Reading List
A non-exhaustive, greatest-hits-only
(and sporadically updated) list of the media that is inspiring my thinking and practice(s).
…and here’s me @ The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA (photo by Jose M. Marmolejos)
NON-FICTION
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
FICTION
ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
“It’s 2020. Be Bold or Get the Hell Out of the Way” Vu Le, from the Nonprofit AF Blog
This New Yorker article, “Can Reading Make You Happier"?” that introduced me to the concept of “bibliotherapy.” And this one, “Fran Leibowitz Is Never Leaving New York” that is a reminder to take myself less seriously.
“unthinkable thoughts: call out culture in the age of COVID-19” by adrienne maree brown
“white beloveds: #BlackLivesMatter is not a trend, it’s an invitation to our own freedom too” by Rev. Margaret Anne Ernst
PODCASTS
Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin
Dolly Parton’s America (WNYC Studios)
Still Processing (NY Times)
Heavyweight (Gimlet)
On Being (American Public Media)
Everything Happens a podcast with Kate Bowler
Episode: “adrienne maree brown: Are You Satisfiable?” (Hurry Slowly Podcast)
Episode: “Everything Is Always Keep Changing” (Cheryl Strayed & George Saunders on the Sugar Calling Podcast)
POEMS
Optimism, by Jane Hirshfield
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs -- all this resinous, unretractable earth.
Sorrow Is Not My Name, by Ross Gay
—after Gwendolyn Brooks
No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.
—for Walter Aikens
“A word after a word after a word is power.”