What to Read When There's Work to Do
Happy Sunday, friends. Here are 4+ articles and a book for you.
New here? Welcome! Consult my first post to see what amateur bibliotherapy means. If I link to a paywalled article that you can’t access, reply to this email and let me know. Finally, complete this Google form or reply to this email any time to let me know what you’re reading. I may include your recommendation in a future edition.
Hey there, team. I hope you’re taking good care.
I’m so glad that many of you reached out about last week’s resource compilation in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
If you are protesting in New York, consult this information prepared by The Legal Aid Society about your rights, what to do if you’re arrested, and more (thanks for sending this, Karen K!).
If you want more bail funds to support, actions to take beyond protesting/donating, or ground rules of social media activism, this comprehensive guide (via Twitter) will help.
If you are looking for ways to contact representatives about defunding the police, this master document has scripts and contacts organized by location and urgency.
While it was wonderful to see so many other resources circulated this week, it is incumbent on us to use them now and going forward.
A Note on Bibliotherapy
I thought it might make sense to go back to the history of “bibliotherapy” and think a bit about why reading is so important to me. The 2015 New Yorker article that inspired the name of this newsletter explains:
Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.” (emphasis mine)
Bibliotherapy thus has its roots not just in recommending books for pleasure, but for growth and betterment. Anti-racism work requires ensuring that growth and betterment is for the benefit of BIPOC.
With that in mind, here are some reads.
The Articles
What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For? Vulture, (~7 min). This piece critiques the many viral “anti-racist reading lists” that have been circulated on social media. You know the ones: they usually end up in an Instagram graphic, listed out with titles and authors, devoid of any other context. The article's description of "reading Black art zoologically" felt reinforced this week when lists were shared without any other description of the books themselves beyond being part of an “anti-racist” education.
This sentiment was echoed by Juan Vidal for NPR, who states that “anti-racist books will only do a person good if they silence themselves first and enter into the reading — provided they care enough to do so.” He notes that decolonizing your bookshelf, or “actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long,” is a key component to becoming anti-racist rather than just sharing a list of books. Interrogating your own biases and bookshelves is vital to that process.
NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white,' The Guardian (~8 min). This interview with award-winning sci-fi author NK Jemisin chronicles her experience with racism in the publishing industry and in a genre dominated by white authors and characters. US publishing is, as the article notes, “blindingly white”: a cited 2019 survey measuring diversity in publishing indicates that 79% of respondents identified as white, 78% were women, 88% were straight, and 92% were non-disabled. Jemisin’s interview demonstrates how white sci-fi writers in particular have been hostile and racist towards BIPOC writers.
For further reading on the lack of diversity in publishing, this piece from Jennifer Baker on Medium details how each part of the publishing process has built-in bias that drives inequality. It’s a great contextualizing piece to then take a look at the trending #publishingpaidme conversation on Twitter, where authors are sharing how much money they were paid for particular book advances.
As an aside: I was on the library’s waiting list for Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy for most of March and April (and, as fellow amateur bibliotherapist Amanda T. will tell you, I nearly dropped $120 on this online reading group about it) before I realized it might have to do with the fact that her new novel had just been released and was being billed as incredible pandemic reading. By the time I got off the waiting list, I missed my window to claim the book. I have since just… bought the book, but let my idiocy be a lesson to you.
I Wrote A Gothic Novel—Now Life Feels Like It is One, Refinery29 (~5 min). It felt like Elisabeth Thomas spoke directly to me when she wrote this article, which discusses her debut gothic novel’s release during the pandemic:
“Haunted house stories describe spirits in limbo, that unsettled horror space between life and death. We’re in limbo too, but I, at least, am not moved by some romantic wild anger or gothic passion. Because how can I grieve when I’m not yet sure what I’ve lost? What we’ve all lost?”
This is also a great article to read if you’d like a taste of the prose in her book. (Spoiler alert: I’m recommending her book later in this newsletter.)
Why Does Every Teen in Every Movie Want to Go to Yale? Vulture (~9 min). Who better to parse the minutiae of Hollywood culture (and its tropes) than Hunter Harris, who might have the only perfect Twitter account in existence? Hell, even her Into The Gloss interview recounting her skincare routine is a delight.
The Book
Are you looking for a gothic novel with a splash of sci-fi that will make you feel like you’ve accidentally consumed a hallucinogenic drug? CATHERINE HOUSE by Elisabeth Thomas will do the trick. Ostensibly about an isolated and elite school in rural Pennsylvania that is not all it seems, CATHERINE HOUSE luxuriates in a fog of ennui and dread, and is a blur of character development and time. Language and description of most things is sparse, at first, except for the rich and decadent and unsettling descriptions of the food and drink in each scene. (I am eating so well in quarantine and yet I am unsettled, almost always.) This book is about confinement, where things are weird and festering and sort of gently rotting. It makes me believe in ghosts and assume all grand-looking houses have corpses hidden in rooms with peeling wallpaper.
What to know going in: This book has received a number of favorable reviews, but it seems that nobody can quite describe it. Do not believe the publisher who compares this book to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (the only similarities are its elite academic setting, constant drunkenness of characters, and the fact that both are very good). Do not trust the Goodreads reviews that unfairly demand clarity of language and narrative from a book about uncertainty and trauma and delay. The strength of this book is what I craved most when I read it last month: a narrator who is just as uncertain about what’s happening to her as you are. RIYL incredible debut novels by Black authors, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (this is a superior version), and Studio Ghibli food scenes.
If you’re looking for something else, here are 10 nonfiction books that specifically address systemic police violence; 6 debut fantasy novels starring Black women; and 13 books that improved this author’s mental health.
Until next time, I hope you’ll interrogate your institutions, your bookshelves, your idols, and yourselves. And if anyone needs JSTOR access to do some research, let me know.