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In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Why you should read it: This book is brutal and honest and beautifully written. The narrative is deeply painful and personal, and I'm going to be processing it for a long time.
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Twisted by Emma Dabiri
Stamped from the Beginning meets You Can't Touch My Hair in this timely and resonant essay collection from Guardian contributor and prominent BBC race correspondent Emma Dabiri, exploring the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized throughout history, with ruminations on body politics, race, pop culture, and Dabiri’s own journey to loving her hair.
Why you should read it: This book is part memoir, part detailed history, and excels at both simultaneously. Dabiri's writing manages to feel candidly intimate without sacrificing that unassailable groundwork of scholarship and research. I very much appreciated the conspiratorial tone and the way the more personal parts of the story felt like a conversation. This book has an incredible amount of heart, and an abundance of knowledge to offer, and I recommend it to any and everyone.
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Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods...The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.
Why you should read it: This one is a tough read, but so illuminating I'm not sure I have the words to describe it. I knew there were intrinsic and deliberate injustices in who has historically been allowed to accumulate wealth and property in America, but the scope of the problem—and the sheer malignant INTENTION behind it—was even more expansive than I realized. This book is meticulously researched and powerfully composed, and I wish I could make everyone I know read it.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Why you should read it: This book is brutal and honest and beautifully written. The narrative is deeply painful and personal, and I'm going to be processing it for a long time.
- — - — - — - — -
Twisted by Emma Dabiri
Stamped from the Beginning meets You Can't Touch My Hair in this timely and resonant essay collection from Guardian contributor and prominent BBC race correspondent Emma Dabiri, exploring the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized throughout history, with ruminations on body politics, race, pop culture, and Dabiri’s own journey to loving her hair.
Why you should read it: This book is part memoir, part detailed history, and excels at both simultaneously. Dabiri's writing manages to feel candidly intimate without sacrificing that unassailable groundwork of scholarship and research. I very much appreciated the conspiratorial tone and the way the more personal parts of the story felt like a conversation. This book has an incredible amount of heart, and an abundance of knowledge to offer, and I recommend it to any and everyone.
- — - — - — - — -
Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods...The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.
Why you should read it: This one is a tough read, but so illuminating I'm not sure I have the words to describe it. I knew there were intrinsic and deliberate injustices in who has historically been allowed to accumulate wealth and property in America, but the scope of the problem—and the sheer malignant INTENTION behind it—was even more expansive than I realized. This book is meticulously researched and powerfully composed, and I wish I could make everyone I know read it.
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