I used to think I was good at writing introductions. Now as the years go by, including this one, I cannot announce that I doubt my choices, cadence and intuition when it comes to my writing, but after writing so many introductions, so many lead sentences, so many year-end pieces, I find it important to reflect on exactly what it is I mean to say…every single day.
Some say to become a better writer, you need to read. I agree with that and more times that not, I like to read more than I write. Reading helps me form my thoughts. Books help me expand my theories and learn about history. They help me speak with vigor and knowledge on topics I’m called to lecture on…but more importantly, they help me slow down.
When I read I can escape the fast paced culture of American urban living. I can take time and head to a library or a bookstore and not have to talk. I don’t have to answer and retort, I don’t have to smile or become angry due to an engaging conversation. I don’t have to explain myself.
I don’t have to explain why I think and do the things I do. I don’t have to prove I love someone or pick up a phone call. I don’t have to respond to an email or remember to pick something up from the grocery store. I can forget doctor’s appointments and birthdays (even my own). I can take the time to read someone else’s thoughts.
I can let authors do the thinking and writing for me, or they can tell me a story that is vastly different than my own. This 2017 Reading List contains a few of the books I’ve read, skimmed, studied and quoted this year. I hope you enjoy it and Happy New Year. –je
By: Anthony Giddens
Edited By: Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, Leticia Sabsay
By: Ida Börjel
By: Theodore W. Adamo
The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality
By: Michel Foucault
As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
By: Susan Sontag, Edited By David Rieff
Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Modern Era
By: Anthony Giddens
Edited by: Judith Butler, Zaynap Gambatti, Leticia Sabsay
Aesthetic Justice: Interesting Artistic and Moral Perspectives
Edited By: Pascal Gielen, Niels Van Tomme
By: Chris Crass
By: Richard Wolin
Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois
By: Gerald Horne
The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
By: Maggie Nelson
By: Joyce Carol Oates
By: Kahlil Gibran
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
By: W. E. B. Du Bois
By: Hannah Arendt
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women
By: Brittney C. Cooper
Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times
By: Alexis Shotwell
By: Peter Singer
Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society
By: Michael Albert
Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious
By: Sigmund Freud
Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others
By: China Martens
By: Nina Power
By: John Waters
Listen Up: Voices From the Next Generation
By: Barbara Findlen
The Concept and Measurement of Violence Against Women and Men
By: Sylvia Walby, Jude Towers, Susan Balderston, Brian Francis
Eros and Ethics: Reading Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VII
By: Marc De Kesel
A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Reader
Edited By: Frances Smith Foster
By: Wilhelm Reich
By: Mark Anthony Neal
Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions
By: Judith Kegan Gardiner
Sex, Drag, and Male Roles: Investigating Gender as Performance
By: Diane Torr and Stephen J. Bottoms
Hope in the Holler: A Womanist Theology
By: A. Elaine Brown Crawford
The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention
By: Sameena Mulla
By: Audre Lorde
On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970
By Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966–2006
By: Joyce Carol Oates
Shotgun Seamstress Zine Collection: Six Zine by and for Black Punks
By: Osa Atoe
Freedom Challenge: African American Homeschoolers
By: Grace Llewellyn
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women
Edited By: Mia E. Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, Barbara D. Savage
By: Patricia Hill Collins
By: Patricia Hill Collins
Women’s Oppression Today: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter
By: Michèle Barrett
This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition Writings by Radical Women of Color
By: Cherríe Moraga
The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way
By: Alice Walker
In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence
By: Kristin Bumiller
Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience
By: Michelle Murphy
By: Danielle L. McGuire
Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism
By: Erik S. McDuffie
Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality And Intimacy
By: Tricia Rose
Seasonal Reading Lists features on TERSE Journal
Special thanks to Red Emma’s Bookstore
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