A new reading list from our friends at TERSE. Journal

When I was traveling a couple of years ago, I sent about a quarter of my library to my mother’s house in the Rocky Mountain region. My books sat in her guestroom for a year before I called her and inquired about have them sent back to me.

I’m back to writing full time after a brief stint of teaching, and with the attainment of many writing and reporting assignments, I feel naked without my collection to help me sort through and research to hone the basis of my thesis and tones for my essays, screenplays, and stories.

Whether I’m writing about a Black women jazz musician, an ethereal novella or writing an essay to assist other writers in finding methods to smooth their literary paths, I’ve known since I was a girl that a robust library of diverse books (that only you can curate via your own tastes and literary needs) is essential to growing into a successful writer.

When I received the full list of books that are patiently waiting to be reunited with my eager and voracious fingers, palms and eyes, I thought it would be good to share some of the books I own and love.

Not many people get to see my process. I wanted to take a bit of the veil down between myself and other readers and writers to ensure that we, in even the smallest of ways, stay connected.

Jordannah Elizabeth

Editor in Chief of TERSE. Journal

_______________________________

I’ve organized 45 of my books into seven different categories for your convenience.

BLACK WOMEN WRITERS

Black Looks

Bell Hooks

The Source of Self Regard

Toni Morrison

The Training School for Negro Girls

Camille Acker

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood

bell hooks

Hunger

Roxane Gay

Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-WW II Paris

Rashida Braggs

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race women

Brittney C. Cooper

Difficult Women

Roxane Gay

Diversifying Democracy

Harriett Lee Elam-Thomas

FEMINISM

The Dialectic of Sex

Shulamith Firestone

Women & Equality; Changing Patterns in American Culture

William H. Chafe

The Chalice and the Blade; our History, Our Future

Riane Eisler

Making Spaces Safer; A Guide to Giving Harassment the Boot

Shawna Potter

Ecofeminism

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva

Anarchy and the Sex Question; Essays on women and emancipation

Emma Goldman

Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodern in the West

Jane Flax

Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory

Judith Kegan Gardiner

SPIRITUALITY

Reiki, 108 Questions and Answer

Paula Horan

The Ultimate Guide to the Rider Waite Tarot

Johannes Fiebig

Chakra Therapy For Personal Growth

Keith Sherwood

BLACK NON-FICTION & JOURNALISM

Knocking the Hustle; Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics

Lester K. Spence

FlyBoy 2: The Greg Tate Reader

Greg Tate

Flyboy in the Buttermilk

Greg Tate

Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars

Henry Louis Gates, Jr

FICTION

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway

Still Life with Woodpecker

Tom Robbins

Richard II

Shakespeare

Henry IV Part 1

Shakespeare

Death Kit

Susan Sontag

Naked Lunch

William S. Burroughs

Plexus: The Rosy Crucifixion

Henry Miller

NON-FICTION

The New Journalism

Robert Boynton

Role Models

John Waters

Modernity & Self-Identify: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Anthony Giddens

Sound Figures: Crossing Aesthetics

Theodor Adorno

The Twilight of American Culture

Morris Berman

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Harold Bloom

What Great Teachers do Differently

Todd Whitaker

Writing in Society

Raymond Williams

POETRY 

The Sabotage Manuals (Poetry)

Ida Borjel

Can I Kick It? (Poetry)

Idris Goodwin

Crossfire (Poetry)

Stacey Yann Chin

Everything Must Go (Poetry)

Kevin Coval/Langston Allston

Once (Poetry)

Alice Walker

Black Queer Hoe (Essays & Poems)

Britteney Black Rose Kapri