This month’s Reading Round Up offers a collection of some of the best articles I read, covering topics including Nicole Beharie, hygiene theatre. and anti-Blackness. Plus a list of my own written work. Get those tabs ready!
My Writing
Op-Ed (printed in the Napa Valley Register): Napa’s Black community fought for freedom from the start
Book list: New Young Adult Speculative Fiction July 2020
Book review: An Old Story Made New: C.T. Rwizi’s Scarlet Odyssey
Book review: Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf Is a Miracle, a Gift
Book review: Straight From the Underground: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Book review: “We Are Each Other’s Harvest”: Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet
Book review: Portal Doors, Talking Marmots, and Disembodied Heads: A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer
Book review: Complications and Contradictions: All of Us With Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil
Book list: YA Book Bundles – Historical
Short fiction spotlight: Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: June 2020
Book list: YA Book Bundles – Romance
Book list: YA Book Bundles – Contemporary
Book review: “Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter.”: The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Book review: “Nothing else in the world beyond but trees”: Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings
Other Works
“Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time” by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic: “COVID-19 has reawakened America’s spirit of misdirected anxiety, inspiring businesses and families to obsess over risk-reduction rituals that make us feel safer but don’t actually do much to reduce risk—even as more dangerous activities are still allowed. This is hygiene theater.”
“A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.” by Jodi S. Cohen for ProPublica: “The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place. She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.”
“Reckoning With Anti-Blackness in Indian Country” by Nick Martin for New Republic: “The Indianz.com article also never once mentions the fact that Roanhorse is Black—an omission that attempts to sidestep the question of anti-Black and other kinds of discrimination in tribal communities. (The article “practically turns itself into a pretzel trying not to note this,” Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, a Blackfeet writer, noted in a thread on the piece.)”
“Nicole Beharie on ‘Miss Juneteenth’ and the Danger of Labels” by Due for Fair: “Beharie plays Turquoise, a former beauty queen-turned-bartender struggling to pay the bills and navigate her teenage daughter’s fierce independence. The role inspired the actress to reflect on what liberation means in her own life — from wearing her natural hair on set to speaking freely. “I didn’t think I was allowed to do that,” she continued. “Black women have always had to choke it down.””
Punk-Ass Book Jockey 