Reading update 6.25.24…

In an effort to post more regularly and stay actively reading, I’m hoping to do weekly updates from my reading list. As you’ll see in what follows, there’ll be some overlap between books, and some repeated discussions perhaps, but I feel there’s no real way to avoid that. Plus, one thing I noticed when I keep a reading journal, which is sort of the vibe I’m going for here, is that your perspective about a book can change as you continue to read through the book. Yes, this should be obvious, but even the most avid readers (myself included) often make the mistake of judging a book by its cover.

And I think this might be the best space for me to process what I’m reading (and hopefully pick up a few reading recommendations, too).

So let’s start with what I recently finished: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa. This is probably the fastest I’ve read through a new book and that’s because it was hard to put this one down. Starting in Ein Hod, the story focuses on one Palestinian family in the years leading up to 1948, when Israel began its aggressive occupation of the land. And as the Zionists become more violent, life for this family becomes a living hell. The descriptions are vivid and thorough, and there were points where it felt as though I were reading a current event out of Gaza or the West Bank. While the events this family faces are frequently horrifying and occasionally catastrophic, their devotion to each other and the dream of a free Palestine make this a tragically beautiful read.

Next up are my current reads. I’m still working through The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, but it’s honestly been tough. Every day since October 7^th, 2023 has brought a new hellish story out of Gaza. It’s impacted my reading trends where I feel drawn to reading more novels rather than non-fiction stories. It seems easier to wade into the realities Palestinians face when I read Palestinian novels; it’s not as easy when reading non-fiction accounts of Israel’s atrocities. It’s like I need a narrative structure to tether me through the hellish world forced upon Palestinians. All this to say it’s been difficult to read Rashid’s historical account because I might read a chapter, then open Instagram or TikTok and see that Israel has yet again committed war crimes and advanced their blood-thirsty genocide. That things have only grown worse. But yet it’s still a critical read for those who’d like to deconstruct the US/Israeli propaganda and learn how Palestine is being systematically erased from their homeland.

I’m also making good progress with Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty. This is quickly becoming a book I can’t put down. It’s a collection of Morgan’s own short-stories (kind of like Never Whistle at Night where Talty also has a short story), and they’re not all horror, either. Some are just depictions of everyday life for Indigenous people, and that’s what makes the horror elements that much more chilling. Talty uses subtle little details to carry a lot of weight in turning an everyday event – walking to the store and back, hanging out with your friend at the bar – into a flashpoint where the story shifts to a thriller. But by the end of each story (so far), I’m also left reflecting on the painful realities that inspired these stories.

Lastly, I’ve got one more book queued up called The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens & Ghosts by Tiya Miles. This was a recommendation from a professor I had during my MFA program and I’ve been meaning to read it for a while. I had actually kind of forgotten about it until I saw it on the shelves behind a BookTok creator I watched a week or so ago. The professor I’d had recommended it after I had asked for books that blend the discussions of Critical Race Theory with discussions of Indigenous identity. I may not get to this one right away, but I’m quite excited for it.

In light of my last post about how I miss studying theology, I’m also contemplating dusting off one of my books from seminary that’s probably academically outdated, but might stir my curiosity. Blending in something that keeps me reflecting on my time as an evangelical should definitely help with my own novel I’m working on – I’m aiming for psychological thriller that doubles as a story of deconstruction from evangelicalism. Thus, it’d be autofiction, but with a psychological thriller flare.

Upon mentioning keeping a reading journal, I might make that another blogging series where once a week I take a single text I’m reading and I work through the questions I developed for the reading journal I kept through my MFA program. Generally speaking, the journals were intended to get us to connect what we were reading with what we were writing. And I think that might stir some helpful discussions here.

That’s all for now. If you’ve got reading recommendations similar to the ones I mention here, please let me know in the comments. Or if you want to share what you’ve been reading, feel free to comment with that as well.

Keep calm and read on!

In the Bag 6.11.24

May ended with a little bit of chaos and so far, June hasn’t promised much else. But I was finally able to get some rest this weekend and really dive into a few books, and now I’m feeling refreshed – both physiologically and creatively. This week I’m trying to take advantage of this and work on a few projects – the first of which is this sort of newsletter-like post.

And I thought I’d start with a reading update. While the quantity of books I’ve read in the last month or so have has been low, the quality certainly has not. I think it’s precisely because I haven’t pressured myself to a read a lot that I’ve been able to absorb what I have read. Both of the books I’ve recently finished provided direct inspiration for my largest project – turning my MFA creative thesis into a novel.

First off was Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, Edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. This is an incredible collection of stories with a wide range of sub-genres: psychological thrillers, mystical/fantasy, historical fiction, and even some have a little humor laced throughout. A few even read like the prologues to novels all their own. Normally, horror isn’t my preferred genre, but after reading these stories, it’s definitely up there.

The second book I finished was The Removed by Brandon Hobson (who has a story in Never Whistle at Night). One of the key aspects to my creative thesis was non-linearity in storytelling and Brandon’s first novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, was an influential part of my own work. His second novel is an even better example of how to bridge the past and the present in such a way that you feel like you’re getting multiple stories from one. It is a hauntingly beautiful read.

Inspired by these last two books I went out looking for more like them, and one recommendation was Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (who also has a story in Never Whistle at Night). And sure enough, when I scouted the back cover, I saw an endorsement from Brandon Hobson, which essentially sealed my need for this book (honestly, though, the real thing that sealed it was finding a “used” copy that looked hardly even touched. It saved me like $6). I haven’t had a chance to jump into it yet, but it’s now highly ranked on my TBR pile.

I’m still working through The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, and oh my word has it been eye-opening. Given the nature of my Master’s theses, I had already known some of the main bullet points of what’s happening in Palestine, but Khalidi goes into greater detail of how Israel took over Palestine. And while it is a dense read in the sense that there’s a lot of information, Khalidi has made it feel less academic, as if you were having an informal conversation with one of your professors over drinks after the last class of the semester. Heartfelt, but thorough, and an essential read for anyone who’s trying to learn more about Palestine.

While Khalidi does a fantastic job of painting the socio-political landscape throughout the last century, I recently came across a novel that, while the characters themselves are fictional, has provided a palpable narrative context for the apartheid in Palestine: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa. Her storytelling is wonderful and while the story is set in one point in time right now, there are allusions to future events. For someone who defaults to non-linear ways of writing, I’m looking forward to the rest of this novel.

And of course, the more I read, the more I become inspired for my own projects – novels, podcasts, comics, etc. This in turn fuels the desire to quit regular jobs and become a full-time content creator, which is incredibly unwise given the current political and economic turmoil. But it is still my long-term goal. If you’d like to support this goal tangibly, hop over to my Ko-Fi page where you can buy me a coffee.

Lastly, in light of the on-going genocide in Palestine, many content creators are advocating for Palestinians who are trying to raise funds to survive. Someone I know in my real life runs his own falafel place and we’ve been going to for years, but only found out a few months ago that he is from Palestine. His name is Samir, and he has several family members still in Gaza who are all trying to get out. So far as I know, they’ve all been able to survive the bombings. But the longer these goals go unmet, the worse the odds get. Please consider helping out Samir if you can.

That’s all that’s in the bag this week. Thanks for reading.

In the Bag: August 2022

A few years ago, I started what I had hoped would become a series highlighting the various texts I read through my MFA program. As things unfolded, though, I simply did not have the energy or time to push another 500-1,000 words out about the things I was reading. (Part of our assignments back then was to write annotations on the books we read to highlight specific elements of the text that pertain to our own writing. It used a lot of brain power).

I don’t really have much more time or energy these days, but I do have a more consistent schedule. Last week I got the promotion I applied for within Starbucks (now becoming a shift supervisor for my store) and a few weeks ago, my fiancé got transferred to a job location within walking distance, which helped cut down on the extra driving we had to do.

Needless to say, our schedules are about as stable as they’re ever going to get.

Which means I can actually start to schedule out time for myself to read, write, and just create stuff I want to create. Leaving my second job at the end of March has done wonders for my creative energy and now I want to try to focus that onto a couple projects. One way of achieving that is to try (again) taking time on a monthly basis to share what I’m reading, and maybe a few initial thoughts on each book.

Ideally I’d like to write posts like this on a weekly basis, but I’m not a fast reader. For instance, I just finished a nearly-400-page book that I thoroughly enjoyed; I was literally reading it every day. It still took me two weeks. So it’s probably better for me to write these on a semi-monthly basis for now.

With that in mind, there are several books I’ve got in my bag this month; The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope, The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings, Calling For A Blanket Dance: A Novel by Oscar Hokeah, and Nightcrawling: A Novel by Leila Mottley. The books by Leslye Penelope and Alex Jennings were recommendations from another author whose debut novel, A Master of Djinn, sparked my recent resurgence in reading: P. Djèlí Clark. I rarely get the desire to write a review about the books I read (even if I really love them), but Clark’s novel was an incredible read. Oscar Hokeah is actually a Twitter mutual from my @ScribalPractice account, so I’m extremely excited to read what he wrote. And Mottley’s novel is the rare New Yorker recommendation (that I have also seen praised by respected Twitter mutuals) and I just had to try it out.

In addition to A Master of Djinn, I’ve also finished several other books that I thoroughly loved and for which I will likely outline some small reviews in the coming days/weeks. But for now, I’m starting with what’s in my bag and going from there.

So what are you reading?

In the Bag: Part I

In an effort to help narrow my focuses through this MFA program, I’m starting a new blog series titled, In the Bag, discussing what I’m currently reading/working through, and a few notes about how each book I read informs my writing practices. “In the bag” is a nod to my golfing days where some players’ clubs (clubs being carried in golf bags) were highlighted so amateur golfers can go out and buy them to make them feel like the pros. But it also brought attention to strategy, which is similar to what I’m hoping to do here.

Except with a book bag.

My MFA program, not surprisingly, challenges students to stretch themselves creatively – trying on new methods and forms to see what would fit their creative expression the best. And the overwhelming majority of our required reading is a list compiled together with our faculty mentors (mine being Walidah Imarisha) that is intended to help us explore and learn new ways of writing. As we go along, we’re asked not to summarize the book’s contents, but rather its presentation – the way words are strung together on the page, or maybe how the author flits back and forth from the present to a point in the past, or maybe even how the author breaks out in poetic fashion to describe certain, significant moments of their lives. Once we’ve done this, we’re to connect these works with our own, and/or even imitate their work.

So what’s in my bag this week? Well, not a whole lot. My fiancé and I are still in the middle of the moving process (we don’t even have a couch at this point), and our schoolwork hasn’t been given the attention it adequately requires. But I’ve been bouncing between Assata Shakur’s An Autobiography, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir.

Assata has an interesting back-and-forth layout where she starts in the immediate aftermath of one intense moment (the turnpike shooting), but then in the next chapter she starts with her earliest childhood memories. She alternates between these two timelines from chapter to chapter and it makes for an interesting way to piece her story together. In my own project, I have a method of alternating between certain strands of events – back-and-forth between moments of processing my own racial identity and then moments of encountering racism – but her style is more clearly stated. I love this book because not only am I learning more about an often terribly (and intentionally) misunderstood figure in american history, but I’m also seeing a different way to tidy up my own writing.

Roxanne’s book is less about informing my writing practice and more about giving me more accurate information as a backdrop to what I’m working on. “The history of the United States,” she writes, “is a history of settler colonialism – the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft,” (2). This framework of US history is radically different from what I was taught in school. There, we were indoctrinated with american exceptionalism – that, more or less, “we” were the good guys of the world, chosen by God. Dunbar-Ortiz adds, “Those who seek history with an upbeat ending, a history of redemption and reconciliation, may look around and observe that such a conclusion is not visible, not even in utopian dreams of a better society.” This book will definitely help in debunking american mythology.

I first read Coates’ Between the World and Me not long after it came out in 2015, when I was just starting my thesis research on an Indigenous Jesus (hi, yes, I went to seminary). Back then, I wasn’t as able to delve into personal experiences as much as I am now; it had to be all “objective” academic b.s. So reading Coates was incredibly refreshing – even if the subject material wasn’t (and shouldn’t ever be) happy-go-lucky. And I’m only a chapter into The Beautiful Struggle, but it’s right in that same visceral vein – describing his realities not as he would like to remember them, but as he does remember them, grit and all. It’s a reminder that for my own project, I can’t shy away from how I remember things – because a lot of the shit I went through was gritty and harsh. And when I sit down to retell the stories, I should not sugar-coat anything.

Later this week, I’ll be starting a couple other books as things start to ramp up for school (I have my first packet due two weeks from tomorrow). But this is what I’m reading for now. And even though it’s been hardly a month and a half into this program, I can already feel a huge difference in the way I approach my writing. These authors (as well as the 14 other books I have in the queue for this semester) will have a huge impact on me and my writing.

Anything you’re reading do this for you?