what I'm reading (summer 2024)

When it's hot AF you stay inside and read.

I do, anyway.

Here's a partial list of what I've been reading this summer. A lot of nonfiction and memoir, and some memorable fiction.

• Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy Tyson
• This reminded me some of Zellner's Wrong Side of Murder Creek, but Tyson writes about growing up the son of a white minister and the murder of Henry Morrow, a Black man in a small Southern town in 1970. The implications of a white church supporting the grieving Black community are deep and painful. I would have been a toddler; history is not that long ago.
   
• Black AF History by Michael Harriot
• As funny and irreverent of a non-whitewashed history of America as you'd expect from this on-air commentator and journalist. I had the pleasure of seeing him speak at Dillard this summer too. I hope he writes a book focused on the hundreds of revolts and uprisings my religious American history books never covered.
   
• Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett 
• Harriot's book led me to this gem from 1962. Published before the murder of Martin Luther King, it traces African-American history in what we know as the United States from the earliest days. Hard to find but push your local library.
   
• Know My Name by Chanel Miller
• Miller writes beautifully and powerfully about sexual assault, consent, and the failings of institutions and higher ed. I'm amazed at her poise and vulnerability.
   
• The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
• It's remarkable to me how thoroughly RuPaul Charles has influenced American culture, while somehow dodging the blogs and the culture wars. Ru's memoir is incisive and thoughtful, tracing his early days of making the scene in New York City, shaping and challenging and dropping knowledge bombs. Everybody say love!
   
• Hurdles in the Dark by Elvira Gonzalez
• I enjoyed this memoir even as it frustrated me. A young immigrant woman finds refuge and a future in running and hurdles, but the subtext, the unresolved anxieties of her undocumented family and years of sexual abuse at the hands of a coach, left me wondering and worrying. I hope she is safe and sound.
   
• Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
• I loved Such a Fun Age and this is a stellar follow up. Reid deftly and accurately captures the moods, voices and vices of college students and a professor at the University of Arkansas. You can see the crisis building and you just can't look away. The dialogue is accurate and devastating.
   
• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
• A layered family story, again with looming crises and hilarious, heart-rendingly bad decisions. The characters are well developed and with the exception of some vernacular dialogue I skipped over, this kept me raptly reading all the way through.