Books on my nightstand as October wraps itself up in a warm blanket...

Here’s my monthly line up….from top to bottom…

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

Wow, well, people. Where to start and how to keep it short. It’s a 12 week DIY program with a chapter reading and exercises for each week. Every day or the goal is to write 3 pages of Morning Pages – think all the vomit in your brain can empty out. And take yourself on an Artist Date each week. The premise is that we all are born into this work with creativity from source/spirit/god/universe/whateveryoucallit and we learn to block it, reject it, and excuse it away over our life experiences. The program is meant to help anyone reclaim and get back in touch with their own unique creative soul.

I’m grateful to be doing it along with two wonderful women from my coaching training. We are in the early days – mid week 2. I think all of us have owned this book for a period of time but not done the program – that’s interesting all on its own. I have been a daily/morning journaler for the last couple years so the morning pages are routine-ish. Waking up before my early-rising daughter to get them done though is harder and there’s some internal resistance there to work through. The Artist Date is great accountability to putting action to my talk. I have intentionally woven in creative activities into my doctoral course this semester so this is me walking my talk. I think I’ll write a post just on that later.

Black is my Body: Stories from my Grandmothers Time, my Mother’s Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard

I just finished this memoir a few days ago. Bernard is a professor of English and an author. Bernard wrote this book in essay format. She opens by contextualizing the focus on body and Blackness with details her experience being brutally stabbed in a random act of violence at a coffee shop where she was studying in grad school one evening. She details it out including the aftermath how she has made sense of stabbing and how those around her understand it. The role of race and body weave in and out of 12 separate but interconnected essays about womanhood, family, parenting, adoption, interracial marriage, food, higher ed classroom and with college students, living in a very White populated state, and more.

The Subjection of Women by John Stewart Mill

I know I said I was only reading womxn, non-binary, and writers of color this year, and in truth, I haven’t opened this one yet. It was alluded to in last month’s reading, Educated by Tara Westover so I grabbed it off my bookshelf. I did read, or maybe skim it, during graduate school when I took some women studies courses at the time. I think it is apropos to revisit it now as I prepare teach in the spring one of my favorite seminar courses, Womxn and Gender Non-Conforming in Higher Ed.

How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi

I started this only this week so I am just a chapter or so in but, so far, I am captivated and grateful for his writing. He opens the book with a story from high school when he gave a racist speech in public as part of a competition. Then he reflects on why he said (and believed) what he did and how it fits in as part of this post-racial false narrative we have in the US. How blind we all are and how some of us continue to stay ignorant. He makes a case for becoming anti-racist instead of “not racist” or other versions of that. He offers early on great examples of different definitions of racist, racist policies, racist discrimination and then that “anti-racist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities” (p. 20). And, spoiler alert, ALL policies are racist, especially in this country. There is no such thing as race or gender neutral anything. Please read this book!  

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Another book referenced in another book. Bernard references this book, and others, which makes since as she teaches literature in university. Having studied English literature myself during undergrad, I’m drawn to the classics or must reads. I do believe they offer us a common understanding of the humxn condition and experience. I also regrettably recognize how the English literature coursework and texts of the 1990s in rural northern Louisiana did not include writers of color, nor really much from womxn generally. Our curriculum at a PWI (predominately White institution) in the south did not include legendary authors such as Hurston, as she is both Black and womxn. Two identities being too much likely for the older, White men who were my professors at that time. I took only one course with a womxn faculty in my major, and maybe at all. I have much to make up for in the gaps of my formal education.

You’re on an Airplane by Parker Posey

Started it but won’t finish it, I have to admit. I love Parker Posey, that’s why I was excited to pick it up at the library. I admire her quirky approach to life and movies. I grew up on her films – they speak to me in terms of going against the mainstream and being oneself in career and life. She was my role model in my youth of being ‘perfect’ in her imperfection of nerdy and eccentricity. I think because of that I need to hear her read the book rather than read her words.

Not pictured but in my pile to read

·      This will be my Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins

And then these are in my back up pile (different that my actively reading pile reviewed above) on my nightstand for when I need to continue the processing…

·      All about Love by bell hooks

·      Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education edited by Eaton, Hughes, and MacGregor

·      Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling our Stories Transforms our Lives by Louise DeSalvo

·      The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming your Power, Creativity, Brilliance, and Dreams by Debbie Ford

·      The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children by Shefali Tsabary

What writing this has taught me about myself and my current reading patterns:

·      Reading leads to more good reading by paying attention to who else author’s reference or call upon or discuss as having made an influence on them and/or their writing.

·      There’s so much to read and there’s so many great author and voices out there to help us unlearn conditioning and create our own way/paradigm for living and loving.

·      Be intentional about having womxn, non-binary folx, and writers of color in all reading lists from preschool to grad school and beyond…

·      I commit to actively and regularly listening and learning from people’s experiences, especially in the work of unlearning taught racism and sexism in the US. As a white womxn in this world, it is my responsibility to do this and help other white womxn.

Enjoy! Let me know what you’re reading right now!

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