Sponsored by MIRA Books.
Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, Evie and Kass’s father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he’d been abducted by aliens but Jakob remained missing. Now, Jakob is back and talking about an intergalactic war. The entire family will have to come together to help Jakob because FBI is after him, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you look forward to making them each year and subsequently forgetting them within two months sticking to them? Or, have you come to see the rush to join gyms, etc. around this time every year to be exhausting and a little trite? The past couple years, I’ve found it a little more helpful for me to set intentions throughout the year, rather than just once at the beginning of it. With that said, I still appreciate what the turning of the year can mean for what ever progress I want to make. I also appreciate how many New Year’s resolutions have been restructured the past few years. It seems like they’re all moving to incorporate more self-care. Resolutions around weight management, for instance, have been shifting to feeling good in and about your body rather than solely focusing on weigh loss.
Below are some books I hope will be helpful in achieving some of the desired changes for your new year.
Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley
Yoke is a thoughtful look at how yoga is practiced in the western world. Through personal essays, Stanley uses humor and honesty to deliver some insightful truths about racism, wellness, and loving your body and self. For more of a how-to yoga book by Stanley, check out Every Body Yoga. She also has classes (including a 2 week trial) if you’re interested.
You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh
Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh has been helping the world to better understand Buddhist teachings and practices for decades now. In You Are Here, he uses a retreat he led for Westerners as a foundation to show how to attain mindfulness, which can be used in meditation practices, or otherwise incorporated into everyday life.
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.” — Audre Lorde
The concept of self-care as we have been seeing it used the past few years has been somewhat appropriated. When Audre Lorde made the case for unapologetically taking care of herself, it was to further combat the systems of oppression that would see a Black, queer and female body destroyed. The Body is Not an Apology has similar energy. In it, Renee Taylor makes the case that physical human bodies are just as varied as our personalities, and that our ability to see and accept this diversity has been thrown off balance. A poet and activist herself, she shows how we can radically accept ourselves, thereby preserving bodies and minds that oppressive systems might otherwise break down.
Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee
You know how there’s always a push to do more? To increase productivity, focus, or some other work-related thing? Well, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee makes the case for how we need to have several seats. In Do Nothing, we’re shown the value in reconnecting with some quintessentially human aspects of ourselves: our creativity, our capacity to reflect, our social life. Funnily enough, taking a load off, relaxing, and reconnecting with these things can actually make you more productive, but that’s an aside. Read this to “recover [your] leisure time” and take a load off.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
A Little Sumn Extra
Rebecca Hussey writes about a new study that shows that nearly 1 in 3 Americans are reading ebooks
Here’s a great list of YA books like Firekeeper’s Daughter
Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif will be released in February. It’s been out, but this one will feature an introduction by Zadie Smith.
What some Black authors have to say about recent book bans
Roxane Gay is launching a new podcast
Tressie McMillan Cottom is writing a newsletter for the New York Times. She also covered Jason Isbell’s Nashville Ryman residency and compiled a playlist where he chose a Black woman performer to open for him almost every night for a week in December.
How much do you know about the trendy new word game Wordle?
A Malcolm X Biography donation was rejected by a Tennessee prison
Here’s news that sounds like the premise of a novel: A manuscript thief was caught
Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.
Until next time,
-E