Author: Patricia Elzie

Many people have really strong opinions about creative advice, regardless of the type of project. Some folks have advice that they swear by. Create daily, build a habit, etc. Other folks have the opinion that being creative is so unique to each individual that all advice, in essence, is incredibly unhelpful at best and flat out bad at worst. Personally, I apply a some/many/most framework. Some people think creative advice is useless. Many people find value in creative advice. Most people can usually find at least one thing of value in a pile of creative advice. This is why I tend to read books about creativity. I don’t expect that every single thing in the book will be inspirational to me but I expect to find at least a few things that I can identify with and apply to my own writing, music, cooking, etc.

Creative Quest by Amir Thompson (AKA Questlove) likely has a bit of something for everyone. Questlove is the co-founder of the music group The Roots (which is also the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon). Questlove is a drummer, a DJ, an author, a culinary entrepreneur, a designer, and more. This man does not stop.

A warning about this book which was written a few years ago, he does use a couple of comedians as creativity examples (one of the comedians is a transphobe, the other is a rapist). Otherwise, I enjoyed this book! He not only gives advice on being a creative, but he also explores what creativity means, how different people may define it, and has some great discussions on creativity inspired by other creative works.

One thing he talks about that I don’t read enough of in such advice books is the importance (for some people) of being an apprentice or having a mentor. A lot of people can benefit from that kind of relationship and there is always such an emphasis on doing things on your own when having a creative community is important because nothing happens in a vacuum. Related is another idea he talks about, which is cultivating a network. Something Questlove spends a lot of time talking about is curation. Curation as an important part of the creative process and curation as creativity itself. I’m inspired to read that section again because there was a lot of good stuff in it.

I do want to note that there is definitely music used throughout the audiobook which can be an absolute cacophony of sound if you turn the speed up on your audiobook players like I do.

This book is pretty high-intensity from start to finish and I could not put it down. Some content warnings up front for death of a spouse, suicidal ideation, violence against women, and death of a child. Some readers are hesitant to call this book a romance but I disagree. It’s gritty, real, and ugly sometimes but it also has some very important hallmarks of what makes a romance a romance.

Our heroine is Feyi Adekola. Five years prior to this story, there was an accident that killed her husband. She has been deep in grief and it shows in her art. Feyi and her best friend Joy live in New York and at the start of this story, Feyi decides that she is ready to have sex again, not for love, but she is ready to allow someone to give her physical pleasure. She has sex with a guy at a rooftop party and they date for a while but it doesn’t get very serious. They part amicably and Feyi meets someone else: one of this guy’s friends, Nasir. Nasir is perfect and he doesn’t rush her. He agrees to be friends, though he clearly wants more. He is patient and adoring and they grow a beautiful friendship.

Nasir is from Jamaica and he gets her a spot in a show at the National museum with a curator that Feyi has only dreamed about working with. He takes her to Jamaica and they stay with his father, Alim Blake, a celebrity chef with two Michelin stars. He had a gorgeous home built up on the mountain and Feyi is both star-struck and awestruck at the amount of luxury.

Feyi is putting everything in jeopardy because the minute she spotted Alim picking them up at the airport, she knew there would be trouble because he’s radiant in a way that makes everything and everyone want to orbit around him. She’s going to be in Jamaica for many weeks, in this beautiful, intriguing person’s home, trying desperately not to ruin everything she is trying to build with Nasir because she is absolutely smitten with his father.

Aside from consistent high-intensity lust, grief is always present in this book in some way and even in the chapters full of lust or love or beauty, grief is always right there. I think it’s brilliant to juxtapose these very high highs with the heart shattering lows and it makes the love even more beautiful, the sex sexier, and the sadness almost unbearable. By the end of this book I was rooting for so many of the characters to find love and healing and life in ways they had not been able to for a long time.

Anna Sale is the host of the Death, Sex, and Money podcast and this book is an extension of that show. Sale wants us to have those conversations that we are avoiding, sometimes even for years. As you can imagine, content warnings for a bunch of hard things, especially around death including infant death.

The author’s argument is that we all go through these particular hard things and by avoiding the conversations that could actually help us and our relationships, we end up isolating ourselves and maybe even making things harder to deal with than they already are. The book is divided into five big buckets of “hard things” by chapter: Death, Sex, Money, Family, and Identity.

The bulk of the book is actually stories upon stories not only about the author but folks she has interviewed for the Death, Sex, and Money podcast about the hard conversations they’ve had in their lives or that they wish they had in their lives and how that experience of having (or not having) the conversation has affected them. In the introduction and at the end of each chapter, which, again, is full of stories, Sale offers up what she has learned about how to have such conversations. She does such a phenomenal job of acknowledging not only that these conversations are hard but also how they are hard and then the importance of having them anyway.

Personally, I am remarkable at avoiding conversations, especially around and with family as well as conversations around death. One quote in the book was, “Family is where we tend to lose our maturity” and wow, that hit close to home. I can’t say that after reading this book I was excited to have all these conversations, but recently I have been unexpectedly forced to have some of them. I am deeply grateful to have read this book a couple years ago because I felt like I had a bit more support and bravery around these incredibly hard conversations and topics.

I want to give content warnings for sexual assault, suicide, abuse, anti-trans violence, and racism up front because I’m going to talk about some of these things in this recommendation.

Kai Cheng Thom is the author of Fierce Femmes & Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, which is an excellent bit of fantastical fiction and I am pleased to say that her nonfiction is just as good. I Hope We Choose Love is nonfiction about how we on the left/liberal side and specifically the queer community tend to eat our own. Our capacity for forgiveness and for allowing people room to improve and grow is sometimes non-existent, especially for people who we consider a part of our own community. Often the people in the queer community who aren’t allowed to be human, that is, to make mistakes, are also often queer people of color.

This book is organized into three sections: Let Us Live, Let Us Love, and Let Us Believe. It alternates between thoughtful, nonfiction essays and powerful, intimate poetry. She covers so many of the unnecessarily difficult and incredibly unhealthy things that happen in the liberal queer community that often aren’t talked about, such as the almost toxic self-righteousness, the culture of enabling, lack of internal and peer accountability, and more.

One of the essays about suicide I found particularly important. There is a sometimes extreme culture around allowing our peers and loved ones have the final say on what they do to their body, which, yes, my body my choice but stick with me. This then extends to the idea that if someone is determined to take their own life, then it is not anyone’s job to stand in their way. That author argues that hey, this is incredibly messed up and maybe what they need is someone to step up and say, no, I’m not letting you do this, even if you hate me for it. I’d rather you be alive and hate me, than not alive at all. The author also urges us to work harder on making the world a place where people want to stay living.

Another essay that I appreciate as a person who is childfree is about how radical queer culture is often about things like communal living but the reality is often people pairing off and creating a queer version of the nuclear family.

Phenomenal book that I highly recommend!

This delightful little graphic guide has information for a range of people, starting with information on what pronouns are to some advice for people who use gender-neutral pronouns themselves.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the singular they back to 1375 and most of us are familiar with already using it. For example, if I’m sitting in a restaurant and a group of people at a table nearby leaves I may look over and say, “Oh, someone left their sunglasses.” This book focuses on using they/them pronouns as singular, especially for a person who is nonbinary.

Archie Bongiovanni uses they/them pronouns and their co-author Tristan uses he/him pronouns. I really like that they’ve co-authored because readers get information from both the perspective of the person who uses the pronouns for themself as well as from a person who uses gendered pronouns and has been learning to use gender-neutral pronouns and implemented their use at his restaurant.

There are a number of gender neutral pronouns that a person can use: ve, zie, per and more. While this book focuses on they/them pronouns, everything in this book can be applied to other gender neutral pronouns as well. If you’re looking for reasons why a person might use gender neutral pronouns, that information is not in this book. Truth is, there are many many reasons and it’s not necessary to know why in order to use them.

Archie talks a little bit about how it feels when people misgender them and use the wrong pronouns, and how impact matters more than intent. There’s advice on how to ask for someone’s pronouns (as well as how not to) and what to do if you get someone’s pronouns wrong.

The book also touches a bit on gender neutral pronouns for groups instead of saying “hey guys” or “hey ladies.” There are so many words you can use instead! The book suggests “hey everyone, hey y’all, and hey folks.” Personally, I like to add that “fools, peasants, and people of Earth” are also all gender neutral.

I really appreciate the section on what to do if you witness someone using the wrong pronouns for a friend because I know I tend to get like a deer in headlights when that happens around me so it helps to practice having something prepared while making sure to talk with your friend first. There’s also a section for folks who are non-binary where Archie gives some advice on coming out and finding support.

I love a book with footnotes and even more than that, I love a book that uses most of the footnotes just to add snark and sassy comments. This book does exactly that and more.

Elsa Sjunneson is a four-time Hugo Award finalist, a professor, a sword fighter, a dancer, and very, very witty. She is also a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids. Every time I read something from a disabled writer, whether it be a memoir, essay, or Tweet, I realize how my perceptions of certain disabilities have been shaped by media, which is tremendously shitty at portraying disability! Sjunneson really digs into this as this book is part memoir and part examination of how disability (primarily characters who are Deaf or blind) are portrayed in the media. She also writes about the intersections between Deafblind, being a woman, and being queer. I appreciate that before digging in, Sjunneson lays some groundwork and really asks readers to examine what we think when we hear that someone is Deaf, blind, or Deafblind, such as the assumption that all Deaf people speak ASL or that all blind folks can read braille. Both are far from true.

This is not a book to look to if you’re looking for inspiration porn. The only thing you should be inspired to do after reading this book is to tear down systemic ableism. It was an intense read, each page making me angrier and angrier (and then laughing at the author’s snark) and then breaking my heart.

Sjunneson tackles the subject of Helen Keller right near the beginning of the book which makes sense considering that Helen Keller may be the only Deafblind person many people know of. This chapter alone is worth the price of admission. I can be nothing other than absolutely horrified by The Miracle Worker. The author doesn’t shy away from calling out even the most beloved properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Daredevil.

She also talks about things like dating, catcalling, and sexual assault when a person is disabled. Content warnings for explicit depictions of ableism, school bullying, sexual assault and abuse and references to caregiver murder, police brutality, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.

The author first talks about the definition of love and how everyone seems to have a different definition. The love she is talking about is not a mere feeling. It’s not the idea of love you fall into, unaware and unavoidable. The love that hooks is talking about in this book is a choice. It’s an action and it’s something you choose to do over and over as well as something you choose to open yourself up to.

She goes on to write about how everyone assumes that people learn how to love in the homes they grew up in but that’s not necessarily true. She talks about the skewed idea that someone can both love a child and be abusive toward them. She posits that love cannot exist where there is abuse. Care can exist and kindness can exist but love cannot. She also writes about how love cannot exist in a place where there is no honesty.

I especially appreciated her chapters about community and healing, how no one heals alone, and healing as a communion. hooks writes a lot about how capitalism and narcissism and individualism make it practically impossible for us to love each other or ourselves and, in effect, make it impossible to heal.

There is a section on death that really made me see death in a different way because yes, in death there is love. She suggests that in the U.S. we have a fear of life. That we learn it’s dangerous to celebrate too much or to be optimistic or hopeful about something because we might get hurt. By not doing the celebrating and not having hope or optimism, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to love life.

This book was a heavy read but I’m really glad I read it and I hope you do too.

Rebecca Hall is a scholar, activist, educator, and former lawyer. Wake follows Rebecca as she researches slave revolts and specifically, slave revolts led by women. Until I read this book, I had no idea that slave revolts were so frequent. I am unsurprised I didn’t know this, given the way history is taught and not taught here in the United States. While instances of slave revolts can be found by digging around, most of the information available is about the men involved and very little about the women. Honestly, I learned more about the slave trade from this book than I did during school. The depths of depravity are astounding and I am both haunted and disgusted by the things I’ve learned, more than I already was.

At the same time, this book is also a great story about researching history and reading between the lines to piece together the things that are left unsaid and thereby being able to get a more full picture of what may have happened. Wake also includes dramatizations of such stories as imagined by the author who is trying to fill in the gaps. The artwork is completely in black and white, which I think in some ways helps to keep readers from being overwhelmed by the imagery, which includes a lot of violence, enslaved Africans on ships, and more.

In the interwoven memoir we also learn about the present-day barriers keeping academics like Rebecca Hall from unearthing this history. The existence of bureaucratic red tape that makes accessing archives and records sometimes impossible. For example, Lloyd’s of London is a huge insurance provider (that still exists today) which laid the groundwork for its empire by insuring slave ships. I’m sure you can imagine how they feel about people accessing their archives with slave ship details.

This book is pretty intense and very important. I learned so much through this short volume and it’s been important in filling in my mental gaps around history.

This book is under a hundred pages. The essay is first, then the short story. However, my recommended reading? Skip forward and read the short story first, then read Zadie Smith’s introduction, then read the story again. In Morrison’s own words, Recitatif is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.”

The two characters are Roberta and Twyla and they are both eight-year-old girls from poor families. Their respective mothers dropped them off at the St. Bonaventure shelter, making them wards of the state. We learn many things about Roberta and Twyla. One has a sick mother, one has a mother who dances all night. One has a mother who is religious, one has a mother who wears too-tight pants. The girls are roommates at St. Bonaventure’s for four months and the story follows them there for a while, then they meet repeatedly when they are older.

One of the things we know about the two girls is that one is white and one is Black; however, we do not know which is which. Morrison deliberately does not tell us and this story is written in a way that it is impossible to tell. You can try to guess, but a few sentences later I promise your opinion will change and then flip flop again in the next paragraph. It’s very clear in the story that race is incredibly important to the tale and that crucial piece of information is deliberately kept from readers. Even details such as geographic setting don’t allow readers to determine the races of the two main characters.

I want to call out a big content warning for ableism and violence against a disabled character. The character is Maggie, who worked at the home where the girls were. The girls were very mean to Maggie and oddly, when Twyla and Roberta meet years later, they argue about what race Maggie was.

Recitatif is absolutely fascinating and Smith’s deconstruction and examination of the story is brilliant. It’s one of those stories that tells the reader more about themselves in the reading than it tells about the characters. I’m reminded of the phrase I’ve heard people use, the “I don’t see color.” Well, it’s not even an option in reading this story and it’s delightfully chaotic in that way.

This book is part biographical, a little bit autobiographical, and between these biographical bits are interspersed poems by author Ibi Zoboi. These poems are inspired by Octavia E. Butler, her life, her work, and the world she grew up in.

I remember seeing a Tweet from someone that said something like, “okay poets we get it, things are like other things” and that always makes me laugh but truly, poetry is a way of looking at something, whether it’s a physical thing or a feeling or a person or a life, in a way that we haven’t examined it before. Poetry can help us see things differently and this book is such a stunning, lovely example of that.

There is plenty more than biographical prose and poetry in this book. There are also photographs, including the earliest photo of Octavia Estelle when she was four years old. There are also some other historical images for context but there are a few that I am high-key obsessed with. One is a page from the first novel she wrote when she was ten. Octavia Estelle Butler was obsessed with horses. So she started writing a story about magical horses who live on an island. She was a shy and quiet child and would find solace in her writing and she would just write and write in her pink notebook. She knew she wanted to be a writer, even though her aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.” Octavia Estelle was insistent.

Another of my favorite other images included in this book is one of the many notes of inspiration that Octavia E. Butler wrote to herself which turned into inspiration for my most recent tattoo. I adore this book and it’s a great recommendation for folks who are familiar with Octavia E. Butler as well as folks who are just learning about her.