Current Books on my Shelf

I am usually a creature of habit. It helps with anxiety, and the planning really makes me productive. One of my most cemented habits is to read only ONE book at a time. It's weird, but I think of it like eating a meal. There's no way I'm mixing taco night with sushi night. I need time to digest and clean my palate a bit.

But the quarantine is a very strange time. I find myself snacking on different books, taking little bites here and there. To be honest I'm seeing these come together like some sort of fusion cuisine. So here's what's on my shelf right now, each with bookmarks. And by bookmarks I mean random things I find around the house because I'm too lazy to get a real bookmark.

1.  Michael Twitty: The Cooking Gene

I'm still working through this book (and still fasting 20 hours a day soooo). It's not the sort of thing you can simply pick up and set down. One minute you'll be reading about a historic recipe, then you'll be staring at the genetic certainty of assault on female ancestors. He mixes his own experiences with family history and mountains of research. His writing is like a good conversation, and I hope I get to meet him one day. And maybe try one of his dishes? A fasting girl can hope...

2. Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have A Dream; 

Writings and Speeches that Changed the World

I've read some of MLK's speeches in the past, but I've never looked so closely at his words. It's scary how many of his experiences are mirrored in actions today; white supremacist groups openly intimidate, police brutality, systemic racism, and etc. His words both inspire and soothe, heal and fire up. While he advocates for nonviolence, he is by no means saying that we should quietly wait for things to change. And if someone complains about another statute toppling over and how MLK would not have liked it, remember this...he didn't do anything violent, and he was still stabbed in the chest with a steel letter opener (resting on his aorta), had his house firebombed, was arrested 29 times, and was eventually shot to death. 

We tend to romanticize that time like there was this group of random white supremacist dudes running around, and the average white person was just beyond excited to end segregation. We try to say things like "but my Daddy had black friends," or "we had black neighbors growing up and we didn't do anything to them." Where I currently live now in Michigan, I am within 30 minutes of what was once a hotbed of KKK activity, with a cross burned on a black family's lawn in Howell as late as 1989. This history happened, let's stop pretending at least some of our ancestors were not apart of it.

3. Susan Migden Socolow: The Women of Colonial Latin America

This was recommended by a friend, and while I'm still in the first few chapters, it is really helping my unpack my heritage. Since college, I have not done a lot of research about my Latinx roots. Being Mexican in Civil War reenacting isn't really a thing you see a lot, and with some of the comments I've heard personally/from others, I'm not often offering up that information. Being white-passing (with a white last name) means I'm not treated differently, and for a long time I was afraid to say much about it. Even researching makes me a little anxious, since I know a lot of depictions in the 19th century were not great. It's time I started digging in a bit more and learning about myself.

4. M.J. Ryan: How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For

I ordered this one at the beginning of the quarantine. That was a scary time for me; I'd just cancelled my conference, school was closed for the foreseeable future, and people in the medical field (like my fiance) were getting sick and dying from a virus we didn't understand. There are people I know who openly called this virus a hoax and scoff at any rules to quarantine or distance themselves. They sneer at science and complain about events they have to miss, while I sat at home hoping my fiance would come home...I was angry, to say the least, since they had the privilege of sitting behind their computer at home complaining, but not actually having a loved one out there working. I've had to cut some of those toxic people out of my life, which again was jarring. I needed to breathe.

This book offers some practical answers to help me work through anxiety. There are good exercises to help me reflect on my own spheres of control, and how cutting out those toxic people benefits me in the long run. I'm going to bring some of these ideas into my classroom, whenever that may be.

5. Danielle Krysa: Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk

Quarantine took away my deadlines. Suddenly, there was no conference to make boxes for. No Greenfield Village event to occupy my efforts. My days opened into endless hours inside, mostly alone (my fiance worked nights for about 4 months straight). How can I craft or create when my mind is so occupied with fear and anxiety? Well, this book gave me some ideas, even pushed me into new directions. It offers helpful hints on how to break through some of those fears we have while being an artist. There's an emphasis on even failure creating something beautiful. To be honest, I've reread a few of these chapters over and over again. It's nice to feel inspired creatively :)

So that's what's on my bookshelf now. There's a few more books online I'd like to finish. Perhaps I'll finish one of these before my next purchase? Regardless, I'm enjoying the experience.

~Kristen