February and March 2025 Reads
April 23, 2025
An instruction manual for optimism
I often describe myself as a scholar of hope. My Master's thesis revolved entirely on the subject of hope, positing the emergence of what I termed "post-nostalgia" as the quintessential affect of contemporaneity which can stifle the experience of hope and optimism on a societal scale. I digress...Jamil Zaki's take on hope vs cynicism in contemporary society is a can't-miss read, in my opinion, and I learned a lot from him. I really love how he anchored his entire investigation into optimism with one very personal example what propels him towards hope time and time again.
The main point of Jamil's book is that we cannot allow the call to arms against fascism and hatred turn us into haters or, even worse, into a cynical and defeated mass. His writing is both a comfort and a battle cry; there is still work to be done. My grandmother, an avid cross stitcher, had a tapestry hanging on the wall above the bed I slept in at her house that read "courage is fear that has said its prayers." And what is hope but courage that we can sustain for the long haul?
A winter wonderland, but in hell
I have....varied feelings about The New York Times' book review section, though I must admit one of my absolute favorite reads of last year came from one of their suggestions: Daniel Mason's North Woods, an unbelievably gorgeous read. I found Heather's novel off of a NYT list of books that evoke a sense of winter and the icy storm that descends over this entire story was definitely a character in its own right.
Heather's book contains three narratives that tie together in a way that truly caught me off guard in the end. I am not a huge thriller reader, so the plot twists may have been more obvious to a more regular participant in the true crime-esque genre. Each narrative centers on one character: Wylie, a true crime author staying in a rented farmhouse that once was the setting to a brutal family murder and abduction; Josie, the sole surviving member of her brutally murdered family; and an unnamed little girl who lives confined to a basement with her captive mother. When Wylie discovers the frozen body of a child in the yard during a horrific snowstorm, shit really starts to go sideways.
I liked Heather's novel well enough! Jess was on a FaceTime call with me as I finished it and she can attest to the audible gasps the book provoked at the end. Overall, the tension wasn't as palpable as, say, Stephen King's Gerald's Game (a book that genuinely terrified me) or as heart-pounding as Adrian McKinty's The Island. I found Wylie's inner life a tad too simple, and the resolution was a bit Hallmark-y....y'know, if Hallmark dealt with murder, kidnapping, assault etc. But! It kept me company one chilly winter night and I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another o Heather's works the next time I'm in the mood for a little thrill.
A beautiful tapestry of otherness
Nella Larsen is such a quietly evocative writer. Her descriptions are slippery, like an oil painting not yet dry, and they smear across the pages of this story about lovely Helga Crane.
Helga is a biracial woman that we accompany on a cyclical journey. We begin in the south, where Helga is a teacher at a highly pedigreed institution, which only highlights her orphaned status as a "nobody." From there, Helga flees north to New York, where she finds a great deal of meaning as part of the Black intelligentsia of thriving Harlem. She begins to chafe here, too, eventually, sick of the expectation that she feel ashamed of her lineage as half-white. So, Helga flees to her mother's family in Copenhagen, where she becomes a spectacle of performed Blackness for the upper-middle class community of white artists. Eventually, Helga makes her way back through the city and further south. Along the way, Helga is desperately searching for an understanding of herself that both she and the people around her can live with, a self definition that never truly comes to fruition.
What Kenneth Burke meant by "equipment for living"
It didn't take long for me to join the ardent camp of people who have read bell hooks' work and think "everyone should read this" as soon as I started All About Love. I wrote about the experience of reading this book in my journal: "I find that I am already familiar with (most of) the ideas & principles she's putting forth, but her language and the depth of her careful, studied, researched mastery of the topic have knocked me on my ass several times."
Even things as (seemingly) simple as the meaning of the word "love" are rocked by hooks. I'd never encountered the definition of love that she uses; it comes from German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who defined love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Mind = blown. The entire premise of hooks' work is that love should be understood as an action, a verb, a practice. And the more we practice, the better we become.
Another deeply underlined quote in hooks' work that has become a mantra of mine lately: "When one knows a true love, the transformative force of that love lasts even when we no longer have the company of the person with whom we experienced profound mutual care and growth." A beautiful lifeline for the grieving, I think.
A balm in book form
Thây ("teacher") Thich Nhat Hanh has become one of my treasured spiritual guides lately. I first encountered the legacy of his work through podcast interviews with two of Thây's students: former Buddhist nun Kaira Jewel Lingo, who took the leap to leave life as a nun and become a layperson, and Brother Chân Pháp Hũu, who still lives at Plum Village in southern France. (I'm currently reading Kaira's book We Were Made For These Times, and loving it!)
The beauty of Thây's teaching lies in its simplicity. His words and lessons are not only applicable to those living within the cloistered walls of the monastery but to everyone, everywhere, at any time. Thây teaches us how to cultivate a lasting sense of peace even while sitting in traffic, for instance, or amidst a particularly hectic season of life. Thây's personal experience with turmoil infuses his teachings with authenticity and his words are gentle reminders of how much power we have over how we move through the world. As Ram Dass once said, "You can do it like it's a great weight on you, or you can do it like it's part of the dance." Thây teaches us how to do it like it's part of the dance.
A heart-cracking debut poetry collection
I first came across Victoria Hutchins on Instagram (@thedailyvictorian), where she shares her poetry, often while practicing on her yoga mat. In school, poetry was often my least favorite unit in English class—I was far more interested in the process of losing myself in a novel. But my burgeoning collection of poetry books over the past few years can attest to my growing interest in the genre. Contemporary poets like Sarah Kay (her 2014 collection No Matter the Wreckage is a regular companion of mine) and Victoria occupy a special place on my shelf.
Victoria's words contain such simple beauty that reflects the inner calm bolstered by her yoga practice. Her work is instantly soothing, like the first step into an inviting bathtub. I recently wrote Victoria's poem "the finer things" in a friend's birthday card and there's something that feels beautiful and lasting about doodling my loved ones' names throughout a volume of poetry that sits on my shelf and reveals fresh understandings to me, about the poetry and about my loved ones, every time I open it.
Top image credit @judysmith549668
