I was wondering why it seemed like I'd been reading a lot but had few books to share, but then I remembered that I'm actually a third of the way through half a dozen different titles so it's going to take me awhile to actually finish them all! And on the other hand, I've apparently been listening to a lot more podcasts than I've realized. Space and time, such amazing and confusing things. Books Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Beth Linker. It's almost unheard of for me to enjoy every chapter in an edited anthology, but this one managed to accomplish that! Every chapter had a slightly different focus (music or parenthood or state institutions). One of my favorite quotes from this book: "The civilizing mission rests on a web of contradictions and paradoxes, of which the most glaring and important for purposes of this chapter is that universal values can be universal only if there is an underlying belief that not everyone is capable of holding them." Universalism is always premised on the idea that there is something outside; I have literally never thought about this before, but it's right on. Also, I really appreciated in one of the later chapters, borrowing from historian Darlene Clark Hine's studies of late 19th century African American women, noting that there is also epistemological power in voluntary invisibility, retaining your self-knowledge so others can't construct you, categorize you, or diagnose you. Buy or borrow. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields. This book made me rethink everything I thought I knew about race and racism. Like the idea that when we say something is racist, we're not actually addressing the real problem. Instead, we're often using the term racism as a euphemism for anti-Blackness. Like the idea that race really isn't scientifically real at all, so any medical interventions classed as being directed at members of a certain race is inherently flawed. (I've seen Dr. Arrianna Planey talking about this before but this longer form version made me even more keenly aware of it every time I see it happening now, and it happens a lot). Like the idea that race occupies a space of being both real and not real, like witchcraft, and like witchcraft there's ongoing social (re)creation involved. There's also a whole chapter on oral histories, exploring it as a data type and discussing the ethical considerations of taking someone's story and re-purposing it for academic use. Buy or borrow. Podcasts I'm listening to some of these more as series than as individual episodes, so that's how they're described here. Somehow Accentricity has become my bedtime stories. It's has sociopolitical aspects to it, which could be upsetting, but the host is just so sweet that I find it soothing. And since I need to train myself not to watch/read stuff on my phone at bedtime, this podcast has been a perfect way to learn more about accents and sociolinguistics and Scotland and finding your voice, while giving my eyes a break from bright lights. Listen on Apple or Spotify. The Revolutions podcast series on the Haitian Revolution. I'm not sure when I became intensely curious about Haiti, but I think it was when I learned that after enslaved Haitians had successfully gained their freedom from French slaveowners they had to pay reparations to the people who had enslaved them and profited from their labor (and suffering and disablement and death and holy cats this is monstrous). I did not learn this in my many years of French classes. I either learned it by chance on twitter or from reading Andres Resendez's The Other Slavery. I learned even more about it from Trouillot's Silencing the Past (referenced last month). And in an episode of Africana Philosophy on the revolution, they suggested this series to learn more. So here I am! All the trigger warnings for this one. Listen on Apple or Spotify. Did you know that the guy who invented the GDP warned Congress against using it because it would only benefit the ultra-rich and wouldn't provide any indication about the well-being of workers? Did you know that thanks to real estate developers' use of over-policing for gentrification purposes in Northern (US) cities, that we're now experiencing a reversal of the Great Migration? I didn't! Citations Needed has episodes that are much longer than I normally have the attention span for, but the content so far has motivated me to keep going. Listen on Apple or Spotify. Episode 108: How GDP Fetishism Drives Climate Crisis and Inequality Episode 116: The Pro-Gentrification Aspirationalism of HGTV's House-Flipping Shows Just for Fun I fell down a Jolin Tsai rabbit hole this month. Taiwanese Mandarin-pop superstar Jolin Tsai has such an amazing back-catalog, ranging from the bittersweet love song "We're All Different, yet the Same" to gay dance-anthem "Fantasy" to her girl-power "I'm Not Yours."
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