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Super chill book review: Real American: A Memoir (Julie Lythcott-Haims)
When I was at Stanford, there was a beloved dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising named Julie Lythcott-Haims, affectionately known as “Dean Julie.” I didn’t really interact with her personally—I mostly just remember her leading us all in a chant of “oh-ten!” to show our enthusiasm for being part of the great class of 2010—but…
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Super chill book review: After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Willie Jennings)
I kind of want to say that this one’s for the nerds out there. But I’m also kind of against the anti-intellectualism that words like “nerd” might carry. So…this one’s for anyone interested in thinking about seminaries and other institutions of higher education. Or, really, anyone interested in thinking about any sorts of institutions with…
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Super chill book review: You Are Your Best Thing (ed. Tarana Burke and Brene Brown)
In the last year or so I’ve read four of Brené Brown’s (many) books, and I’m a fan. She has great stuff to say. So much of it. I really think that she has changed (and continues to change) the conversation around things like empathy, shame, vulnerability, connection, and belonging. At the same time, as…
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Super chill book review: Just Us: An American Conversation (Claudia Rankine)
Apparently Claudia Rankine’s 2014 book (or, more precisely, book-length poem, although a lot of it is fairly prose-y) Citizen: An American Lyric is pretty well-known, at least in some circles, but I hadn’t heard of it until recently. When I went to check it out from the library, I saw that Rankine also wrote a…
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Super chill book review: Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Kaitlin B. Curtice)
After most recently writing about a couple of old-school(-ish) books, it feels like a good time to come back to the present. Kaitlin B. Curtice is my age, and her very-much-worth-reading book Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God was published in 2020. I found Curtice’s reflections on grappling with Christian faith as a young woman…
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Super chill book review: Hope in the Dark (Rebecca Solnit)
Rebecca Solnit originally published Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities in 2004, so a lot of it centers on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. I read the third edition, published in 2015, which includes a long and lovely newly written foreword. The premise of the book is that “The future…
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Super chill book review: This Bridge Called My Back (ed. Anzaldua & Moraga)
This one is an oldie, but a goodie. The book is This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, and it was originally published in 1981. It’s what it sounds like—an anthology of pieces written by lots of different women of color. I read the…
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Super chill book review: How to be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)
I was on a hiatus from male authors for a while, but I made an exception for Ibram X. Kendi. I got over Kendi’s gender and read his book How to be an Antiracist because it felt like an important read…and also because it took so frickin long to get it from the library! (Side…
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Kimberly Latrice Jones’ video, black anger, and white discomfort
This video by black author and activist Kimberly Latrice Jones has been making the rounds on the interwebs. It’s entitled “How can we win?”, and it’s worth watching. I’m sure white people are saying all sorts of things about it, and it probably doesn’t need any more white person commentary. On the other hand, if…