The Library

(renamed from The Syllabus on 2.22.26.)¹

I realize there are too many books feeding me to limit myself to naming one per week. Some of them I’ve read in full 📕 Others I’m currently reading or am reading piece by piece over time 📖. A few I’ve yet to read but hear their call 🔖. Every single one has found me on time. They challenge, hold, and nourish me in different ways. I hope they might do the same for you.

I expect this list to change over time, for several books to be added or maybe even removed. I’ll do my best to track those changes - it is an archive, after all.

In no particular order:

BOOKS

• Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley 📕

• This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley 📕

• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison 📕

• Beloved, Toni Morrison 📖

• Jazz, Toni Morrison🔖

• We the Animals, Justin Torres 📕

• Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke 📕

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker🔖

• What it Takes to Heal, Prentis Hemphill 📖

• The Keloids We Heal: Trauma, Spirituality, and Black Modernity in Literature, Sarah Soanirina Ohmer 🔖

• In the Dreamhouse, Carmen Maria Machado📕

• The Essential June Jordan 📖

• A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde 📕

• Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde📖

• The Black Woman Anthology, edited by Toni Cade Bambara 📖

• The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara 📖

• Parable Series, Octavia Butler 🔖

• All About Love, bell hooks 📕

• The Will to Change, bell hooks 📕

• Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks 🔖

• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, written and gathered by adrienne marie brown + contributors 📕

• Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Marie Brown 🔖

• Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals, Alexis Pauline Gumbs 📖

• Evidence (short story), Alexis Pauline Gumbs 📕

• Beyond Revolution: A New Theory of Social Movements🔖

• How to be an Explorer of the World, Keri Smith 🔖

• Cinema of Crushing Motherhood, a New Feminist Cinema, Olivia Landry🔖

• False Starts: the Segregated Lives of Preschoolers, Casey Stockstill 🔖

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcom X and Alex Haley 🔖

• The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz 📕

• Black Eyed Susans: Classic Stories By and About Black Women, edited by Mary Helen Washington 📖

• Baldwin: A love Story, Nicholas Boggs 📖

• Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin 📕

• Another Country, James Baldwin 📖

• If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin 📕

• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin 🔖

• The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere 📖

• Eloquent Rage, Brittany Cooper 📖

• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa 📖

• You Could Make this Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith 📕

• The Artists Way, Julia Cameron 📖

• Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall 🔖

• Dear Senthuran, Akwaeke Emezi 🔖

• On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross 📖

• Women of Color : Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy, edited by Lillian Comas-Días and Beverly Greene 🔖

• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Kay Redfield Jamison 📕

• Starting Point, Hayao Miyazaki 📖

• We Need New Names, NoViolet Ulawayo 📖

• Acts of Faith, Iyanla Vanzant 📖

• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez 🔖

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl, Harriet Jacobs 🔖

• Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathavane 🔖

• The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin, Jennifer Putzi

• The Invisible Man, Ralph Eddison 📕

• The Body Keeps the Score 📕

• Doggerel, Reginald Dwayne Betts 🔖

• Unexplained Presence, Tisa Bryant 🔖

• Scorched Earth, Tiana Clark 📕

• A Concert of Tenses: Essays on Poetry, Tess Gallaher 📕 (added 2.22.26)

FILMS

[incoming…]

INTERVIEWS

[incoming…]

SPEECHES

[incoming…]

VISUAL ART

• The Kitchen Table Series, Carrie Mae Weems (added 2.22.26)

1. Because…syllabus just stopped feeling right. I’m trying to put my finger on exactly why with a bit of difficulty. I can say that “syllabus” felt a litter to linear and finite, felt like grade school, felt less like exploration and less like home. I grew up in a library. Libraries are some of my favorite places in the world.