This book was particularly hard for me. Tbh I was planning to start my year off with reading a whole lot about Afrofuturism and then in January I just started reading a whole lot about Afro-pessimism instead which then evolved into a study on slavery. I really wanted to read more on the experience’s of Black women and so this was an obvious choice. Each woman’s story, a life that went far beyond the tropes and roles they were meant to play in a society that choked the life out of them and their children was shared with such clarity it honestly reminded me of Barracoon.
My mom gave me her copy of Barracoon a couple years ago and I made it a priority this year to read it and give it back to her because its been sitting on my shelf long enough. This book was stunning. I have no other words and while that word can have a more positive connotation I want to use it here more neutrally. Hurston has a way of making me think about things in a fuller sense. I think that there is something so powerful about her ability to listen and convey not just a story but a person. This story, this life is so beautiful and important to learn from.
Like I said I didn’t come into this year expecting to get into Afro-pessimism but I never read anything I’m expecting to read. My tbr is a mystery to me. Funnily enough I didn’t start with the introduction I started with Afro-pessimism but sometimes I need the more detailed stuff before I get the overview (that’s how I coded this page lol). If you follow me on bsky you’ve seen me talk about my love of Saidiya Hartman and this, while not being the first piece I’d read from her, really solidified that love. Also shout out of course to thee Afro-pessimist himself Frank B. Wilderson I’ve watched some of his videos and guest appearances on other peoples shows and decided to just jump right in. I think I had decided I need that background before I got into Afrofuturism and now two months later the closest I’ve gotten is Black Utopia.
This book really put so many things into perspective for me in my personal life. It honestly hurt my feelings a little bit. I think this is truly one of the backbones of any anti-racist politic and until I see non-black people embracing Afro-pessimism as a real movement I don’t think we’re making much progress globally. Maybe that’s a pessimistic view (pun intended) but… so yeah this book man.
This was also an extremely hard book for me to read. I struggled so much with that level of inhumanity, of objectification, thingification, just plain evil. We have in no way reckoned with the true horrors of slavery and more than anything I think black people should be angry about that. Black women especially. This book was heartbreaking and at times nauseating and I will probably reread it at some point this year.
If you haven’t read parable pick it up like right now. This book is our lives right now so learn from the lessons we’ve already been taught. Nothing worth learning is easy. This was not an easy lesson. This was heartbreaking and real. We have to grow past these systems of oppression and we have to be able to imagine something better and something new. I think we too often get stuck trying to make things that have already failed work instead of imagining something more.
I dream about our black utopia every day. It’s all that keeps me going some days. A lot of people speak of revolution but my take away from this book is that we dream of utopia to get the revolution. I think subconsciously I understood that but to read about the work and thought of black people over the centuries from this country was something different. The fight for that vision, revolution and then abolition, true abolition true freedom for black people destruction of the systems of hierarchy that bind us. Utopia.
Fanon, Fanon, Fanon *duck smoking cig gif*. Very few writers speak to my soul the way Fanon does. I don’t think enough people read this one in particular. Fanon lays everything bare in this one and I appreciate that when he does not have a full understanding of what he’s speaking on he leaves space for the conversation to evolve past him. I recommend reading this one alongside refusing compulsory sexuality by Sherronda J. Brown.
Saidiya take a mf bow for this one right here. I love you femme queens, butch queens, transmasc’s, gays, lesbians, and queers, black women and enby’s you are beautiful. You are anarchistic, you are wayward, you shine and have so much to give. Affirmations and history that’s what this book is.
My God can Mrs. Due write or what?! Like the first book was so poignant and beautiful her themes just come across so strongly. Her characters jump off the page. Much like the first book this one had me stressed the fuck out. Like literally she wanted me to cry after every chapter. Controversial but I’m a Dawit truther. Fana plsss plsss get better by book 3. Jessica and Alex catch a break challenge.
This gag. Like this completely restructured my view of the world while also reaffirming things that I already knew and felt. Like I said we have not reckoned with slavery at all and I mean since the earliest days of humanity. Everyone in the world owes black people reparations and once one starts paying everyone’s gonna have to pay up. The Arabic and Transatlantic trades in particular are still impacting black people globally as we speak. Social death and manumission as a concept were very new to me while also being my lived experience. Many things to think about on this one.
I think reading Scenes of Subjection after the American Slave Coast was a good idea. You get an understanding of the system from the outside and then to read this and you’re no longer on the outside looking in but seeing how every piece of the system is upheld. I also appreciate how thorough Hartman is she gets into every nitty gritty detail until you get the whole picture in all of its hideous glory.
The Gullah wars are new to me. I come from two Gullah families that practice our traditions and teach our history and I still had never heard of this war on American soil that lasted from 1739-1858. This book was really interesting for me because it helped me examine some of the things my family has always done in the context of the history of my people. I also enjoyed the book because I think we need more information that challenges the idea that enslaved people weren’t fighting tooth and nail to get free of the system that bound them.
What an enlightening read. I truly believe in black anarchism and I think this alongside anything Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin has written and Saidiya Hartman is quintessential to a basic understanding to black anarcho politics. I had never really articulated the idea or feeling of being a nation on no map I think that our relation to each other and our community is so special and we have been able to hold onto our way of being collectively despite all that we have been subjected to.
What a beautiful novel. I wish I could give Korede a hug man. Poor girl is just trying to find real love and companionship all while keeping her sisters proclivities under the radar. This book kept me on the edge of my seat I was entranced from the first page. Most of the time I wanted to shake all the side characters especially Ayoola until they all got their shit together and let Korede have her moment of peace but maybe that’s the older sister in me talking.
As a disabled black person who loves fiction this book was very affirming but not only that it inspired me to be more deliberate with my art and do more exploration with the bodymind. We are not limited in ourselves as black women or gender nonconforming people and I think that seeing the connections made to (dis)ability, identity, race, gender, and how our fiction calls into question the very nature of our world really pushed me to think harder about my own art.
Black people you are the loot. That’s my biggest takeaway. When a whole group of people not only used to be the property of a nation, an empire, but the currency you really have to take your politic farther. Who does it serve when you refuse to burn everything down.
GAG ORDA! This book was saur fucking fun y’all! Black women hunting the klan? Check! Gay? Check! Examination of black politics? Check! This is getting added to my mid year reread asap. I am a Sadie truther btw.
This was the first time I had read anything on the Natchez model and it really put some things into perspective for me on the current boycotts and how much more work was done to enforce the past one. I think my biggest takeaway was that we have to interrogate how we as black people were really able to make community change when we can never agree on anything and the answer? We will shoot back.
Oh Langston my earliest writing inspiration (besides Phillis Wheatley). This one had the whole club fucked up bruh. I read this in one day, just randomly picked it up at 4 am and next thing I know its 1 and I’m crying for Cora, Bert, and Willie. It’s honestly sad that white people haven’t changed a lick in the 100 years since this book was written, I saw all these characters in the white people I’ve been around my whole life.
I spent several days gushing about this one on social media. One of the more recently published books I’ve ever read and so it touched on more recent art. I liked how he was able to evoke imagery for performances I had never witnessed and some that I had and make me think about how they fit into the context of black performance and what all that really means. Everything we do is so deeply rooted in our culture and resistance to systems that have been placed on us.
I was so excited to read this one y’all don’t even know and somehow the book exceeded my expectations. I haven’t related to a male character in a long time the way I related to Ham. I love the way the book was narrated by the spirit of St. Martin from inside of Ham the split body experience felt so familiar to me. Also going on my reread list I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I put it down the other day. Anyway shout out to oomf cause this shit slaps.
I flew through this book. Out of all the stuff I’ve read by Saidiya Hartman this one made me think the most. I think there is much to be said about black Americans statelessness and where we fit into the world. I think we really have to examine our relationship to the diaspora and how our fight and our history varies so much from region to region and country to country.
Going into reading this book I had no idea that Kuwasi was queer so picking up this book was like getting a chocolate chip cook and then realizing there was $100’s baked into the center. Weird analogy? Yeah probably lolz but its the best I could come up with. This was a beautiful book and says so much about the life he lived and the impact putting our politic into action can have on people around us.
African Cosmology really shook some things loose for me. Forever grateful to oomf for putting me on because this is the connection I needed to make between “Anarchy Works”, a book I read last year, the Haitian revolution, Gullah wars and where black anarchists are today. It also made me think about the potential for true advancement without eurocentric thought.
Becoming Human asks and answers the question of whether black people are human and if humanity is something we should strive for. Its not, we aren’t and honestly thank God. This book is making me think more about the sciences, social and otherwise and how every one of them is based in theories thought of by racists and tied to antiblackness.
Wake work will be something I will have to sit with for a while longer the more I think about what a total climate of antiblackness and what that means for the generations of people that came before me and the many that will come after me the more I want to solve this problem it is heartbreaking how much black people go through in this world and how there is no escape from this place that can so often feel like hell. It does give me some hope that people are studying our world so honestly and openly and even though it often hurts to read it does help me process my own circumstances and that align with these studies.
I love coming away from a book feeling changed from the inside out. This book has completely changed my perspective on antiblackness and how black people fit into the order of an antiblack world. It has me reexamining every interaction I’ve ever had with a non-black person and I have a fuller understanding of what total climate antiblackness looks like in every space and moment of black life. There literally is no escaping it but through the comfort of blackness and the black body.