2020 media highlights
Perhaps the only thing that worked out well in the hell year of 2020 was that I met my personal reading goal – no doubt aided by insomnia induced by world events as well as spending more time at home.
Keeping up with the past practice (2019, 2018) of identifying the various themes in my favorite media picks, here are some of the highlights.
Women’s Memoirs
I read several of these books at the height of my pandemic-induced stress insomnia around 3-4 AM. Margaret Renkl and Sue Hubbell’s books soothed me the most.
Trick mirror (book, Jia Tolentino) – A wonderful book of essays by one of the most talented millennials currently writing for the New Yorker.
Thick (book, Tressie McMillan Cottom) – I hope that one day I can construct a sentence, let alone a paragraph, like Tressie McMillan Cottom. Another moving book of essays.
Late Migrations (book, Margaret Renkl) – I first noticed Margaret Renkl when she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about possums. Stories about nature and family in the South.
A Country Year: Living the Questions (book, Sue Hubbell) – Sue Hubbell was an academic librarian who moved to the Ozarks with her husband. Their marriage dissolved but she became a beekeeper. I love her description of the seasonal work and descriptions of her working on her barn, her pets, and working with hives.
Deep Creek (book, Pam Houston) – A memoir of Houston’s life, surviving childhood abuse, and living on a ranch. I stayed up late one night reading the chapter in which she fled a wildfire that nearly wiped out the ranch and it was one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read.
Public Policy
If you constantly wonder why the US can’t have nice things, eventually you need to read some books about public policy.
Cadillac desert: the American West and its disappearing water (book, Marc Reisner) – Read this if you want to develop some really strong feelings about water infrastructure!!
The triumph of injustice : how the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay (book, Emmanuel Saez; Gabriel Zucman) – Read this if you want to know how we can finally have nice things and feel justified in your hatred for the 1%!!!
Are Prisons Obsolete? (book, Angela Y Davis) – Read this if you want to learn more about prison abolition but need someone to break it down for you!!
Neither snow nor rain: a history of the United States Postal Service (book, Devin Leonard) – Read this if you love sending and receiving mail as much as I do!!! The US Political Service is arguably one of the greatest things the United States has ever created and we must protect it!!!
Portraits of political leaders/movements
Maybe it’s an age thing but I find that the older I get, the more I enjoy reading biographies – sometimes as inspiration, and frequently as cautionary tales or warnings.
The woman behind the New Deal : the life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and his moral conscience (book, Kirstin Downey) – Frances Perkins was one of the few people in FDR’s Cabinet who was there for his entire tenure, and we still benefit from her legacy through things like Social Security and workplace safety protections. Frances Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and it deeply shaped her policy work. She died as a broke adjunct who had been housemates with Paul Wolfowitz (seriously). I was powerfully moved by the opening chapter in which FDR asked her to become the first woman in a President’s Cabinet and the decisions she had to wrestle with to say yes.
Ella Baker and the Black freedom movement: a radical democratic vision (book, Barbara Ransby) – I think the whole concept of bibliotherapy is a little cheesy, but this book was both an intensely soothing restorative balm for my anguish about leftist sectarianism and also an inspirational look at how to organize and build power. If your main lens for understanding the Civil Rights movement is through charismatic leaders like Martin Luther King, you must read this book to expand your understanding of the period. Ella Baker is one of my non-sectarian leftist heroines – intensely practical, process-oriented, and no time for bullshit. I think this book might have the most marginalia of any book in my personal library – I was underlining and writing things like YES or OMG or !!!! in the margins of nearly every other page. After I finished it I sent Barbara Ransby an email thanking her for writing such an immensely transformative book that put my own political experiences into perspective.
Before the Storm (book, Rick Perlstein) – I kept describing Rick Perlstein’s book as a biography about Barry Goldwater but then my smarter friends who’ve also read the book pushed back on that description: in their opinion, it was more of a chronology of a political movement. They’re absolutely right. I had been under the impression that the Southern strategy was more of a Nixon-era thing, but Perlstein’s book really helped me understand how much of the current right-wing ideology has its roots in the Barry Goldwater movement. I’m currently reading Perlstein’s Nixonland which is also good, but Before the Storm is masterful on another level.
With Babies and Banners (documentary) – Many know about the 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike organized by the UAW at General Motors, but fewer know about the incredible role that women played in it. This is a wonderful documentary that has both extremely 1970s/80s labor historian vibes AND big second-wave feminist oral history vibes (i.e. pretty much genetically engineered to be relevant to my interests).
Categorised as: life