playing favorites 2023
I read more books this year than I have in a long time. Four more books than last year, about one every two weeks. Books are usually an escape for me; it feels like there was a lot I wanted to escape from this year. I try not to stick to one or two genres of reading. Many of the books I read are recreational. These books help me decompress from the stress of the world around me. The rest of the books I read are informational. They unlock new ideas and perspectives I infuse into my work and daily life.
I read so many fantastic books that I struggled narrowing the list down from a top 7. There’s even a tie for first! It was that kind of year. I’ll briefly mention the two I loved but didn’t include below. Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a classic. I read it at the exact right time and felt the heady rush of familiarity for a book that doesn’t feel three decades old. Lily Zheng’s DEI Deconstructed is an inspirational, aspirational, and humbling read. They’re both worth reading if you haven’t yet. Here’s my list for the year!
5. Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni
Mimosa is a hefty graphic novel about four best friends: Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex. They live in Minneapolis and have been in each other’s lives since they were in their twenties. They still meet pretty often for brunch while the years have slipped by. Chris is turning 40 and has a kid from a marriage that fell apart. Jo is hustling and juggling jobs to stay afloat. Elise loves her job and kinda has the hots for her boss. Alex is there too! As queers aging out of their party days, they decide to organize a monthly event for the LGBTQ and 30+ crowd.
This is a brief but loving story about friends who grow in different ways and directions. Archie Bongiovanni hasn’t been on my radar for more than the past five years or so. I first read their book, A Quick and Easy guide to They/Them Pronouns. Their book Grease Bats reminded me my twenties. I describe that period of my life as not being very smart but having a lot of fun. Mimosa’s characters are around my age and going through the late-30s panic I knew super well. Definitely worth a read.
4. Seattle From the Margins by Megan Asaka
Megan Asaka tells the stories I didn’t know about my adoptive city in the pacific northwest. This book describes the lives of Native people, immigrants, and laborers from the 1860s to World War 2. The first settlers intended to build a white utopia but relied on the many people of color to help them build it. Seattle From the Margins touches on the history of the Puget Sound in so many familiar ways.
I’ve always felt Seattle’s racial segregation just by living here. Learning that it’s always been this way was a revelation. I remember driving around while reading this book (not at the same time). Henry Yesler’s sawmill cut lumber for the north while its workers lived at arm’s length in the south. Yesler Way was the divide between the white land owners and the laborers they were desperate to keep. Sawdust, the neighborhood that sprang up south of the mill included lodging houses, brothels, labor offices, and more. The white leaders subjected people in the region to persecution, displacement, and uncertainty. To this day, the South End remains under-resourced compared to the north side of town. How do we keep repeating the past when it’s still with us?
3. The Nation on No Map by William C. Anderson
Nearly every mainstream school of thought centers the white experience. Anarchism is no different. Anderson’s book describes the tension that many Black people in America feel. They live in a state that oppresses them, that doesn’t want them there, but they belong nowhere else. But unlike those who seek to reform this nation, it’s not aspiration to be bound by the walls of the state. The Nation on No Map aspires to a world of true freedom: abolition and Black liberation.
“I’m an anarchist!” is the first thing I wrote after reading this book. William C. Anderson’s analysis of the state, written during Covid, becomes more true every day. Having worked in white society all my life, it’s easy to think of my brand of change as radical, even revolutionary. Books like this remind me that there’s much more out there that’s worth fighting to achieve. Anderson argues that we have gotten lost in incrementalism. What I want is every state, every border, to dissolve. This book helped remind me why.
1. (tie) The Spear Cuts Through the Water by Simon Jimenez
The Moon Throne rules The Land in a state of terror for centuries. The Moon Throne’s power comes from a goddess stolen from the sky, the actual Moon. Her absence keeps people in pitch-black and dangerous darkness at night. Then one night she vanishes from captivity. Traveling with her is Jun, a guard from the royal palace. Keema, a soldier from a forgotten people, soon joins them. Chasing them down are the emperor’s sons known as the Three Terrors. Will they restore the Moon to the sky?
Playing favorites alum Simon Jimenez has done it again! Unlike The Vanished Birds’ science fiction novel, this book is pure fantasy. This book was a queer love story and a sprawling journey across strange lands. What felt like a huge book (the second-longest of the year!) I read through in a matter of days. I loved this one.
1. (tie) Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Noopiming tells the story of Mashkawaji in part through seven entities they introduce. Akiwenzii the old man. Ninaatig the maple tree. Mindimooyenh the old woman. Sabe the giant. Adik the caribou. Asin and Lucy the humans. We meet more people along the way who also connected to the others. Together, these seven make up one body but tell their own stories living in the colonized world.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is another past playing favorites author. It was a nice surprise that my favorite book of the year ended in a tie. Noopiming is wry, funny, and still evokes hurt. Simpson teaches us about her culture’s worldview in small details that may be missed on the first reading. She shares in this video that Anishinaabe don’t recognize the american concept of gender, making all the characters in the book nonbinary. Noopiming is a perfect example of what Betasamosake Simpson described in her book As We Have Always Done. In it, she shared that Indigenous stories are folk story, history, poem, metaphor, and truth all in one. I grabbed so many quotes from this book; her writing still rests within me many months later. Lesson two from Mashkodiisiminag, a goose elder, still makes me chuckle when I think about it.
In March of this year, one of my favorite albums turned 20. Jason Molina, the artist known as Songs: Ohia, released Magnolia Electric Co. in 2003. The album was such a revelation and a pivot from his old sound that he began releasing records under the new name. With a full ensemble and haunting vocals, Molina and pals recorded this opening track in one take. When I listened to Farewell Transmission for the first time it brought tears to my eyes. I thought about my friends, my family, and people loved and lost. Molina sings,
“Real truth about it is
No one gets it right
Real truth about it is
We’re all supposed to try.”
As I write this, we are witnessing genocides taking place in Palestine, Sudan, and around the world. I know that it can feel hopeless in the face of so much brutality. I know how easy it feels to disengage or even give up. Real truth about it is, we’re all supposed to try. As 2024 dawns, let’s take care of each other. Let’s keep trying.
