Black History Month Reading Lists are a yearly tradition on the blog. Until now, I’ve featured mainly kids’ books, but this year, I want to share three titles for you, the adult, to read. I love good cover art, and two of the following titles have covers that are a treat for the eyes.
I keep trying to find ways to introduce this book. All of them are depressing reflections on the ways my life has changed during the pandemic (no more quiet time, whether I like it or not). I have struggled to balance the emotional and physical drain of daily life with activities that energize, allow my brain and body to rest, and make me laugh.
This book book did all of those things.
I’ve been gently asked by the Universe to prod my feelings about fatness and fat people.
I’ve gradually added people on social media to make my feed more size inclusive. I’ve followed the movement in the sewing community to hold pattern makers accountable for providing inclusive sizing.
And I’ve been reading Lindy West.
I was in my early twenties and taking courses towards my nursing degree when I attended one Saturday Anatomy and Physiology class wearing a shirt that said “Chubs.” My professor asked me about it.
“Oh, it’s just an inside joke in my family,” I said carelessly. We’d been calling baby carrots “chubs,” and then it became something we called each other, with variations ad infinitum, including the plural “chubs and ubs,” and so on. We made shirts. We never thought too much about it.
The professor looked me in the eye. He said, “You can do that because you’re not fat.”
A while back, I said I planned to write more thoughtful posts and fewer sewing and book posts. That commitment might have happened on a Superwoman day, or sometime before the pandemic. It seems like it was too hard to manage, because despite my commitment, the blog hasn’t changed.
Now, I sit here with a collection of five books that from outward appearance have nearly nothing to do with one another, and I’m trying to figure out how to knit them together into one cohesive post.
By the time you read this, it will be February. Things might be better than they are now, or they might still be about the same.
Maybe you want to consume something other than news, to stretch yourself, or just escape into a good story, learn something new, or melt into a puddle… one of these books might just do it for you. I hope so.
Today, the daily devotional we read during home school included poem about presenting a positive demeanor to the world and not bogging people down with our personal woes and health concerns. Tell God how good you feel, and God will make it so, was essentially the closing prayer.
This afternoon, after a week-plus break from social media, I hopped back on IG. One of the first posts in my neglected feed was a slideshow about white people’s toxic tendency of pretending everything is OK all the time. According to the infographic, this prevents Black people from being open about their reality and makes it hard for them to trust white people or feel safe around them. White privilege allows us – encourages us? – to pretend things are OK even when they aren’t.
