What I was reading in September and October

Books Read

September
Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

October
Swing Time, Zadie Smith

After the flurry of reading in August, I expected to be reading more. I was expecting the momentum to do the work, but it turns out that it doesn't really work that way. I picked up a handful of other books but didn't make the time to sink into them. Again, coming back to Nick Hornby, but sometimes it's not the books that are at fault, it's the readers. 

The night I finished Freedom is a Constant Struggle, in a Starbucks that was near but not that near my apartment, an older white man waved at me to get my attention from the table diagonal to mine. “That Angela Davis” he said “what’s she saying these days?” “Oh, um. She’s talking about Palestine” I replied. And then he nodded and shared a little bit about his experience with her decades ago. I don’t remember what exactly he said, only that I couldn’t tell if he was feeling negatively about her, or thought she was full of it, or thought I was full of it, to be a white woman reading Angela Davis in a coffee shop. And then I left, maybe to go to therapy or maybe to just go home, nervous with the unexpectedness of it all. Looking back, I think he was just lonely; I think he liked Angela Davis; I think he wanted to talk. And I couldn’t or wouldn’t give it to him in that moment. And that’s a story about social anxiety.

When I was reading Homegoing on the south-bound Red line platform, a woman approached me to tell me how much she loved it. I waved my copy and gabbled back “I just started but I think I’ll definitely be recommending it to people!” and then she walked away. That’s also a story about social anxiety.