From November 5th to current events, it feels quite apocalyptic. Hunger Games, Gilead, or whatever books/films you read and/or watch…yeah it definitely feels like we are there.
Before the Julius Caesar/Brutus like style of President Biden to the rapidly and unfairly pressure placed upon Vice President Harris to run a race in less than 100 days, it felt like Black people were taking pages from the stories of Octavia Butler and truly were studying history and trends predicting the end result without the result coming fully into focus.
It was as if we had our glasses firmly planted on the bridge of our noses while those around us had their glasses on the top of their heads and were in desperate search for them while we are begging them to grab their glasses from upon their heads so they can see what we see.
And here we are.
In a predicament that we knew was coming to pass and feeling truly like “WTF?!”
I have been in a bunker in deep repair, self care, and boundary setting regarding how I will be conducting myself going forward as someone who engages in the political, social, and economic well-beings of others for a living.
I am finally peeking my head out to test the waters and allowing myself to be in deep reflection and in the openness of listening to others. I will say I have always done this throughout my career but in my personal life I can admit I am inflexible with my ideals.
I’ve have dung in my points and ideals where I can’t hear anyone else, but in my work I allow myself to hear others vantage points. I realized that has become many people as of late, especially with the rise of social media where many people can say their opinion through a screen and do not have to answer to the people they hurt directly face to face.
This train of thought has lead me down the twisty turvy road of incels, separatists, loners and everything in between to understand and slowing realize that social media has been used as a substitute for real life community. We have allowed our minds to believe the blue check, the followers, and other social media hierarchy norms to translate into real life in person, human to human interactions. I’m gonna hold yall hand when I say this… that mindset is literally insane.
We are social animals by nature. Now are people different? Yes.
Everyone does not need to be people all the time like our extroverted counterparts, but we do need community every now and then.
What happens in community, when you truly build in community with others? We share and exchange ideas and ideals. We debate respectfully because we love our community. We believe in the community we have built.
We have gotten so siloed in who we interact with, rigid with our ideals to the point of inflexibility, and the belief that humans in fact need to be perfect. We are all flawed and imperfect. That is the beauty of being alive and breathing. Every single one of us has something to learn and has the duty to grow until we leave this Earth. As Erykah Badu said, “The man that knows something knows that he knows nothing at all.” One human being does not have all the answers. Our community challenges us to expand, to grow, to care, to understand, to love, and to be respectful.
We have become so rigid in our ideals that many of us have grown to believe in order to build community with others they HAVE to agree with everything we believe?
There are foundational thoughts that are intrinsic to who you are. I am not saying to shake those very firm ideas to you. What I am addressing though is soon we are going to be against a powerful entity that has established community within a mass of people despite those same people not agreeing with everything to conquer over a shared ideal or ideals that they believe is a bigger threat to them. Those people are happy to be in community with people who listen to their thoughts and not agree, even if it is for show. The sense is community regardless how we may feel that community may look like to us.
Do I believe we should bring shame back for certain atrocities? Firmly, yes. BUT, I also believe we have not allowed safe spaces for those to ask questions and/or process thoughts, ideals, and sentiments amongst others without judgement or ridicule. At my college, I remember being in Nyumburu (Go Terps!), and we used to have this huge conference table where everyone was suppose to be studying but of course we weren’t. We were in discussion with each other over various topics from sexuality to politics to dating, and for the most part we always tried to approach and leave the conversation with respect. We created this idea, intently or not, that everyone coming in conversation should have all the facts because “Google is free”.
Those types of discussions back in college days reminded me we are truly losing recipes. We have allowed technology and those who control those technologies to dictate how we engage with others when we agree and/or disagree with others. We have gotten comfortable with disrespecting others, finding their homes, and/or threatening their livelihoods. Now, I will say these “twitter finger gangsters” who believe they can call folks any racial slur in the book do need to be addressed outside of the metaverse, so your employer is aware of your stances especially if you are in HR, medicine, law, law enforcement, and/or education. Those fields have direct impact on the social contract we have entered into in the pursuit of happiness and liberty and justice for all.
People do need to do their own fact checking and research, but once that has happened, a safe space to discuss amongst people who do not look like you, in the same class as you, and some much more so you can see how those ideas or policies may affect others is needed.
As the kids say, “Go touch grass.” Go be in community in real life. Social media is not real. People’s every day lives are though.
currently obsessed with.
what I’m watching.
The Marlow Murder Club
what they say:
An all-new adaptation of Robert Thorogood’s novel The Marlow Murder Club stars Samantha Bond who is joined by Jo Martin, Cara Horgan and Natalie Dew.
Samantha Bond (Downton Abbey, Home Fires) takes the lead as Judith Potts, alongside Jo Martin (Doctor Who, Back to Life) as Suzie Harris, Cara Horgan (The Sandman, Traitors) as Becks Starling and Natalie Dew (Sandylands, The Capture) as DS Tanika Malik. Steve Barron (The Durrells in Corfu, Mrs Sidhu Investigates) is set to direct.
what EYE say:
This is what the folks call cozy mystery, but it truly delivers! Now, yall I love a good Masterpiece PBS show, and this definitely a favorite of mine. I need something to fix my Bad Sisters hangover and it fixed me up but now I’m in a hangover from this show. Definitely give it a watch. You can find it on Amazon Prime or PBS.
What I am Listening To
Erykah Badu’s Baduizm + Solange’s A Seat at the Table
Both albums have kept me grounded as I navigate this crazy world and their validation of my feelings in this moment and the questions I am still toying with is truly the soundtrack to my life honestly.
The Bookish Hottie
what I’m reading & listening to.
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros + In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space
Iron Flame’s plot.
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.
But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.
Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
In Open Contempt’s plot.
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.
Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.what you should be reading.
what you should be reading.
The Blackbirds of St. Giles by Lila Cain
On a terrifying night in 1768, Daniel and his young sister, Pearl, narrowly escape their brutal life of slavery when a Jamaican sugarcane plantation is torched in a violent uprising. In the ashes, Daniel leaves behind the rest of his family—and one powerful love.
More than a decade later in New York City, Daniel anticipates sailing with Pearl, now 15, to a new life promised by Britain’s king to former slaves who fought for the Crown in America’s War of Independence. For saving a Major’s life in battle, Daniel is doubly rewarded with the man’s inheritance, to be claimed on the other side of the ocean.
But a king’s promises can be forgotten, and fortunes snatched away by the cruel prejudices of strangers in a new land . . .
Hopeless and homeless, Daniel and Pearl are lured into a dank maze of passageways roiling beneath London’s teeming streets, under the famed Covent Garden, and far below the crypts of St. Giles church. A world of unimaginable poverty, where the desperate live as outcasts—the blackbirds of St. Giles.
Reigning over the scene is Elias, a ruthless, violent “boss” who sells protection for a price. To shield Pearl, Daniel must literally fight for their survival, stepping into the ring with a monstrous opponent.
Dazzling and poignant, The Blackbirds of St. Giles propels us into an extraordinary, too long overlooked community and period in history, when the threat of servitude is ever-present, and some ghosts of the past can never be escaped . . .
MY REVIEW (no spoilers)
The Blackbirds of St. Giles was truly descriptive, captivating, and an adventure full of victors and villains. As a Black American, we rarely hear the stories of our brothers and sisters across the pond who fought for King George with the promise of being freed after. This instantly brought me in and truly kept me in enthralled. Following Daniel and Pearl from their escape from the Garnett Plantation to the Americas to newness of London, you are thrown into a world of unlikely friends and into the fray of London’s underground activity. This was clearly a deeply researched book full of interesting facts and wonderfully colorful descriptions. Wordsmiths for sure, we have in Lila Cain. If you are fans of Miss Scarlet and the Duke or other PBS masterpiece shows, this is definitely for you.
It was definitely drawn out on some points, but overall this was a solid read for me.
Before you go!
I decided to jump into the world of BookTube with The Bookish Hottie Youtube Channel. I launched my FIRST episode all about how books changed my life + my 2024 book picks.
I hope you support, subscribe, like and share. I’m happy to be in community with so many book lovers. It makes my heart warm. Thank you
for the push. Check out my first episode here.See ya in two weeks-ish!