Lit Hub Weekly: June 1 – 5, 2020

TOMORROW: In 1917, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, is born.

READINGS ON RACISM, WHITE SUPREMACY AND POLICE VIOLENCE: Aaron Robertson on George Floyd and Black pessimism · Daryl Pinckney on the American tradition of anti-Black vigilantism · Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the future of radicalism · Carol Anderson on the history of respectability politics and their failure to keep Black Americans safe · Garnette Cadogan on walking while Black · On James Baldwin’s dispatches from the civil rights movement · Sherilynn A. Ifill: how small-town newspapers ignored local lynchings · Philip Dray on Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a Civil War that never ended · Ibram X. Kendi on how racism relies on arbitrary hierarchies of power · Alexandra Minna Stern on the foundational texts of white nationalism · Robin D.G. Kelley on the roots of anti-racist, anti-fascist resistance in America.
“I was in the process of witnessing the preparations for a police riot.” Timothy Denevi on the clearing of Lafayette Square, and the coward Donald Trump. | Lit Hub
“This country, the structure—if it were a dinner table, I’d flip it.” Layli Long Soldier on Wounded Knee and the murder of George Floyd. | Lit Hub
Parul Sehgal on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Jeffrey C. Stewart on Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist, Darryl Pinckney on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
Bad roommates? Strict parents? Nosy neighbors? Whatever your quarantine situation may be,Lauren A. Forry has a recommendation for you! | CrimeReads
“My hope for all readers is that they will shut the book and run out and protest. That’s what I always expect people to do. They seldom do it.” Barbara Ehrenreich on anger, curiosity, and truth. | The New Republic
Tochi Onyebuchi on the responsibility that Black writers contend with amid constant violence against Black people. | Tor.com
“The police brutality and state sanctioned murders were done loudly with no fear of consequences from those who perpetrated them.” Over 100 African writers signed an open letter in solidarity with African Americans. | Al Jazeera
“The atmosphere is noir, and everywhere vice is interleaved with virtue.” Emmanuel Iduma on Cyprian Ekwensi and the stories of Lagos. | New York Review of Books
“The urge in a particular cop to extinguish a black man’s life does not go away just by firing them or altering laws. You have to change their heart, too, not just the law of a land.” Gabrielle Bellot on James Baldwin, Do the Right Thing, and George Floyd. | Catapult
Prominent writer, activist, and academic Rachel Cargle is opening a bookstore and writing center in Ohio that will champion marginalized authors. | Harper’s Bazaar
Poetry after the “Black Death” in the 14th century wasn’t widely supportive of social change. The opposite was often true. | The Conversation
“We want to erase the past rather than address it. The pain needs to be addressed.” Read a profile of Jericho Brown. | The Bitter Southerner
“Our gardens must grow. That is a metaphor and a literal truth.” Imani Perry on her relationship to land. | The Paris Review
“Military hardware not only makes civilian cops look like soldiers; it makes them more likely to act like soldiers, too.” How American police became militarized. | New York Review of Books
“These posts make anti-racism feel like a trendy, white self-improvement program, completely disconnected from redistributing power.” Megan Reid on the public performance of anti-racism. | Bustle
“The books are there, they’ve always been there, yet the lists keep coming, bathing us in the pleasure of a recommendation. But that’s the thing about the reading. It has to be done.” What—and who—are all these anti-racist reading lists really for? | Vulture
Palestinian authors are bringing new perspectives to migration, diaspora, and history. | Middle East Eye
“More money, more technology, and more power and influence will not reduce the burden or increase the justness of policing.” Alex S. Vitale on the role of police in society. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub:

Jill Watts recommends ten life stories of forgotten civil rights pioneers • Masha Gessen on American autocracy and the end of meaning • How Shanghai became a city of literary experimentation • On Sam Sharpe and the revolt that ended British slavery • ON THE FRAGILE LINE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM: Aleksandar Hemon: fascism is not an idea to be debated, it’s a set of actions to fight · Natasha Lennard on anti-fascism and the criminalization of protest in America · Timothy Snyder on the importance of disobedience · Never again what? Giacamo Lichtner on Primo Levi · John Freeman on state misinformation and the role of the whistleblower · Ariel Saramandi on the aesthetics of the American dictator · Ece Temelkuran on losing one’s democracy to a populist demagogue · Grigory Yavlinsky on how a dictator holds on to power · Federico Finchelstein on the political art of spinning lies into myth · A good journalist understands that fascism can happen anywhere, anytime: on the writing of Dorothy Thompson · Lorraine Berry on Donald Trump, and Umberto Eco’s 14 ways of spotting a fascist • Poet Ali Black on protest, laughter, and finding breath • Peter Pomerantsev on the bots vs. the activists • Robin Wall Kimmerer on choosing a relationship to the land not defined by greed • Honorée Fannone Jeffers on the endless mourning of the present • Héctor Tobar reflects on a generational uprising, and witnessing history in the making • Wayétu Moore on surviving conflict as a child in Liberia • Remembering Florence Nightingale in the Year of the Nurse • How capitalism created sexual dysfunction

Best of Book Marks:

“The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it”: a 1963 review of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time • The Southern Reach Trilogy, Pnin, The Secret Garden, and more rapid-fire book recs from Jenny Zhang • Little Family author Ishmael Beah shares five books he read in primary school about people and animals surviving the fates they are dealt, from Treasure Island to Animal Farm • James Holland on the five best books about D-Day • Megha Majumdar’s A Burning, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, and Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week