Today's mini pod is a little bit of a return to last summer. Our very efficient reader, Tiffany has been bugging us about our reading and encouraging us to read a lot more sources if we could so as we hunkered down this hopefully winter break with a book, there are plenty of recommendations in this episode. You can find a list of all the books that we talk about in this episode in the description Happy holidays and happy reading, y'all.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.
Home, everybody. This is Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye and a man you get them. And this is a mini pod, and we don't know what we're about to talk about.
Yes, that was Angela's suggestion that we wait and figure out what we're going to talk about, and I record, yeah, we understand. Well, we've heard you guys in the audience ask us about what we're reading, what we like to read, and so I thought this might be a good opportunity for the co host to share some of their favorite
books and we would recommend to you guys. I know I have a lot I, as I talked about, have read Charles Blow's book The Devil you know, so I would love for folks to read that we can have a conversation about it. I am reading The Color of Money, Wealth and Black Banks. I might have a subtitle wrong, but it's MRSA but Darenden. I think that's fair name. I had her on my show some years ago and started the book and embarrassingly so did not finish it.
And I hate when folks when people do that, this is a question I'll ask you, guys, I might be a bit of a I don't think it's snobbery. I think it's just the art of reading. I do not think audio listen. When people say they listen to the audiobook, I don't know if that's reading. And I say that because like your brain literally processes it differently and for
the right like when you read something, you're comprehended. It's the difference between listening to a podcast like y'all are doing now versus actually reading the words, like your brain literally processes it. And so you know when you have friends with kids and they're like, oh, I did the audiobook and the parents are like no.
No, no, you need to read the book.
I think if I had kids, i'd be one of those parents like, you have to strengthen that skill.
You have to read. So do you all think that audiobooks counts as reading?
Yeah, if you are an auditory learner, yeah, which some people are. Some people like I need to hear it out loud. In fact, when I'm actually reading, whether it's a report or a book or even an article, sometimes I will say out loud to myself a piece that is something I want to want to remember, a piece that I may want to go back to now.
Love.
I love physical books because I like writing in them. I got tabs for days. If you wanted to get me a you know, a gift and you don't know what I like, just get me some post its because they're going to end up in books and the flags. Yeah, all of that. I love it, and mainly because I even commit you know, certain passages to memory when they're really you know, that thought provoking and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think audio books work just as fine.
I tell my kids all the time because my son, Jackson, particularly, who's a really competitive reader, you know, wants me to know that he started the day at page twenty three and he ended at one hundred and twenty six I said, well, that's good, Jackson, but do you remember what you read? But I would not object to at you know, at some point when they get introduced to audio books to them listening as well, we're gonna get the fundamentals of
reading down. We're gonna get the fundamentals of you know, you know, root words, because it's going to be important for you at some some point in time. But I will tell you I have I have I have a question. One does it make a difference to you listening versus reading yourself fiction nonfiction? Because I'll say this for me, I am I don't read fiction at all. In fact, my therapist has told me you've gotta you have got to read more fiction. It is where the imagination, Yes,
you know it exists. And I'm so like, no, no, no, But why would I waste my time on that one? I know if I read this, this is history, this is this, this is you know, these are things that I can put under my under my two bell. So I got to still make that adjustment. But I do wonder whether or not it would be different for me if I were listening to an audio book of a fiction story versus an audio book of a fact story, and I wonder if it makes a difference to either of you.
I will say Lenard actually suggests reading the book and listening to it at the same time. He was telling me that it was a good experience, and he did it with Viola Davis's book, So I did that with Violet Davis's book, and I agree. So I think it depends. I definitely in somebody the way my mind moves. If I'm just listening to the audio book and I start looking at something else or like I'm texting at the same time, you can forget it.
I basically have blocked everything out.
But if I'm concentrating just on that book or closing my eyes and just listening to that book.
It helps.
But I did appreciate the experience of reading and listening at the same time.
Plus fiction non fiction equal leaders.
I'm not a I'm not a fiction person. I think that there was a time, like growing up, where I was more of a fiction person, but I think now there's so much going on. I feel like, if I'm going to be reading, I wanted to be historical based, strategy based, political base economics based, something with some solutions in there. So I do know like, the last fiction book that I was really into is Derek Beale Faces at the Bottom of the Well in Law School, And it was because I could see it.
And here we are about to get shipped off to Hell.
To Mars right now, So I mean, I understand it has a little tinge of accuracy.
I go through about a book a week, and I try to go back and forth. If one week is fiction, the next week, I'll try to do nonfiction. But I really enjoy fiction. Angela, you talked about finding me Viola Davis.
That book was therapy for me.
I mean that book Viola Davis, just so I couldn't read or listen to that. I read that and I can't do audio at the same time as reading because our speeds are different. And I'll read something over, like if a paragraph or even a sentence it's just beautifully constructed, I will read that over and over and over and over. Tony Morrison said ones which I it is a torturous
process to write. I don't believe in ghostwriters either, because not that ghostwriters can't have good books, but when people say I wrote a book, I'm like, well, did you write or did you have a ghostwriter? Because when you are writing. Tony Morrison, when I was fourteen, I was listening to a conversation with her and Oprah and she was saying that as a writer, you will take one cent tense and structure it in every possible way to make it the point that you want.
To see what works.
And I tried to had a discipline to do that, and it is a tortuous process and so, but it's also a beautiful process when you're all done. So I like the way that fiction doesn't constrict you to the realms of reality that you know. It can still you can learn from it. It can still based in history, but it's beautiful writing that you know deeply explores. And with fiction, they're more than likely is not a ghostwriter.
With nonfiction sometimes I think it's particularly with biographies, people will, you know, hire somebody. I know a lot of people who are like hired ghostwriters who offer They're like, hey, I can write this chapter for you, and I'm like, as if I would never you know, I want to construct this myself. But this leaves me I have some sound that I want us to listen to from a writer that I thought was so amazing. She since passed away. But I'm sure many of you have read Octavia Butler.
Probably not you, Andrew digit or are you Angel I guess since you guys don't read fiction. But her work it speaks to so much that's happening right now. And she actually made a good point I think, around just the process of writing, but also how she bases it in what's happening in society. And she was so far ahead of her time, So take a listen.
I got the idea for it when I heard someone answer a political question with a political slogan, and he didn't seem to realize that he was quoting somebody. He seemed to have thought that he had a creative thought there, and I wrote this verse. Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say, we think what we are told that we think, we see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To see and to hear even an obvious lie again and again and again may be to say it almost by reflex, then to defend it because we have said it, and at last to embrace it because we've defended it. And because we cannot admit that we've embraced and defended an obvious lie. Thus, without thought, without intent, we make mere echoes of ourselves, and we say what we hear others say.
This is a work of fiction.
But that beautifully constructed paragraph I think speaks to so much of what's happening in society about how we will regurgitate a lie. And I don't mean maga Republicans will you know, obviously that happens, but I even mean amongst ourselves because something existed, or because you know, we will take We talked about this in parody. You know, Fox News will run a piece and then the Shade Room will post it.
You know, it's it is something.
Where it dulls our intellect and it declines our reasoned thinking. And so I don't know, I think there are some lessons to learn in fiction. But when she talked about that, I just thought, Wow, that's true. I see that happening a lot from some things that took place in the Black Church that I, you know, don't agree with in adulthood. But people, you know, it's it's orthodoxy, you know, it's culture.
These axioms become principal after a while, and if we just imagine, but what if this is not the case. What if this man saying this to me is wrong? What if this leader projecting this to me is incorrect? What if this leader really wants to rule and not lead and just to question everything around me? So finktion, I would say, can invite that kind of Yeah?
Well that was beautiful. And what I loved about it is she said, missus butler h the obvious lie, right, is obviously not the truth. So we're not debating with
another this is true false. We all are looking at the thing and saying it's not true, and then we keep listening, and then we start to repeat, and then the repeating becomes the you know, the our foundation of defense, and we fight over it, and then we've gotten so deep in we cannot even acknowledge that we all knew it was a lie, and I just kept running with it.
Yeah, what I love?
So I think, Tiffany, your appreciation is well learned. You're a writer, and so you love words. You love the written word, not as you know, maybe not even the spoken words so much as you love the written Yeah. Sure, Michael Harriett is one of those people who I have underlined, double underline, circled because he is. It feels like, while it comes off so easy as a person who likes to see subtexts, I imagine a person who has, as you described earlier, written a sentence so many different ways
that he wants it to stick. He wants it to land,
and he wants it to land on first impact. I appreciate you know, the written word as well, obviously more more more fact than fiction, But I do want to reprioritize and reorient myself a little bit here because I do think there's some truth in this sort of imaginative, imaginative space where for a lot of my life I've sort of had to live and deal in what is present, what I know to be the case, either what has happened or forecast to occur, And I do think it
robs us a little bit of the what's outside the box, what's not on the page each what isn't being said? Where are the possibilities for this to go? And I think writers, particularly those who are skilled at it, have a beautiful way of lifting us off of it. So I appreciate that about good writers, but I appreciate them an equal measure I think both written and spoken.
What would you recommend to our audience that they pick up and maybe even to me? Maybe I haven't read some of the books you have.
So this is when I'm using this one because this is a quote from the Congressional Black Caucus that we say often it was no permanent friends, permanent enemies, just permanent interests. And this book is from William Lacey Clay. This is Congress from Lacy Clay's father. William Lacy Clay was one of the CBC founders, and he talks about the journey of Black Americans in Congress from eighteen seventy to nineteen.
This book is called Critical Race Theory and it is.
A collection of essays. It's a text that I used in law school. This actually talks about this is It includes Kimberly Crenshaw as well as many many other scholars. This book is important because it will actually tell you about what critical race theory actually is and not the nonsense they tell you. So the foreword is by Corno West. It's edited by Kimberly Crenshaw, Neil Gatanda, Gary Peller, and
Kendall Thomas. Medical apartheidr I'm bringing this up because this woman, doctor Harriet Washington, talks about why black folks don't or why the system, the healthcare system, the medical system has not proven itself trustworthy to black people, which is a slight modification on what we normally talk about. Very good texts Ron Brown. In addition to Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ron
Brown's picture was on our mantle in the house. My dad was in a diehard Democrat, but what he loved about Ron Brown was his way of advocating for black people. He was the DNC chair and also was the Department of Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton.
This is his.
Memoir, Ron Brown, An Uncommon Life. Asada obviously an autobiography, very important. This is written by Asada Shakur. She is, I believe, the only woman on the FBI's most Wanted list.
She should not be there. Free Asada all right.
And finally, my good brother, Resma Menechem has a book called My Grandmother's Hands. It's a New York Times bestseller. It helps deepen us into what ancestral trauma looks like, what it means to regulate and corregulate our nervous systems, and how to ensure that we heal from racialized trauma in the body. It's a somatic therapy book that teaches us different for modalities to call upon to heal ourselves and to heal the communities that we.
Are a part of.
But I did we meet him? Did we have dinner with him somewhere?
I remember you talking about this book that you just loved, and it was maybe it was definitely.
I definitely had been breaking bread with Resmuk. Maybe you were there, Tip, I'm sure, if not there in spirit. Oh yeah, he was there panel for me.
That was years ago. I remember when you said.
That for the centennial.
Yep, what you got, Andrew oh Man.
I felt, for one, your book is all the way at the top, as is my friend Kenisha doctsha Oh Grant. So I didn't get to pull them down.
Saying you can't reach it. I didn't get my tip book let me grant.
They're up at the top, but some that were closer down obviously out there.
You know.
I feel like that was okay, Thank you guys. I feel like that was my first book and I've turned in a rough draft and they published it. Because now when I read it, I'm like I would I never wrote like that but thank you.
Hey, you got a book out there for him? All right? Another one coming, So four hundred souls, My fellow rattler Iram Kendy and Keisha Blaine, and I especially, especially especially enjoy. I told you about my tabs and stuff and books, just just proof that I put tabs in books when I read them. My favorite essayist contributor, of course, would be none other than Michael Harriot.
Harriot Harriott and I just have let it go.
But I don't know why, Michael, forgive me. I like pronouncing it that way, but I'm gonna do it with you. Harriet Harriet Harriott, who is our grit? Can? I say?
Griott?
Sure, Michael Harriott, are agree?
Got?
Okay? There it is? But I love The hero of this drama is black people. All black people, the free blacks, the uncloaked maroons, the black elite, the preachers, the reverends, the doormen and doctors, the sharecroppers and soldiers. They are all protagonists in our epic adventure. Spoiler alert, the hero of this story does not die ever. This hero is long suffering, but unkillable, bloody, and unbowed. In this story
and in all the subsequent sequels now and forever. This hero almost never wins, but we still get to be the heroes of the true American stories simply because we are undestructible. Try as they might, we will never be extinguished ever.
Trying to figure out why you got to read excerpt.
That's that's the only one I read because he's one of my favorite and of course Heaven McGhee the Some of Us again evidence I do books, wrote wrote really beautifully and I think accessively about why black, brown, working class white folks should be in common cause with each other. And then this is my political scientist in me, because I think these are very important for anyone who is
interested in strategy around politics, the Art of war. Of course Sunsu the Well which one Tachi ching is also a must read, and the Analects of Confucius, and I just think these are important philosophical documents. And in the Art of War, I think it is really tactical and strategic, and it is revived centuries, uh, and it's still highly regarded by I think political scientists around strategies, strategies to win. And then just a just a slight favorite. Uh. The
obstacle is the Way. I said, I think during our New Year's show that the only way is through. You know, you try to feel like Lee, It's just there's too much, you know, I just want to blink out, numb out, and so The Obstacles the Way is one of those books that just sort of helps to encourage you to push through. Well, have I got a lot of favorites.
I've not read any of the books that you guys reference, so yeah, but this is great because now, yes, exactly what black A f history, of course, but the other books I had in all the books, Angela read your home book. I've read my own book, but the Assada Chaqueur, I'd really like to read that one. In the conversations I've had with the elders lately, her name has come up a lot, so I think I'm gonna put that next on my list, So thank you, guys. Mine is
How to Say Babylon by Sophia Sinclair. And this was recommended to me by Van Newkirk, who also recommended that I write a book. I write my second book, but it's so beautifully written. I mean, just somebody I didn't know, and you might think, well, why do I want to read a memoir someone I didn't know, but it was so beautifully written and so captivating.
I love it.
I'm about to order it.
And who has already.
Talked about black a f history, but Michael Harritt Harriet Harry ots Michael Harriet is such a gift and his book was so popular. It was on the New York Times bestseller list forever fell off and then inexplicably just bounced back on there because I think people were like, oh, I know it was a dope, but there are still have so many yes. And I have so many highlights of this book. Another one, the Love Songs of W. E. B. D.
Boys.
This is fiction, but it is beautifully beautifully written and takes you through generations and time. I have others that I don't have pictures of, but The Poison What Bible is probably my all time favorite book by Barbara Kingsolver. I give that book away, and Michael Harriet's book away. And another book, Ghana Must Go, And I'm embarrassed to
not remember the writer's name. She's a woman, but it's just an amazing book about three siblings who are Ghanaian and it goes back and forth with them from Ghana to America.
So that's my book.
So if you guys are looking for something to read, that's your NLP, this summer reading list or autumn reading list or whenever you get to your read Yes, exactly.
I'm reading something from this now.
Okay, this is from Resma and I and I think it goes back to I know this is an evergreen episode, so God only knows, but this goes back to our episode from today that we recorded prior. This is about when democracy falls? Is I guess the name of the episode, something like that. It says an African American elder said to me recently. There is a root to the trauma tree, and what we see now is the fruit that tree, which was planted roughly fifteen centuries ago, now casts a
shadow across our entire nation. Today, many of us still feed each other. It's bitter, poisonous fruit. None of us ask for this trauma, none of us deserves it, yet none of us can avoid it. It is part of our personal and national histories. In many American bodies, the Civil War, or the American Revolution, or the Crusades rages on.
Today.
We're head of reckoning. We Americans have an opportunity and an obligation to recognize the trauma embedded in our bodies, to accept and metabolize the clean pain of healing, and to move through and out of our trauma. This will enable us to mend our hearts and bodies and to grow up.
That That is why I like reading, because I would read that over and over. It's beautiful to hear you read it. But I don't even know if I could. That was so poetic and literate. And yes, like.
That's the thing that you'll like about this tip, really and I'm serious, like I'm not even saying this because of what you just said, and it didn't occur to me though right now. I think what you will appreciate about this book in particular right now because of what you're moving through, And honestly, I might challenge us all to I'll pick it back up, Andrew.
I would read this with you too.
There are somatic body based practices in this book at the end of each chapter to help you move through the trauma that you carry in your DNA and the trauma that you are currently experiencing by just living in this country. And so I think that it really is
a good like I was going through it in twenty twenty. Yeah, but I think it's a great thing to just to have an embodied practice to you know, metabolize the history, to feel what you're feeling from a DNA and ancestral memory standpoint, to feel what you're experiencing as you carry what feels familiar even though we haven't lift it before. But like the breathwork of it all, like tapping into your nervous system, tapping into your survival instinct.
No one want to tap out of it, humming.
You know, the practices that are like tapping your foot, those are all things that our ancestors did, and part of that was helping them to move through their trauma.
Yeah, okay, I will read a quick excerpt because the only one sentence this is from Octavia Butler, parable of the Sewer, and I didn't mention this book, but I strongly encourage everyone to read that. It begins in twenty twenty four, but it was written in the eighties or maybe the seventies. And this speaks to something that we've talked about a few times on the podcast over the weeks and months about immigration and people being shipped off
to offshore torture camps, and it's just one sentence. The main the protagonist is a young girl and she has a disorder some might say, I'm called hyper empathy, and it causes her to feel whatever the other person is feeling, So which is can be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. If you're having sex with somebody, you have your orgasm, you feel their orgasm.
If someone has yes, yes, good point.
If someone unfortunately, if someone is getting raped, you feel their pleasure, but you feel your own terror and pain. So the book goes through a lot of things as she navigates her own hyper empathy. So the one sentence I would just read is when she says, if everyone could feel everyone else's pain, who would torture amen? So maybe we can move with a little bit of empathy and imagine that we could feel everybody else.
With pain.
And Welcome home.
Welcome Home.
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