Here I sit in my local Boba shop, embodying helpful and healing energies on the eve of this solstice and channelling Cancer season, a time of personal and collective healing. I previously intended to provide this list well beforehand, but I’m reminded now, in this time, of the importance of visualizing what I am creating as I create it, innovating and doing away with what’s outdated. My list has been updated since my trip to the 19th annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit (more on this in another article), and this is the improved list I wish to share. As always, I am happy to redirect or recommend more literature that might be more specific to your interests this summer (I, myself, am a high volume reader and there is no condensed list of five books that can satisfy me for three months) and would be happy to receive DM’s for book recommendations through Twitter (@vixenarchives). For now, here are 5 summer reads for healing and repair that will serve as your next read for this summer.
5 Summer Reads for Healing & Repair
1. Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown
Image courtesy of Amazon.com
- Cheapest Purchase Here: https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html
I had the pleasure of meeting with and sitting through Queen Adrienne’s sessions on Spell Casting and Emergent Strategy, where we were actually able to write spells and use emergent strategies in a room full of strangers. She is my queen, and her publication is a self-help book on mapping and assessing interlocking swirling systems of power surrounding us. We are like microcosms, and in this complex political and social climate, I think that we need strategies like Adrienne’s to take the time to heal ourselves first, before thinking about engaging in more direct forms of action, which are almost entirely ableist by nature anyhow. Adrienne draws inspiration from the brilliant work of Octavia Butler. If you don’t end up reading Emergent Strategy, I highly recommend following Adrienne’s Twitter accounts (@adriennemaree or @octaviasbrood) and/or blog here at www.octaviasbrood.com.
2. Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Image courtesy of Duke University Press
- Cheapest Purchase Here: https://www.amazon.com/Spill-Scenes-Black-Feminist-Fugitivity/dp/0822362724
I had the pleasure of listening to Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a self-proclaimed queer Black troublemaker and Black feminist love evangelist, at the AMC’s opening plenary and working with her directly in Chicago on grassroots narratives across various communities. After listening to her, I simply can’t articulate the immense healing power laced into this collection of scenes capturing Black spiritual, bodily, and supernatural experiences in a poetic way. Poetry itself has a powerful ability to express and deepen understands of narratives and feminist theory, which I will explore in a later article on poetry’s possibilities as well as also using tarot to access those possibilities.
3. Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry, Delfina Vannucci & Richard Singer
Image courtesy of AKPress.org
- Cheapest Purchase Here: https://www.akpress.org/comehellorhighwater.html
Here is a quick, fun little handbook with super cute illustrations that I think is perfect for both power-structure newbies as well as those of us who mistakenly believe we’ve seen it all. It is the perfect read for the road, the park, or what have you. It provides a grassroots level insight on how social relationships and power work, and also a how-to on building social relationships on a caring and community-based foundation.
4. The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, Jack Kornfield
Image courtesy of Amazon.com
- Cheapest Purchase Here: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Heart-Universal-Teachings-Psychology/dp/0553382330
What could be more healing and reflective than a book on mindfulness? For those of you seeking something a little more concrete in terms of spirituality and strategies for mindfulness, I recommend this book as perhaps one of the most comprehensive guides to Buddhism provided to Western readers. If this book seems a little dense (don’t let the page count scare you! It’s very smooth) for a summer read on mindfulness, I can recommend shorter, more classic, and fairly basic reads from other renowned monks including Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace is Every Step. Don’t give up on The Wise Heart because it is so worth it, especially if you’re coming from a place with a lot of anxiety.
5. Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces, edited by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore
Image courtesy of PMPress.org
- Cheapest Purchase Here: https://burningbooksbuffalo.com/products/out-of-the-ruins-the-emergence-of-radical-informal-learning-spaces
- You could also sign up for a30-dayy free Scribd membership and download it here: https://www.scribd.com/book/348771543/Out-of-the-Ruins-The-Emergence-of-Radical-Informal-Learning-Spaces
Okay, so this isn’t technically a book on personal healing, but this is a highly transformative book for students, and we’re all students here right? If you feel like last semester personally victimized you, then this is for you. It is dense, and you may need to step away and take breathers to absorb it all, as I recommend you do as this is part of the healing process. My hope is that this book will provide students, especially marginalized students, with healing strategies to navigate the grand old institution of higher education (slow solitary tear). This book will definitely provide you with an amazing toolkit for approaching next semester as well as the remainder of your entire academic career, or perhaps your future career if education is your jam.
If you encounter any accessibility issues to any of these books, DM me via Twitter! I will see if I can pull some strings and find some resources! I hope that you decide to give these 5 summer reads for healing and repair a chance and enjoy your read!