I amused myself with the thought that people often make a point of declaring their uselessness in order to be helpful. I can‘t do anything, but I‘m here for you.

loneliness and heartbreak are not the same. I have been heartbroken and preoccupied with any number of pleasing but ultimately foolish pursuits, just as I have been lonely with a heart at least mostly intact (though it can be said that my heart, and perhaps yours, hums at the frequency of a low and ever-present breaking).

But in 1957, feminism and lesbianism were not necessarily and not frequently understood as being at all connected. That Lorraine made them so was a sign of her holistic approach to exploring her place in the world, and the world itself.

Desegregation isn‘t about Black people giving up their institutions

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

If you cannot carry out a revolution and are not in a position to negotiate reforms, then perhaps it is acceptable to do nothing at all. Better yet, to organize, analyze, and strategize—to put yourself in the best position for the next opportunity. Sometimes the right action may be to wait. At least, recent history suggests you should not try to effect maximum disruption at any moment that this appears possible.

…the recognition by most of the faithful that they were in fact much holier than their preachers, that they had a clearer sense of right and wrong, a more honest and intimate sense of love and compassion and decency.

🙏

Martin Luther, who, as the Chronicler drily remarks, “had a somewhat inflexible character, which, everyone agreed, was not improving with the passing of time”.

👍🏻

So I set out to write this book to articulate how:
- the unexplored consequences of AIDS
- and the literal gentrification of cities
- created a diminished consciousness about how political and artistic changes get made

No one who likes Yeats is capable of human intimacy

It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marked as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing

You shouldn‘t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it.

For the vast majority of the people on this planet, the thing that‘s going to kill them is already on the inside

Becoming a writer was partly a matter of acquiring technique, but it was just as importantly a matter of the spirit and a habit of the mind. It was the willingness to sit in that chair for thousands of hours, receiving only occasional and minor recognition, enduring the grief of writing in the belief that somehow, despite my ignorance, something transformative was taking place.

“We have the strength and peace of mind of those who never compromise.” But the nature of a cease-fire and a peace process is precisely negotiation, soul searching, and compromise. Much blood has been spilled over a quarter of a century in the name of a stark and absolute ambition: Brits out. Yet that ambition has not been realized.

Nothing teaches you the true nature of your friendships like a sudden death, worse still, a death that‘s shrouded in shame.

As they carried along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

“I don‘t deserve joy!”
“No one does. It‘s a gift from God.”

“I offer no defence of coercive heterosexual monogamy, except that it was at least a way of doing things, a way of seeing life through. What do we have now? Instead? Nothing.”

I love the genre of narrative nonfiction but I feel like this writer didn‘t entirely succeed in her goals - in fact she seemed to consistently undermine them

“The rich are only defeated when they are running for their lives”

I don‘t know why I am so obsessed with memoirs and parenting books. Druckerman‘s voice is hardly original or even interesting. But for some reason I devoured this book. Take that as you will.

whatever

Finished in a few hours! I love a good memoir

This was the first book I‘ve read in a while and it was HARD to get through. This book is raw. But the storytelling is beautiful and Yaa Gyasi really bonds the reader to the characters in relatively short chapters, which is impressive.

Got a little lost in this book. ROMANTIC - can‘t decide if it was refreshingly or predictably so.

Summer of fiction continues with this wrenching whirlwind. Feels too intimate to be read so hungrily but that‘s what I did. No one can sit on this book for more than three days. That‘s the kind of book it is.

An epic. This book made me quietly angry about how difficult it is to be a woman and be left alone. Poignant and tragic. You‘ll get lost in it then cry when it‘s over.

I cried at the CRJ chapter on love and shame and Hanif‘s voice is in my head.

Beautiful and almost painfully clear. I remember Erika L Sanchez once said writing her book felt like an emergency. Reading THIS book felt like an emergency. I closed it with an emotional hangover.

I feel in awe of Ewing‘s power. This book was like going to church.

I didn‘t understand the hype at first but BOY does this book get good. I was completely oblivious to the YLO‘s organizing history in Lincoln Park. And it‘s a rare housing history book that‘s not too wonky.

Kinda bougie

This was tough to get through, a little jargon-y or academic-lite. I picked it as a primer on a subject I‘ve never studied and it does give a solid overview of the Zapatista movement and Zapatismo ideology, just not a very engaging one.

I think I love like Frank O‘Hara, and that‘s probably not a good thing. No one writes love and loss w such sweet and wry vulnerability. The title poem was my favorite (“why should I share you? Why don‘t you get rid of someone else for a change?”) Closely followed by Mayakovsky (“be sick as I am sick”) and Sleeping on the Wing (“Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire “). I‘ve been on a poetry kick & this book fed me. Good for reckless romantics.

I can‘t really explain this, but what I loved most about this book was how HONEST it felt. It was beautiful to see things I know (violence, harassment, mental breaks, having a complicated and sometimes unsympathetic relationship with your parents) and things I know of (poverty, the violence of border-crossing, intergenerational tension in immigrant families) written with such care. not usually a YA person but couldn‘t resist

I haven‘t read a poetry book w structure in a long, long time, and this was the perfect start. I finished in 40 minutes but the words stayed w me. I loved the repetition of the “heaven” poem throughout - it kept the rhythm and nailed some really poignant points.

I finished this in a single L ride and it was an EMOTIONAL L ride. Some of the poems felt a little dry, but the final (title) poem left me in tears. Want to reread.

necessary and difficult read. I learned a lot about the work survivors have already done, especially in disabled and immigrant communities. I also loved the emphasis on our shared responsibility for survivors‘ healing. Tbh, I was disheartened by the accountability methods - they just didn‘t seem like they worked, even though I think it‘s a huge feat to have strong enough community to be able to even try.

What stood out to me most is how little has changed in Chicago in almost a century. All the wealth is still extracted from the south + west sides and concentrated in fortified white enclaves. The city is still starkly and intentionally segregated, and those who maintain its segregation still blame their victims. Poor kids still grow up in cramped, cold, roach- and rat-infested apartments while their landlords get richer! This book made me angry.

great book for organizers; a quick read. Loved the humility and discipline of someone who has been working in movements for what seems to me like a long, long time. Also made me want to learn more about the Haitian Revolution.

I didn‘t wanna like this book bc of the hype but I cried in Jewel during the hospital scene anyway. Beautiful, honest, intimate. I‘m a sucker for that nerdy Gen-X queer academic type. For whatever reason this book felt refreshing, almost old-fashioned, in its style and courage. Maybe I wouldn‘t like it as much on second read, but it packed an emotional first punch.

This book is SUPER voyeuristic and racist! I had to read this book in high school, recently reread and am appalled my school picked this book to introduce middle class kids to Chicago‘s public housing. Looking for good criticisms of this book.

This book was kinda voyeuristic, but it did make me realize I shouldn‘t have picked a book on the projects by someone who wasn‘t from the projects. Its most useful feature was its outlining of major public housing milestones in Chicago history, but the approach was weird and racist. Felt like it was trying to convince a white audience of the...horror? Humanity? Inevitability? of the rise and fall of Chicago‘s high rises.

One of the best books I read last year. It changed how I move through cities and started me on a deep dive into anti-gentrification lit and organizing.

The New Orleans section rocked me most - I straight up did not realize the extent of the gory aftermath of Katrina before the book. I felt humbled by the resilience of the Black New Orleaners profiled, fighting for their kids against the truly genocidal gentrification of their city. Recommend.

This book rocked me. The Iraq War section left me with a profound sense of disgust, esp reading a decade later. The anti-war movement died, the war architects retired to cushy book deals, and the rest of us settled into cultural amnesia. And we‘re STILL bombing ppl! Ugh. I really loved the closing message on taking the lead from affected communities already resisting and rebuilding. A must-read for anyone trying to understand just how we got here.

Intoxicating, mostly because I saw so much of my own life in the subjects. I think an uncomfortable majority of white people in America see themselves in this book, yet the world it exposes is simultaneously so bizarre. I agreed w/ her analysis but I wish the book had taken a more militant tone and really put white wealth on trial. I don‘t read a lot of sociological studies so maybe that‘s a methodological limitation. A surprisingly quick read!

This book lit a fire under me. Smarter people have already praised her style and analysis, but what jumped off my page is how fiercely Ewing loves her home and the people in it. The way she writes kids, their parents and families, teachers, Bronzeville - the love is powerful and palpable. It made the book, which is an overview of the organizing around the 2013 school closures, feel intimate. This is a deeply hopeful book. Must read.