Blog & Writings

There is a before and an after. Before Beloved, I understood history intellectually. After it, I felt it in my chest. Morrison does something that few writers can — she makes the unspeakable not just speakable but inescapable. You cannot read Beloved and remain unchanged. This is what literature at its highest is supposed to do.

The Mis-Education of the Negro was written in 1933. Ninety years later, it reads like it was written last Tuesday. Woodson's central argument — that an education system designed by and for the dominant class will teach the dominated class to accept and even celebrate their own subordination — has lost none of its urgency. If anything, it has gained.

Kendi's core move is deceptively simple: shift the question from "is this person racist?" to "is this policy racist?" That pivot — from moralizing about individuals to analyzing the effects of systems — is enormously clarifying. It removes the need for certainty about intent (which is always hidden) and grounds the conversation in outcomes (which are measurable). This is a book that changes how you see.

All About Love was the last book I expected to shake me. I came to it thinking it was self-help dressed in academic clothing. I was wrong. hooks takes love seriously as a philosophical, political, and ethical category — and in doing so reveals how impoverished our usual thinking about it actually is. We are taught to treat love as a feeling. hooks insists it is a practice.