There may be no writer, no thinker, who has shaped my conversations on the show more than Christina Sharpe. Whether her work is explicitly part of a conversation (in episodes with Ross Gay, Solmaz Sharif, Natalie Diaz, and Dionne Brand, to name a few) or whether her thought and vision provide a foundation and subtext for one (conversations as wide-ranging as those with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Monica Youn, Claire Schwartz, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Charif Shanahan), Sharpe’s scholarship has been a crucial part of some of the most dynamic conversations on the show. Her work has always been more than academic work however. It has always been a hybrid, scholarly and literary, visual and textual, personal and structural. But her latest book, Ordinary Notes, is the most personal to date, and among the many things it could be considered (John Keene suggests it combines memoir, memorial, literary criticism, and political and cultural critique) is as a love letter to Sharpe’s mother and how she cultivated and nourished, in the face of all the brutalities of our world, an atmosphere of Black life, Black art, and Black thought within their home. Of how she pursued, in Christina’s words, “beauty as a method.” This is a rare book that will work on you if you work your way through it. Ordinary Notes is both generous and challenging, envisioning an elsewhere and otherwise of shared risk and care.
For the bonus audio archive Christina contributes readings from Dionne Brand’s The Blue Clerk, Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s Quiet, and Canisia Lubrin’s forthcoming Code Noir. These join bonus material from everyone from Nikky Finney to Layli Long Soldier. And the bonus material is only one of many potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter. Find out more at the show’s Patreon page.
Today’s Bookshop is the largest and deepest yet, with Christina’s books, of course, but also with many of the Black writers and thinkers and artists that she has been shaped by or writes alongside.
The post Christina Sharpe : Ordinary Notes appeared first on Tin House.
Rae Armantrout : Finalists
Crafting with Ursula : Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias
Courtney Maum — The Year of the Horses
Ada Limón : The Hurting Kind
Crafting with Ursula : adrienne maree brown on Social Justice & Science Fiction
Cristina Rivera Garza : New and Selected Stories
Caren Beilin : Revenge of the Scapegoat
Crafting with Ursula : Karen Joy Fowler on Experimental Women, Animals, Science & Story
Sheila Heti : Pure Colour
Alejandro Zambra : Chilean Poet
Crafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature Writing
Solmaz Sharif : Customs
Gabrielle Civil : the déjà vu
Crafting with Ursula : Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line
James Hannaham : Pilot Impostor
Rabih Alameddine : The Wrong End of the Telescope
Crafting with Ursula : Becky Chambers on Creating Aliens & Alien Cultures
Victoria Chang : Dear Memory
Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook
Raymond Antrobus : All The Names Given & The Perseverance
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