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I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m getting back into the reading GROOVE. I’ve been kind of slumpy for a number of weeks/maybe-possibly-months. But I just finished a book about a 17th century French poison scandal and a fiction (!!) book about Yale secret societies (yes, it was Ninth House). Fortunately, as always, we have a veritable onslaught of new books, so let’s check some out:
America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton
I am so excited about this book? Hinton makes a clear case that the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd did not exist in isolation. They were part of a history of police violence and public reaction, specifically on the part of the Black community. In it, Hinton says “the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order.” Love this reframing. Love adding context to current events.
The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams by Jonathan Ned Katz
Adams emigrated to the US from Poland in 1912, where she hung out with anarchists and ran queer speakeasies in NYC and Chicago. It’s like Emma Goldman, but gay. In 1925, she published a book called Lesbian Love, which is included as part of the biography. She was convicted of publishing an obscene book, because it was America in the 1920s, and eventually deported to Europe, where she later died in Auschwitz. I tell you all these details so you know what you’re getting into, but also dang, I thought I knew my US lesbian history, and I did not.
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman
ACT UP was founded in 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in NYC. At a time when the AIDS crisis was being ignored, they made it impossible to ignore. Author Schulman has been working on the ACT UP Oral History Project since 2001, and here highlights how “a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world.”
Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome
Poet Broome writes this extremely interesting memoir, framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘We Real Cool.’ It covers his “early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys,” his increasing drug use, his family, and “the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys,” which is a phrase that just cuts right to your heart. Also, bonus points for the title, which is SO good.
Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales
Dating apps. Real annoying. Real helpful. Lot to unpack there probably. Sales not only talks about the data around dating apps, but as an almost-50-year-old, went on TENS of dates through them, which she covers in the book. She says that these apps do little to foster real connection, but in a world where more and more people are meeting their longtime partners through them, what’s the alternative? (side note: I met my wife through Tinder and she is great.)
For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.
