What We're Reading, Watching, Viewing & Listening To...
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze. My Grandmother’s Hands is a call to action for Americans to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body. Author Resmaa Menakem introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
The Rape of Recy Taylor
his harrowing and very instructive documentary from Nancy Buirski is about the remarkable courage of Recy Taylor, a young black woman in Abbeville, Alabama, in the United States. After she was raped on her way home from church by six white teenage boys in 1944, Taylor refused to stay silent like all the other victims of this very commonplace crime.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
“The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is arguably not only one of the greatest albums ever, but also an incredible anthem for women, all women, for girls, all girls. She predicted everything from the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, and even the deterioration of both hip-hop and pop culture by challenging the un-thinking of us all. It is a gift, really, to us all, as important as the writings of Joan Didion and James Baldwin, and as monumental as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Carole King’s Tapestry. It deserves to be in all those conversations, forever.” (Kevin Powell)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
"An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American... As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as 'the younger brothers of creation.' As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return"--
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
In this experimental, personal-essay film, Wilkerson explores a difficult ancestral legacy as he investigates the unpunished murder of a black man committed by his own great-grandfather in Alabama more than 70 years ago. Through a powerful collage of old and new material, some of it inviting audience participation (the film was originally presented at festivals with live narration), plus examinations of more famous nearby racially motivated incidents such as the rape of Recy Taylor, we’re challenged along with Wilkerson in our ideas about family, American history, and even iconic literary heroes.
![Dirty ComputerJanelle explained the meaning of her album’s title “Dirty Computer”: "We come from dirt and when we transition out we go back to dirt. […] We’re CPUs, our brains are uploading, downloading, transmitting, passing back and forth in…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/551592fce4b00e3284101b4e/1535578720319-9U5S82OXDCAWPOD1V8PZ/dirtycomputer.jpg)
Dirty Computer
Janelle explained the meaning of her album’s title “Dirty Computer”: "We come from dirt and when we transition out we go back to dirt. […] We’re CPUs, our brains are uploading, downloading, transmitting, passing back and forth information. And with all computers you got your bugs, you got your viruses. But are those negatives, positives, features? Or not? I think it’s a conversation I want to have with us as a society, as human beings, about what it means to tell somebody that their existence, either they’re queer, minorities, women, poor, makes you have bugs and viruses. […] it’s about embracing those things even if it makes others uncomfortable."