Book Reflection April

As a small child, I was a voracious and avid reader. My love for reading continued into adulthood, but waned during my undergraduate and graduate education experiences for two reasons. First, there was a large volume of assigned reading that I needed to address each week, leaving little space, time, or enthusiasm to pick up another book. Second, I felt guilty doing something that I enjoyed that wasn’t productive when I had a long, arduous to-do list ahead of me.

My guilt trip stopped during my Managerial Skills course at NYU Stern, taught by Professor Dolly Chugh, where she shared the immense value associated with lifelong readership. Not only does reading help us to learn technical topics and skills, but fiction in particular provides us with a private and quiet space to explore and deepen our empathy towards those who have different lived experiences from our own. As we grow as leaders and people in our community, our ability to empathize with others is only growing increasingly more important.

If you are looking for tools and strategies to get back into reading, I find Professor Chugh’s article on becoming a born again reader to be a helpful resource (I also highly recommend signing up for her newsletter!).

Each month, I will be sharing books I have recently read that I recommend you read.

I would love to start a conversation in the comments about what you think of these books! Have you read them? What was your key takeaway? What recommendations do you have for me?

First, I would like to introduce How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, written by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. This book provides powerful insight and a lived history of the black feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The book introduces the women who birthed the concept of intersectionality, a term which has been intellectualized and institutionalized without recognizing the creators and thinkers, who have helped to shape how some of today’s leading anti-racist activists are creating space and community to dismantle white supremacy and fascism. I believe this is a must read for anyone, but in particular, white individuals who associate with the feminist movement and others interested in anti-racist efforts.

Second, I would like to recommend Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (and Homegoing as well if you haven’t read it). Yaa Gyasi has a gift as a writer to transport you to the destination of her stories. When I read her work, I feel as though I am living alongside the characters, a silent observer to the story at hand. This book differs from Homegoing as Gyasi explores the life of Gifty, a neuroscience fifth-year PhD candidate at Stanford and her relationship to the powers of depression and addiction. This is a must-read for those looking for beautiful prose, or to passively learn more about neuroscience and the human struggle and disease which is addiction.

Third, I would like to share On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. This book is quick history lesson meets an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale meets googling “how to move abroad without colonizing another country but getting the f*** out of westernized society.” This book is a must read for anyone who has a short attention span but is looking to become more literate in how the West has failed everyone but the white, male, cis, able-bodied, straight, 1% or is looking for an answer to the question, “how does history repeat itself?”