Curated reading links.

Favorite Essays I Read This Week:

As a Black Woman, I’m Learning that Rest Is Resistance, Michelle Chikaonda

Tears flooded my face when I read Her Kind, a heart-wrenching essay from Naomi Jackson on losing and finding her mind.

A Litany for Survival by Naomi Jackson on giving birth as a black woman in America.

Reflections, While Sitting in Traffic (a one-sentence essay)

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Claudia Rankine (Lyric Essay)

How I Found My Desire to Live After My Wife Died, Matthew Salesses

Favorite Short Fiction I Read This Week:

A Precious Stone, Amy Y.Q. Lin

Favorite Good Sentence I Read This Week:

“Focus means choosing to prioritize what matters most at the expense of everything that matters less — even if those other things are also good and valid.” —Niklas Göke, 7 Lessons From the 7th Year of Running a Book Summary Business

Favorite Paragraph I Read This Week:

“AI might report an event, but they will never tell a story. They might record a moment in time and ascribe adjectives and adverbs to it. But no AI will ever have the capability to relate the brutality and beauty of sadness and the strange terror that can come with joy. They will not know that when you smell a baby’s head, your eyes close. They will not know how the soul swells when you hear your children laughing together nor the hollowness of being completely alone in a room full of people. They will not know the smell of coffee or rain on the way. They will not know the lunacy that comes from a pandemic lockdown or the simple yet very necessary joy of walking barefoot on soft grass under a warm sun. No C3-PO will ever understand that one of the most surreal things about death is that everyone else is still alive and for days you want to run outside and cry out for everyone to just stop. Please, stop.” Carla Hoch, A Blessing for Writers and Storytellers in 2023

Another Beautiful Paragraph From Carla Hoch:

“In short, no AI will ever be human, which is a thing we writers specialize in. We are professional humans who obsessively hoard sensory details and emotions. That is our gift. That is our charge. And, if I have any blessing for you in the coming year it is this—that you all feel the fullness of what it is to be human and write it down. Tell the stories. All of them and all of it. Leave out nothing. Write the things that scare you, that you are afraid to feel, that make you laugh. Write the things you understand and what you never will or should. Write the stories. When the future strides through the graveyard of the present that has long since become the past, it is the stories that will remain and cling to its funeral shoes.”

Etcetera

• A Black Composer’s Legacy Flourishes 500 Years After His Birth (Via The New York Times)
• Ten Outstanding Stories to Read in 2023, Longreads
• Publishing Thoughts for the Minority Writer, Maria Dong

Did You Know?

Celebrated on the 11th day of January in the Ge’ez calendar, Timket in Ethiopia is a holiday that commemorates the baptism of Jesus Christ.