Read with me

Exactly a year ago, I set my first-ever reading goal: Read 75 books in 2020. Thanks to the Arlington library, my little flea-market shelves swelled with books over the last 12 months: Toni Morrison’s novels, James Cone’s theology, Henri Nouwen’s meditations, Edwidge Danticat’s short stories, James Baldwin’s essays.

In the midst of a difficult year, books kept my curiosity company. Along the way, I learned that good books rub off on you. Each story helped give shape to my own.

Through reading, I found new routes for reflection. As we faced a international health crisis and a potential racial reckoning in the U.S., historians like Howard Zinn and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. held up a mirror to the present. As I wandered the 2-mile radius around my house, reading about places from 20th-century Harlem to Wendell Berry’s Kentucky farm brought out new dimensions of the landscape. As I spent more time alone, studying gender, race, and culture helped me to better understand my identity and social location.  And when I looked closely at the pages themselves, writers like Annie Dillard and Robin Wall Kimmerer showed me how to string words up like lights, wiring the imagination and illuminating the dark places in the world and within ourselves. 

Books became the bulge in my purse, the weights in my luggage, the sparks that set off conversations, the currents that ran through my mind constantly. The more I read, the more I craved reading. Each one offered me a gift.(Usually far more than one!) And as we all know, 2020 has taught us not to take any gift for granted. So, in a spirit of gratitude, I’m excited to share a few books that made a mark on me.