Volume 3, No. 47: Light, Rage, Joy, Light: November Reading Reflections

Greetings, book and treat people! I started writing these monthly reading reflections in September and it’s become a ritual I cherish.

Before we get into it, a quick note about this newsletter through the end of the year: My annual break starts on December 15th, and I’ll be back in your inboxes on January 10th. Over the next two weeks, I’ll send out four Best Of the Year newsletters: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and everything else. Buckle up, it’s going to be a lot of books!

November was another shattering month. I hope you all found some moments of beauty and connection. As always, I’m so grateful that you are here with me. This is a long one—I just kept adding pictures.

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It snowed on November 1st. Nessa and I walked through a snowy tunnel of golden beech leaves.

On the ridge, Nessa leapt and ran and sniffed and jumped. I thanked and thanked and thanked.

The first book I finished in November was Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine by Hannah Moushabeck and Reem Madooh. I loved it. It set the tone for my entire month and inspired me to start reading a picture book every day. For joy.

I walked on the ridge every day, and took pictures of Nessa running every day. Because I love her face. Because I love the way her body radiates joy.

I read Return Flight by Jennifer Huang and The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz, both recommended to me by my friend Surabhi. Return Flight was gorgeous and sharp, full of movement and love. The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich was meh. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood. Maybe I was too heartbroken for fluff.

I made myself a warming, nourishing soup full of kale, potatoes, and herby chicken meatballs. I called my reps.

I listened to The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi. It’s a brilliant and comprehensive history of Palestine from 1917-2017. One thing that stood out to me is Khalid's commitment to complicated historical realities. He examines interlocking systems of oppression, webs of power, the fraught entanglements of various political ideologies (both Israeli and Palestinian) throughout the 20th and 21st centuries—and much more. It is, in fact, very complicated. Most of human history is complicated. Khalid delves into all of these intricacies, and in doing so, lays bare the ongoing crimes of the Israeli state.

The sun started setting at 4:30. It’s my favorite thing about November, my favorite thing about winter. Every day, I walked on the ridge at sunset.

Every day, I received the gifts: the brilliance of light, the sweetness of darkness. The early sunsets, which tell me: “Pay attention. Breathe deep. Root.”

I read The Philistine by Leila Marshy, a beautiful coming-into-self book about a queer Canadian Palestinian woman who takes a life-changing trip to Cairo to reconnect with her father. I can’t recommend it enough.

I took a familiar walk around a familiar pond and found a beaver tree. I thought about the world—how wild, how detailed, how full of wonders.

I called my reps. Still, this daily prayer.

I read my second Mahmoud Darwish book, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (translated by Jeffrey Sacks). It’s a book of love poems and landscape poems, poems about home and language, about being forced to leave home and longing for it. They are about the brutal history of the occupation, yes, the agony of exile, living through violence and how it destroys—but more than that, more deeply, I think, these poems are a love letter to Palestine. “I have a language in the sky / and a language on the earth / Who am I? Who am I?”

I spent a week on my beloved island with a dear friend. I watched the ducks in the waves on my morning walks. I let them teach me something about steadfastness and stillness. Every day, after my walk, I sat on the porch and called my reps.

We made a warming, nourishing soup: slow-roasted pork shoulder, slow-simmered broth, Brussels sprouts. We lit candles at every meal.

I read Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis. It’s full of wisdom. Here is some: “Well, I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community. I don't know whether I would have survived had not movements survived, had not communities of resistance, communities of struggle survived.”

We walked in one of my favorite places on earth. I let the grief fill me, and the rage fill me, and the wonder, also. I let it fill me.

I read two short story collections by Palestinian authors: Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randan Jarrar and The Sea Cloak by Nayrouz Qarmout, translated by Perween Richards and Charis Olszok. The Jarrar was good, but not memorable. I enjoyed the range of settings and styles.

I loved The Sea Cloak, which I picked up thanks to Induk’s fantastic review. I was struck by all the modes of movement Qarmout explores: an auntie in Gaza watching a TV program with her niece is transported in memory to a childhood trauma. Two lovers in Gaza navigate their desire to leave for Egypt, and the barriers preventing them from doing so, in different ways. The sea is constantly churning, tossing up various emotional truths. Bombs, explosions, telephone calls, water, walking through rubble—all of these kinds of movement create a devastating picture of Palestinian life under occupation. I wrote a bit more about it here.

We watched the early sunsets.

I took pictures of my love, running.

I listened to Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh. It’s one of my favorite books of the year. It’s a love letter to and elegy for the Palestinian hills. It makes vivid what the occupation takes: lives, dignity, homes, land, the freedom to walk the hills in spring. The freedom to roam through a landscape of olive trees and iris, dramatic ridges and hidden valleys, ancient ruins, old family terraces. The freedom to move.

I also listened to How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. I got a lot out of it, even though I’m not really the target audience, simply because of my relationship to cleaning/keeping house. Almost none of the practical advice was helpful for me, but I love Davis's philosophy and framing of care tasks as morally neutral. It's brilliant and broadly applicable.

At home, I walked on the ridge. Nessa ran on the ridge.

The light wove miracles through the grass, in the sky. We are entering the Season of Light, and I am ready.

I began my read-a-picture-book-every-day ritual on November 18th with We are Still Here! by Traci Sorell and Frané Lessac. It’s technically a project for 2024, but why wait for joy? I’ve read a picture book every day since and it has changed everything. I am head-over-heels in love. Picture books are reshaping me. I am going to be so loud about it, forever.

We are Still Here! is nonfiction book about Indigenous history and, most importantly, present. Children at a community school are preparing presentations for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Each gets a two-page spread with straightforward text and bright, bold illustrations. I loved it.

In the mornings, I walked along my favorite dirt road. Sometimes I watched the sun rise over the fields.

I listened to Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. I loved the last two hours, a beautiful and heartbreaking meditation on stories, trauma, and what it takes to break—and reset—cycles of violence and memory. It was moving, and so devastating to listen to right now, thinking of Palestine. But the first 13 hours were very boring. Nothing happened and there was no character development. I wasn't invested at all until the very end. Maybe the pacing will work for you!

My favorite poetry collection of the month was The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye, which I don’t have the words for, though I wrote some here. This book is poetry as refuge, poetry as a way to braid stories of resistance out of the brutality of occupation, poetry as roiling, incandescent, searing rage, poetry as demand. Nye’s language is precise and unflinching, but it is also expansive—it reaches into the imagination, reaches toward freedom.

Here’s one of my favorite poems, ‘Tiny Journalist Blues’:

Nothing to give you
that you would want.

Nothing big enough
but freedom.

As part of a collective action, I wrote the names of 15 murdered Palestinian children on these small slips of paper. It felt impossible. I lit candles. I honored these lives in this one small, impossible way.

From one of the organizers: “Today, 178 jews and allies joined a coordinated snail-mail action, sending letters to Senator Elizabeth Warren demanding she call for an immediate ceasefire. Combined, these letters contain the handwritten names of the 6747 known Palestinians who have been martyred in Israel’s unceasing attacks on Gaza since October 7, and 4331 individual placeholders for those whose names we do not yet know. he number of deaths has risen significantly in the hours after packing these 11,078 names.”

Warren has since made a statement supporting a temporary ceasefire. It is not enough. We keep pushing.

I read Are You This? Or Are You This? by Madian Al Jazerah with Ellen Georgiou. Al Jazerah is a Palestinian gay man, activist, and the founder of Books@Café in Amman, Jordan. I’m still untangling how I felt about this memoir. I liked a lot of it. A lot of it felt rushed. I’m glad I read it.

I reveled in picture books! Zonia's Rainforest by Juana Martinez-Neal is a brilliant, moving story about an Asháninka girl who loves the rainforest in her home in the Amazon Basil of Peru. When We Were Alone by David A. Robertson and Julie Flett, a story about the horrors of residential school and the beauty of resistance, took my breath away.

I enjoyed learning about the Tanabata Matsuri in The Star Festival by Moni Ritchie Hadley & Mizuho Fujisawa. I'll Go and Come Back by Rajani LaRocca & Sara Palacios is the sweetest story about a Tamil girl and her grandmother who connect despite a language barrier. I enjoyed I'll Go and Come Back so much that I picked up another book by Rajani LaRocca, this one illustrated by Neha Rawat: Masala Chai, Fast and Slow. It was a delight, and so was the chai I made using the recipe at the back of the book.

It snowed again.

I took more pictures of my love, running.

I fell in love with Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer and Marvin Bileck. It was published in 1964 and it’s pure whimsy. Pure wonder. Pure joy. I can’t explain how wildly I love this book. I opened it thinking I would like it because it has a wonderfully strange cover and I love the title. By the time I got to the end, I knew I had underestimated my capacity to love children’s books. I love this book with the kind of abandon I thought was reserved only for my most sacred novels. How humbling, how joyful, to be wrong. I wrote about it extensively here. I implore you to read it.

I listened to Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander, a fun second-chance romance set in Florida. There was a little too much “we’re just not talking to each other!” for two 39-year-old dudes, but it was still a good time.

I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. I spent the morning reading picture books by Indigenous authors. They were all brilliant.

• Remember by Joy Harjo & Michaela Goade: Goade brings Joy Harjo’s 1983 poem ‘Remember’ to glorious life. It opens with the words: “Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories.” Every page from the first to the last is a stunning mess of color and movement, stars and plants, creatures and wind, as Harjo urges us to remember who we are and what connects us.

• We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom & Michaela Goade: This is a story of hope and resistance. A young girl fights to protect the water—water that is medicine, that is life, a being with memory that “has its own spirit.”

• Stand Like a Cedar by Nicola I. Campbell & Carrielynn Victor: In this reverent, gorgeous book, we travel through the seasons on the lands of the Coast Salish Peoples in British Colombia.

• We are Grateful by Traci Sorell & Frané Lessac: This is a joyful celebration of contemporary Cherokee life and culture—of everything there is to be grateful for throughout the year. I love how Sorell highlights little/everyday things (collecting honeysuckle for basket making, cuddling babies), sad/hard things (remembering the Trail of Tears, honoring a relative who’s passed on), and big celebrations/traditions (like dancing at the Great New Moon Ceremony).

• My Powerful Hair by Carole Lindstrom & Steph Littlebird: This is an incredible book. The story is beautifully rhythmic, with repeated phrases about what’s being “woven into my hair” and little poem-paragraphs of Indigenous wisdom and beliefs about hair that begin with the same phrase (“Our ancestors say”).

• Be a Good Ancestor by Leona Prince, Gabrielle Prince & Carla Joseph: This is such a beautiful book about what it means to be a good ancestor. It begins with: “Be a good Ancestor with water,” and then it moves through other things—land, living things that swim, walk, and fly, neighbors.

• Winter’s Gifts by Kaitlin B. Curtice & Gloria Félix: This book is a love letter to the beauty and wisdom of winter. I loved everything about it.

In the afternoon, I watched the livestream of the 54th Annual National Day of Mourning with other members of my community, thanks to Stone Soup Cafe. It was powerful. I plan to be in Plymouth next year.

I started lighting candles every morning at breakfast, to welcome the Season of Light.

In the days after Thanksgiving, I finished a bunch of books I’d been reading for ages, starting with Palestine by Joe Sacco, which I had started in October. I didn’t like it at all. It’s so sarcastic and flippant. I didn’t like Saco, the narrator/character, especially all of his sexism. I get what he's doing. I get that he's drawing attention to his own biases, that he's using sarcasm and cynicism and humor to highlight American complicity. I get that he’s using comics to make a point. I still hated this book. What's happening in Palestine is so unconscionable, so utterly heart-and-world-breaking. I do not need a flippant book about it. I especially don't need one by a white American. The framing of this just absolutely did not work for me.

I did really enjoy All That's Left to You by Ghassan Kanafani, translated by May Jayyusi and Jeremy Reed. It’s a collection of stories and a novella. I don’t know if the stories will stay with me, but I am excited to read more of Kanafani’s work. Bonus: it’s published by Interlink Publishing, a Palestinian-owned press based right here in Northampton!

Every day, I picked a new picture book. Catch That Chicken! by Atinuke & Angela Brooksbank is so silly and so fun.

The City Tree by by Shira Boss & Lorena Alvarez is a beautiful ode to city trees. North Woods Girl by Aimée Bissonette & Claudia McGehee spoke to my soul in a thousand different ways.

I also finished the The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid, which I started in September, and Variations by Juliet Jacques, which I started in July! I loved the Kincaid, though I am still untangling it. Her sentences continue to destroy me. I’m thinking about Xuela, the heroine of this novel, in the context of Kincaid’s other heroines, about the characters as related by memory, each of them unique but also parallel universe versions of each other…there’s just so much happening. Kincaid’s work is a gift.

Variations is one of my favorite books of the year! It’s basically a fictional archive of queer and trans life in the UK, from the late 1800s through the mid 2000s. There are interviews, articles, letters, plays, academic papers, oral histories, etc. It’s playful and smart. Every story was a winner. I’ll be writing more about it at some point.

I listened to The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe. It was brutal. It's a detailed account of the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948 and continues to this day. Zionists set out to ethnically cleanse Palestine, did so, and have been denying they did so, despite evidence from their own mouths, ever since. It’s all so chilling. I learned a lot about the disturbing purpose of Israeli national parks—to cover up Palestinian history and write a different history on top. If you know of any books about the racist history of the US National Parks, I’d love to hear about them.

I walked on the ridge. Sometimes the moon rose while I walked.

Every day, I read picture books: Anita and the Dragons by Hannah Carmona and Anna Cunha is a simple story about immigration, and how scary it can be to leave home. The Thing About Bees by Shabazz Larkin is a love letter to bees, and to his sons. The Star People by S.D. Nelson is full of magical, glittering illustrations and Lakota stories about the Cloud People and the Star People.

In addition to my daily picture book, each day I read a few pages of Migration by Mike Unwin and Jenni Desmond, a nonfiction picture book about animal migrations. What a joy. I read about the wildly different migrations of Christmas Island red crabs, Straw-colored fruit bats, Bar-headed geese, and Southern African pilchards—just to name a few of my favorites among the creatures that were new to me.

The sun is setting earlier and earlier every day, and every day, it fills me up. Every day, I thank and thank and thank.

I put up my Christmas tree and filled it with lights.

I dried oranges and strung them with up with twine. They twinkle in sunlight and candlelight.

In this last week of November, I’ve unpaused several books that have been on pause for weeks or months: Greenland by David Santos Donaldson (a reread); Light in Gaza edited by Jennifer Bing, Mike Merryman-Lotze, and Jehad Abusalim (enraging, beautiful, clear); Crisis by Karin Boye, translated by Amanda Doxtater (20th century queer fiction); and Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa (Palestinian fiction). I also picked up Moby-Dick again after a month’s hiatus, and I'm into it.

December is the most scared month of the year for me. I’ll be celebrating the Season of Light every day. I’ll be reading wintery picture books. I’ll be lighting my menorah with my beautiful new Hanukkah candles Narrow Bridge Candles. I’ll be at this protest in Northhampton on Sunday. I’ll be reading about Palestine. I’ll be calling my reps. I’ll be walking and and walking, thanking the darkness, burning all the candles, filling my house with light and light and light. I’ll be slowing down and nesting in. I’ll be burrowing and rooting and grieving and reveling. I’ll be.