Hey, welcome to Moony Reads. My name is Bek and today I'm going to be talking
about all the books that I got in the
month of June. The majority of the books
that I got this month were nonfiction,
but I did get a few fiction as well. I'm
gonna go ahead and start with the first
book that I got this month, which was
Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon. I've already talked about this
book several times on my channel and
it just came out at the beginning of the
month. This is their newest book and it
was absolutely fantastic.
I can put a link to the video where I
talk about this a bit more. It's a really
small book, but there's a ton packed
in here that was just really wonderful.
Next, I have a poetry book: The Black
Condition ft. Narcissus by Jayy Dodd.
Jayy Dodd has poems in a number of
different publications and this was one
of her books, so I went ahead and got it. I'm pretty sure I read that it was
autobiographical, but there is also a lot
of mythology imagery. So I'm not, I guess,
100% sure on what its gonna be like -- but
I'm really looking forward to reading
this in July. The next book I have is
fiction and that is The City We Became
by NK Jemisin. My dad works with
publishing and gets copies of books
occasionally and this was one of the
ones that he got a while back. He's read
it, so now I get it and I'm super excited
about it. I've really been wanting to
read NK Jemisin. For those who don't
know, The City We Became is fantasy and
within this, each piece of New York is
represented by a different character. I'm
not totally sure what happens plot-wise
but I'm okay with keeping it that way. I
know that it goes into different
perspectives, which sounds super
interesting. And hopefully after I get
done with this, I can borrow The Fifth
Season, which my sister has currently.
It's gonna be a great time. The next
stack of books that I have, I got at
Barnes & Noble. This is the first time
I'd been to a book store since
everything shut down. I went in there for
specific books but of course I came out
with more. So the first book I've got is
Namah by Sarah Blake. I had actually
ordered this in maybe February. It
wasn't supposed to come in until April
and of course everything was shut down
in April. So I was able to pick it up when I went shopping this month. I've
been pretty excited to get to this book.
I heard both BowtiesAndBooks and Sage
Reads talk about it. It's basically a
biblical retelling of Noah's wife from
the Noah's Ark story and -- she isn't
really focused on in the actual like
text, so this kind of delves into her
character.
It's very queer and very metaphysical, so
I'm really interested to see what this
is like.
The next book that I got that I did plan
on buying was The Source of Self-Regard
by Toni Morrison. This is a collection of
speeches and essays and different things
like that. I have read Sula by Toni
Morrison and I really really enjoyed it,
so I'm excited to get to some of her
nonfiction stuff. This is actually the
group read for the fuckathon, which is
hosted by Noria reads. I'll put links to
that in the description if you're
interested. The next book I technically
also got for the fuckathon, but I was
planning on getting it anyways. And that
is The Henna Wars. I would be really
surprised if you hadn't heard about The
Henna Wars already. It is a young adult
novel. It's got sort of an enemies-to-lovers romance. There's also discussion
and of cultural appropriation. It's
really interesting. This book just sounds
super adorable and there was no way that
I couldn't get it just looking at that
cover -- it's just really beautiful. So, I'm
super excited to get to this in July as
well. Next I got Open Season: Legalized
Genocide of Colored People by Ben Crump.
This book was suggested by Jesse from
BowtiesAndBooks.
It looks at Ben Crump's experience as an
attorney and, in general, looking at the
history of how Black people have been
treated by the criminal justice system.
Ben Crump was the lawyer for Michael
Brown, Trayvon Martin, and some other
prominent cases. And I believe he's also
going to be the attorney for different
things going on with George Floyd. The
next two that I got, I was pleasantly
surprised to see. Both of these were
originally published a while back and I
hadn't seen these in a physical
bookstore -- and I tend to look pretty
heavily at the social science section. So
the first one of those is Women Race and
Class by Angela Davis. This was originally published in
the early 80s. And like the title would
imply, she looks at sort of the
intersections of all of these. And then I
have Killing the Black Body: Race,
Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
by Dorothy Roberts. And this looks at the
history of how Black women have been
treated kind of starting really far back
around colonization and slavery up until
it was published in the 1970s. Both of
these have been on my radar for a long
time and I'm glad that I was able to
find them. And I'm really glad that they
have started to put in kind of a more
diverse selection of books, particularly
in the social science section. The next
couple books, I got online just during
various times. Both of these next books
were actually suggested by Brianna from
Brianna's Library. So if you are at all
interested and books like these that are
nonfiction and politically oriented,
definitely check out their channel. The
first one of those is Revolutionary
Suicide by Huey P Newton. Huey Newton was one of the cofounders at the Black
Panther Party and this is his
autobiography. Next is Live from Death
Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal. This is a
collection of prison [letters] he wrote
these a while he was on death row. From my understanding, this really gets into what
it's like to live on death row but also
the conditions that these people are
living in. The next couple of stacks that
I had came from places that had sales
going on. The first couple are from the
University of Chicago Press and the
first one of these is also a
recommendation from Brianna's Library
that is Red Star Over the Third World.
And this looks at a number of different
revolutionary movements that happened in the global south. And then the other book
that I got from University of Chicago
Press is The War on Drugs in the Global
colour Line edited by Kojo Karam. And this looks at the impact that the war on
drugs has all over the world. So this is
a collection of articles and essays that
each look kind of at different parts of
the world and how drug trafficking is
impacting a multitude of countries. Then
at the final three books that I have, I
got from Duke University Press.
The first is Intersectionality as
Critical Theory by Patricia Hill Collins. I've talked about Patricia
Hill Collins a little bit before. I
always highly highly recommend Black
Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins.
Really that book should be essential for
anyone who's interested in feminism. It's
also pretty accessible language-wise for
the most part. So, I'm interested to see
what she has to say in Intersectionality
as Critical Theory. This was more
recently published and this is kind of
taking the step a step further -- it's not
just talking about intersectionality and
what it is, but how to actually apply
that. So I'm really looking forward to
this. I'm planning on reading it in July.
Next, I have Poor Queer Studies:
Confronting Elitism in the University by
Matt Brim. From my understanding, this is
going to be looking at how schools are
not accessible to a number of people,
specifically through a poor and queer
lens. And I imagine it's going to talk
about specific things that should change
in higher education and different ways
that we could do it. I thought that this
was particularly important for me to
read since I am working in higher
education -- I'm an adjunct at a college --
and I'm also considering getting my PhD.
So, I think that so I think that knowing
and understanding this perspective is
going to be super important. And then
finally I have Black Queer Studies: A
Critical Anthology by Patrick Johnson
and Mae Henderson. I got this book
because I was actually looking at a more
recent book that I believe was published
by the same people. But it was described
as almost like a follow-up or more
recent version of this book. So, I wanted
to get that book but I decided to go
ahead and get this book so that I could
read it first and then once I'm done
with this go on ahead and get the next
one. And this is looking in an
interdisciplinary way at the experience
of black queer people. So those were all
the physical books that I got in July. I
did get a lot of ebooks. There were a
number of places that were having sales
where certain ebooks were like $2.99. I
also got ahold of some PDFs and ebooks
for free. I'm not gonna go into each and
every one of those because that would
take a really long time, but I will put a
few on the screen. I did end up getting
some fiction books, and then I got a
number of books also that were
nonfiction -- there were a number of books on policing specifically that were free
from Verso. There were also a number of
books that were inexpensive or free on
racial injustice, And I ended up getting
a couple of romance books because I
wanted to try those out next month -- which I talked a little bit about in my TBR
video. If you've read any of the books
that I bought this month, definitely tell
me what you thought about them down in
the comments. And thank you all so much
for watching. Bye!
