I’ve been reading so much lately, but most recently: Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones, A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux, Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome, Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds, and Margery Kempe by Robert Glück. I’m looking forward to reading Simple Passion—also by Ernaux—The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet, Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black, Orphic Paris by Henri Cole, and Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison.

I don’t know if I would ever want to have written anything that someone else has already, but there are times that I wish that I could capture Toni Morrison’s gift for syntax and rhythm, the way she creates language that captures the black vernacular so deliberately, elegantly evoking the vestiges of a history of violence against black bodies, especially black female bodies, while never once rendering these narratives from the gaze of the oppressor. 

I don’t want to dwell on my least favorite trends in literature, so I’ll focus instead on my favorite trend—because this work has been most useful for my own practices as a writer—and that would be the emergence (is it emerging?) of autotheory as a form of memoir or autobiographical (life) writing. I’m thinking of Girlhood by Melissa Febos, The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, and The Women by Hilton Als as excellent examples of  this “trend.” Of course, I welcome any debates pertaining to my categorization, and especially any designation that what these writers are doing is “trendy.” 

This is so shameful, but I don’t reread books nearly enough, but when I do, The Blacker the Berry… by Wallace Thurman, Passing by Nella Larsen, The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor, and Sula by Toni Morrison are four books that I have returned to often. I frequently teach these books together because they do a phenomenal job of betraying the effects that white, patriarchal constructs have upon black womanhood. They are such dazzling books.

I’d probably go into an unsung field like social work to help those in rehabilitation for drug and alcohol use disorders. I like to think that I do that in my own way in my writing, even when I’m not writing about this particular circumstance explicitly; the condition haunts my creative conscience, always hovering above the page.