Every day, in this strange new world of unprovoked wars and a hyper-corporatization of everything, my husband and I are trying to find ways to live a life that feels meaningful, authentic, and sustainable. This week I found solace and solidarity in the essays and art criticism of Art on My Mind by bell hooks and the strange assortment of blog posts that make up Lady No by Kim Hyesoon.

Art on My Mind by bell hooks

“Learning to see and appreciate the presence of beauty is an act of resistance in a culture of domination that recognizes the production of a pervasive feeling of lack, both material and spiritual, as a useful colonizing strategy. Individuals who feel constant lack will consume more, will submit more readily.” – bell hooks, Art on My Mind

Given that I first learned of bell hooks at my hippie grad school where we all read Teaching to Transgress, it’s odd that this is the book I most quoted on LinkedIn this week. Odd, except that there’s something about Art on My Mind that spoke so deeply to the creative maker in me that I wanted to share the balm of her words in that awful den of capitalism we feel compelled to show up at every day but that brings few of us any joy (or jobs, TBH).

“It occurred to me then that if one could make a people lose touch with their capacity to create, lose sight of their will and their power to make art, then the work of subjugation, of colonization is complete.” – bell hooks Art on My Mind

There are a lot of things to love about this book, and I learned a lot about Black artists I hadn’t encountered before (including Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, and Alison Saar) and about the racism, sexism, and classism of the art world (the book was originally published in 1995, but I’m willing to wager not enough has changed).

“Anyone involved in the grant-receiving, grant-giving process… can see it is often individuals, irrespective of race or gender, from privileged backgrounds… who are best able to utilize existing funding agencies.” – bell hooks, Art on My Mind

What I appreciate most, though, is how layered hooks’ thought process is. For example, when she discusses the “place of the visual in Black life” in the titular essay, she talks about the lack of representation of Black artists in the art world, but she also digs into how the way Black people have been portrayed in art over time presents an inherent conflict between art being “necessarily a terrain of defamiliarization” and early Black audiences who “were wanting art to be solely a vehicle for displaying the race at its best.” When she writes about “the visual as an experience that can convert and serve as a catalyst for transformation,” I found myself longing for an updated version of this essay that touches on where we are now and where we might dream of going next, although quotes like this are still far too current:

“Transforming ways of seeing means that we learn to see race—thereby no longer acting in complicity with a white-supremacist aesthetic that would have us believe issues of color and race have no place in artistic practices—without privileging it as the only relevant category of analysis.” – bell hooks, Art on My Mind

She applies the same nuance to discussions of cultural appropriation and artists for whom “no critical framework existed to theoretically validate and illuminate the significance” of. Other topics of interest are the choices an artist makes (important in an age of AI), hedonistic consumerism, intuition vs. intellect, the dynamics of competitiveness in art, and “art as the practice of freedom.” Basically this book is a (still too valid) primer for how to think more deeply about the forces that are trying to separate us from our art, and with that our humanity.

“I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do, and that’s what keeps me going. As an eight-year-old, that’s what I wanted. Now I’ve got what I wanted.” – Emma Amos in Art on My Mind by bell hooks

There’s a celebration in that statement and also a bite, so it seems fitting that I literally bled on this book (I’m okay). For now I’m fighting the good fight by trying to learn from hooks’ commitment to living simply to sustain her own art.

“The task of setting free one’s gift was a recognized labor in the ancient world.” – Lewis Hyde

Lady No by Kim Hyesoon

“To write poetry is to place something that is nothing in the middle of spokes, spinning the machine of oblivion at full speed. Against the judgment of usefulness, it is utterly useless, spinning the absences that can’t even be used as ingredients of a story.” – from “Oh, Honest Poem!” by Kim Hyesoon, Lady No

In a very different vein, I also found inspiration in the forthcoming Lady No, a collection of blog posts by Korean poet Kim Hyesoon that originally appeared anonymously on a Korean publisher’s website in 2014. The posts themselves are eclectic, often taking place in a country called Aerok (Korea spelled backwards if you are also sleep-deprived). Some are stories and some poems. Most are uncategorizable, and it took awhile for my brain to open to what Kim was creating by writing them. Translator Jack Saebyok Jung writes of working at “preserving Kim’s fierce strangeness,” which I gradually learned to appreciate. I’m still unpacking the layers of the work, but she touches on topics including loneliness, motherhood, and authoritarianism— you know, my usual trifecta.

“Is there any metaphor in this country now.

Perhaps if we are forgiven
Perhaps if every poem in this world is forgiven.”
– from “Metaphor Ban” by Kim Hyesoon, Lady No

One of the things this book made me think about is audience. There were whole sections of pieces that I could not initially relate to because I didn’t have the right life experience to unlock them. Others, like “By the River Ouse” spoke to me because I did have the necessary keys to understand this was about the suicide of Virginia Woolf. When writing (or creating any art), there’s always a moment where you must choose to consider an audience (or not) and at what level you want to communicate with them. While I did feel outside some of the work, when I finally worked myself inside, I felt like I had passed some test and achieved complicity with the writer.

One recurring theme in the pieces in Lady No is the literary world itself. From translations to literary festivals, I enjoyed learning from Kim’s perspective on these as she is both more accomplished than I and coming from a completely different culture. Yet I learned from the way she questioned the rigidity of the canon, the narrow slices we view artists through, the capitalist insistence on branding even our creative selves, and how she posits that each poem demands the creation of a new worldview.

“Once you name a poet a woman poet, then manly poetry becomes the standard, and womanly poetry becomes its provincial other.” – from “Witch-Type Poet” by Kim Hyesoon, Lady No

This book is still unfolding for me, but one thing it has me thinking is about how being open to the world and to new ideas is itself a wonderful transgression right now. I hope that you will reach for something that challenges you today—as an act of resistance if nothing else.

“When the ground is shaking under one’s feet, fundamentalist identity politics can offer a sense of stability.” – bell hooks Art on My Mind

If you are interested in broadening your world with either of these books, order a copy of Art on My Mind or pre-order Lady No from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

Now that Christmas is over, I can safely reveal which books I loved the most during this past year without ruining any gift surprises. Reading is always an escape for me, and in 2021 this escape was especially welcome. I found myself using books as a way to explore other realities in a way that was both unintentional and also much needed. Of the 106 books I’ve read so far in 2021, here are the five I most loved, books that I think you might enjoy if you need a new reality for a few precious hours or days at a time.

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

“[D]eath and time are both illusions because we and every stone are made of the same ever-shifting particles. If we live, it’s only because some distant galaxy lent us its dust for a while.” – Zeyn Joukhadar, The Thirty Names of Night

This is the book I’ve most recommended on Twitter threads this year because reading The Thirty Names of Night was such an immersive experience. This gorgeous book slides lyrically between locations (Syria, New York and Michigan), time periods, and genders as it explores themes of identity and belonging as a trans boy seeks answers about the fire that killed his mother and about a Syrian artist who disappeared. Joukhadar’s language is stunningly poetic, the characters are rich and compelling, and the action of the story is well-paced. I was a little hesitant about finishing this book because I’d loved it so much that I wasn’t sure that the ending could live up to the rest of the book. Reader, it did. If you want to get lost in a beautiful book, The Thirty Names of Night is my top recommendation for the year.

“[H]ow a person is supposed to know what they love to do by how time blurs when they’re doing it.” – Zeyn Joukhadar, The Thirty Names of Night

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

My six-year-old son also loves getting lost in a good book. And while we enjoyed Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk and the Vanderbeekers series by Karina Yan Glaser very much, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the perfect book for him right now, which makes it one of the most enjoyable books for me, too, because (when he isn’t bouncing back and forth on the bed) he’ll lean in close to me and put his hand across my wrist as I hold the book, an intimacy that’s already becoming rare.

He’s been obsessed with the Marvel character Shang-Chi since he found a Lego set at the toy store earlier this year and that led to a general fascination with China. This book, which my cousin picked out for him, details a journey by a young girl to find and consult with the Old Man in the Moon. The story arc and characters are strong, and it’s also filled with short renditions of Chinese myths. Some of my favorite moments so far are when we found the story of a goldfish trying to reach the top of a waterfall to become a dragon (a story that he’d had emblazoned on a shirt he wore for years) and the moment he told me the critical detail about why a dragon’s eyes weren’t painted in—something he’d learned from a series he’d been reading on his own.

The illustrations are beautiful, the print is mercifully large and the quality of the paper lends a tactile pleasure to reading this book. If your kids are as curious about the world as my little guy, particularly China or mythology, I highly recommend Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

My own interests in Asia tend more toward Japan and Zen Buddhism and I am a longtime fan of Ruth Ozeki regarding both. So when I found myself in a fiction drought toward the end of November, my husband mercifully and lovingly laid this tome on my bedside table to tide me over until Christmas.

Ozeki’s books are getting more and more mystical and I’m very much enjoying following her on this journey. At first The Book of Form and Emptiness broke my heart, reading the story of a family of three trying very hard to make it by when the father dies terribly may not have been my first best choice while my husband was healing from an injury during a pandemic, but maybe I needed that cry. I also needed the fantastic way Ozeki wove the different points of view together, from an adolescent boy trying to mourn to his mother who’s doing her best to cope to the voices of the books themselves, everyone had a different contribution to this story and every word contributed to the delicate balance of this wonder-filled book.

“‘Let me tell you something about poetry, young schoolboy. Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness. Ze moment I put one word onto an empty page, I hef created a problem for myself. Ze poem that emerges is form, trying to find a solution to my problem.’ He sighed. ‘In ze end, of course, there are no solutions. Only more problems, but this is a good thing. Without problems there would be no poems.'” – Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

The Book of Form and Emptiness delves into grief, hoarding, mental illness, and the process of healing torn books and I’ll gladly read it all over again the next time I need a reminder that suffering is only part of the story.

Appleseed by Matt Bell

I don’t always read the right books at the right times (or do I?), having read Station Eleven in the weeks immediately preceding the pandemic’s early days in Seattle and Matt Bell’s In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods while pregnant, so you might want to find your own right time to read this post-apocalyptic delight. But I do think you should read it. I liked it enough to buy out the copies at my local independent bookstore (in hardcover) and send it to the people I most wanted to read it. Like The Book of Form and Emptiness, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and The Thirty Names of Night, Appleseed weaves several stories together to create one greater whole. In this case it’s the story of a fawn who helped bring apples to homesteads across the U.S., a man who is fighting to wrest the country from a company controlled by his ex during a global climate disaster, and a creature who is exploring the icy surface of what used to be this country many years after the culmination of that climate disaster. The luscious characterizations and world-building recalled the best of Ursula K. LeGuin and the fully imagined ramifications made me look hard at dangers percolating in the world right now, politically and scientifically.

I wish I could share a particular quote from the book, because Bell’s sentences are so well constructed, but I was so wrapped up in the plot that I failed to underline a thing.

Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I already wrote about Undrowned here, but it’s the perfect real-world counterpart to Appleseed and the focus on the radical power of love and the importance of caring for ourselves and our environment is a good step forward into the future, whatever it may bring. Read it for yourself, read it for the ones you love and the ones you don’t. This book can only enrich your life and your relationship to humanity as a whole.

“What are the boundaries that we choose and do not choose? What are the distances we need and what are the walls that will isolate and destroy us? How can we discern the differences between generative boundaries and destructive borders? Are we ready to move towards nourishing forms of adaptation?” – Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned

I’m hopeful for 2022, not because I have any idea what will happen next, but because hope is my coping mechanism and because I’m sure (at the very least) I will find new books to love. What did you most love reading in 2021 or what’s on your list for 2022? Please share recs in the comments and help me build my birthday list. In the meantime, I’ll be over here shoving books at my shelves during an end of year cleanout, hoping I don’t actually have to let go of any of them.

The idea that a book is brought to life by its reader is not new. A writer pours all of the details and plot that they can into a work and then the reader comes along and makes it their own by keying into the things that matter to them and ignoring the things that don’t. This conversation and co-creation between writer and reader feels like magic when we allow ourselves to surrender to it. Yesterday, though, Ruth Ozeki took me beyond that magic to make me feel as though A Tale for the Time Being was not only written for me, but was being written for me as I read it. I wanted to go back and re-read it immediately to see if it changed. I also wanted to have you read it immediately to see if it was a completely different book for you. It probably isn’t (not really) but it’s very much worth a read either way. I’m going to delve into where the magic came from for me. Just go buy the book if you want to avoid my spoilers.

Metafiction Toys with Reality

A Tale for the Time Being is two books in one. The first is the diary of a teenage girl living in Tokyo in the nearish past. The second is the story of a writer, Ruth, living on an island on the west coast of Canada actively avoiding writing her next book, a memoir about her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s. Now if you look up metafiction, you’ll see that the form of authorial insertion is often used as parody. Yes, if you’re talking about Kundera. It’s also used as a tool to “explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.” This is more what you see with writers like Paul Auster and it often feels like a stilted lecture. Weird, but stilted.

Ozeki, on the other hand, brings a rich humanity to metafiction that allowed me to bring my whole being to the book and not just my intellect. I’ve loved two other books by Ozeki before and I can’t recall her ever using herself as a character before, but she did it brilliantly here and it was just the right effect for this book. Part of the reason it worked so well is that she engaged my emotions first. Granted, it was the emotion of annoyance as I met an angsty Japanese teenager, Nao, who I though was being glib about metaphors as she called herself a “time being.” I pushed past that (thank God) and kept reading. Ruth’s story drew me in more easily because it is, at this point in my life, easier to engage emotionally with a writer who should be writing her masterworks but isn’t always. Ruth finds Nao’s diary and some other papers washed up on a beach in Canada and begins reading.

Through the relationship of these two stories, A Tale for the Time Being effortlessly whisked me through major events like the Fukushima meltdown, 9/11, suicide, and what it was like to be a kamikaze pilot in World War II, hitting each from a deeply human angle. Because Nao is a Japanese girl who was living in America but then moved back to Japan we also get a Japanese perspective on these events and more which was incredibly interesting and humanizing. There’s also lots of Buddhism. In gentle, washing waves that stretched my thinking and made me feel at home. The metaphor that had initially seemed pat expanded gloriously and this book wrapped around me and made me think deeply.

How This Book Wrote Itself for Me

At first it was easy to gloss over the details that were personal to me. Nao’s great-grandmother, Jiko, is 104, wise and dying. This year I lost my Djiedo at 104. Like Ruth, I’m a writer living in the Pacific Northwest (and most days I’d rather be on an island). She’s married to an artist (as am I). They’re both trying to find their place in the world—worried about being too isolated, too in the mix of things, not making enough work or the right work. Ruth had some complicated health stuff with her mom, something I’m navigating this past month (and for the last 30 years). Nao is a complicated, unhappy teen-aged girl (as I once was). And Jiku, a pacifist Buddhist nun, has to navigate her son going off to become a kamikaze pilot in World War II while I’ve worried about sending my son to war ever since I first heard myself sing “Taps” after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” in a night of misguided lullabies (that I couldn’t seem to stop repeating for as many years as he still let me sing to him).

This is the spoiler part. There is a moment when Ruth opens Nao’s diary and finds that what was once written is now blank. That was the switch that flipped for my tired, busy brain and made me think that maybe it was no coincidence that I picked up this book, the copy of A Tale for the Time Being that I was holding, this week, a terribly busy week near the end of a terribly busy eight months in which I find myself writing book reviews at 5am and all that Buddhist balance I’ve been craving isn’t something I’ve even been able to look for. As Nao sat with Jiko practicing zazen meditation, I felt myself breathe. And it was everything.

I don’t know that this book will write itself for you the way that it did for me, but I hope you do have that experience of magic someday. Either way, Ozeki’s writing is fantastic, always.

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