A Year in Reading: Lauren Michele Jackson

December 6, 2019 | 13 books mentioned 2 min read

At the risk of being obnoxious, I checked some majors off the list this year: job, Ph.D., book—in that order. What all that mostly indicates is a joyful change in reading habit and frequency, from the skittish chapter-hopping of the scholar put to market to the languid page-turning of a person who puts pleasure first. And so I must begin with the romances: first, the friends and lovers (and friends turned lovers, naturally) of Jasmine Guillory as entwined in The Wedding DateThe Proposal, and The Wedding Party. I read Casey McQuiston’s delicious Red, White & Royal Blue and wouldn’t stop talking about it. I returned to Lisa Kleypas, whose historical romances I first discovered in my Nana’s basement and devoured in secret in my preteen bedroom, catching up with the gentry’s next generation in Cold-Hearted Rake. I went back to another fave, Donna Fletcher, in reading The Irish Devil and Irish Hope, books that animate all the feminist talking points on the problem of romance novels (in which “No” means “Take me, I’m yours!”).

covercovercovercoverMost exciting was the gift of getting to read titles while talk still swirled around them, from the justifiably hyped Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado to small, sharp entrances by Eric Thurm (Avidly Reads: Board Games) and Andrea Long Chu (Females). I felt belated to some books that became instant classics in my hands and on my shelf: Negroland by Margo JeffersonThe Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang (I like to joke that I crossed the Atlantic just to get my hands on the quietly gorgeous U.K. edition), How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander CheeSeverence by Ling MaWhat Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell, and Her Body and Other Parties, also by Machado.

covercovercoverComing from literary studies, I am rather hard on sociology but I read more in that genre this year than I ever have. Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan M. Metzl expertly evades sentimentality; Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom won’t stop, quit, or compromise; and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo let me know what the fuss was about.

I attended an event that introduced me to the tender words of Briallen Hopper, whose essay collection Hard to Love I immediately purchased and sank into. No less tender is Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know, whose tiny experiments with memoir I much appreciated.

Setting the mood for now and forever are two masterpieces by black women I read for the first time in 2019: Corregidora by Gayl Jones (edited by thee Toni Morrison) and Rebel Yell by Alice Randall. Because the page, the text, language, and all the movement, all that shit, fucking matters.

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Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

teaches in the departments of English and African American studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation.