James Baldwin proclaims, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” With a reality TV star in the white house and the prevalence and popularity of reality stars on our Instagram feeds, anti-intellectualism seems like it is often paying off. Ignorance and prejudice is recast as honesty and indifference and silence regarding life or death political matters is deemed as diplomacy. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by black women like Yara Shahidi and Amanda Seales who are using their positions of relative influence to speak the truth and simultaneously demonstrate that it is cool to be a smart Black woman.

In the midst of a presidential administration that seeks to degrade individual humanity and uplift homophobia, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and ableism it is important to continue to resist. Resistance comes in many forms, including education and connectedness. Reading is, in fact, a form of resistance. For Black people, the act of reading is political. We are products of our pasts and a turn to literature and writing serves as a reminder of the multiple ways that we are connected to one another.

Reading helps to historicize where we are collectively, as well as who we are individually. Here are a few books that I have read this summer or am planning to read:

• Yaa Gyasi. "Homegoing
• James Baldwin. “No Name in The Street”
• Eddie Glaude. Democracy in Black
• Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom
• Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider
• Bell Hooks. Feminist Theory from Margin to Center