BLOG: ‘And the category is ….’ best summer finds

The continued need for social distancing due to COVID-19 has me online a lot more than normal. This increased time online means more of everything and a new challenge narrowing down the best picks. Here is what made the cut… 

Music:

“Easy Come, Easy Go” by Daveed Diggs & Rafael Casal – My spiral into “Hamilton” related content on YouTube brought me back to this killer track from the 2018 film that was written, produced and starred by the duo, “Blindspotting.” Easily one of my favorite movies, this track makes me swoon, smile, reflect and laugh all over the course of three minutes every time.

Must Watch: 

“POSE” – I love a well-executed period piece and as I say that I now get to include the magical series POSE in my infatuation. This show starts in the late 1980s and follows several people connected to the ballroom culture in NYC. This community is made up of brown and Black found families of mostly trans and gay people. Ballroom culture, for most of its history, is an underground scene and yet elements of the refuge such as lingo and dance have trickled into the mainstream for decades.

If any more convincing is needed, Billy Porter won an Emmy for his role in this show and a Hollywood Reporter Table Talk of trans folk describe the work as possibly “too revealing” for its level of authenticity. This show is available on Netflix and Hulu.

“Hamilton” (Disney+) – What am I going to say that someone else hasn’t already said? In addition to me loving it, my partner — who doesn’t like musicals — loved it too. Honestly, to the extent that I was shushed throughout our first viewing.

Must Reads: 

“Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, American’s First Celebrity” by Tana Wojczuk – This short read is what the title says it is, but so much more. I read it because I was interested in American celebrity culture, but I found its inclusion of LGBT+ history, Shakespearean performance history, American identity history, theater history and feminist history extremely compelling. All in less than 250 pages – or I should say 4 hours since I listened to the audiobook.

“The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides – After following me around the web for several months, I finally picked up “The Silent Patient.” This debut novel by screenwriter Alex Michaelides was the winner of the 2019 Goodreads Awards for Mystery & Thriller, so needless to say I had very high expectations. This book delivered. There was a portion of the book where I had my eyes rolling thinking “ew are we really doing this” but I powered through this red herring and was rewarded in the last few pages of the book. ‘The Silent Patient” is akinto other thrillers like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” 

“MARCH” Trilogy by U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin – These three graphic novels,  illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell, tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of U.S. Rep. John Lewis. This incredible series gave the movement the depth it deserves rather than the whitewashed and sanitized version we get in most popular media and history classes. It showed the differences between key figures like “The Big Six” and organizations that are often grouped together.

Because it is from the perspective of Lewis, the readers become most familiar with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 

This was amazing to see people in college with similar backgrounds as many at UHCL (first-generation college students, on financial assistance, etc) be a force of nature at this time. One of the most impactful aspects of this book was the parallels in narrative against the movement to those against Black Lives Matter and the facts that prove justice is not inevitable, it takes work and has constant setbacks

More Ya Know: 

“The Zora Canon” – This is a collection of the greatest 100 books written by Black women organized by thematic moments like “A Fight for Our Humanity (works from 1859-1900)” to “A New Black Golden Age (works from 2011-2019).” 

I love, love this list because, outside of getting a collection of great work by Black women, it is organized by time period and theme. In film, literature and art history classes we move through themes of one group of artists/intellectuals responding to another but with that canon being very white and very male. This list takes those principles of a thematic and historical organization but centers Black women.

I have only read two of these books and maybe only heard of 20 others even though I am actively seeking these titles out. This Zora Canon (named after Black anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston) includes books from all genres from nonfiction to sci-fi/fantasy and though it contains mostly adult novels, there are books for younger readers too.

@Caenhillcc on Twitter – Of all social media platforms, Caenhill Countryside Centre’s (CCC) Twitter account is my absolute favorite animal account. CCC is a farm based in the United Kingdom with the goal of educating young people about farmer life. In addition to serving as a rescue center for (mostly) farm animals and posting on Twitter, they also have a YouTube channel with longer content. It has gotten to a point that I know many of the animals’ names even with the audio on mute. 

This is really the content we need right now.