You Must Write It
February 25, 2018
This month’s food-for-thought meme is my favorite quotation from my favorite author, Toni Morrison.Book recommendation:
If you’d like a book that challenges you with complicated and contradictory truths, I recommend Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi’s detailed explication of racist thought. We’ve gotten it backward, Kendi asserts, when we think of racism as something that will be cured by first changing people’s minds and hearts. Rather, it is racist structures put into place by people who are motivated to create and preserve advantage for themselves that cause racism. Racism exists to support social and economic hierarchies. He builds his case beginning in ancient Greece with the philosophy of Aristotle. I’ve promised this newsletter will be brief, so this is not the place for a full review. I’ll just say that I’m reading it in a book club, and we’re taking several weeks to discuss it. It’s worth it.
Resource recommendation:
Authors Guild – With membership levels for writers at every stage of their careers, the Authors Guild offers all sorts of services, from contract review and tax advice to webinars and website hosting. You can check their submissions calendar, keep up-to-date on issues in the news that affect writers, read interviews and other articles about the writing life, and much more. https://www.authorsguild.org/
Congratulations to the winners of my book giveaway! If you’ve sent me your address you should expect to see your books in the mail within a week or ten days.
If you’re on Pinterest, check out my new board For Readers and Writers at https://www.pinterest.com/jancmaher/for-writers-and-readers/
Have a great month!