Julie Scelfo
Julie Scelfo is a journalist, author and justice advocate who helps people discover the forces that shape human thinking. She recently gave a TED Talk on how humans make meaning and why being “media savvy” is essential for analyzing today’s cluttered information environment. Julie is most popularly known for her book The Women Who Made New York.
If you could recommend 3 books to anyone, what would they be?
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
I would recommend this book to any adult seeking to better understand the ways in which humans oppress each other, and the long, ugly history of white people trying to better themselves and sometimes escape oppression while being blind to how they themselves are harming others. We humans have a habit of creating narratives that are self-serving; this powerful book (which i read during college) forces the readers to see that any narrative omitting others is inherently harmful and the opposite of love.
The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
I read this so long ago that I can't even tell you the plot. But what I remember so fondly was how it revealed what it truly meant to love and how there were people capable of loving despite the deepest cruelties of humankind. Any adult would love this book because it's a great work of literature (that actually became a TV series) but especially those looking for something that addresses the full range of human experience that will stay with you forever.
Everything Is Under Control by Phyllis Grant
Grant's book feels like a letter from your best friend—who happens to be a world-class poet and chef. She doesn't waste any time with the trivial but goes straight to the ^real^ stuff, by which i mean our bodies, our relationships and the timeless struggle of being a woman/mother/wife amidst the equally powerful pull of being a free/independent being. Through it all, she keeps choosing love and provides her family (and us) with deliciousness. Life, death, the divine feminine—it's all there, not to mention one of the most admirable portraits of marriage I’ve ever seen — achieved as much by the words on the page as what was *not* said. Beautiful.
What are you reading now?
I've recently finished books on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (by Nick Basbanes), Helen Hamilton Gardner (by Kimberly A. Hamlin) and William Monroe Trotter (by Kerri K. Greenidge) for my author interview series at The Mount. Currently reading "Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity” by Porochista Khakpour, "Tertulia" a book of poetry by Vincent Toro, and "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky" by Joy Harjo, the United States Poet Laureate. Next week I plan to re-read Mitchell S. Jackson's "Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family" and go steadily through "Seeing the Body: Poems" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, an intimate jewel of a book filled with her portraits as well as her words. When it arrived I opened it right away, but haven't yet had an unhurried, steady read-through, which I want. I've also been meaning to read "Apeirogon" by Colum McCann, although i'm not sure my heart can take the anguish (I already know what it's about); and I wish Morgan Jerkins's "Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots" was out already. Morgan, won't you send me a galley??
Whose reading list are you most curious about?
“In no particular order: Garnette Cadogan, Paul Holdengräber, Maria Popova, Yahdon Israel, Jason Reynolds, Parul Sehgal, Jenée Desmond-Harris, Jelani Cobb, Jeff Gordinier, Ellen Foster, Sandra Cisneros, Stacy-Marie Ishmael, Alexander Chee and Ruby Sales.”
