What I’m Reading This Month – April 2019

What I’m Reading This Month – April 2019

One of the most exciting things happened to me last month…. I won a book giveaway from Goodreads! If you’re not on Goodreads, as soon as you get done reading this post head on over there and make an account. Goodreads allows you join yearly book reading challenges, keep track of titles you want to read, and see what other folks are reading (this is a great way to get book suggestions). 

So how did I win a book? You’re able to add titles to your “shelves,” and if there is a publisher giveaway for a book you’ve shelved, you’ll have the opportunity to enter the giveaway. I enter these giveaways all the time, and I finally won a book – Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, which was also on my birthday book wishlist. I cannot wait to get into this multigenerational saga set in the Old Drift, a colonial settlement in a small African nation. 

This month I’m also reading sisters, Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields’ book Race Craft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. After telling my friend Mia that I was trying to finalize my reading list for my graduate Critical Race Theory seminar, she suggested I check this book out. In a series of essays, Barbara, a history professor, and Karen, a trained sociologist, set forth an argument that compares the mental gymnastics of racecraft to that of the belief in witchcraft.

My final read this month is Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. I received this book from one of my instagram friends (and who said social media friends aren’t real friends). Dr. Dana Cotto was clearing out her bookshelves and I saw she was giving away this book (as well as a few other titles). I think this tale of a young woman’s journey for finding family, identity, and ultimately herself will be the perfect plane read as I travel to the Association of Asian American Studies conference later this month.