Reading Updates!

Unfortunately, I have not been reading much! It feels like the world changed overnight. I never thought I would see the day where universities, Boston public schools, Disney, Broadway closed, yet here we are. As I mentioned during our last class (ever :( ) I bought Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoner from the Raven bookstore in Harvard Square. I never knew the Raven bookstore existed, it’s fairly small and the prices are really good! I strongly recommend it (though maybe don’t trek through Harvard Square now seeing that everything is a ghost town at the moment), the Raven is right across from the Border Cafe. I bought this book because I had the intention of seeing Bernadine Evaristo this Thursday, but unfortunately, I can no longer go!  The Lonely Londoner is a book about the Caribbean diaspora. It speaks to the experience of men from the Caribbean moving to London. They also try to find a home in London but fail to do so. I have not read this book, I just read a lot of reviews of it! Bernadine Evaristo’s book, Girl Women Other, is similar but instead, it focuses on the stories of women! I am so disappointed I cannot see her live, but unfortunately, it is what it is. 

Other than that, I haven’t done any pleasure reading, I am shamefully reverted back to watching Love Island again. It is a good distraction from the constant news about the Covid-19. I think because we moved to online classes (like everyone else) I’ve been on the computer for very long periods of time. This would be a good time to do more reading, I definitely plan on it, I just haven’t done it yet. But that will change! I still have to read all of Toni Morrison before 2020 ends, due to the recent changes, I think it is definitely more possible. I wonder how Covid-19 will affect bookstores in addition to many other things. I wonder how small bookstores are doing and if the costs of books will rise because of the lack of business. 

I have read poems by Phillis Wheatley for my 18th century British Literature class. Wheatly is an absolute badass and I enjoyed reading her work and the hypocrisy she points out about slavery. I think her poems carry a lot of power, I admire her desire to make positive change, especially because of the position she was in. She chose to speak up on important issues. We are also read abolitionist poems by More and Cower. I failed to find an impact on these poems because they weren’t written by people who endured these experiences. I found them to be unreliable authors and I struggled to understand why they wrote their pieces in the first person.