i love when ur writing an essay and u all of a sudden get a burst of inspiration or find the perfect source to back up ur point and it’s like the clouds have parted and everything’s clear and ur not gonna have to drop out

The Booksellers (D.W. Young, 2019)

my sociology teacher once told me that he only understood les miserables after reading it like 3 times and that made me feel better about taking a long time to read a few pages and I think that should be more spoken in dark academia, the 'wanting to read classics but taking your time to actually understand the words you're reading and the meaning behind them' thing, I mean

James Baldwin: The Last Interview And Other Conversations

“The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.”

— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

there’s a large grey area between “this creator is a misogynist/homophobe/racist” and “this creator did not fully think through the implications of some of their writing choices” and it would be nice if people would stop to assess where in the scale between those two cases their criticism applies, instead of going for a hard zero on the first option all the time

saw this on twitter and i thought i’d share: thestorygraph is a non-amazon-owned alternative to goodreads funded by a black woman. you can export your goodreads library so no need to manually add every book you’ve read

First episodes of audio drama podcasts be like what’s up I’m GAY i live in a TOWN and I just saw a GHOST

classics are like: you went so extremely hard with the misogyny that it turned into homoeroticism

sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down

Here’s the thing to remember about anti-racist book lists:

Read these, yes. But then read books that were not written as treatises on racism. Seek out Black art not only because it can teach you something about race but because Black people are simply doing extraordinary work.

Read Morrison as much for her prose and her mastery of pacing as for her politics. Read Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, an ode to little wonders and a reminder to look at the world with gratitude. Read Elizabeth Alexander’s stunning testament to grief and marriage, The Light of the World, and note the innovations in form as she mixes memoir with poetry and recipes, a collage meant to mirror her late husband’s paintings. Read NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and marvel at the worlds she builds.

Just a small reminder. Black art does not exist solely to educate non-Black people. Always be expanding your horizons.

just because there aren't as many posts of blm circulating and just because we're slowly posting regular "aesthetic" content again it does not mean you have the right to stop educating yourself on issues that affect black people. continue to educate yourself and others, call out racism when you see it and continue to donate and sign petitions. activism that only occurs when somebody dies or something devastating happens is not proper activism, it is performative. so, just because you aren't posting as much about blm or other issues anymore, it does NOT mean you can go back to being ignorant. continue to stay aware. keep that energy and use it and your privilege to help black people and amplify their voices. us non-black people need to recognise that choosing when to speak up or speaking up when it is big is a privilege and is ignorant and we need to fix this.

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

Alberto Manguel  (via macrolit)

Free Black History Library

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (2017)

History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable. It happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities. — Marsha P. Johnson

Queens started being filed out and being put into police cars, and guns had been drawn. Molotov cocktails were flying. And I’m like, “Oh my God, the revolution is here. Thank God. You’ve been treating us like shit all these years? Uh uh. Now it’s our turn.” — Sylvia Rivera

THE FIRST PRIDE WAS A RIOT HAPPY PRIDE | BLACK LIVES MATTER