BOOKS
Curator Reviews
Quiara Alegría Hudes
I’d bring James Baldwin’s evergreen “The Fire Next Time,” to my island to remember how elegantly language can portray ferocity, honesty, and uncompromising social criticism.
View Quiara Alegría Hudes's Top 10 Favorite BooksTa-Nehisi Coates
Basically the fines essay I've ever read. It's technically two essays but it feels like one. Baldwin refused to hold anyone's hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you.
View Ta-Nehisi Coates's Top 10 Favorite BooksMaggie Nelson
I know, I know, it’s made it onto a lot of lists. But there’s simply no substitute for this model of lucidity and complexity, the virtues of thinking out loud, and ethical, literary and autobiographical inquiry.
View Maggie Nelson's Top 10 Favorite BooksTracey Thorn
His writing, like his thinking, is so clear and beautiful, always eloquent and elegant even when he is writing, as here, about race and religion. There is anger, of course, but somehow he also manages to be witty, and so, so clever. I always imagine he must have been brilliant company.
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