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Favorite Books, Movies, Art OF 2019

12/30/2019

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Since there are so many interesting books in the world, I start many more books than I finish. I sometimes watch movies in twenty minute chunks. Art, I believe, is not only what museums choose to display, but what gets created when we explore the unknown. 

This is by its nature an incomplete list—still, here is some of what I liked in 2019. 


BOOKS
Picture
  • ​Intimate: An American Photo Album by Paisley Rekdal
​An inventive looping of mutiple genres to invoke the history and ambiguity of identity, intimacy, belonging and othering in contemporary America. 

  • The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty 
Djinns and the medieval Middle East and a badass heroine who is a con artist. Need I say more?

  • I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded trans. by Ranjit Hoskote
What does it mean to have a life of spirit amidst turbulent times?—how does one deepen, shed, emerge through utterance?   

  • Living A Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
Still reading this one slowly. For everyone who wants to think about how to inhabit this world while questioning it.

  • Circe by Madeline Miller
Brilliant reimagining—how Circe grows into a sorceress and then a human.

  • Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot
A book “structured by pain”—Mailhot writes her way through the pieces (of colonial, intergenerational trauma), finding and restoring the connections.

  • Everything Under by Daisy Johnson
Evocative of a slow-moving river—a mother going under, memories resurfacing.

  • The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
Words as spells--recovering words that describe nature to bring back enchantment.

And Also These Books:  
 
  • Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner
  • Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
  • Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington
  • Save Me The Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
  • The Little Snake by A.L. Kennedy
  • The Queen of Jasmine Country by Sharanya Manivannan

MOVIES
Picture
  • I Dream in Another Language (Sueño en otro idiom) dir. by Ernesto Contreras
The slow displacement of non-western realities by modernity, the cultural/magical ecology of indigenous languages.

  • The Breadwinner dir. by Nora Twomey
Gender and empowerment, life under the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan. These words do not get to how affecting this animation is.

  • Boy dir. by Taika Waititi
A whimsical tale of sons and a father, and fantasies that turn into opportunities to become heroes. 

And also Article 15 dir. by Anubhav Sinha.

ART
  • Marwa Arsanios, Untitled (tapestry)
Above are just two scenes from the tapestry designed by the artist and hand-stitched by the women of Jinwar, Syria, focusing on healing in dialogue with the land. (At SOFT POWER, SFMOMA)

And also Interior Landscape, a collaboration between Ashwini Bhat and Forrest Gander.
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