Hacker News Books

If you fail to understand how so many Indigenous and Black people of this country view it with such contempt, I would recommend a few reads. But first I would ask you to consider that whatever greatness it can claim lies not in it’s continued founding myths, but in the many unheralded acts of sacrifice and resistance that so many of it’s marginalized citizens made and continue to make down to this very minute.

James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”, or his “No Name in the Street” layout both how the country was brought to the reckoning of the Civil Rights movement and then completely capitulated to white supremacy. Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” [1] still rings true to so many of us. Read David Truer’s “ The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present” on the meticulousness explicated horror of how this country has and continues to destroy and devalue Indigenous life.

The people protesting Friday in the Black Hills or in the front lines of the Black Lives Matter actions are calling upon us all to view it as it is, and dare to imagine what it could be.
I am sad that we don’t embrace the movement to bring about real democracy.

[1] https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/nations-story-what-slave-fou...

List plain text (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-...)

    “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” by Shoshana Zuboff
    “The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company,” by William Dalrymple
    “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,” by Casey Cep
    “Girl, Woman, Other,” by Bernardine Evaristo (Booker Prize winner)
    “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present,” by David Treuer
    “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” by Jenny Odell
    “Lost Children Archive,” by Valeria Luiselli
    “Lot: Stories,” by Bryan Washington
    “Normal People,” by Sally Rooney
    “The Orphan Master’s Son,” by Adam Johnson
    “The Yellow House,” by Sarah M. Broom (National Book Award winner, nonfiction)
    “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,” by Patrick Radden Keefe
    “Solitary,” by Albert Woodfox
    “The Topeka School,” by Ben Lerner
    “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion,” by Jia Tolentino
    “Trust Exercise,” by Susan Choi (National Book Award winner, fiction)
    “We Live in Water: Stories,” by Jess Walter