ashe dryden - programming diversity

CodeNewbie Podcast: Diversity in Tech

Ashe Dryden — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 16:53:13 +0000

Diversity in tech is a big topic. In our conversation with Ashe Dryden, programmer, organizer and diversity consultant, we unpack the many questions, misconceptions, and realities of diversity in our industry. In part I of our interview, Ashe gives us a diversity primer, explains why this topic is so important, and tells us how she’s crafted a conference based on inclusion called AlterConf. In part II of our interview, Ashe Dryden talks about how the harassment she’s experienced has made her worry about the safety of people around her and influenced her decision to move to the woods. She tells us about the incident that made her angry enough to start working on diversity advocacy, how her work has changed her perception of the internet, and what we can all do to be advocates in the workplace.

Listen to the podcast on CodeNewbie: Part One & Part Two

Twitter Book Club: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Ashe Dryden — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 20:54:09 +0000

I've been wanting to read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet for a while, and a number of folks on twitter said they'd be interested as well. Here's all the information you need to know for the book club.

Book Availability:

Amazon $7.99-10.47
Local bookstores - may need to contact to order ahead, as it's a relatively new book
Libraries - may need to put reservations on the book, as it's likely in limited quantities and fairly new

Important dates:

August 1: begin reading!
August 31 - 8:30pm EST/5:30pm PST, Sept 1 - 12:30am UTC: book club begins!

Come prepared with questions, thoughts, and what you liked/didn't like about the book. We'll be tweeting under the hashtag #lwsap. Feel free to follow me for reminders and the general discussion. I've started a twitter list for the folks participating. Tweet at me if you'd like to be added.

Gadgette: Interview: Ashe Dryden – programmer, diversity advocate, White House fellow for LGBT tech

Ashe Dryden — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 18:00:00 +0000

"Ashe Dryden is a programmer, writer, speaker and White House fellow who’s setting out to make the tech industry all about diversity. Passionate about helping others open doors – no matter their gender, race or sexual orientation – Dryden coaches companies to make diversity their number one priority.

As the White House fellow for LGBTQ tech, her expertise have garnered attention across the board, with the programmer also involved with AlterConf – an event that aims to shine a light on critical culture discussions in tech and gaming.

Here, Ashe talks of her first steps into the diversity limelight and how others in the industry can help with the cause."

Read the full interview on Gadgette.

Polygamer: #38 with Ashe Dryden of AlterConf

Ashe Dryden — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:00:00 +0000

In this podcast, Ashe discusses how AlterConf will address global issues of diversity while respecting local values; how the Code of Conduct applies in different cultures; why all AlterConf speakers and organizers are paid, not volunteers; and whether AlterConf will ever exhaust the range of topics at the Diversity 201 level. Finally, Ashe also mentions her new project, The Fund Club, which uses crowdfunding to inject significant financial boosts into non-profits supporting marginalized voices in tech.

Listen to the Polygamer podcast.

Shop Talk Show: Episode 198 with Ashe Dryden

Ashe Dryden — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 18:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Chris and Dave for having me to talk about AlterConf, Fund Club, and my books!

Listen to the podcast on Shop Talk Show

Ashe's favorite books of 2015

Ashe Dryden — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:37:26 +0000

I read far fewer books this year than I did last because I had a ton going on in my life, but still came out with some clear favorites. If you weren't around for last year's list, I make a concerted effort to read books written by and about marginalized people. The books below are in no particular order.

If you're looking for good books to take with you on winter vacation or to give for the holidays, I'd recommend these ones.

1. The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin [speculative fiction, fantasy]

“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at these contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they’ll break themselves trying for what they’ll never achieve.”

I read this on recommendation from a friend. Fantasy isn't usually my thing, but I feel this falls more squarely into the general speculative fiction category. I'm looking forward to reading more of her stuff.

2. Strikers [Strikers #1] by Ann Christy [YA fiction, dystopian science fiction]

“Life is entirely too short for fear to be a factor in how we live it.”

I've read a lot of YA over the past few years and like that many aren't nearly as graphic as their adult counterparts. This one was different than the Hunger Games-y niche that all dystopian YA seems to fall in these days. The author is working on book 2 in the series.

3. The Internet of Garbage by Sarah Jeong [technology/internet, culture, feminism]

“When we seek to build truly equal platforms and marketplaces of ideas fit for the 21st century, we are trying to create things that have never existed and cannot be constructed by mindlessly applying principles of the past.”

Sarah Jeong is brilliant, funny, and her work is always insightful. This short book (literally took me ~2hrs to read) centers around the garbage that is created and builds up on the internet and why, culturally, we allow it to happen. Good read for people trying to understand the issues around harassment and abuse online and why no one is doing anything about it.

4. The Leaving of Things by Jay Antani [YA fiction, general fiction]

“We steadily endure our lives and ultimately we are alone in our endurance. In this aloneness, we find our strength.”

The book centers on the life of a teenage Indian American boy whose family decides to leave their home of many years in Madison, WI to move back to India. I read this when I, too,was moving away from Madison so it had interesting parallels. Vikram's voice around loneliness, isolation, and unlearning American-centrism/exceptionalism is profound.

5. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable [history, biography]

""Victims of racism are created in the image of the racists," Malcolm argued. "When the victims struggle vigoroulsy to protect themselves from the violence of others, they are made to appear in the image of criminals, as the criminal image is projected onto the victim." Liberation, he implied, was not simply political but cultural."

I tend to read at least one biography a year and like to choose figures I only know surface facts about. This is a long book, but well worth the read. It covers Malcolm's early life, through his Nation of Islam days, and beyond. Being able to see all of the moving pieces around his life (his family, the NoI, his politics and work) as well as to read his speeches is important to see the whole man - his power, his intelligence, his determination, as well as his issues.

6. The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S Tepper [science fiction, fantasy, dystopian feminism?]

“(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?
(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.
IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.”

The story centers around a matriarchal society and the world they maintain. Some of the story's themes are told through a recitation of a retelling of The Trojan Woman (like the quote above).

7. Split by Swati Avasthi [YA, fiction, abuse]

“But I’m not the one digging her grave; I didn’t open her hole in the earth when I drove away that night or when I couldn’t make her come with us. My dad dug it years ago; he forced her to lie down in it and kept her there by fear and beatings. And when she tried to get out, he stomped her back in. She has been lying there for twenty-five years. Her muscles have atrophied, her joints have stiffened, and she can’t see anything except him and the tight little space she calls home. I don’t know how she’ll get out; I can tug and pull and yank, but it won’t make any difference. She was right: she’s gotta solve it her own way.”

This is the book I cried the most for in 2015. The story centers around a teenager escaping his abusive father, choosing to move in with his estranged brother. TW for abuse, stalking, harassment.

8. Parable of the Sower (Earthseed #1) by Octavia Butler [dystopian science fiction, post-apocalyptic]

"Every time I understand a little more, I wonder why it’s taken me so long—why there was ever a time when I didn’t understand a thing so obvious and real and true."

I'm so sad that it took me so long to finally read this book. I couldn't put it down! I loved the way religion was treated in the story - it's rare to see fiction that shows the community and solace that faith can create. The book follows a young woman whose life is torn apart as she crosses the country, trying to create the community and home she's always wanted.

9. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More by Janet Mock [autobiography]

"The crux of our conflict lay in the fact that we each couldn't be who we wanted the other to be."

I was lucky to have seen Janet Mock speak last year where she read an excerpt of her book. Her story is heartbreaking and heroic.

10. Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant [non-fiction]

"To truly confront this type of violence would require us to admit that we permit some violence against women to be committed in order to protect the social and sexual value of other women."

This year I wanted to learn more about the politics around sex work and I got tons of recommendations for this book. The book is an easy read - lots of history of sex work and anti-sex work legislation, understanding the rhetoric around sex trafficking, as well as the social justice movement to recognize sex work as work and the workers as people.

11. The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus (The Myths) by Margaret Atwood [mythology, fantasy, feminism]

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

The Penelopiad is a re-telling of The Odyssey from the viewpoint of Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Penelope and her murdered maids tell the story of how they survived during Odysseus' journey and how he punished them for their survival upon his return.

12. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates [memoir]

“But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.”

Coates writing is haunting and poetic and powerful. It's written as a letter to his teenage son about the world they live in and how best they can actually live in that world. You feel Coates pain and anger and hope for the future of his son in every paragraph.

White House LGBTQ Tech and Innovation Fellowship

Ashe Dryden — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 05:00:00 +0000

The Summit brought together over 200 of the most innovative and talented LGBTQ technology leaders to tackle some of the world's greatest challenges. We spent the day learning about different issues and breaking out into teams to come up with ways to solve specific problems facing America and the world. Potential challenges included: gun violence prevention, gender equity, big data and privacy, voting rights, the environment, tech inclusion, prison reform and energy.

Pagebreak: The Ethics of Unpaid OSS

Ashe Dryden — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 19:42:59 +0000

Thanks to Liz and Niki for talking about my piece, The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community, on their Pagebreak podcast!

"You can't tell me that straight, white, cis men are inherently smarter -- because that's what you're saying when you say they were the only ones who were qualified [for a job]."

Listen to the 14:23 podcast.

Model View Culture: Social Networking as Peer Surveillance

Ashe Dryden — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 15:27:28 +0000

This piece was originally written for Model View Culture's Surveillance issue in October 2014.

Tech news articles preach the dangers of sophisticated programs at startups misusing data we give them, performing sociological experiments on us, or the NSA spying on everything we say and do.

But those things are barely on my radar.

As an outspoken, queer woman, the internet is a terrifying place. Can I trust myself, my friends, or my family not to inadvertently harm me through the information shared on social networks? What will ill-willed colleagues do with that information if and when we unintentionally trip up?

Photo CC-BY John December, filtered.

I want to tell you the story of how we came to unwittingly self- and peer-surveil, allowing the internet to near-simultaneously make our worlds bigger and smaller. I know this, because it’s my story, too.

In 2004 I moved across the country, away from everything I’d ever known. I was in a new city where I knew no one, so I turned to the internet as I’d done most of my life. This was an interesting time for the web; sites relying entirely on user-generated content were becoming big and would herald in the era we find ourselves in today. When I found out about Meetup and Upcoming, I happily told them about all things I was interested in.

I soon found myself in a community that relished sharing a physical space with internet people and we were drunk on the feeling. We took pictures, happily tagging them with both our actual and internet names, dates, events, and geolocation data. We embraced hashtags not just for events, but impromptu collaborative art projects. Social networks were uncharted territory, a make-it-what-you-want-it-to-be atmosphere where we were explorers and inventors, discovering ways to connect, share, and feel closer to each other. In a way, the internet itself became a new friend to me – one that wanted to see the whole picture of who I was. It wanted to know what music I listened to when I was sad, what pictures made me happy, and what I wanted out of life. I found myself sharing every article I found interesting, information on the charities I donated to, and what concerts I’d be attending. In a bizarre sense I felt the more I shared of myself, the stronger that relationship could be.

It seems unimaginably naive to say I didn’t realize how all of that information could ever be used against me. I remember remarking to people who were dismayed by Twitter having made oversharing popular, “no one will care what I did today a month from now; we’re living in the moment.” But a few years provides a wealth of perspective: today, people constantly exploit little pieces of information from social networks I’ve participated in over the years to DDoS attack my websites and physically threaten, harass, and abuse me.

An obvious example of this is my income, which has become nearly fully supported by micro-donations from hundreds of people all over the world. For quite a long time, that income came through a site that advertised exactly how much money I was making and from how many people. At first this was a positive thing – people could see how much financial support projects like mine received and understand that it wasn’t as widely supported as many thought. But when I was visibly in the site’s leader board and eventually the top person receiving on the site, it became a huge problem. Reddit and Hacker News had a field day. I’d get comments and emails from people claiming my work was panhandling, prostitution, trickery, and theft. People berated me if they found out I went to a movie with my partner, feeling I was squandering the money I received. Others who had previously supported me were angry when I wouldn’t immediately drop everything I was doing to give them advice, because in their eyes, I worked for them. My ability to maintain a work/life separation effectively disappeared.

Having received threats and abuse online, I have to take extra steps to protect myself offline. I pre-emptively tell new acquaintances that they can’t post information online about where I am, where I’m going, or who I’ll be with for fear of confrontation or worse. Friends with the best of intentions asking publicly on Twitter for me to meet them at a specific place and time means having to decline a lot of invitations. It’s awkward to explain to people that they may be inadvertently putting you in danger.

I recently stopped following anyone on Twitter and replying sparsely because people graduated from attacking me directly to going after my friends and family to cause me harm. I semi-jokingly tell people that being near me is risking radiation exposure; I’ve been blackmailed into giving up relationships and fully living my life for fear of indirectly hurting the people I care about. In essence, social networks have manipulated the relationships I have with others.

Social Networks as a Panopticon

In the late 18th century, the philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon, a building that allowed a watchman to observe every occupant from one vantage point. This led occupants to act as if they were being observed at all times, regardless of whether a watchman was in the tower or observing them; the mere potential of constant surveillance altered occupant behavior.

Foucault discussed his social theory of Panopticism in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, noting that the occupants of the Panopticon are “the object of information, never a subject in communication,” and that

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

In the 1970s, a piece of software called DIALOG was designed to replicate the Panopticon effect and tested at a large pharmaceutical company as part of a psychology experiment. The software allowed workers to not only report the work they were doing, but to socialize with peers. When users realized the software was allowing management to monitor them continuously, many stopped using it. Others decided to continue, “raising the question of whether remaining users modified their behavior under the threat of surveillance, as prisoners in Bentham’s Panopticon would, or whether they believed that the benefits offered by the system outweighed the possibility of punishment.”

Photo CC-BY Friman, filtered.

Social networks operate in much the same way. Thanks to open APIs and the limited technical talent needed to use them, the ability to monitor someone’s every activity can be easily automated and analyzed for patterns. A few weeks worth of data can give you an idea of when someone leaves for work, what coffee shop they stop at in the morning, and even what route they drive to get home. Using additional data – something as simple as a selfie – it’d be easy for a relative stranger to “recognize” you on the street.

Barring that level of sophistication, a simple observer to our online lives can still learn a lot about us. I was shocked the first time I met someone and they asked about each of my four cats by name. I’d willingly put that information out there, but I didn’t fully comprehend what someone using it would feel like.

Knowing the risks, do we alter the way we act within these systems? I’d argue that too few of us do, myself included. Only after the information I’d put out there was used to hurt me did I realize exactly how much I’d shared and how difficult it was to get back.

I don’t doubt there are dangers lurking around corners I haven’t thought of yet.

Social engineering

What allowed all of this to happen? How was I so easily fooled into living in the Panopticon? A shared and interwoven set of tenets between social networks and the people who use them create a variety of subtle pressures.

Photo CC-BY LongitudeLatitude, filtered.

Tenet 1: Well if it’s free, I guess I’ll take two

After just a couple years of becoming actively involved in social networks, I had a social media list that boasted nearly 30 differentactive profiles (I have no idea how many I’ve made total), but I wasn’t concerned. “It doesn’t cost me anything to try a new service”, I’d tell myself. I could play around, test the boundaries of the system and how it let me interact with people before adding it to my always-open tabs list or abandon it completely — along with my data that lived there.

Tenet 2: One identity to rule them all, and in a closed system bind them

Coupled closely with the desire to try everything is the compulsion to stake a claim to your identity on every service available. In manufacturing the scarcity of things like usernames, social networks create an anxiety on the side of the potential user; the assumption being that demand will always be higher than the supply, so urgency in account creation is required.

On top of that, larger properties have done well for themselves by creating a closed ecosystem to connect them. Google and Facebook are both good examples of this, allowing users to connect their email to their social calendars to their social networks to their contacts and so on. Participation in any of the sub-properties requires participation in the main one and encourages staying within the ecosystem by exploiting user laziness.

Tenet 3: Public is default

It’s easy to forget that the idea of privacy controls are a relatively new concept. I think the first social network I saw them on was Pownce, and even then I treated it less as a form of security and more as filling a niche need. I could share this post with that set of people and no one else can see it? How novel! At that point it didn’t even occur to me that someone could or would want to manipulate my willingness to share every detail of my life.

Social network growth is driven mainly through public sharing – the ability to see things outside the walled garden and want to participate. It should come as no surprise that startups wanting to show potential financial partners exponential user growth encourages public-as-default to the point of making it difficult or impossible to hide data.

Tenet 4: Share everything early and often

I’m just as guilty as the next person for actively encouraging my friends to share, share, share. In a world that we experience primarily through technology, we feel connected when we learn more about someone through their everyday lives. This isn’t something artificial and constructed by a marketing department, we aren’t as compelled to share because of A/B tested button color or slogan. It’s a subtle pressure; something that feels natural and familiar because it’s how we make friends, how we become better friends.

Tenet 5: Shoot first, ask questions later

Even knowing the dangers, we feel strangely safe and at home on the internet. And what feels more safe than scrolling through tumblr on your laptop in your warm bed, instagramming that weird thing your cat does, or telling your friends what you’re up to today?

In an industry where shoot first, ask questions later might as well be tattooed across the shoulders of startup employees, none of this is very surprising.

The industry has shown some hints at self-awareness of the problems it magnifies, but creates as many as it solves. Anti-social networking apps like Cloak, ostensibly used to avoid people you follow on social networks, can just as easily – and perhaps more obviously to those of us most vulnerable to confrontation or altercation – be used to stalk contacts.

Many marginalized people are using services in ways the creators may not have expected. When I received death and rape threats this past summer, it was important for me that my partner always knew where I was. I used Apple’s Find My Friends to constantly share my location. But in doing so, I’m forced to give up more privacy. It’s easy enough to forget that it’s always monitoring me; what danger could I be in if my partner knew I visited an abortion clinic, the home of an ex, or an intimate violence shelter?

There is no “outside the system”

Miraculously (and perhaps ignorantly), all of this hasn’t made me a social recluse. To this day I use services that share photos, videos, microblogs, what I read and listen to, my exercise habits, and even what I knit.

Photo CC-BY Daniel Oines, cropped & filtered.

There’s no doubt that social networks use predatory practices masquerading as friendly ones to extract what they need from users and that people will exploit that easily available data to victimize marginalized people in slightly more sophisticated versions of the old ways. As marginalized people, we’re often on the safe side when taking the cynical view of things, so assuming social networks and predatory people will be out there, how do you protect yourself? A growing sub-genre of self-help books focusing on internet privacy, including Violet Blue’s The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy, may hold some of those answers.

But we shouldn’t discount what participating in social networks means for our identities. Can we celebrate and share our identities – all the little pieces that make us who we are – without sacrificing our privacy and safety? Are our identities forever altered by defiantly living within the Panopticon?

Ashe's favorite books of 2014

Ashe Dryden — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 21:09:08 +0000

This year I made a concerted effort to read books almost exclusively by marginalized people. Below are my top 12 of 2014, in no particular order.

With a list this short, you could read just one book a month and make it through the year happy with the quality of books you've read :)

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [general fiction, feminism]

"In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here’s the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven’t lynched somebody then you can’t be called a racist. If you’re not a bloodsucking monster, then you can’t be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters. They are people with loving families, regular folk who pay taxes. Somebody needs to get the job of deciding who is racist and who isn’t. Or maybe it’s time to just scrap the word “racist.” Find something new. Like Racial Disorder Syndrome. And we could have different categories for sufferers of this syndrome: mild, medium, and acute."

The story of a Nigerian-born woman coming to terms with what it means to be Black in America. Throughout the book, she writes a series of blog posts about how confusing it all is, often funny and poignant.

2. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood [science fiction, and I would argue for Horror]

"We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves."

One of the more horrifying science fiction stories I've ever read, the story follows a young woman living in a monotheocratic dystopian society.

3. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman [feminism, anthology]

"I took my B+ -- feminism can be graded, after all -- and abandoned feminist activities at Stanford."

This year we read a number of anthologies in the intersectional feminism book club this year, and this was my favorite. In it are discussions of identity, religion, abortion, class, femininity and machismo, being adopted into a transracial and transcultural family, and being an Arab in a country with prejudices and misconceptions about the Arab world.

4. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu [science fiction]

"I have traveled, chronogrammatically, out of the ordinary tense axes and into this place, into the subjunctive mode."

This book is very much in the vain of Douglas Adams-style cleverness and I immediately fell in love with it. This is a time travel story that uses grammar tenses to discuss points in time. My new favorite time travel book!

5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot [non-fiction, science, investigative journalism]

“Henrietta’s were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory.”

This is one of the better books I've read in the past few years. It's written by a woman who ended up becoming close with the family of Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose genetic material was taken without her permission and has been in use in science and medical labs across the world since 1951. She was immediately erased and forgotten -- her genetic material being referred to only as HeLa. The story follows the heartbreaking reality of Henrietta Lacks and her family.

6. China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh [science fiction, general fiction]

"All of that work to make a little more money. But I will still be Zhang. I carry myself wherever I go, and it is myself I want to escape from. I hate myself. I hate this place. And I find it is very tiring to carry hate all the time. So I sit and listen to the night on the Arctic tundra, defeated before I start. And sick to death of all of it."

China Mountain Zhang reads much more like a general fiction novel set in a science fiction universe. The story follows Zhang, a man who was genetically altered to appear Han Chinese in a world where China is the super power and has control over what once was the United States. A lot of neat tech and beautiful story-telling. (Note: this book has quite a few problematic aspects. Trigger warnings for suicide, rape, and homophobia.)

7. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates [non-fiction, auto-biographical, race, American culture, narrative]

"Who among us would integrate into a burning house?"

I picked up this book after devouring a bunch of Coates' writing in the Atlantic. The Beautiful Struggle is the story of his childhood and life as a young adult growing up in Baltimore with a father who worked with the Black Panthers and ran a publishing company from his basement to promote and disseminate the work of African writers and visionaries.

8. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon [non-fiction, auto-biographical, race, American culture, narrative]

“Not so deep down, we all know that safety is an illusion, that only character melds us together. That’s why most of us do everything we can (healthy and unhealthy) to ward off that real feeling of standing alone so close to the edge of the world.”

I came across Laymon's work through a blog post he published on his site and quickly fell in love with his writing. The book is a collection of letters to loved ones, self-reflection, and cultural critique. It's heartwrenching, eye-opening, and funny.

9. Nevada by Imogen Binnie [fiction, trans-feminism]

"She mumbles a no and turns away, still smiling because what else are you going to do, explain patriarchy to this fucking rando?"

Nevada follows the life of a trans* woman who watches as everything in her life crumbles. It's amazingly written; I don't think I've ever felt I was reading myself so much in a character. Highly recommend.

10. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano [feminism, trans-feminism, narrative]

"The constant threat of being ostracized, which is directed toward people who show even the slightest interest in marginalized cultures and perspectives, creates within the center an enforced ignorance regarding those at the margins."

Another one I read in the feminism book club. I've had friends champion this book and at the same time point out a list of problems with it. For the most part, I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. I loved the time spent on examining masculinity, which I wasn't expecting.

11. The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell [non-fiction, humor, history]

"Of course, this America does exist.

It's called Canada."

As someone who grew up in New England and had much of the history of colonial America through the Revolutionary War drilled into her, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from her writing. Her style is casual, funny, and super informative. If you're into history, definitely pick up her stuff. (Sidenote: if you like comedic retellings of history, Viva la Revolution, which is about the French Revolution, may be up your alley.)

12. How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston [humor, American culture, race]

“As I've reflected back on both, I realize that my neighborhood was just like The Wire. We had the drug dealing, the police brutality, the murders. Well, it was /almost/ a perfect match. We had everything The Wire had except for universal critical acclaim and the undying love of white people who saw it.”

This book was hilarious, sharp, and informative; so much so that I finished it over the course of one domestic flight and immediately passed it to a friend of mine to read so we could gush about it together. (Sidenote: I got a recommendation to read Some of My Best Friends Are Black from this book, which is problematic, but has great discussions of things like redlining, bussing, and social segregation.)