Welcome to Bri Books! From sexy fiction to fascinating history, here's a look at what I'm reading in 2024. For a book lover, the new year is the definition of a blank slate. The books of 2024 offer escapes of all kinds. Below, I'vm nominating 8 books I can't wait to read in January and February. In this episode, I'm rounding up 8 titles I can't wait to read.
1:05: ‘From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture’ by Koritha Mitchell. I'm a cottagecore princess, and I wanted to get to the roots of domesticity in the US. In high school I was obsessed with domestic/ Victorian values during the Industrial Revolution, and noticed the glaring absence of free Black American women from this history. But that doesn't mean we weren't there. In the book, Koritha Mitchell analyzes canonical texts by and about African American women to lay bare the hostility these women face as they invest in traditional domesticity. Tracing how African Americans define and redefine success in a nation determined to deprive them of it, Mitchell plumbs the works of Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, and others. These artists honor black homes from slavery and post-emancipation through the Civil Rights era to "post-racial" America. Mitchell follows black families asserting their citizenship in domestic settings while the larger society and culture marginalize and attack them, not because they are deviants or failures but because they meet American standards. ‘From Slave Cabins to the White House’ illuminates the links between African American women's homemaking and citizenship in history and across literature.
4:15: ‘The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America’ by Erin Hatton. Everyone knows that work in America is not what it used to be. Layoffs, outsourcing, contingent work, disappearing career ladders—these are the new workplace realities for an increasing number of people. But why? In ‘The Temp Economy,’ Erin Hatton takes one of the best-known icons of the new economy—the temp industry—and finds that it is more than just a symbol of this degradation of work. Succinct, highly readable, and drawn from a vast historical record of industry documents, ‘The Temp Economy’ is a one-stop resource for anyone interested in the temp industry or the degradation of work in postwar America.
6:50: ‘New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation’ by Thomas Dyja. A lively, immersive history by an award-winning urbanist of New York City’s transformation, and the lessons it offers for the city’s future. Dyja’s sweeping account of this metamorphosis shows it wasn’t the work of a single policy, mastermind, or economic theory, nor was it a morality tale of gentrification or crime. Instead, three New Yorks evolved. Dyja weaves New Yorkers famous, infamous, and unknown—Yuppies, hipsters, tech nerds, and artists; community organizers and the immigrants who made this a truly global place—into a narrative of a city creating ways of life that would ultimately change cities everywhere.
9:12: ‘Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion’ by music journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy was released in October of 2023. A cinematic narrative of glamour, grit, luxury, and luck, ‘Fashion Killa’ draws on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the fashion world to tell the story of the hip-hop artists, designers, stylists, and unsung heroes who fought the power and reinvented style around the world over the last fifty years. In the book, Krishnamurthy explores the connections between the DIY hip-hop scene and the exclusive upper-echelons of high fashion. She discusses the sociopolitical forces that defined fashion and tracks the influence of music and streetwear on the most exclusive (and exclusionary) luxury brands. At the intersection of cultural commentary and oral history, ‘Fashion Killa’ commemorates the contributions of hip-hop to music, fashion, and our culture at large.
11:10: ‘Prayer and Our Bodies’ by Flora Slosson Wuellner. Written in 1987, this book explores the very real relationship that exists between the bodily self and the spiritual self. Readers will heighten their awareness of the interactions among body, mind, and spirit. If you're someone who struggles to appreciate your body, this book is an important touchstone toward healing our relationships with ourselves and others. It talks about how prayer isn't just what we say, but how we live our lives. Flora Slosson Wuellner, a retired ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, is well known throughout the United States and Europe for her writings and retreat leadership that focus on the inner healing that God freely offers through Christ. She has written 14 books on inner healing and renewal.
12:36: ‘You Learn By Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life’ by Eleanor Roosevelt. This wise and intimate book on how to get the most of out life was gifted to me by a lovely friend named Carrie. At the age of seventy-six, Roosevelt penned this simple guide to living a fuller life—a powerful volume of enduring commonsense ideas and heartfelt values. Offering her own philosophy on living, she takes readers on a path to compassion, confidence, maturity, civic stewardship, and more.
14:30: ‘The Pillow Book’ by Sei Shonagon. Written by 10th century court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, ‘The Pillow Book’ offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion, and whim dominated, while harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance. Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shonagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman's life at court in classical Japan.
16:30: ‘Homebodies’ by Tembe Denton-Hurst is already a fantastic read. An insightful, propulsive, and deeply sexy debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and pens a searing manifesto about racism in the industry.
A meditation on identity, self-worth and the toll of corporate racism, Homebodies is a portrait of modern Black womanhood with a protagonist you won’t soon forget.