Welcome to Litsy!

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the ABC. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at the point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. - Frederick Douglass

These essays are a book lovers dream. Engaging and thoughtful. Lively and powerful. An easy way to come up with lists of new-to-me authors and to remember past favorites. I will say it is formatted by time period so if you, like me, have trouble with feeling a disconnect with the older, more formal, writing styles, then just skip around but read them all!!

A quote from James Baldwin regarding the “race question”.

Loved love loved this! I usually crawl throw reading nonfiction so almost always listen via audiobook. This was book reads like a collection of short stories and it's amazing and humbling, poignant and important.

I cannot get over how good this book is. I want to hide in a tree with it. I want to read it in a park on a picnic blanket. I want to read it in a tiny fake-french cafe. I want to push it on all the people who say race in lit doesn't matter and say "read this".

Loving this book, so far❣️It‘s making me think about my own relationship to reading and writing. Excerpts selected from nonfiction works in which 25 Black luminaries-from Frederick Douglass to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie-share “the Peril, Power, and Pleasure Of Reading and Writing.“ #literacy #blackwritersonreading #blackwritersonwriting