LIT LIT: JULY
5 Lessons Learned from MOC
We want to wrap up this month's theme with a LIT LIT that highlights and applies five life-affirming lessons from men of color; by connecting them to articles, books, and movements that dive deeper into shared themes.
LESSON 1:
Be as honest with yourself as possible, and try to make friends with people who like you for you - not an iteration of who you are, or who you think you should be - but really like you for YOU. And when you're creating whatever you want to do in your life, just try to create and put out the truest version of yourself into the world. -- Hasan Minhaj
What to read to get inspired by the very things that connect YOU with the things YOU do:
LESSON 2
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. -- Frederick Douglas
What to read when you feel like you can't make a difference (when you really can):
READ: First-Generation College Students Must Have A Voice In Education Conversations
By: Jeremy Knight
LESSON 4
Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over. -- Junot Díaz
What to read when you feel tired of being powerless/voiceless as the only person of color in the room:
READ: Covering, the hidden assaults on our civil rights
Link: http://kthughes.net/101w/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Yoshino-1.pdf
By: Kenji Yoshino
Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.
Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity.
Stay LIT!
by Flerine Atienza
@flerinecrystal
READ: Something to food about: Exploring Creativity with Innovative Chefs
By: Questlove
Link: http://a.co/0ALCpeE
Questlove is a drummer, producer, musical director, culinary entrepreneur, and New York Times best-selling author. What unites all of his work is a profound interest in creativity. In somethingtofoodabout, Questlove applies his boundless curiosity to the world of food. In conversations with ten innovative chefs in America, he explores what makes their creativity tick, how they see the world through their cooking and how their cooking teaches them to see the world.
The conversations begin with food but they end wherever food takes them. Food is fuel. Food is culture. Food is history. And food is food for thought.
LESSON 3
If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn. -- Charlie Parker
What to read when you feel invisible or uncredited:
READ: World's Great Men of Color, Volume I: Asia and Africa, and Historical Figures Before Christ, Including Aesop, Hannibal, Cleopatra, Zenobia, Askia the Great, and Many Others
By: J. A. Rogers et al.
Link: http://a.co/4rPqV9S
World’s Great Men of Color is the comprehensive guide to the most noteworthy Black personalities in world history and their significance. J.A. Rogers spent the majority of his lifetime pioneering the field of Black studies with his exhaustive research on the major names in Black history whose contributions or even very existence have been glossed over. Well-written and informative, World’s Great Men of Color is an enlightening and important historical work.
LESSON 5
I don't really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. -- Prince
What to read when you are over all the bullshit expectations in which society keeps trying to box you in:
READ: Other Boys NYC
By: Various authors
Link: https://www.instagram.com/otherboysnyc/
A new doc series about the experiences of 50 queer and transgender men of color in NYC. The doc’s Instagram highlights anecdotal profiles of individual personalities.
