Other people said it better this week, so straight on to the links...

"We need affirmative visions of a better future." I've read this conversation between health justice scholar Beatrice Adler-Bolton and historian Jules Gill-Peterson a few times now. This line of thinking feels like it just might be the antidote to the pervasive political depression and burnout of the moment. Related: Audre Lorde on the fact that there is no single-issue struggle. And Rebecca Traister with a reminder that despair is not an option. 

Osama Shehzad on what watching shadi dance videos, and how desi weddings get filtered through social media. 

How American gun violence is covered by reporters in Mexico, by Javier Garza Ramos.

"Listening to conscious rap granted you an identity, one that stood in contrast to the materialist and self-serving culture my generation was constantly accused of perpetuating. " Mychal Denzel Smith on Kendrick Lamar, the return of Black Star, and the legacy of conscious rap.

Dave Eggers' book was banned in South Dakota, and here's what happened when he tried to figure out why.

"It’s difficult to become an expert in American political, legal or social history. It’s quite easy, though, to cherry-pick historical examples that prop up an end in search of a rationale—which is precisely what the Supreme Court majority did this week, twice." Joshua Zeitz on how the Supreme Court fails at "originalism."

Loved this essay by Alicia Kennedy on lifestyle as politics: "When we say that changes only have to occur on the level of big policy and systems, we leave out the significance of public participation and the fact that how we each live our lives is part of a greater whole."

 

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"The stakes have never been higher." A recipe for Republican chicken. A matrix-style analysis of reality tv shows. Why is it so calming to watch someone prepare a library book for circulation?

I found this extremely motivating.

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NPR's book recommendation engine is great, per usual. The sheer number of books I wish I were reading right this second takes my breath away. 

On my own summer reading pile...

• Tomi Obaro's Dele Weds Destiny, the perfect summer novel about the ups and downs of a trio of lifelong friends
• Sarah Manguso's Very Cold People a novel look at what it means to come from a place of whiteness, and Isaac Fitzgerald's big-hearted memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts. How are there two books about this state, where I have zero personal connections, on my nightstand right now? A funny coincidence.
• Adrian Nathan West's My Father's Diet, the most interesting book about masculinity since Thomas Page McBee's Man Alive, which is saying something.
• Jackie Polzin's Brood, a novel about loss and chickens
• and Nona Willis Aronowitz's Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution, one hell of a meditation for this moment in sexual politics. We'll be in conversation about it on Crowdcast next month!