#tl;dr there is not really a method to this madness lol it's just Vibes

[coquelicoq]

heya ^^ love to see all the excerpts you publish on various topics and was curious about how you choose which ones you post and how you come upon them (did you choose to read those books or did you get recommendations/came to knew about them while working etc).

i think everything that's posted lately has been from the same book, We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba, though several of the essays in that book had been published previously in other outlets, so i've been linking to those locations when possible. i could have sworn i heard about that book here on tumblr, but i just went back through my prison abolition tag and my to read tag and i didn't see anything about it, so now i have no idea! could have been from anywhere. what usually happens is i hear about an interesting book on here, or in the newspaper, or via word of mouth, and i put it on hold at my library, and then months later when it comes in, i have no memory of why i did that. it's like a little surprise gift from my past self. this book was in such high demand that i think i had it on hold for a year or so before it was available for me to check out.

how do i pick what to excerpt? hmm. i don't really plan it out. my main use of tumblr is as an archive for things i might want to look at again sometime, so often that's the motivation, just to save the passage somewhere i can find it again. it also helps me to have a couple of really central quotes just to remind me what the thesis of the book is (for non-fiction); i have some posts queued right now that serve this purpose for Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, which i finished reading the other day. and sometimes i just think a book is good and want to give people a teaser that might make them interested in reading it. i do try to excerpt in such a way that the passage can stand on its own but will be enriched by reading the rest of the piece.

for these mariame kaba excerpts, the reason i've posted so many (and there are a few more in my queue) is that there's so much to learn about this topic - but especially so much to unlearn. there are so many things she points out in this book that challenge very basic assumptions at the heart of our society. my experience of reading this book was basically me going "oh shit, that's a good point. oh shit, that's a good point!" multiple times per chapter. so i guess i just wanted to record some of those good points for posterity.