Summer Reading

The Blueprint
By Rae Giana Rashad

The Blueprint might hit a little close to home in these times. Much like the worlds Margaret Atwood builds, Rashad’s tales of a dystopian world full of overt misogyny and racism are only our own world shaken slightly and retold. The ways slavery displays itself in the book might be two notches away from our current reality, but with reminders that freedom and revolution are only a couple notches away as well. AMANDA HAGGARD

The Ministry of Time
By Kaliane Bradley

The nameless protagonist in Kaliane Bradley’s sensational debut, The Ministry of Time, is a modern-day British civil servant working in a top secret program. The government has used a time machine to snatch people from various points in the past and bring them to our world. Our girl is to be the “bridge”— a sort of housemate/guide/spy — to a British naval officer who was kidnapped during an 1845 Arctic expedition. Literary in style, The Ministry of Time not only has an epic sci-fi premise. It’s also a thrilling love story.
ERICA CICCARONE

Plundered
By Bernadette Atuahene

When systemic inequality, incompetent bureaucrats and private interests intersect, maintaining stable housing becomes complicated by design. Property-law scholar Bernadette Atuahene explores Detroit’s housing crisis in her sweeping, page-turning Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America. With novelistic flair, Atuahene investigates how the city of Detroit illegally foreclosed on thousands of homes, and how predatory governance has blighted Black neighborhoods, wrapping homes in red tape and leaving them to rot. Atuahene follows several generations of one Detroit family from the Great Migration to the present day, as one woman fights to maintain her birthright. This gripping saga will make readers look closely at their own laws and policies, how they may be leaving people out in the cold. ERICA CICCARONE

True Grit
By Charles Portis

In honor of the Contributor’s long-time physical office space in Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church, consider picking up a copy of Charles Portis’ iconic adventure novel True Grit this summer. Its heroine, 14 year old Mattie Ross, is devoted to the Presbyterian church. She is also devoted to avenging her father’s murder. Set in the American west in 1878, the novel tells a tale of amoral drifters, hardened bounty hunters and corrupt federal agents, all delivered in the rollicking deadpan of its singularly motivated protagonist. The book is hard to set down – plan to plow through the entirety of True Grit in a single day at the beach if you’re not afraid of a sunburn.
LAURA BIRDSALL

Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
By Alexis Pauline Gumbs

A poet. A teacher. An unapologetic Black lesbian feminist, Audre Lorde was among our most influential thinkers about gender, sexuality, art and activism. With Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, poet and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs presents an unconventional and moving portrait of Lorde’s singular life. Bringing a special focus to Lorde’s poetry and how her spiritual philosophy was informed by the natural world, Gumbs’ biography weaves through the themes of Lorde’s life, from her childhood Harlem, to her early adulthood working in a factory, to her remarkable tenure at Hunter College and relationships with other literary luminaries throughout her adult life. Gumbs does not hide her own admiration and affection for Lorde, and the book is all the better for it. ERICA CICCARONE

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)
By Jesse Q. Sutanto

Readers fell in love with the title character of Jesse Q. Sutanto’s 2023 cozy mystery Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. Both charming and, at times, infuriating, Vera is a Chinese widow who owns a tea shop in modern-day San Francisco. When a random man dies in her shop, she becomes a de facto sleuth, and picks up stray young adults (all suspects!) in her quest for the murderer. Vera Wong’s follows her on a new mystery that deepens Vera’s character and adds more danger into the mix. Snooping has loads of heart, and following Vera and her growing pack of strays makes for jaunty, relaxing reading. ERICA CICCARONE

Out of the Silent Planet
By C.S. Lewis

In honor of Contributor co-founder Tom Wills’ fondness for the Inklings, a cohort of Oxford writers that also included J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams, I humbly propose that the uninitiated experience the joy of C.S. Lewis’ foray into science fiction. In the first book of his famous trilogy, protagonist Elwin Ransom is kidnapped by two university professors and forced into an unplanned interplanetary adventure. The richness of Lewis’ universe is unparalleled and Ransom is an almost perfect hero: an initially reluctant underdog who rises to the moral conundra of interstellar power struggles with winning and earnest charm.
LAURA BIRDSALL

It’s What You Do Next: The Fall and Rise and Nashville’s First Female Mayor
By Megan Barry

If for no other reason than I think she deserves to be heard in her own voice on the matters of her own life, Megan Barry’s story of her tenure as mayor is worth reading, particularly if you followed any of the coverage of her resignation from her seat. Barry comes off as transparent, and the book is as much a mini history of that era in Nashville as it is a telling of her story. If you run in any Metro circles at all, there’s a story or two in there for you. AMANDA HAGGARD

On Disobedience
By Erich Fromm

This little book includes four essays the socialist psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm penned in the 1960s. Fromm is writing about societies that are “led and manipulated by big, powerful bureaucracies – societies in which the individual becomes a well-fed and well-entertained automaton who loses his individuality, his independence and his humanity.” While penned during the Cold War era, it is astonishing and scary how relevant Fromm’s words remain in today’s political climate. JUDITH TACKETT

Irena’s Children: A True Story of Courage
By Tilar J. Mazzeo

Irena Sendler is the woman who smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and is hailed as the female Oskar Schindler. This biography explains who Irena is in all her humanity. It shows that one person alone cannot save thousands of children, but she sure can have the courage, spirit and tenacity to create a network of saviors. Irena’s story is also told in a 2009 movie starring Anna Paquin. JUDITH TACKETT

People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal
By Marshall Ganz

Here is a guide to fighting for democracy. Ganz starts by explaining the importance of relationship building and ends by demonstrating how we can build capacity and bring organizing to scale. He shows how meaningful change is based on moving beyond mobilizing to organizing where people embrace their diverse viewpoints and rise up to become leaders themselves. Ganz is a must in any organizer’s personal library. JUDITH TACKETT

Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age
By Amanda Hess

If you need any extra reason to poke at the digital age, Amanda Hess points out a few ways the internet, social media and the expectations around modern parenting are rotten. In some ways, it’s an exploration of how the models of shame and guru-ism have long been embedded in parenting, but the lense Hess views this through is one of a new parent just having birthed a potentially medically complicated child with tech apps at her fingertips throughout.
AMANDA HAGGARD

Inciting Joy: Essays
By Ross Gay

Ross Gays’s Inciting Joy: Essays reads much like how I imagine a conversation with me feels like: footnotes on footnotes, stories within stories and a sort of “we will get there, I promise” that only folks that want to get there with you will continue with. It’s a good thing the message and beauty buried in these asides is wonderful. Though I can’t say the same of my vocal ramblings, Gay always manages to tie things together in a meaningful way. An essay on basketball might have a sidequest or two, but there’s a long game there.
AMANDA HAGGARD

The Nightingale
By Kristin Hannah

Set during the German invasion of France, this World War II novel tells the heartbreaking story of two sisters. Each one fights the war in her own way. One as a fierce defender of her family who is forced to house a German officer, the other as a rebellious freedom fighter determined to help save her country. Of the many World War II novels I have read, this one is by far my favorite, and I recommend it as an inspirational story during uncertain political times. JUDITH TACKETT