Right now I’m in the middle of reading Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. This book is a collection of essays on feminism, gender, race, and politics. Knowing my interests, I think that my readership could guess that I would probably be interested in a lot of these essays. I wasn’t really sure what to expect out of the book, but so far it’s been pretty amazing. Gay mixes her vast knowledge of fiction and nonfiction in order to create parallels to society and social norms. So far in the book, she has successfully intertwined literature, film, television, and general pop culture to create a narrative about her experiences in the United States. Even though I haven’t finished the book, and will surely devote a post to reviewing it, it’s made me stop and think about my intentions for this blog and what I want people to get out of it.
When I started blogging I wanted to be really intentional about a couple of things. I want this to be a space where I can write about books in a different kind of way. I want to paint the fictional (and non fiction) books that I read in a specific light focused on human connection and interaction. At the basis of all stories, I think there’s a commentary about our society and how we interact with others. I want to focus on highlighting those ideas and finding what books can teach us, good or bad, about ourselves.
Within this desire, I also realize that people are extremely busy. With the increase of accessibility to the internet, the widespread use of smart phones, and an almost constant inundation of information, I often find myself wanting to gather facts in the quickest amount of time, so I can move on to the next thing. Because of this, I had the idea of making each of my blog posts around 500 words. I’ve found this exercise to be one of the most challenging, yet rewarding parts of blogging so far. Finding the right words to get across my point in the most concise way is helping me become a better communicator. I have to decide what’s really important for a reader to know about this book or topic, and therefore I feel like my writing is really accessible and easier to digest.
After writing my review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, I realized that a lot of my readers might not have context on race relations in the United States. I began created a series of pages under The Issues. On these pages, I hope to link my readers to more resources and information on different salient identities so we can all be better informed and better to each other.
I’m writing this post, because I hope that people who stumble across my blog will feel as though they’re engaging in some valuable dialogue about society. I hope to make connections in a similar manner to Gay, mixing my love of literature and life to bring awareness to certain biases that we may hold. I hope that my readers will challenge me on my thought processes and give me recommendations for ways to expand my world view, because we’re all in it together.
Until Next Time World…
Politics, Polymers, & Pretty Dresses 