Bookforum: A constellation of books that teach us to reimagine the present

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's syllabus for Bookforum. The works below can teach us how to encounter them if we pay attention. These writings refuse whiteness and colonialism by breaking open space, making room for worlds otherwise. This is world-building work, and these books’ exploratory nature makes them similar, in some sense, to speculative fiction. But these texts arise from and are rooted in the lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. The worlds they envision allow us to see the present—and the past—anew, and are life-giving precisely because they refuse the efforts by white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism to undermine them. They offer a study on how to read, or how to read differently, or perhaps how to listen.

The new novel from the author of As We Have Always Done, a poetic world-building journey into the power of Anishinaabe life and traditions amid colonialismBookforum: The works below can teach us how to encounter them if we pay attention. These writings refuse whiteness and colonialism by breaking open space, making room for worlds otherwise. This is world-building work, and these books’ exploratory nature makes them similar, in some sense, to speculative fiction. But these texts arise from and are rooted in the lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. The worlds they envision allow us to see the present—and the past—anew, and are life-giving precisely because they refuse the efforts by white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism to undermine them. They offer a study on how to read, or how to read differently, or perhaps how to listen.