12 Inspiring Prompts for Writers: Day 6
Books that Should Get More Attention
Howdy and welcome to day six, where we’re thinking fondly of books that we think should get more attention. These are the kind of books that maybe aren’t on Bestseller lists, but you love them to death anyway—books that make you grab people by the shoulders and beg them to read them.
The Book that Builds An Intricate World
I already mentioned my deep love of Martha Wells’ work, but she does have other novels besides the Raksura books. I recently read Witch King and was very taken with it. The worldbuilding is god-tier and the prose is written with a great sense of urgency—the opening really grabs you by the socks. Talk about jumping on the plot horse.
All I can say is that it's really cool and you should read it.
The Book That Will Make You A Better Citizen
There were a lot of different books that gained popularity during the 2020 BLM movement. One was White Fragility. Another was How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi (that one, I actually read). But I think there is a more seminal work to the movement that more people should read, called Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. I read the introduction from this book for Critical Theory class in my MFA and wondered, why is this not required reading in every United States classroom? The book was written at the turn of the millennium, but it has been updated multiple times to reflect new issues such as rising political vilification of immigrants and online hate speech. I would like to think that if more people read this book, the country would be slightly less of a goddamned mess.
The Book That Asks Big Questions
Getting back to fiction, I enjoyed Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. This is a book that has suffered a few bans in America due to the nature of its protagonist being a black trans kid. It’s a pretty significant book in that the trans gal, Jam, is wholly accepted as herself and beloved by her family. Her transness isn’t much a factor of the plot at all, really—the story is like a buddy cop movie where Jam teams up with a terrifying, Biblically-accurate angel to attempt to bring justice to evil doers in a town that's supposed to be a utopia. But it’s also about transformative justice. It’s a novel that has a lot of stuff in it that I don’t usually see, and I doubt other people usually see, and that perspective makes it valuable. Also, it won a fuck-ton of awards.
What about you? What books do you think other people should be reading?