August Roundup
Hello friends, this is the last newsletter I’ll be writing in August, and the last I’ll be writing from New York City before I fly back to London next week. It’s been an incredible trip, one I’ll write about in more detail in future newsletters, but for now I wanted to share with you my favourite reads, watches and listens of August.
Reading
Judith Herman, Truth and Repair
If you haven’t heard of Judith Herman, then this book is as good a place as any to start. Herman is an American psychiatrist whose work over the last few decades documents in incredible diligence and compassion the experiences of sexual assault survivors. Herman’s earlier landmark work, Trauma and Recovery, is credited as being among the first to draw a sustained comparison between the experiences of sexual assault survivors and those of combat veterans and was as such a landmark work. Her main contribution, one she returns to in this newest work, which takes as its focus the question of what justice could look like for survivors of sexual violence, is as simple as it is revolutionary — “trauma isolates; the group restores a sense of belonging.” Healing, for Herman, can only ever be communal, despite our best efforts to individualise and privatise it. It is this thread throughout her work that makes her so brilliant and so necessary.
New York Times, interview with Judith Herman
It’s been a Herman heavy month for me, so I also want to include this interview with her, in which she discusses the injury and chronic pain that derailed her professional work very shortly after the publication of Trauma and Recovery. The interview is in The New York Times, and it’s worth the temporary subscription if you’re interested in a view that sits just apart from many of our dominant narratives about trauma, and which carries, in my opinion, quiet revolutionary potential.
Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue
This short and beautifully written collection of essays is definitely one for the Joni Mitchell fans out there — Key began writing this book as a meditation on Blue, a favourite album of Joni’s. What transpires is an incredibly moving and artful set of reflections on life as a single woman: Key is in her mid-forties, her last romantic relationship ended when she was 22. I loved this book because it captures so much of what I have felt as a single woman living in a big, busy city, so much of which is organised around the family or couple as unit. An excellent read, and an excuse to revisit one of my favourite all-time albums.
Colm Toibin, Long Island
I only got midway through this beautiful novel because the screen of my Kindle started to break, but this book is everything that is brilliant about Colm Toibin. Exquisite observation, humour and compassion, and diligent documentation of the experiences of the Irish diaspora particularly in America. I have a hard copy at home, so I’ll be reading and reporting back as soon as I return.
Percival Everett, James
This is my current read, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim. I bought this book in New Orleans from the bookshop that William Faulkner rented when he was writing his first novel. New Orleans, right on the Gulf Coast of the US and surrounded by swamps and former plantations, is a city steeped in the history of slavery, and the book begins with the same premise as Huck Finn: Jim hears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his family. Huck, fleeing his father’s violent rages, fakes his own death and escapes into the swamp. The two meet, and they journey together. Huck and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi River is here retold by Everett with his characteristic wit and ingenuity. So far, an excellent novel.
Watching
King Richard
I watched this film on my flight back from New Orleans, and it absorbed me entirely. This is the story of Richard Williams, father to the Williams sisters, diligent coach and proud family man, determined to the point of belligerence in his task of setting up his daughters for the professional and personal success he as a child was deprived of. I loved watching the Williams sisters play tennis when I was a child, and this film was a beautiful exposition of their childhood and upbringing, and the outsized and albeit at times imperfect expressions of love from a father really willing to do anything to secure his daughters’ happiness.
Sex and the City
I’m in New York, so of course I am watching Sex and the City, and I’m only a little embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I’ve followed the show in any substantial way. It passed me by in my late teens, and by the time I was in my mid-twenties, when most of my friends were watching it, I found the very dated discussion around sex and consent too triggering to be enjoyable. If you can put aside those reservations, which are entirely valid, it is an incredibly entertaining show. Sometimes, you just need a bit of trash, and I have no doubt that Emily in Paris will be next up.
Listening
The News Agents US
This has been my main anxiety-queller when it comes to the US election. It’s frank and informative, but it’s also conversational and it’s funny. They’ve done a good job of covering Kamala Harris’s recent burst in popularity, and they had some excellent coverage following the shooting at Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally. Great podcast, one I’d highly recommend.
Shell Game
This podcast was an excellent recommendation from my mum. It’s an NPR show in which a journalist Evan Ratliff creates an AI version of himself. What starts out as an exercise in curiosity becomes in turns comedic, bizarre and disturbing. It’s a refreshing take on the powers and limitations of AI: Evan sets his AI self up to answer cold calls, as bait for fraudsters, before sending him to therapy. One of my favourite moments in this show is when the therapist suggests that Evan might one day himself like to attend therapy, which, to me, says an awful lot about humans and our seemingly unending fixation on the powers of technology.
Etta James, I’d Rather Go Blind
Spending a week in New Orleans I’ve been listening to a lot of blues, and this has to be my favourite of all the songs I’ve had on repeat. I heard it sung in a little bar on Frenchmen Street by an incredible band and a singer with the most beautiful voice, and I know it’ll be the song that will take me back to this trip for years to come.