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A couple years ago I had a student who excitedly told me about how a teacher at her old school had introduced her to this amazing author who was now her very very favorite. Friends, that teacher had introduced her to Ayn Rand (aka Wario to Dorothy Day’s Mario). I bought a paperback copy of The Dispossessed online immediately with the hopes of turning the tide… but the student and her family had moved away before the book arrived. I kept it and am now reading it for a book club, and hoping that student found someone else down the road to steer her away from the ugliness of Randism.

Next book club book, following The Dawn of Everything. We’re trying to pair this with The Dispossessed to see where things might intersect. Right away, Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Those who seek history with an upbeat ending, a history of redemption and reconciliation, may look around and observe that such a conclusion is not visible, not even in utopian dreams of a better society.” So THAT’s something to think through with Le Guin…

Damita has been asking me to try to understand what happened to Europeans politically and socially prior to going on their colonization/genocide/empire/enslavement bender that we’re still trying to find our way out of. Maybe this would be illuminating?

Ryan recommends it so it has to be worthwhile

I shouldn’t have, but I jumped right to the White People: Save Yourselves chapter so now I gotta backtrack from the beginning