[weltenwellen]

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

[primulaceas]

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

[the-starry-messenger]

Diaries, Franz Kafka // Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

[propertiesofjoy]

crime and punishment, fyodor dostoevsky

[exitwound]

invisible fish

[primulaceas]

Mary Oliver, "To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song." Blue Horses

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao

[reverecurrent]

Come and be my baby, Maya Angelou.

[propertiesofjoy]

giovanni’s room, james baldwin

[granada-brett-crumbs]

9 Sitting Positions And What They Say About You

[spiritcc]

Some sketches for the Soviet series by Mark Kaplan, their artist and stage director

[soracities]

what are some must read books in ur opinion?

i’ve gotten this question a few times and there’s a general mix of things under the book recs tag here, but otherwise, as a general rule, i don’t believe in ‘must read’; what i do believe in is reading as widely, openly and diversely as possible and following your own instincts and impulses throughout it all. where classics are concerned, given how ridiculously limited the canon has been for so long, i like to supplement each work with something from a different perspective, just to hear it spoken from the other side because that’s what’s important to me.

so if you’ve read tropic of cancer by henry miller, read paris when it’s naked by etel adnan.

if you love the expansive, multi-layered poetry of t.s. eliot then read the selected poems of adonis (or the pages of day and night as an introduction),

for classic works focused on war and strife and the devastation of it all: maus by art spiegelman, persepolis by marjane satrapi, the war works hard by dunya mikhail, death and the maiden by ariel dorfman, a thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini. for the things they carried by tim o’brien try: the sympathizer by viet thanh nguyen, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong.

for the gothic imagination of edgar allen poe and bram stoker add: angela carter, daphne du maurier, shirley jackson, or, if you’re more contemporarily inclined: carmen maria machado & kelly link

magical realism that isn’t gabriel garcía márquez: ben okri, amos tutuola, isabel allende, laura esquivel.

epic poetry / classical texts that aren’t roman or greek: the ramayana, the epic of gilgamesh, the tale of genji.

i hate bukowski and am not the biggest fan of the beats but if they’re your thing try: erica jong, kim addonizio, dorianne laux, diane di prima, elise cowen – or you can broaden even further: the dub poetry of michael smith or linton kwesi johnson - and while we’re on that: louise bennet, or edward kamau brathwaite (multi-layered, pushing the boundaries of language with a post-colonial perspective)

if you like e.e. cummings and pushing the boundaries of language and form with writers like aram saroyan, try ca conrad,

love dickens? try elizabeth gaskell or zadie smith.

love 1984? read we by yevgeny zemyatin who not only inspired it, but lived it.

for every walden or book like it, try basho’s narrow road to the deep north or rebecca solnit’s wanderlust.

love tolkien, asimov, bradbury? try: ursula k. le guin, octavia e. butler

want intense, challenging reads on the often violent mires of identity and ideas of self-hood? try toni morrison. want it mingled with kafka-esque absurdity? try invisible man by ralph ellison. 

want breathless interiority or philosophical examinations à la camus’ the stranger? try clarice lispector’s the apple in the dark (other female writers also worth the look: sarah kane, forugh farrokhazad, alejandra pizarnik, see also: norah lange’s the people in the room)

i’m also not the biggest fan of rupi kaur (at. all.) but if you like her: maram al-massri’s barefoot souls is hauntingly beautiful and concise.

also this goes without saying but even so: you can’t ever read conrad’s heart of darkness, and not read: chinua achebe, aime cesaire, ngũgĩ wa thiong'o

read simone de beauvoir? then read nawal el saadawi & arundhati roy

love pablo neruda? try nizar qabbani, mahmoud darwish, saadi youssef (and while we’re on them: as gorgeous as their love poems are, they write just as beautifully on exile as any eastern european / soviet writer, to which i’ll add nathalie handal’s the neverfield)

like, this is by no means definitive and is a very, very rough list of examples, the vast majority personal. but my point is that the only ‘should’ i follow in reading is being careful of reducing your experiences to one voice, one standard, one culture. it’s a human experience, and a human heritage. that heritage is so much broader than a canon of straight white men. there is another voice, always, and i think we should all do our best to try and find it whenever we can.

[moon1ike]

Exist slowly, softly like the trees

Ada Limón, Mowing // Shaun Tan, The Blue Cow // Shaun Tan, A Temple for Cows //Czesław Miłosz, Notes // Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

[firstfullmoon]

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”

— James Baldwin, from “The Northern Protestant,” in Nobody Knows My Name

[pangaeastarseed]

*GROSS SOBBING AT HOW UNBEARABLY BEAUTIFUL THESE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE*

From Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein

[sunfortune]

ari and dante quotes that peel me like a fruit

[persephones-fruit]

For the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person’s body, of another person’s smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (via persephones-fruit)

[simon--ferocious]

I was staring at him, though I did not know it, and wishing I were he. He seemed—somehow—younger than I had ever been, and blonder and more beautiful, and he wore his masculinity as unequivocally as he wore his skin. He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)