what's on my desk

hint: books!

I did not read for fun, at all, for over a decade during school and lawyering - but starting in 2020 I’ve amassed a gigantic (for me) number of books, in the process of trying to learn to write and also realizing how much catching up I had to do on things that are second nature to a lot of people who read. I’ll never get there, and reading remains physically difficult on the best days, but I’m proud of how much I’ve managed to absorb in this time and how I’ve actually started to enjoy it.

Here is the current ever-evolving rotation of books on my desktop that I use for reference/ inspiration, or that I just like.

Top down, then left to right:

1. “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf

2. “The Idiot,” Elif Batuman

3. “Junior High.” Tegan & Sara, ill. Tillie Walden

4. “Time Is A Mother,” Ocean Vuong

5. “Do You Remember Being Born?” Sean Michaels

6. “Godhead,” Ho Che Anderson

7. “I Do Everything I’m Told,” Megan Fernandes

8. “decodependence,” Lila Ash

9. “Flying Couch,” Amy Kurzweil

10. “Spinning,” Tillie Walden

11. “Fun Home,” Alison Bechdel

12. “This One Summer,” Mariko & Jillian Tamaki

13. “Incredible Doom,” Matthew Bogar & Jesse Holden

14. “Crying In H Mart,” Michelle Zauner

15. “Family Style,” Thien Pham

16. “Roaming,” Mariko & Jillian Tamaki

17. “Ducks,” Kate Beaton

18. “Save The Cat,” Blake Snyder

19. “A Swim In The Pond In The Rain,” George Saunders

20. “In The Dream House,” Carmen Maria Machado

21. “Draw Stronger,” Kriota Willberg

22. “Persepolis,” Marjane Satrapi

23. “Yolk,” Mary H.K. Choi

24. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce

Some of the grounding quotes taped to the wall:

1. “I still catch myself trying to become the object someone imagines me to be, but then there are other times, when I am free, when I am fluent, when I am unimaginable, that I start to feel like somewhere out there is the decolonized love for me, somewhere out there, there is a love that doesn’t let any of us be so lonely.” - essay by Jenny Zhang

2. “To me an important break through, I felt, in my work and that of others was the call to use the term white supremacy, over racism because racism in and of itself did not really allow for a discourse of colonization and decolonization, the recognition of the internalized racism within people of color and it was always in a sense keeping things at the level at which whiteness and white people remained at the center of the discussion. In my classroom I might say to students that you know that when we use the term white supremacy it doesn't just evoke white people, it evokes a political world that we can all frame ourselves in relationship to.” - Cultural Criticism and Transformation, bell hooks

3. and 4. — life changing affirmations by Yumi Sakugawa

Things I Am Doing:

1. I finally found a decaf coffee that is delicious and brews a crema and everything, and it’s changed everything.

   

   

   new state of being in the mornings

2. I am shamelessly trying to use the face algorithm on instagram to increase my follower count to a clean 6 figures, ho ho ho. The objective is to make me more attractive to prospective publishers (sob). Whether it works is yet to be determined. But anyway, here’s a fun one that took a long time to put together.

3. I’m doing Yoga with Adriene’s 30 day challenge in an attempt to be aware of my body for more than zero minutes per day (I talked a little about embodied practise here). I chose this particular playlist because the videos are short and low impact, thus increasing the likelihood that I will see it through to the end.

I’m working on final art for a children’s book, which means I am also working on a post about the materials I use to draw my books — that will go up later this week.

xo Zoe