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Looking back at the books we read in 2020

12/7/2020

Hello friends,

Paul here. 2020 has been a rough year and I cannot wait to rip down (and burn?) this year’s calendar and put up next year’s. But, when I take a breath, I know that 2020 wasn’t all bad. The virus gave many of us time (perhaps more than we wanted) to reflect and reevaluate. The Uprising for Black Lives has inspired and challenged us to make urgent changes in our lives and organizations. With the coming administration, change is on its way...no, not enough, but a little. We have so much to look forward to, and still so much work to do, but as we eagerly approach a new year, Theater in Asylum is taking a moment to highlight some of the bright spots of 2020 with some “Greatest Hits” lists compiled by our community. This week, we look to books.

2020 was a great year for my reading. Without as much theater to see, I read much more than I usually do. I started the year with Kim Stanley Robinson’s futuristic, climate-conscious love-letter to the city: New York 2140. I took a deep dive into Philip Pullman’s writing, which I somehow missed but would have loved growing up. I finally read a few books by bell hooks, and relished in her ideas around teaching. I returned to a few favorites: Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller; as well as that obnoxious genre I can’t get enough of: political memoirs.

The ideas that struck me most though, were the books about humanity as it relates to scale. We’re both powerless within vast systems beyond our control, AND powerful –dangerously so– in a world out of balance and brutally unequal. I don’t think I’ve reread any books as often as I have Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown and Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit. Perhaps I’ll add to the reread list Jenny Odell’s remarkable and understatedly titled How to Do Nothing. Odell really elaborates on an idea adrienne maree brown introduced to me, that, “What you pay attention to grows.” So pay attention, prune away distraction, and be present.

I think about this quote from Richard Powers’ The Overstory:

“Say the planet is born at midnight and it runs for one day. First there is nothing. Two hours are lost to lava and meteors. Life doesn’t show up until three or four a.m. Even then, it’s just the barest self-copying bits and pieces. From dawn to late morning—a million million years of branching—nothing more exists than lean and simple cells. Then there is everything. Something wild happens, not long after noon. One kind of simple cell enslaves a couple of others. Nuclei get membranes. Cells evolve organelles. What was once a solo campsite grows into a town. The day is two-thirds done when animals and plants part ways. And still life is only single cells. Dusk falls before compound life takes hold. Every large living thing is a latecomer, showing up after dark. Nine p.m. brings jellyfish and worms. Later that hour comes the breakout — backbones, cartilage, an explosion of body forms. From one instant to the next, countless new stems and twigs in the spreading crown burst open and run. Plants make it up on land just before ten. Then insects, who instantly take to the air. Moments later, tetrapods crawl up from the tidal muck, carrying around on their skin and in their guts whole worlds of earlier creatures. By eleven, dinosaurs have shot their bolt, leaving the mammals and birds in charge for an hour. Somewhere in that last sixty minutes, high up in the phylogenetic canopy, life grows aware. Creatures start to speculate. Animals start teaching their children about the past and the future. Animals learn to hold rituals. Anatomically modern man shows up four seconds before midnight. The first cave paintings appear three seconds later. And in a thousandth of a click of the second hand, life solves the mystery of DNA and starts to map the tree of life itself. By midnight, most of the globe is converted to row crops for the care and feeding of one species. And that’s when the tree of life becomes something else again. That’s when the giant trunk starts to teeter.”

And on this quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens:

“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”

In 2020 I read about feelings of power and powerlessness, to the wild inequalities of power, and to the micro and macro systems seeking survival, resilience, adaptation. In 2021 I have books lined up about American art and politics in the 1930’s, about Occupy Wall Street, and about pre-colonial North America. I want to understand how people change and how societies face existential change. How do we survive apocalyptic forces? How do we not create apocalyptic forces ourselves? How do we reset, rebalance, revive and then keep creating forward?

Below find a list of what the larger TIA community has been reading. And let us know what your favorite books of the year have been. Feel free to reply to this email and let us know. We’ll keep an updated list of books here on our blog.

Happy reading,
Paul

The TIA Community’s favorite books of 2020

Fiction:

Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Milkman by Anna Burn
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdich
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Brown Girl Brownstones by Paule Marshall
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Circe by Madeline Miller
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
NW by Zadie Smith

Non-fiction:

Bhagavad Gita
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
The Romance of American Communism by Vivian Gornick
Our Women on the Ground : Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World edited by Zahra Hankir
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region by Tony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll
Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks
Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
Me by Elton John
How to Be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal by Joanna Macy
My Grandmother's Hands by Resma Manekem
Here by Richard McGuire
How to be Alone by Lane Moore
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan
Me & White Supremacy by Layla Saad
There Must be Happy Endings by Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano
Assata by Assata Shakur
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Tick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty
Mr. Know-It-All by John Waters
Energy at the End of the World by Laura Watts
Educated by Tara Westover
How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the Twenty-first Century by Erik Olin Wright

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Giving Tuesday 2020

12/1/2020

Dear friends,

2020 has been… a lot. Crisis upon crisis has upended nearly everything, redirecting us and driving us to introspection along the way. Throughout the year, we’ve held gatherings online to process all that’s happening, as well as to explore and discuss wonderful plays. Each gathering also highlighted an organization doing good work amongst all the chaos. These organizations have their hands in the dirt and their eyes on a better world.

This Giving Tuesday, we ask you to consider supporting one (or more!) of the organizations we highlighted this year. Below, see a loosely-categorized list of heroes who are:

Making and spreading theater
Offering legal support and encouraging civic engagement
Empowering people and communities
Supporting asylum seekers and those navigating the immigration system
Working to make our housing, healthcare, and education systems more equitable

Thank you so much. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Peace, power, and love to you,
Paul, Katie, Kathryn, and Hilarie

Making and Spreading Theater

The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc., a Knoxville-based professional, multi-generational ensemble company dedicated to the production of new works. Founded in 1969, Carpetbag works in partnership with community artists, activists, cultural workers, storytellers, and leaders to create original, theatrical works. Their mission is to give artistic voice to the issues and dreams of people who have been silenced by racism, classism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. Donate to Carpetbag Theatre.
Cornerstone Theater Company, in over 30 years, has commissioned more than 100 award-winning playwrights, produced over 150 new plays for the American Theater, trained thousands of students in our innovative methodology, and impacted tens of thousands of community members across the country, many experiencing theater for the first time. As the New York Times notes, Cornerstone Theater Company “… aims to make theater an integral and relevant part of ordinary American life.” Find out more about their incredible, neighborhood-and social-justice-rooted work and, if you are in a position to do so, donate!
The Fire This Time Festival is an OBIE Award winning theatre festival that showcases new plays from talented writers of African descent. The Festival explores the diverse possibilities of contemporary American drama and challenging new directions for 21st century black theatre. Donate.
G!RL Be Heard: developing, amplifying and celebrating the voices of girls and young women in NYC through socially conscious theater-making, storytelling and performance. "All of our programs share the GBH method and curriculum of mentoring and listening to the girls' stories; helping them develop their writing and speaking skills to powerfully express and share their experiences, and leading discussions about the issues affecting women and girls around the world. Through performance, the company members not only develop their confidence and skills but they are able to teach audiences about the issues affecting girls and women and impact the world for social change." Donate here.
The Indie Theater Fund protects, sustains and strengthens independent theater presented in the five boroughs of New York City. In addition to granting vital financial resources to theater companies and individual artists, we stimulate the growth of independent theater by seeding projects that support and develop the community as a whole. Support the Indy Theater Fund here.
JAG Productions was formed with the mission to produce classic and contemporary African-American theatre; to serve as an incubator of new work that excites broad intellectual engagement; and thereby, to catalyze compassion, empathy, love, and community through shared understandings of the humankind through the lens of the African-American experience. In each production JAG is committed to the following: 1) Selecting excellent work, 2) Attracting exceptional, diverse actors to the Upper Valley, and 3) Engaging and shifting the community. Donate.
Junebug Productions exists “For Us By Us”—a Black-owned and Black-run organization for Black people—elevating Black and Brown peoples and their complex stories of justice, beauty, love, health, environment, racism, poverty, immigration, gentrification, displacement, hopes, dreams, and all that life offers. Donate.
Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (aka Pregones/PRTT) is a multigenerational performing ensemble, multidiscipline arts presenter, and owner/steward of bilingual arts facilities in The Bronx and Manhattan. Our mission is to champion a Puerto Rican/Latinx cultural legacy of universal value through creation and performance of original plays and musicals, exchange and partnership with other artists of merit, and engagement of diverse audiences. Click here to learn more and donate!
Trickle Up. Inspired by the artists-on-behalf-of-artists activism of Elizabeth Swados, Trickle Up is a new grassroots subscription video platform. As members of the performing arts community struggle to maintain their livelihoods amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Trickle Up NYC enlists artists who are suffering from lost income, by sharing work on the platform. Trickle Up launched on March 23 and one week later, gave a $10,000 commission to their first artist. Every time they get to $10,000, another artist will be hired to create content. Donate to Trickle Up here.
viBe Theater Experience provides girls, young women, and nonbinary youth of color (aged 13-25) in New York City with free, high quality artistic, leadership and academic opportunities. viBe works to empower its participants to write and perform original theater, video and music about the real-life issues they face daily. viBe's performing arts and training programs provide the platform for participants to amplify their voices and "speak truth to power", by creating an artistic response to the world around them. You can donate here.

Legal Support and Civic Engagement

Common Cause. From founding in 1970 through today, a core principle of Common Cause is that as more eligible Americans participate, our democracy becomes stronger. In 1971, Common Cause led the campaign that won the 26th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing 18 year-olds to vote. Today, Common Cause is winning campaigns to modernize elections, make them more fair, secure, and accessible with automatic voter registration laws and same-day registration at polling places on Election Day. Common Cause works to ensure security and fairness at the ballot box by demanding paper back-ups and post-election risk-limiting audits to detect foul play early. Common Cause is also a lead partner in the Protect the Vote coalition. Donate to Common Cause here.
Legal Outreach prepares urban youth from underserved communities in New York City to compete at high academic levels by using intensive legal and educational programs as tools for fostering vision, developing skills, enhancing confidence, and facilitating the pursuit of higher education. Legal Outreach uses law to attract junior high school students to academic programs that inspire and motivate them to strive for academic success. From the 8th through 12th grades, students work after school, on weekends, and during summers to build the skills and confidence they need to achieve their goals. Once in college, students who wish to pursue law school are eligible to participate in our College to Law School Pipeline Diversity Program. Legal Outreach has been transforming the lives of students from underserved communities for almost 30 years. Donate to Legal Outreach here.

Empowering People and Communities

Black Sheep Brick Oven. Located in Jackhorn, Kentucky, Black Sheep is an incredible bakery and pizza place supporting the local community. Part of Black Sheep’s purpose is the creation and training of a local job force from the population of folks who have either A) lost employment from loss of service jobs when the coal production waned and caused another out-migration of miners and their families seeking employment elsewhere; B) folks emerging from the incarceration “brain drain” created by the opioid crisis. Donate to Black Sheep here.
Brooklyn Movement Center is a Black-led, membership-based organization of primarily low-to-moderate income Central Brooklyn residents. They build power and pursue self-determination in Bedford-Stuyvesant & Crown Heights by nurturing local leadership, waging campaigns and winning concrete improvements in people's lives. Through their intersectional organizing, BMC centers a full range of issues and Black identity that define a whole community. Find out more and donate here! (you might need a bit of patience to actually get onto the website)
Caribbean Equality Project empowers and strengths the marginalized voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people of Caribbean origin and descent through advocacy, community organizing, education, cultural, and social programming. Donate to Caribbean Equality Project here
Urgent Action Fund - Africa provides rapid response and advocacy grants to support unanticipated, time-sensitive, innovative, and bold initiatives. These grants enable African feminist and women's rights activists, organizations and movements to seize windows of opportunity, fracture patriarchy, amplify their voices, enhance their viability, and become significant actors who can influence policy and law while shaping discourse. They are part of the bigger network of Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights. Donate to Urgent Action Fund - Africa here.

Immigration and Asylum Support

RIF Asylum Support. For over 14 years, RIF has been building bridges for asylum seekers to New York City. RIF was founded to fill the city’s gap in orientation services for asylum seekers. By providing information and making connections, RIF equips asylum seekers to avoid fraudulent and predatory immigration practitioners, and empowers them to feel in greater control of their asylum-seeking experience. In recent months, RIF has drawn on their many decades combined of experience to respond to COVID-19’s impact on our city and community. Donate to RIF here.
The New Sanctuary Coalition. Founded in 2007, New Sanctuary Coalition (NSC) is a multi-faith immigrant-led organization that creates support systems for and empowers those navigating the immigration system. We do this by bringing together citizen volunteers and immigrants – our Friends – to achieve two primary goals: equip Friends with the knowledge they need to navigate the immigration system and lead the movement, and train and mobilize citizens and faith leaders to support and fight alongside our Friends, advocating for urgently needed changes to the system. NSC’s grassroots programs are designed to shine a light on and disrupt the systems that criminalize immigrants’ existence. Core programs include the pro immigration clinic, accompaniment, anti-detention, and community organizing and advocacy. Donate to NSC here.

Housing, Healthcare, and Education

First Book believes that education is the best way out of poverty for children in need. First Book aims to remove barriers to quality education for all kids by making everything from new, high-quality books and educational resources to sports equipment, winter coats, snacks, and more – affordable to its member network of more than 500,000 educators who exclusively serve kids in need. Since 1992, First Book has distributed more than 185 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income communities in more than 30 countries. First Book currently reaches an average of 5 million children every year and supports more than one in three of the estimated 1.3 million classrooms and programs serving children in need. Donate to First Book here.
New York’s Utility Project. This initiative of the Public Utility Law Project of New York, Inc. has been advocating for universal service, affordability, and customer protection for New York State utility consumers since 1981. They have been working on behalf of consumers and the more than 1.5 million low-income households across New York State to enforce their consumer rights, make service more affordable, obtain assistance to pay or reduce bills, and keep the lights on safely. You can donate to their work here.
The Upstate Downstate Housing Alliance and their fight for Housing Justice for All. The Upstate-Downstate Housing Alliance is a diverse coalition of tenants, homeless people, manufactured housing residents, and advocates from across New York. They represent New Yorkers from every part of the state and are united in the fight for stronger tenant protections, an end to evictions, and an end to homelessness in New York. Donate to Upstate Downstate Housing Alliance here.
RIP Medical Debt, which uses donations to purchase medical debt, and then completely forgives that debt. While we reach for a more just healthcare system, RIP Medical Debt is helping to alleviate the economic pain on people recovering. If you aren't sure how buying debt works, take a look at these segments by John Oliver and Lester Holt. You can donate to RIP Medical Debt at this link.

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Theater in Asylum (TIA) is a New York-based theater company founded in 2010 to challenge and empower our community. TIA joyfully pursues a rigorous research and an ensemble-driven approach to theater-making. We create performances to investigate our past, interpret our present, and imagine our future. We prize space to process, space to question—asylum—for ourselves and our community.

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