Ordinary Notes

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Synopsis
One of The Millions&’ &“Most Anticipated Books of 2023One of The New York Times&’ &“19 Works of Nonfiction to Read This Spring&”A dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary Black life.&“I wanted to write about silences and terror and acts that hover over generations, over centuries. I began by writing about my mother and grandmother.&” —from &“Note 18&” in Ordinary NotesA singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores with immense care profound questions about loss, and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 brief and urgent notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. Through the striking images and words in these pages, themes and tones echo: sometimes about life, art, language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, photography, and literature—but always attending, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life. At the heart of Ordinary Notes is the indelible presence of the author&’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. &“I learned to see in my mother&’s house,&” writes Sharpe. &“I learned how not to see in my mother&’s house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.&” Using these and other gifts and ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to become present on the page. She articulates and follows an aesthetic of "beauty as a method,&” collects entries from a community of thinkers towards a &“Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness,&” and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.
Copyright:
2023

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
392 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781039000599
Related ISBNs:
9781039000582
Publisher:
Knopf Canada
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Christina Sharpe
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Social Studies, Politics and Government
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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