Reading list

political education - any history, theory, fiction, personal essay, etc. that really helped develop my politics (summer 2025)

  • false nationalism, false internationalism: kae sera

  • blood in my eye: george l. jackson

  • sister outsider: audre lorde

  • black power and palestine: michael r. fischbach

  • the jakarta method: vincent bevin

  • if we burn: the mass protest decade and the missing revolution: vincent bevins

  • freedom is a constant struggle: angela y. davis

  • one day, everyone will have always been against this: omar el akkad

  • post-capitalist desire: the final lectures: mark fischer

  • former stripper, part-time visionary: ismatu gwendolyn

  • parable of the sower: octavia butler

  • duty art free: art in the age of planetary civil war: hito steryl

  • braiding sweetgrass: robin wall kimmerer (reread)

  • notes of a native son: james baldwin (reread)

  • these wilds beyond our fences: bayo akomolafe (reread)

on my list (haven’t read yet, to read before october):

  • representations of the intellectual: edward said

  • capitalist realism: mark fisher

  • on the eve of the cybercultural revolution: black power and capitalism in the 1960s: brian bartell

  • palo alto: malcolm harris

  • the fantasy and necessity of solidarity: sarah schulman

  • black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity: c. riley snorton

​​videos on youtube:

  • the norton lectures (6-part series): viet thanh nguyen at mahindra humanities centre

  • the tech billionaire to fascist pipeline: alexander avila

  • how corporations hijacked the anti-AI backlash: alexander avila

  • brat and the culture of addiction: alexander avila

  • ismatu gwendolyn: class traitor, or what do i owe the masses as an artist? ismatu gwendolyn

  • sammy obeid’s standup comedy sets

some fiction (& poetry) i’ve loved so far this year; i chose the titles that are at least somewhat related to what i said in this essay (dec 2024-july 2025)

  • martyr!: kaveh akbar 

  • stay true: hua hsu 

  • cinema love: jiaming tang 

  • all fours: miranda july 

  • cantoras: carolina de robertis 

  • voyage of the sable venus: robin coste lewis 

  • roses, in the mouth of a lion: bushra rehman

  • god help the child: toni morrison

  • the dream house: carmen maria machado

  • men we reaped: jesmyn ward

ARCHIVE (Blog posts)

Aug 2025: desire at world’s end

Aug 2025: the illusion of “making it” as an “artist” (what i’ve been doing in beijing)

Feb 2024: 兔尾: california, first love, and the choice to stay

Nov 2023: what am I doing in beijing?

June 2023: dear ana (i graduate)

Oct 2022: start of senior year, stanford

June 2022: end of junior year, oxford

May 2021: midway of sophomore year, shenzhen

Archive (Other Stuff)

March 2025: smoggy today