#23: We Are What We Consume

As the saying goes ‘you are what you eat’ but it’s not just what’s on your plate that defines you—it’s what’s on your bookshelf, who you socialise with and your social feed, too.

Dec 17, 2024

“Reading won’t help us evolve into a just society!”

I saw a meme with this sentiment a few days ago, and while I understand and even agree with the point it was making, I also believe that reading and diversifying the content we consume remains one of the most accessible tools we have to expand our thinking and challenge the status quo.

After all, if reading wasn’t so powerful, why would certain states in the USA and governments around the world go to such lengths to ban books? Knowledge has always been—and will always be—a source of power.

Given that it’s the end of the year, rather than my usual singular book/TV/exhibition recommendation, I'm sharing a list of 13 books, podcasts and articles I crowdsourced from your suggestions on LinkedIn and Instagram. What unites all the recommendations is that they are authentic depictions of underrepresented communities that make members of those groups feel seen, understood and validated.

I’ve grouped them into categories, and if the title features a yellow heart 💛 it means I've read/listened to it too. I hope you find something here that piques your inner book-pod-worm and encourages you to learn more about an identity or community you may be unfamiliar with.

Category: Language

💛 📚READ The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

Although there’s a fair amount in this book that I disagree with, I think it’s an important read for anyone interested in linguistics and communications.

Pinker’s central theory is that humans are born with an innate capacity for language, much like a spider is born with the instinct to spin webs and he therefore rejects the notion that language is learned behaviour shaped by culture or social structures.

If you believe that human capacities like language are primarily shaped by biological evolution and innate structures, I think you’ll find this book very compelling. However, if like me, you lean towards seeing language as a cultural phenomenon shaped by environment and social interaction, you might find yourselves feeling very challenged by his views on genetic predisposition.

Perhaps on reflection, the truth is somewhere in the middle? Either way, it’s good to have one’s notions challenged but ultimately, I’m going to give the last word on this topic to Mr George Orwell.

📚READ Sword Language: How the Soviet Empire Spoke by Eugenia Kuznetsova

This was recommended via LinkedIn and although it’s not yet been translated into English, I wanted to share it simply because of how it was described by the recommender Maryna:

“[The book] illuminates how the USSR, [the former Soviet bloc], weaponised language to colonise Ukrainian culture and other nations within the empire, suppressing local languages, folklore, and traditions.

Though I grew up in Ukraine and learned in school about poets who were executed or imprisoned for writing in Ukrainian or about Ukraine, I hadn't realised to what extent everyday language could serve as an imperialistic propaganda tool. The Soviets used it to establish Russian cultural supremacy and erase local identities—from limiting education, jobs, and community access for non-Russian speakers to manipulating cultural elements like jokes and traditional songs and sayings.

I believe that understanding the history of language weaponisation helps us recognise and address patterns of prejudice in our everyday speech.”

Although many of us are unable to read this book at this present time, I hope that Myrna’s words emphasise the role language plays in shaping our identities and how, across the world, one of the ways in which minorities are universally oppressed is through the suppression of their native and Indigenous languages. Put simply, we are our languages and our languages are us.

Category: Gender

📚READ Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers, featuring Ellen Lupton, Farah Kafei, Jennifer Tobias, Josh A. Halstead, Kaleena Sales, Leslie Xia & Valentina Vergara.

What a title! Extra Bold is an inclusive, practical, and informative career handbook for anyone working in the design world. Written by a diverse team of authors, the book opens with essays that rethink design principles and practices through theories of feminism, racism, inclusion, and nonbinary thinking.

Featuring interviews, essays, typefaces, and projects from dozens of contributors with a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, gender identities, and positions of economic and social privilege it helps anyone in design navigate existing power structures to progress and develop their careers.

📚READ Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves and Our Culture by Niobe Way.

Professor Way, an NYU scholar, provides an in-depth exploration of what boys and young men teach us about themselves, us, and the toxic culture we have created, one in which we value money over people, toys over human connection, and academic achievement over kindness.

The book is based on her longitudinal and mixed-method research over thirty-five years which she says demonstrates that we need to urgently change our culture so that we stop the vicious cycle of violence and blame.

As someone who thinks it’s vital to root any analysis in its wider context, I thought this quote from her publisher Penguin was particularly powerful “Her book reminds us that “it’s not the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.”

Category: Race & Ethnicity

📚READ We Alive, Beloved by Frederick Joseph

This is the two-time New York Times bestselling author’s first poetry collection in which he seeks to find joy in moments of difficulty whether through illuminating the beauty of being Black, highlighting the hope that can be found in childhood, or by sharing intimate truths revealed on a mental health journey.

I’ve followed Joseph for years on social media but have not read any of his published work and by the descriptions you have all provided - this seems like a great place to start.

📚READ Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

This was suggested by several readers, so I knew I had to include it. Originally published in 2020, Caste is a book about race but one that very rarely mentions it directly.

Wilkerson pointedly avoids references to “white” “race” and “racism” in favour of terms like “dominant caste,” “favoured caste,” “upper caste” and “lower caste” in line with her thesis that racism in the United States and around the world is one aspect of a caste system - a society-wide system of social stratification characterised by notions such as hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, and purity. As she puts it “Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin.”

This approach allows her to draw unsettling parallels with India’s treatment of its untouchables, or Dalits, Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and America’s treatment of African Americans. As she says so aptly each country “relied on stigmatising those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanisation necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalise the protocols of enforcement.”

Oof. The saddest thing about that quote is how alive that practice is to this day.

💛 📚READ Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsh

I would credit this book with shaping a lot of my thinking about race and ethnicity and how they play a role in British society.

Part memoir and part history book, Brit(ish)highlights some of the fundamental contradictions that sit at the heart of what it means to be British. For example, we believe we are the nation of abolition but want to divorce that from being the nation of slavery, we’re proud of the Commonwealth, but we flinch from the legacy of the Empire. We claim that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems.

Like many on this list, this isn’t the easiest of reads, but ultimately, it’s hopeful about the future of the UK and every one of us who calls themselves Brit(ish).

💛 📚READ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story by Nathan Thrall

In 2021, Nathan Thrall, a Jewish American journalist based in Jerusalem, published an article in the New York Review of Books titled “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama”, which centred around a heartbreaking event where a school bus overturned in the West Bank, killing and injuring many children on board.

Thrall uses this tragedy to explore the daily inequalities Palestinians endure; in this instance, it is brought to life in the most heartbreaking way as parents and bystanders scramble to seek medical care for the children—care which is determined primarily by the type of government identification they hold.

This book expands on Thrall's 20,000-word essay, delving into the life of Abed Salama, a father caught in the aftermath. It paints a vivid picture of the human toll on ordinary lives caught in a decades-long struggle for self-determination.

It’s hard to recommend a book like this when the world feels so bleak, but its strength lies in its ability to humanise those often overlooked. It brings much-needed texture and nuance to a crisis where basic humanity is frequently forgotten.

📚READ The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

The Map of Salt and Stars tells the story of Nour who has recently lost her father and her home and now lives in the Syrian town of Homs, along with her sisters and mother.

Heartbroken, she sits by the fig tree in the garden and whispers the stories her Baba once told her so that the roots of the tree will carry those stories back to where her father is buried, and he won’t feel so alone. Her favourite is the story of Rawiya, a young girl from the twelfth century who left her home in search of adventure, dressed as a boy. As Nour begins her journey as a refugee she draws inspiration and strength from the epic voyage made by Rawiya 800 years ago.

💛 📚READ There is Only Us by Naomi Raquel Enright

Featured in Sharon Hurley Hall’s excellent antiracism newsletter, this beautiful, personal and nuanced essay blows up the notion of racial binaries; the idea that there is “them” and there is “us”.

As Enright says so emphatically “We must function differently if we are to envision a society that does not attach value to skin color. The lies of whiteness and inherent racial difference were created to justify an oppressive and inhumane system. In order to dismantle that system, we cannot continue to give life to the lies at its foundation”.

I thought this was a beautiful rallying cry for us all and particularly for those with a multi-heritage family.

Category: Faith

💛 📻 LISTEN A Muslim & a Jew Go There with Sayeeda Warsi and David Baddiel

I’ve recommended this podcast previously but it warrants a repeat mention.

This is not an easy listen, but it is an important one. Across the twenty episodes in series one, Warsi and Baddiel tackled topics that are pertinent to the lives of British Muslims and Jews, with a particular focus on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate.

I treated this podcast like homework - I didn’t enjoy it exactly, but I knew it would be good for me. Although I grew up in North London with friends of many faiths and none at all, and I considered myself pretty clued up when it comes to geopolitics, it’s always good to interrogate your beliefs and why you hold them dear. Did the podcast change my mind about anything significant, no. Did the podcast open my mind up to views I hadn’t previously considered, yes, and that can only be a good thing.

As history has shown us before, war doesn’t solve anything. Truth and reconciliation is the only way forward and I think that this podcast plays its own role in that.

💛 📻 LISTEN We’re Not Kidding With Mehdi & Friends: A Palestinian and a Jew Walk into a Podcast featuring Sammy Obeid & Matt Lieb Reflect on the Oct. 7 Anniversary

In this episode hosted by author and Journalist Mehdi Hasan, Matt, a Jewish American, and Sammy, a Palestinian American, share their personal experiences over the past year including how they’ve managed to maintain their sense of humour through a year of intense violence and tragedy. The topic is incredibly heavy, but this shines a light on the potential for a hopeful future for all.

Category: I’m not sure but I like it!

💛 📻 LISTEN Strangers On a Bench with Tom Rosenthal

I’m not sure what category I would place this in so I’ve given it a category of its own. It was recommended on LinkedIn by Shaazia who described it as “Compelling and thought-provoking in a way that doesn’t ask anything of the listener”.

The premise is simple - have you ever walked past a mysterious stranger on a park bench and wondered about their lives? Well, singer-songwriter, Tom Rosenthal, spent the last six months walking the many parks of London, approaching random bench-dwellers and asking if he could sit next to them and record their conversation. Every stranger remains anonymous, and neither name nor place of work is ever revealed leading to greater openness, intimacy, and surprising revelations from the participants.

It’s so compelling and just super lovely.

The Language Matters Memo

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