Show & Tell: Did I Mention Kamala?
Unstacked Digest for the week of September 22-28
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
I am not going to shut up about the fact that I got to interview Kamala Harris on The Stacks anytime soon. Love her or hate her, it is an undeniable honor to have this little book podcast seen in this way by the former Vice President and her staff.
Here is my ask. The Stacks, while mighty, is a very small show. We don’t get a lot of media attention. Even when talking to the former Veep. So if you have friends and family who you think might want to hear the conversation, I would appreciate you passing it on to them. Sharing a link directly with a loved one is really the best way to get someone to do something, like listening to The Stacks. So if you can, if you’re willing, I would appreciate you helping to get the show into more earballs.
This Week in The Stacks
I had to take a little time to talk about Ezra Klein because, yuck.
Kamala. Kamala. Kamala. Kamala.
I didn’t want any of you to miss that I talked to Kamala Harris1 so I made a little extra post this week. Especially since I skipped Friday, because I needed a frickin’ break after churning out a bonus episode (the one with Kamala, ever heard of it?).
True story: Kamala’s team wanted me to run her episode on Wednesday last week, the normal day of the show. I told them no, because I TAKE THE STACKS BOOK CLUB VERY SERIOUSLY. Nothing and no one2 was going to preempt my conversation with
on The Lilac People. 3 Which is to say, you better listen to this episode, too.Books I Read This Week
107 Days by Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris’ account of the 107 days she spent running for president in 2024. This book is a bit of a Rorschach test for the reader. If you want to hate Harris you can find reasons to do so, if you want to be sympathetic to her you can do that too. You liking the book depends more on you than it does on the book. That being said, 107 Days does exactly what you want a political postmortem to do, and maybe a little more. The 107 day construct, each chapter is a day (a few days are skipped), works really well. It keeps the pacing up and the reader driving toward something. We get some very short chapters and some that dig into bigger moments from the campaign. As far as content she’s spilling a little tea on her allies and her opponents, there is self-reflection —not enough for my taste, but she does admit to regrets and mistakes. Most politicians don’t do that, so I give her credit there. The book is short. It moves fast. I liked it generally for what it is. It is not the best book ever written, but it does what it set out to do.
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
A novel about four friends, Black millennial women, and their 20+ year friendship from their 20’s into midlife. I liked this one a lot. The characters felt so real to me. People I’ve been, people I’ve known and loved. The novel is set in both LA and NYC, two places I have lived, in the exact same timeline of the novel. The questions about fame, social media, motherhood, grief, longing, career ambition, our responsibilities to each other, and marriage felt so right on. They are the questions I have asked myself and my friends for the last 20 years. Which is to say, I really liked this book because it was hovering over so much of what I am and what I care about. Flournoy tapped into a specific ethos that is my own. There are moments the book felt slower, but intentionally so. In the ways that a life might feel slow or lulling between major moments. And the choppiness of jumping from character to character and time to time worked for me in the same way you might be deeply connected to a friend for a period of life and then drift apart and come back together. I think the form matched the story and the real lived experiences.
Fave of the week!
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care by Claudia Rowe
An exploration of the American foster care system as told through the stories of six former foster care youth. This book is longlisted for the National Book Award, and it is good, but it isn’t exceptional. And certainly not given the number of fantastic books I’ve read on the subject. The information is all there and well researched, she hits the points you think she will and should, but the storytelling wasn’t great. The book is a confusing; too many subjects and no clear framework for how she is moving between them. The easiest way to explain it would be a bit all over the place.
Housekeeping
The Stacks is now on Youtube. I’ll be sharing 2-5 minute video clips of episodes over there each week. We started with Kamala, obvi, and now it’s a thing. At the moment I am only dropping clips, but depending on how it goes,4 I might decide to load the full episodes sooner rather than later. So please go subscribe!
I am moderating this conversation between Angela Flournoy and Issa Rae, TONIGHT! Monday September 29th. It is sold out, but I bet some people don’t show and you could snag a spot.
I’m still over here guest hosting the Viral Article series on
podcast. This week I talked about the Cake Smash article from The Cut with Rachel Lindsey. I wrote about it quickly here a few weeks back if you missed it.
Things I Love…
Books
I do not love that Assata Shakur died. Not even close. I do love that she died free. I do love that more people will be reading her book Assata, a book that is so damn good. A book I love. I do love that I got to read the words of so many people I admire speak of the ways her work and life touched them. We all have to die, and the way her sent ripples through the world is a testament to how she lived.
Pop Culture
![Poem] The Thing Is by Ellen Bass : r/Poetry](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J6xy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff62fe88a-1e33-4e12-963d-d4a4ff0269fc_998x1212.jpeg "Poem] The Thing Is by Ellen Bass : r/Poetry")
I don’t know that anyone besides
and would say that poems are pop culture exactly, but for whatever reason, this feels like the spot to leave this poem. I have been reading it daily for the last two weeks. Things have felt so so hard, and the words here are getting me through. Also, thank you to José for introducing me to Ellen Bass5 back when we did Poetry Therapy. She has been a balm.