Bluesky is one of the few remaining social media platforms I allow myself to scroll through late at night. I feel comfortable there because it tends to lean left, and the voices of resistance I encounter resonate with me. I am still confronted with awful news about the latest Trump 2.0 attacks on freedom of speech, expression, equality, democracy, and sanity, but at least on Bluesky, this news is accompanied by a fitting level of outrage that is often absent in news reports.
But Bluesky is not just about outrage. Sometimes there are gifts. Take last night, for example. A post by Greg Andree, an English Teacher from Massachusetts, showed up in my feed. He had been threatened by an angry parent who said he was violating an executive order by teaching “DEI” books in his upcoming Liberty and Justice unit. He turned this threat into a call to action: resist and continue.
His post featured a photo of the so-called DEI books that the angry parent was protesting. Of course I bought one and immediately downloaded it to my Kindle. The title I chose was The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo.
I didn’t mean to stay up until midnight reading, but The Poet X was so darned good that I couldn’t put it down. I finished the novel this afternoon and already chose it for book club.
Other novels in the photo were the following:
Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed
The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya Macgregor
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Thank you, Greg Andree for sharing the (YA literary) wealth. May you teach America’s youth for years to come (should that be your wish!). Thank you, Elizabeth Acevedo for such an inspiring novel. May you and your writing inspire youth worldwide to use their voices and step into their true selves.
Happy reading, everyone!
kristininholland 