84. What’s On Our Shelf: Books That Made an Impact
Impactful Learning
Books are powerful tools for learning, connection, evolution, and reconsideration.
From storytelling through fiction to learning about the real lives of others in nonfiction works, books have the power to reshape our thinking, help us communicate with the people in our lives, and sometimes just get lost in a really good story.
Erica Courdae joins India to discuss some of the books that have strongly impacted them, both fiction and nonfiction, and how they think about everything from storytelling to gentrification to minimalism.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
Storytellers who took us on unexpected journeys
A book that helped us rethink what we know about gentrification
Reconsidering minimalism and intentionality
Book Lovers
On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, Erica Courdae (she/her) says that she has always loved to read, even when publicly being a nerd “wasn’t safe.”
India Jackson (she/her) jokes that she was definitely a nerd, “glasses included,” and that she’s always loved to learn and reading is one way she does that.
Erica has loved storytelling and escapism in fiction and the way that stories allow you to draw parallels to real life that can make it easier to process or understand what’s happening in life.
Stories That Take You on a Journey
One book that Erica says impacted her when she first read it, and which she continues to reread, is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was a book that she had meant to get around to for a long time, and when she finally did, she immediately wondered what had taken her so long.
“Something about the way [he] crafted the story just really hit me…It’s one of those that every single time I take it in again, there’s something else that I notice that I didn’t before, something else that I learned…that, to me, is always a sign of a great book.”
India says she had a similar experience after a friend recommended the book to her while she was in college and when she made time for it, she asked herself why she waited to read it.
Erica adds that it’s a book that she wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone, because “it feels like it doesn’t matter where you are in your life…it feels like such a universal book.”
India says that a book that made her feel “a way that I’ve never actually felt [prior] to taking in this story,” is Conduit by Jon Goode.
One of the stories in the collection, she says gave her, “as a woman of color…it just left me in the place of an awe at the craft and skill of the author and his storytelling capabilities to take you on an emotional journey. But also in awe of the ability to hold space for something being hilarious and also incredibly painful at the same time.”
Erica agrees that Goode’s storytelling has the ability to “just fully enrapture you with whatever he’s writing and whatever the emotions are that he’s embedding in it,” and that he is someone she looks up to as a writer.
He has appeared on both the Pause on the Play® and Flaunt Your Fire® podcasts and both India and Erica agree that he’s a great conversationalist and someone whose writing takes you on a journey to places you might not expect.
On Gentrification
Erica says that people may have preconceived notions about what kinds of books she and India read, and asks India for a book from her list that she thinks people might not expect her to have read. India turns the question back to Erica and asks for Erica’s opinion of a book that she was surprised that India had on her list, and India will do the same for Erica’s list.
Erica says she knows India too well to be truly surprised by the titles on her list, because she knows that India is a dynamic and layered person, but the book she might not have thought India would have prioritized reading is How to Kill a City, by P.E. Moskowitz.
Erica says that over time, activism has become more central to who India is and how she interacts with the world, and “it’s very different from what it used to be.”
India credits The Pause on the Play® Community as well as the networks she has built outside of it for introducing her to books like How to Kill a City.
The book is about gentrification, so both India and Erica knew they were going to be angered and surprised by aspects of the book.
India says that the book covers obvious aspects of gentrification, like what she witnesses in the DC area with section eight housing being torn down and replaced with government buildings or pricy condos that push people out of their neighborhoods, but it also reveals more subtle mindset issues when it comes to gentrification.
India says in the neighborhood she just moved into, which is majority Black, that while she has that in common with her neighbors, newcomers to the neighborhood like her are subtly changing it with their choices as they renovate and update houses.
“This book made me acknowledge [that] that mindset is how we get to the massive harm done in gentrification because you’re putting the new people’s preferences first…without considering what my neighbors, who are mostly between sixty and eighty [want].”
Minimalism and Intentionality
Erica says that How to Kill a City isn’t a book she would have naturally suggested to India years ago, and part of that may also have been because of India’s minimalist streak.
India says that in that vein, she was surprised to find The Afrominimalists Guide to Living with Less, by Christine Platt on Erica’s list, given her “intricately chosen” collections of crystals and other meaningful items in her home.
Erica says the book is in one of her “pretty piles” on her nightstand. She says that when she got pregant with her son, she had to downsize a lot of her books to make room for him, even though it broke her heart to let go of so many books.
She says that for a long time she didn’t purchase many new books, but over the last couple of years that has shifted somewhat. She doesn’t buy and keep every book she reads and she makes use of the library, but some books she finds she does want to keep a copy of, like The Afrominimalists Guide to Living with Less.
“I absolutely would never have used the word minimalist about myself for a long time, particularly because I was someone that grew up with people around me that were beyond maximalist…[but now] the biggest piece for me is really the intentionality of what I have and why.”
She says she considers how things are best served and how things might be passed down over time. It’s “that level of thoughtfulness and purposeful buying and keeping and curating, that’s where a lot of that really shows up for me.”
India has also read the book and says that she loves how different it is from other popular books about minimalism like The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up.
“It’s actually getting down to your values…Platt is framing minimalism as intentionalism to a degree. And what does that mean to you?... Because the bare white walls and clear surfaces and everything in neutral colors might not feel like your true authenticity or your preference.”
Erica says that she struggled with the concept of minimalism for years because it was broadcasted as white walls and neutral colors in a way that felt sterile to her. “To have something presented that allowed you to still keep what feels like slices of your cultural identity…that feels so much more in alignment.”
A Powerful Tool
Erica says that this conversation about books could easily be ongoing because there is always what they’re reading now, books that impacted them as children, books they go back to on a regular basis, and more.
“Books have become a way of connecting with other people, with being able to actually bring words and some understanding and analogies and things to what maybe I couldn’t have done on my own. And it’s just such a beautiful tool.”
Ready to Dive Deeper?:
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