Banned

Hello Dear Ones,

As you know, I will soon be making the transition to another platform for my newsletter. We have been working to transition to Kit, and hope to be done soon. Before you receive your first email from our new digs, I wanted to let you know that the newsletter will be changing a bit.

I would like to introduce you to BANNED.

BANNED will be a bookish newsletter, a combination of my dedication to pursuing racial justice, my commitment to learning (especially through books), and my own writing journey as a Black woman in the Midwest.

Most of the posts for BANNED will be divided into the following sections:

Footnotes: musings on *gestures toward America* all of this, as we have done here on substack for the last 5 years

Overdue: one book that made all the difference for me

TBR: one book in my to be read pile

Bookworm: one book I'm reading right now

Prose: an update or hints/tips from my writing journey

Booked: other places you can find me

Occasionally, I will want to deep dive into a specific issue with you with a longform post. I enjoy trying to help connect the dots, and sometimes I just need to share what's on my heart and mind. I know we are in an era of communicating short- reels, tweets, headlines, captions, infographics- and those are valuable communication tools (and they take a lot of work to create). But in this season, I often feel led to writing long, to dig into where we are and why. I hope when you receive these emails, that you will join me with your cup of tea and a highlighter as we process together.

Those with a paid subscription to this newsletter, will be able to continue after our move, hopefully without interruption. But if you choose not to travel with, I want to say now, thank you for your support, your generosity, your commitment to supporting this Black woman.

I continue to be grateful for the community we have established here. We’ve walked through so many changes since we started here in 2020. I hope that BANNED will be one of your partners, as we all navigate this new era of backlash to our work and our refusal to be banned.