Intentional Reading: The Making of a Personal Politic

Current relationships to reading scare me a little.

Friends, please, sit down. We need to talk about reading.

I am coming to you humbly, but with a lot of different experiences coloring my views. I am a trained reader. I have a Ph.D. in American Studies. I am a twice published author of two books for young adults plus a lengthy list of short published works.¹ But arguably, more important is the time I have spent talking to other people about reading. I have done this formally as a professor. I help run a book club for middle school girls with my sorority. Y’all, any time I even go to a book event, I bring back books for the 7 and 9 year old kids that live next door, because I am committed to showing them what’s possible with words.

And even more important than me putting books in their hands, those kids see me with books—open book—on a regular basis. When they ask me to come outside and watch them ride bikes, I bring a lawn chair and a book. They inspect the book for a minute or two, ask a couple of questions, then flee for the bikes. But they know me as an adult who spends my time reading. I like it enough to do this on my free time.

All this to say, I’m worried about our relationships to reading. The “our” here is a little nebulous, I’ll admit. Yes, I’m worried about American children who don’t like to read and struggle to read. Yes, I’m worried about the many American adults who don’t read a book in a year. But I am also a little worried about some of the folks who do.

Back in July, bookstagrammer Azanta made a video about the “hotgirlification of reading” that I have not been able to stop thinking about since. Go, watch the video. And if you don’t have TikTok (I respect this) or you just don’t want to click, she argues that we’re in a moment where the perception and aesthetic of reading well is a cultural currency right now. It’s more valuable than doing the work of reading. Put a different way, videos about collecting several iterations of books’ special editions, hunting for invites to exclusive reader spaces/conventions, huge book hauls, etc. are sending some messaging about which parts of reading are what we should be excited about. Capitalism and consumerism is doing its big one…

This is where I need y’all to not lose the plot. This is where I need you to stay with me.

I am not saying do not collect things.² I am not saying don’t go to festivals and conventions. I am not saying “don’t have fun!”³

I am saying: the act of reading is an invaluable way to access parts of the world you might not ever see. When done well, when you have a healthy diet of reading materials, you’re doing your mind a great service. In a political moment of dire urgency, the ability to read for comprehension and critical thought is not just “a good skill to have,” it could save your life.⁴

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I suspect this is where we might veer off track again, so allow me this moment to caveat. This is not the moment to have the “being well read is elitism” conversation. I hear where folks come from with that argument, and I do think it largely comes from a rational place. But because my idea of “well read” means “having a consistent, healthy diet of reading material,” and not “having read most of the Western canon” or “reads 300 books a year,” you won’t get very far with that argument with me. I think someone could mostly read comics or romance novels and have a consistent, healthy diet of reading material, if you’re choosing the material with intention.⁵ Especially because comics in particular is a form that can contain any number of messages, genres, styles, you can feed yourself a really robust diet of information through comics.

Let’s return to this idea of “consistency” and talking about reading as a “healthy diet.” Reading is like eating well for me. Whatever combination of food you regularly intake, you’ve got to get most of your nutrients from it. It’s totally possible to eat every day and have enough energy to make your body go, but based on what specifically you put in it, you may not feel great. I think books are like that, too. Pretty much anything will activate your brain, but picking what you feed it so you’ll feel your best is important.

Again, this is hard, because as a person with a Ph.D., folks probably think I’m saying you need to go get NYT Bestselling nonfiction or textbooks or high literature to have a “healthy diet.'“

I’M NOT SAYING THAT EITHER. I’m saying just like with food, it takes time to figure out the things that will make you feel good and strong, varied enough that you don’t get bored and that satisfy your tastes. And just like with eating well, you want to “consistently” do that. Maybe you don’t do it all the time, you fall off some, you take breaks. But mostly, you want to feel good and strong, so you’re careful about what you put in your body.

There are also some books that require a little more work, just like some foods. You can’t just put a crab in your mouth and swallow. You have to learn how break those open, fish out the meat. Isn’t it so satisfying when you slow down and perfect the snap and crack of legs such that the meat comes out in one uninterrupted piece?

I think about learning things from books like that.

Sometimes, what I’ve extracted is a singular perfect feeling that I want to replicate in my own writing. It doesn’t even have to be a piece of information. Knowing things can be feelings.

But how do we know things like that, if we’re rushing from book to book, trying to hit number goals?

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Why do you read?

This is perhaps a simple question that I’m realizing the answer to is very different for folks in this age.

I read because I enjoy it. Because there is nothing else I would rather do. But there is nothing else I would rather do because of all the things I can learn in books. The types of people I can meet, the places I can go, the things it can help me reason out, the histories it helps me reconstruct for myself, to make connections. I value intention in the things I read. I love prioritize Black stories (from the diaspora largely) because I am a Black reader/writer and it’s nice to see myself represented. But I also love to buy my Black books from independently owned Black book stores because they are also part of that story and how I see myself represented. When I don’t know something, I begin the hunt for books to fill the gap. In the last few years, I realized I didn’t know enough about Palestinian or Indigenous lives, so it’s been my goal to read more there. I was curious. I followed threads. And then I asked some questions. Got more books. Many from the library. My diet is varied: I value nonfiction as much as I value superhero comics, zines as much as I love traditionally published fiction. If I’ve been reading too many new releases, I go get some stuff published in the 1900s (lol). If I’ve been reading too much American stuff, I try to pepper in some international stories (though I’m less good about this.)

I read books, I read essays online, I read short stories, I read magazines, I read comics in the newspaper, I read I read I read.

There are so many things I want to know, and I have to live knowing I will not know most of them.

That just doesn’t stop me.

I accepted long ago that most people aren’t “read anything they can get their hands on” type folks. I’m like that, but I don’t expect the people around me to have that intensity around it. (There’s probably some neurodivergence spice added to my orientation.)

But everybody I know and love values reading, even if they don’t necessarily love books the way I love books. My home as a child was not just full of books, it was full of magazines and manuals and maps and blueprints and comics. My home was full of things that taught me value different types of literacy.

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Perhaps my point is this: value, respect, intention, consistency and discernment is what makes reading a politic—not frequency, quantity, or exclusivity.

It is quite possible for reading to be a politic and a collector’s hobby, but it might be a good idea to examine the bounds of both. Being a collector doesn’t inherently create the politic; having the politic doesn’t necessitate being a collector.

To return to the idea of “the hotgirlification of reading,” I actually…think it’s kind of great. I do think hot girls read. If Superman thinks kindness is the real punk rock, I think reading might be the real hot girl shit.⁶

Similarly, I think the new Superman had a lot of us coming away thinking about what real kindness is. What it means to live it. To embody it. To have it guide every choice we make in the world.

We need a similar rigor around thinking about what it would mean to prioritize reading well in every facet of our lives.

There are some folks who will come away from this and think, “I’m just having fun. This is just for entertainment. It’s not that deep.”

Man…as someone who got advanced degrees studying things like comic books and new media, and other “less important/childish literature,” I consistently dealt with students saying “Aren’t you reading too much into it?” And I found new and interesting ways to engage the question every semester, when quite simply, the answer is no.

The rigor around reading—any type of reading, any type of narrative at all—that I’m describing should in fact be as serious as it sounds. I’ve said before that rigor is love.

I’ll never say you shouldn’t have fun reading.

But the rigor is the fun, beloved.

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Okay, friends. I just can’t get behind putting my Substack behind a paywall, but I do respect that sometimes folks want leave a little something in the plate for a good post.

So I’m going to start leaving my Venmo, Paypal and Cashapp tags in my posts and if you feel moved to leave a dollar or something, thank you! But my personal blogs have been free for 10 years, I’m not interested in changing that now.

Venmo: @Ravynn-Stringfield

Cashapp: $ravynnkamia

Paypal: @ravynnkamia

1. Record scratch! Because frankly, already, we got a problem. Having a particular set of degrees or publishing books does not inherently mean you have a developed politic around reading. Holding a Ph.D. usually indicates that you are extremely well read in your very narrow subject area. That person who has a Ph.D. in early American women’s literature may not necessarily know as much about even things seemingly close in topic. They might not know much from the 20th century. The American women’s literature might have entirely skipped Black, Latine, Asian and Indigenous women’s contributions. You get the picture.

2. I’m serious. “Curatorial fandom”—showing your interest by collecting items, stats or other information—is a real thing! There are lots of things you could read but communications scholar Henry Jenkins talks about this (largely to make points about what he’s more interested in, which is transformative fandom, but you get it.)

3. *Weary sigh.* Even with this caveat, I think people are going to miss the point. As a quick aside, once when I was teaching, a student asked me what my favorite Beyoncé album was. I said Lemonade. The next time she saw me with friends, she said, “Y’all, did you know Dr. Stringfield said she hates Beyoncé?” This is is exactly what this post is about to be like.

4. Honestly, literacy rates, book bans and the rise of artificial intelligence are just SOME of the things we should be worried about. Misinformation and propaganda are also running RAMPANT right now. It’s kicking everyone’s asses! We are in the bad place! But that is an entirely different post and this was already over 2,000 words, I had to stop somewhere.

5. I love comics and romance novels. I’m making a point to people who might dismiss this form and genre as “not valuable.”

6. You guys have to let me have this one, okay? Plus, I low key think Meg would agree so!