Ep. 352 No Hierarchy of Legitimacy with J Wortham

Written By Wy'Kia Frelot

Today, we're joined by J Wortham, journalist and culture writer at The New York Times. They are the co-author of Black Futures and a former co-host of the podcast Still Processing. In this conversation, J shares their thoughts on the relationship between reading comprehension and social media, reflects on their evolving relationship with their name, and reveals what they look for in a great book.

The Stacks Book Club pick for January is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. We will discuss the book on January 29th with J Wortham returning as our guest.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

J Wortham 0:00

I started reading really young, I want to say maybe, like four. My mom would say that she would prop me up in the kitchen with the cookbook, and I learned to read by, like, reading off instructions to her while she was baking. And I advanced really quickly. So I was reading what my parents were reading, for better or for worse, like I was definitely reading adult things that I didn't understand. I remember once, like, asking my mom, like, what's a dildo? Because it was like, in a Judy bloom, it's in that Judy bloom book. Wifey, though, when she started switching more to, like, adult books, I actually tricked my mom into buying that, because she was like, oh, Judy Blume. And I was like, yeah, it's a kid's book, you know, like, knew it was not, you know, like,

there's dildos in here. Can't wait to get there.

What's that dildo? And my mom was like, Where did you hear that word in that kid's book? You bought me. I know you bought me the book.

Traci Thomas 0:51

Welcome to the stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host. Traci Thomas, and today I am beyond excited, beyond thrilled to welcome Jenna J Wortham to the stacks. Jay is a writer and editor and was the co host of one of my absolute favorite podcasts still processing. They're also the co author of black futures, an incredible multimedia exploration of black art and culture, which we have covered on this very podcast. And today Jay and I explore identity culture, pizza parties and so much more. Don't forget. Our January book club pick is the ministry of time by Kellyanne Bradley. Jay will be back on Wednesday, January 29 to discuss this book with me, so be sure to read along and then tune in and one more reminder, everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love the stacks and you want more access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks to subscribe to the stacks. Pack and check out my newsletter at Traci Thomas, dot sub stack.com. I could not make the show without the support of all of you. Okay, now it's time for my conversation with Jay Wertham. You all right, everybody. It is January 1, 2025 we made it to a new year. As you're listening to this, though, we are recording in the past, so we might be we maybe didn't make that, but I'm so excited to welcome friend of the show, back back in action. Jenna J Wortham, welcome to the stacks.

J Wortham 2:29

Happy New Year. This episode would go out. Wow, I feel so

Traci Thomas 2:33

honored. I'm really excited to get to share this brand new year with you, even though we are still back in Luigi mangiones year, the Year of Luigi. We're,

J Wortham 2:45

we're, you know, we're preparing for the new year. So that energy is like, very forward focused. We're very much like, trying to gird ourselves and fortify ourselves and, yeah, nourish ourselves in advance of 2025, so do you do, like

Traci Thomas 2:59

Reiki or something? You're very focused on energy. I'm just very curious.

J Wortham 3:04

I do? I do Traci, I do all kinds of things, pre panty one, I got trained in Reiki, sound healing, trauma, informed breath work, because I really wanted to be more of like a wellness worker. I wanted that to be kind of part of my, yeah, part of my life. And it is, but it's in a very small way, like it's, I thought I would open a practice, and the world has changed so much that that's not really feeling, I don't know. It's not feeling quite as exciting as it did before, but I still do practice privately, and I'm an herbalist, but I've been doing that for for a very long time.

Traci Thomas 3:39

When you say that you wanted to, like, make that more part of your life, was that, in place of writing, no

J Wortham 3:46

in addition to because I think what I learned as over the years, as my writing turned a little more inward, and I started working on more non fiction projects, and I started writing more about myself, and not just doing straight on tech business reporting, which is how I got my start. I realized that it it's it takes a lot of work to tap into the wells of vulnerability that that kind of writing requires. And so I actually was doing all these practices to be more embodied so that my writing could be more embodied. And I love it so much that I was like, this is an offering that I want to make to the world, and I want it to be subsidized by my w2 so that I don't have to charge you know, some of those services can be 234, or $500 for one hour, which is accessible for some but not my people, really, for the most part, not For me. And so I always had hoped to offer something that would be kind of a like a counter to and not to undervalue that work, but just to sort of be able to offer it in a way that would be just, yeah, much more accessible to people. So it was, it was always something that I saw as kind of a sidebar to my main life. And it still is. It's just. I guess I thought in 2018 2019 I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna have a little storefront. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like, it's gonna be my writing studio in between seeing clients. And look, that could still happen, but it's, it's certainly not happening in Manhattan or Brooklyn in the ways that I thought, just because the cost of living here is so astronomically high, my vision is like a little cabin on an island somewhere that you have to, like, row to get to, which is still not accessible. But now I'm like, in different ways. I'm like, I want it to be this incredibly dreamy and, like romantic and just like Soul replenishing experience. Oh my gosh,

Traci Thomas 5:38

that sounds so lovely. I want to come let me know when the island's ready for me. I'll just get

J Wortham 5:46

him. We need it. We're

Traci Thomas 5:48

gonna need it. We definitely are gonna need a boat to heal, to take us to here. I just don't know how far like, we might have to get in a boat that we can't row, because I feel like we gotta get, like, very far away, not just like, right off the ghost, okay, we sort of just dove in. But would you tell folks a little bit about your relationship to books? Like, were you a reader as a kid? When did you come to reading? When did you come to writing? When did you know that writing was a thing that you would want to do for money, all of that stuff?

J Wortham 6:27

So a few days ago, Dana Traci, who I don't know very well, but you know, is the editorial director of n plus one magazine, was like, tweeting about how much Dana loves magazines. And then was like, I wonder how many people who work in magazines made magazines when they were a little kid. And I saw that, and I was just laughing, because I was like, Oh, I 100% made a little like, you know, editorial sort of newspaper magazine, and then I tried to mail it. And the postal person was just like, I don't know what kind of like serial killer stick together thing this is but you cannot put this in the mail. So I've always gravitated towards trying to get what's in my brain outside of my brain and onto my body and into places where people can absorb it. And I think I was in denial for a long time. I just didn't grow up in a way where I had anyone around me showing or sharing or really teaching me that that could be a job like most of my family. I grew up in the DC, Virginia, Maryland area, right outside DC, in a place called Alexandria, Virginia. Most of my family works in the military. A government job is a good job. You've got benefits, you've got pension. So that's sort of what we were steered towards, you know, just reliable, steady salaries, which is, in some ways, it can be a creative job, but there wasn't really examples of that for me. So even though I love to read, and my family were big readers. You know, I grew up in a house where everybody was like, sitting around reading books constantly, whether it was like Stephen King or cookbooks, or like R L Stein or Christopher Pike, you know, whatever you can get at the grocery store. We were reading and we were big library people, big Scholastic, you know, families. I always got the pizza I always got the pizza party. I was kind of chunky when I was little, so I was getting that pizza party. And I'm still that same kid. If we could read, if I could, like, show people how much I read, and get pizza, gluten free, pizza with, like, cashew

Traci Thomas 8:27

cheese. If I could get pizza for the one that I do, I'm telling you like, and I mean, I can, like, I get paid, and I could buy a pizza, because it also has to be, like, not very good pizza, you know, like,

J Wortham 8:43

it's gotta be cardboard. We also have to all like, gather,

Traci Thomas 8:47

yeah, I need recognition well, for my reading and my eating,

J Wortham 8:52

absolutely, I know. And we are, we are in a bit of a literary, not literary. We're in a bit of a literacy crisis. And I don't just mean in terms of people reading books. I mean just reading comprehension, which I think we see over and over again as our lives get more digitized, even in like miscommunications that we have over text message, which I'm having currently with two friends right now. But I think there's just so much that gets lost when all of our reading is kind of stripped of, yeah, the human touch or human voice or human context. And I think

Traci Thomas 9:27

I see this all the time on like threads or Twitter or whatever, whatever platform, where someone will say something, they'll vent some frustration, and then someone else will come in and correct them, even though that wasn't the thing that the original person was saying. Where it's like, this miscommunication, or the reading comprehension is just so poor. And I think some of it is right, like it's we're stripped of the human connection. And I think some of it is we're going so fast, like we're not slowing down to be like, What is this person trying to say? Or even if you're like. I think they're saying this, and I want to respond in this way, and not just pausing and being like, is there another way I could read this like, is there another way I can think about these same exact words? And it's so that's what makes being on social media for me very uncomfortable.

J Wortham 10:16

I'm with you 100% and I think it's, it's very much a condition of kind of living more in our heads and less in our bodies. It just like hence why I want to do all this embodiment work. But if something, if there's something that Tiktok University has taught me, it's that our inner monologs can really leach out into the outside world. And so when you're reading a text, we're bringing all of our baggage, we're bringing all of our assumptions, and there's no checks and balances. And I think when you're spending more time, I don't know, I think when you're spending times in like narrators heads, and you're seeing them go through these same dilemmas, or you're seeing your I don't know, that's like, the point of fiction to me. It's and non fiction, it's like you actually build up, like a vocabulary and like mental muscle for dealing with the worlds in a way that I really feel like we're losing. So I think

Traci Thomas 11:03

that's right, everyone needs a pizza party. Everyone needs a pizza party. Yeah, because then you'll be more literate and you'll have pizza so you'll be happy, you'll feel good. You said that everyone in your family read, and you always had books around. Do you feel that you read as an adult? What your adults in your life were reading when you were a kid?

J Wortham 11:23

Oh, this is a great question. In some ways, yes. In most ways, no. I mean, because I was a really precocious reader, I started reading really young, I want to say maybe, like four. My mom would say that she would prop me up in the kitchen with the cookbook, and I learned to read by, like, reading off instructions to her while she was baking. Oh, my God, I love this. And I advanced really quickly. So I was reading what my parents were reading, for better or for worse, like I was definitely reading adult things that I didn't understand. I remember once, like asking my mom, like, what's a dildo? Because it was like in a Judy bloom, it's in that Judy bloom book. Wifey, the like one, when she started switching more to, like, adult books, yeah? And then when that was around the house, I actually tricked my mom into buying that, because she was like, oh, Judy Blume. And I was like, yeah, it's a kid's book, you know. Like, knew it was not, you know,

like, there's still those in here. Can't wait to get there. What's that built out? My mom was like,

Where did you hear that word? And I was like,

in that kids book, you bought me, I know you bought me the book. You got it. You got

it. I remember doing a book report on a Stephen King novel, and it was like, I don't remember which one, but maybe it was like, it, you know, it's just like, so scary. And the teacher, my fourth grade teacher, was like, I don't know if this is appropriate for I used to go by Jennifer, by for Jennifer, and I definitely it's not appropriate for the class, even if, if it's like, they're at the level, right? These kids are not at the level. I remember my parents famously were just like, so you want to like, you want us to like, dumb our kid down. Like, what do you want? What do you want us to do? You know, yeah, um, what

Traci Thomas 12:54

did they want? What did the teacher want you to do? Them to do, I think,

J Wortham 12:56

just like, then read

Traci Thomas 12:58

a better book for the

J Wortham 13:00

assignment, just read something else to the class. But there weren't books like, yeah, and I have a lot of older sisters, so there were books from their high school experiences around, or maybe my parents had these books, but, like, The Bluest Eye was around, which, of course, I'm still reading Tony as an adult. Yeah, there was a lot of Terry McMillan around, so I was reading Terry McMillan, but I think that I'm a much broader reader than my parents were. I think they've really read to for and I mean, it's I think the goals are the same. I just think we know about different types of books, if that makes sense, yeah, but I definitely learned the art of reading to escape reading, to decompress, like the pleasures of, like a wintry or, you know, rainy Sunday, curled up on the couch, yeah, with music, like stereo, you know, music on the stereo, something cooking in the kitchen, and, like, reading, yeah? And that was a real gift of my childhood, yeah.

Traci Thomas 13:59

How do you like to read now. Oh,

J Wortham 14:01

my God, Traci, I read every which way. I mean, because, you know, we're in this business, we get lots of galleys. My favorite thing is when I get, I mean, you know, galleys are in short supply these days, so I feel very lucky when I get one. Yeah. But my favorite thing to do is, you know, getting the galley before I'm getting the hardcover better. You know, buying the hardcover and like reading it in the tub, or like reading at the beach.

Traci Thomas 14:20

I'm a tub reader. You're a water person, you're a water stream. Water person, yeah. What's your sign? Scorpio?

J Wortham 14:29

Not. I have a stellar in Scorpio. It's like, so intense, like, my dream is to be, like, on a very hot beach with a book and, like reading the book till I'm too hot, going for a swim, plopping back down and drying off. And like, reading the book so it gets kind of waterlogged, yeah, but it's like, too hot to be on my phone. It's like, I'm underlining. And like, annotating.

Traci Thomas 14:53

Do you have snacks and beverages in this perfect place? Yes, always. What are they? Oh my

J Wortham 14:58

gosh. They're something. Salty, something sweet, something bubbly, cold Seltzer, lots of water. I mean, I also really enjoy, you know, like this time of year in New York, when, well, it's not even that cold, which is a scary thing, but allegedly, you know, imagine, like snowflakes coming down, and there's something baking in the oven, and I'm curled up on a couch with, yeah, like, the fire going well, my TV playing a fire, you know? And like, I've got the book, like, that's also a dream, like, yeah, and there's, like, nowhere to go, nothing to do, that's also, and that's like, I'm having sort of, like, maybe a delicious Chai or a matcha, like, popcorn. Okay,

Traci Thomas 15:40

we can read together, you and I, we have, we have similar reading fantasy life. I'm

J Wortham 15:45

definitely a tea girl. Do you read to fall asleep? I

Traci Thomas 15:49

read every night before bed, and sometimes I fall I don't read to fall asleep, but usually when I read at night I'm so tired I fall asleep. Yeah, but if a book is really good or scaring me, I will stay awake.

J Wortham 16:04

Okay, do you read on like a Kindle or like,

Traci Thomas 16:08

I do everything I do print, I do Kindle, I do audio, and sometimes I do all three on the same book, because I will get, like a e galley link of a book, and then I'll also get a physical copy, and then I'll request the library copy of the audio. So, like, if I have to read quickly, I might be consuming them in different ways, like when I when I'm in the bathtub. Now, I started using my Kindle because I like to turn all the lights out, and then I don't have to have any light except for the light on my Kindle, yeah, or, like a candle, but I can't really read my candle light. Like, it's like, I'm not quite that quaint yet. So I will do a combination of things, and it just depends on what I'm what I have, and what format is the easiest for me. Like, I'm getting ready to go out of town, and I'll just take my Kindle, because I go with my kids and too much shit to carry like three books with me for a day. You know? Yeah, yeah, but I prefer a book. A book is my a physical thing in my hands is my favorite. But sometimes it's just not practical.

J Wortham 17:10

That's right, yeah, that's right, yeah. I'm trying to get back into a Kindle.

Traci Thomas 17:14

I like it like, especially when I'm out and about, I can throw it in my little fanny pack, and if I'm at the park with my kids and they're doing shit, I can just whip it out and read a few pages. Like, it's really helpful when I was when they were little babies, I could take it with me. Like, I didn't get into the Kindle until the pandemic started. So I didn't have one, really, before that, and my kids were born right before the pandemic. So all of my Kindle relationship is tied to my kids somehow, which is like, so weird to be like this device is inextricably linked to my children. But yeah, okay, I know you're working on a book length project. Can you talk about it at all? Will you talk? Yeah? Oh my god, I wasn't sure. Is it coming? Do you know?

J Wortham 17:54

I don't know. Luckily, I will say this is the beauty of I'm working with Penguin Press like they have been very chill. It has taken me a very long time. I'm working on revisions right now, and they're feeling really good, but it's, it's such raw material that it's been really hard to feel comfortable enough to like go into the material. Okay, so there are these huge gaps where I just don't work on it, which is really unusual for me. That's, I mean, I, you know, black futures when, which came out in 2020, I mean, that was a long project, but we were wrangling it was just so much admin, because we had like, 150 contributors, and so that was really like, paper. It was like, more paperwork, or, yeah, yeah. So it was just really like, man hours, human hours, like, you know, just like, and then we finally hired an assistant. We're like, oh, this is so much easier. We should have done this in the beginning. But great, you learn. You know, you live and you learn. But this one, I'm like, oh my god, this is really like, like, I'm trying to hype myself back up to get into this essay about recovery and my dad. And

Traci Thomas 18:55

we should back up just a little bit. Will you tell folks the premise of the book, and if it has a title, at least a working title. Will you? Can you share it? And if not, that's okay too.

J Wortham 19:04

Yeah, yeah, it has a working title, but I think this is what it's going to be called, but it's, it's called work of body, and it's about dissociation, and my relationship to being a very dissociative person, and what it has looked like to figure that out, and what it looked like to try to, and I'm using air quotes here cure that. And then kind of coming into awareness that, well, this is sort of the one of the default settings that I live within. And there's a, there's a very particular, you know, set series of contexts, contextual reasons why. And then interviewing, I think I interviewed over 100 people for this book, and just coming to realize that, yeah, so many people enter third places, for pain management, for artistic, artistic channeling, for for pre and that it is, I mean, so many people said it was a necessary part of living in the modern world, which was. Needing to dissociate, needing to check out, needing to, you know, to zip out. And so it's really kind of tracing this arc around expectations of wellness and thinking about the demands of humans and what is ours and not ours. And I mean, we're meant to dissociate to some degree, like we're meant to spin in circles as little kids or play games and get lost in fantasy worlds. We're meant to read and consume art and lose track of ourselves to gain access to other experiences of ourselves. And then there's kind of a spectrum of more maladaptive responses, which I kind of get into as well interesting.

Traci Thomas 20:33

So it's got some memoir to it. And then a memoir, yeah, it's a blended Am I crazy to think that at one point this book was about, but like the rear end? Did I make that up, that you were writing a book about, like, booties. Whoa.

J Wortham 20:50

I mean, should I do a book on booties now, like, I

Traci Thomas 20:56

think you were doing, like a whole book on the back side or something. Did I make that? Oh,

J Wortham 21:00

no, you didn't make that up. But I think that's someone else. I think there is a book, there is a book

Traci Thomas 21:06

that came out about butts, but I, for some reason, in my mind, decided that's a different book. It's like yellow, it's got a peach on the cover. But I, for some reason, feel like I heard you say this years ago, but I maybe I needed us. I don't know, maybe you don't

J Wortham 21:21

remember something, but that is, I don't remember a lot of things, like, maybe you tapped into something that this well, anyway. So this is not the butt book, but I would love to do remember a butt book. There's so much to say about buts.

I feel like there is. That's why I was, like, Jenna's writing a book about but

yeah. I mean, the butt does come up a lot in this book in relationship to my body and how I perceive it, and how my figure has a lot of gender signifiers attached to it. And because I'm non binary, you know, I mean, I've dissociated from notions of gender. And so that's and that's a very common arc in a non binary trend story. So there is some butt stuff in there, but okay, I'm gonna write this down. I'm gonna look into this. I don't know. Let's see. This is the point Traci though, in the movie where, like, the time traveler, you plants the seed in the person's mind that then, like, changes the course of history. So I'm gonna

Traci Thomas 22:15

go back and listen to, like, everything you've ever said to try to find where you mentioned a bug. I'm sure I did. I don't. I feel like it must have been on, still processing, like there must have been something back in those days, which, which is, which should be said, is maybe the most important podcast in my entire life. I love, love that show so much. I think about certain episodes still, like, after the travel ban, the episode you guys did with The New York Times food person who, like, talked about, like this, like, golden milk recipe or something like comfort foods. Yeah, that episode, and that the stay WOKE episode. Oh yeah, that one. Oh, my God. Like I think about the show too much, unfortunately for me, but I just love, love, not a question, just a comment. But I do have a question we were talking about this before we got on, which is your name? Professionally, you go by Jenna Wertham. Clearly, there was a point in your life you went by Jennifer, and now you use Jay, and I'm, I want to hear you talk a little bit about, sort of considering to use Jay professionally or not. How you think about that? Obviously, you have a body of work. I just read that Lucy saunt book. I heard her call my name, and Lucy talks about, kind of trying to figure out what to do. And in their case, it was just the addition of one letter. I went from L, U, C to L, U, C, y, but even still, feeling like I have all this work as this other name, and so I would love to hear how you're thinking about that.

J Wortham 23:56

Yeah, it's been a real conundrum for me. And I think too it's been really lovely for most of my professional outlets. I'm just going by Jay, but I never announced. I mean, I never even announced on Instagram that I was going by Jay. I just sort of put the rest of my name in parentheses on Twitter and Instagram, and it was actually really nice to see a lot of people notice and just start calling me Jay or asking me about Jay, and the decision to shorten my name even more came maybe it was 2020, to be honest with you. So I was okay, so I'll back up. So I was born Jennifer, named, in part for my father's mother, who was named Virginia, but because I lived in Virginia, it was like, Are you gonna be Virginia? And Virginia? No, so Jennifer's close. And then when I was in some grade, some elementary school grade, there were many Jennifers was popular name in the 80s, and the teacher mixed this up. And so my parents were like, Why do your papers? I think the other little girl's last name was Hall. So they were like, Why is your paper? Say Jennifer Hall? And I burst into tears, and I was like, because the teacher keeps telling me this, like, I'm she keeps telling me I'm wrong. And so my parents were furious. And they were just like, this child knows who they are, you know. And so my dad was like, well, you can be Jenna. And so then I've been Jenna ever since, and so much so that people in my life, when I have to sell them or do a wire transfer for whatever reason that you have to send your friends money through the wires. But you know, sometimes it happens and they would be like, I'm sorry, who's Jennifer? And I'd be like, oh, like, it's just so or, like, traveling with friends and, like, they see your past house and they're so horrified, and they're like, you're such a Scorpio, like, and I'm like, It's not that, it's just, I truly don't feel connected to that name, right, right? And then I always, you know, there have always been people in my life who've called me Jay, or just the letter, or j, A, y. There were always people in my life who called me Jen. I never went by Jen, but there was just a period of time in my life when when people were really just calling me Jay, and I liked it. And I was just like, this fits. I'm coming into understanding of myself as non binary. I feel like even something even shorter and more gender neutral feels really good. And so I mostly started using it on the podcast, which was great. And Wesley, who was my co host on the show, who I'm seeing later tonight, actually, we still make the show, it just doesn't get recorded. That's like, the funny thing, it's like all of our interactions, are, like, episodes,

Traci Thomas 26:23

okay, well, can you just record a little bit for me? And just we, should,

J Wortham 26:27

I know we have these. This is a cul de sac, which is what we would call in the show. And we would like, open a new tab without closing the first one. But we had this moment when Wesley called me and he was having a lot of feelings about Luigi Mangione, and we were just, we were, like, talking on a street corner in bed style. I was on the phone, and like, somebody passed by who I was like, I think they can hear us, and they but, like, maybe they know the show because they were just watching so amused. And he was just cackling. And I'm like, I'm like, but this is why this is related to wicked. And he's like, keep God, you know, we're just, like, having this full back and forth about, like, Luigi and like pain consciousness and like wicked and like the fact that there's this global movie out that's about erasure and pain, and like, the cost of society run by essentially corporations. And like, nope or not, like connecting any of these things. And so we still make it, but it would be fun. I mean, maybe we'll do it in the future. We're both just

Traci Thomas 27:19

so busy. I mean, you're both so busy, and you've like, both totally, you know, glowed not glowed up, glowed out, like you've but I personally, I know I'm not alone, but I personally, there are things that happen in the world where I'm like, I wonder what Jay and Leslie would say. I

J Wortham 27:35

know it's honestly a relief to not live at the at the velocity of the news, because it is, it is not a human pace, like, it's not meant to be legible. I think it is meant to kind of break us. I think it's meant to overload our systems a little bit. And so I'm really, really grateful to not have to try to condense it and then also try to negotiate with, like, the ever conservative media atmosphere, like, try to negotiate to, like what we can and can't say. So I'm truly grateful around that, but I think, but going back to the next back to the cul de sac, or out of the cul de sac, out of the cul de sac, I'm putting the car in reverse, but I want to know what you think, because I have been very worried that if I release my new book under J, people won't find it. So I think that's why I've been using Jay quotations, Jen you know Jenna? Quotations, Jay Wortham, because I want it to

Traci Thomas 28:25

I don't think so, because your last name is so distinctive to me, so to me, and also not that it matters. But like, there are people who drop last names completely because of marriages that fall apart, right? Like this happens. People do change their names professionally, or they add a last name because of a marriage, you know? So I feel like there is precedent in, I mean, not that that matters, but I don't know that it does, yeah, but, like, I don't, I don't think that it's something that people can't wrap their brains around. Obviously, like transphobia and like that will be part of it, of course. But as far as people in good faith, like, I don't, I don't think it's hard. I also think, like, it would still be filed basically in the same place, because it's still the same initial last night, right? Like it's still Jay Wortham or J Oh, you're blowing my mind. So to me, I think it's, I think it is not anything that myself or anyone who wants to read your work would have a problem. And also, there'll be so many people who come to you because of this book who will only know you as Jay. And if that's how you want to be known going forward, that's how you should introduce yourself to those people, that's what I think. But

J Wortham 29:42

that's really interesting. I mean, it is that's so helpful to think about, and it does help kind of normalize this idea that people change their names for all kinds of reasons, and that there's no hierarchy of of legitimacy. It's just a thing that happens. And I'm trying to also remember that for myself, I. Me too, that, you know, I'm in a relationship right now with someone who has only ever known me as Jay and they and so it's also really, it really does feel like a new era of self that I've just fully stepped into. And I've kind of talked the times into rebranding my archive, because now I have two archives. I have a J Wortham archive and a Jenna worth them archive, and I'm getting them to combine them with Jay a post, you know, the height you would have in the middle, sorry, Jenna quote, J worth them. Because I just, I want there to be that transition time. Because I just think it's really weird to just all of a sudden, not I just never announced it, and all of a sudden, anyway, so something about that I feel kind of wedded to a little bit of, like a slower pace shift, even though it's been a few years. But that feels good. And then I feel like I can be, just be Jay, because now it's kind of, you see both, yeah, only see one. It's all together. And that kind of consolidation helps me just feel a little less scattered, like I don't I just don't want myself to be, and it's Jenna's not a dead name. So people say it and I don't like, I don't like it because I'm it feel I'm like, really talking about but it's, it's certainly not a dead name, and it doesn't bother me. And my family is like, they're always like, Jenna, Jay, Jen. Like they can't their brains glitch. And

I'm like, they're like, we're going back into Jennifer. Okay, no,

truly. Like, my sister is just like, I'm just calling you sissy, which is what she's always called me. But, yeah,

Traci Thomas 31:25

I mean, it's names are also so interesting, because some people feel so closely tied to a name or a nickname or whatever, and then some people don't have, they have, like, there's some people who have, like, a million nicknames, so they don't have any real tightness to that. Like, sometimes I'll ask them like, oh, how do you pronounce your name? I'll be like, Oh, are you Carolyn or Caroline? And they'll be like, either. I'm like, What do you mean? Whoa. I'm terrified by this. Like, you don't have an opinion of how you'd like to be called. And they're like, No, either one is fine. Like, people mess it up all the time. And I'm just like, Okay, well, how do you say your name? But it is. I am fascinated because I have a name that doesn't really have nicknames that like, I have them, but they're, it's like, T or TV T, which are my initials, but I don't have like, a, you can't really shorten my name like, so I'm always just, yeah, sometimes people but not really, never stuck. Okay, my brother sometimes calls me Trey. Like, there are people who call me nicknames, but the name Traci is just, it's a whole name, you know, like, it's not like Steven, where you could be Steve or Stevie, or, like, you know what I mean. And so I think I have different thoughts about names, because I'm like, Yes, you just use your name. Use your whole entire name, because that's all you have. But I have always been jealous of people who have, like, lots of options.

J Wortham 32:44

I hear that, no, I really hear that. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, there's something about being unattached to a name that's also really powerful. And it's, it's a little bit like, you know, our names are so imbued with our parents desires for us. And so there's something really lovely, also about kind of stepping outside of that. And people also sometimes think I'm saying Jade when I introduce myself as Jay. Sometimes I'll say, Oh, just the letter. And I have a little diamond Jade now that I'm wearing, but it's tiny, and to get a fat one. So if anybody has recommendations, yeah, I just like a fat ass Jay, but I also want, like a fat ass Scorpio. So I'll get both. We'll see. It's like, when we get together,

Traci Thomas 33:22

maybe the Scorpio has, like, a diamond J or something. It's sort of in the shape, you could get a Scorpio that's in the shape of a j, right, the tail, kind of that

J Wortham 33:31

would work and do, like, a little but it's nice, because sometimes I'm like, Yeah, Jade. And then I'm like, maybe I am also a jade. I don't know. Like, it's just like, but I'm not. But it is kind of fun to just be like, I don't know,

Traci Thomas 33:42

yeah, okay, we're gonna take a quick break, and then we're gonna come back and talk about books. All right, we are back. I know that you are a preparer, and I don't want you to be mad at me, but I do do one surprise thing. Every episode someone has written in and they're asking for a book recommendation. You only have to come up with one, but don't be mad at me. No, okay, this is from Katie. Katie said I need help reading about history from other countries. I read a lot of US history, but I'm in despair about how our country fucks things up and continues to fuck things up. So I'd like to get some global perspective, any titles about other countries history and how they fuck things up. Slash, we are all doomed. JK, kind of so I came up with three books that I want to read for similar reasons as Katie, that I have not read but have come highly recommended. And I can go first and then if you need a second to think. And yeah, so my first pick is King Leopold's Ghost, a story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa. And it's by Adam hothschild, yeah,

J Wortham 34:53

I think that's his Mother Jones. Honor. Mother Jones, yeah,

Traci Thomas 34:56

um, and it's a deep. I dive into King Leopold, the second of Belgium, who carried out like a very brutal plundering of the territory around the Congo River. So this is all about that history, which is a history that I basically know nothing about, and it has been on my list for an embarrassingly long time, and everyone I know who's read it is like, this book is unreal, fascinating, like it's gonna blow your mind. So that's the first one that came to mind, Katie. The next one is by an author that I love, who wrote my favorite book of 2024 which was the Challenger book. He wrote a book called Midnight in Chernobyl, the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster. His name is Adam Higginbotham. I'm giving you lots of atoms today, and it's all about the Chernobyl disaster. So talk about people fucking things up. That's That's this one. And then the last one I picked is the 100 Years War on Palestine, history of settler colonialism and resistance. 1917 through 2017 by Rashid Khalidi, which is the story, or a story, of Palestine, and what's happened there over 100 years from 1917 to 2017 so those are my picks for you. Jay,

J Wortham 36:16

yeah, I'm looking at my bookshelf while you were talking. I think King Leopold's Ghost is a great recommendation. I might also recommend cast by Isabelle Wilson, just because, you know, that book, there's a lot of great reviews and critiques about sort of the framing of trying to get, you know, understand the history of enslavement and kind of extra, you know, put it on top of the history of the cast system. But I do think that it's a very good book for understanding how global forces sort of decided to subjugate and extremely marginalize like all the black people and their different and their different social systems, and kind of what those systems look like. Like it's it's just a really diabolical book for understanding how much coordination there was. Yeah, like, I think that was the thing that I took away the most, which was how much all these governments, South Africa, the US government, Indian Government, were all in conversation about creating these systems of subjugation. They didn't happen in isolation. And I think that's really an important thing to kind of understand when thinking about kind of global colorism and global imperialism and global oppression. Yeah, the other book I want to recommend. I don't see it here, but there's a book that I've actually been wanting to read, which is Anthony lowenstein's the Palestine laboratory. Oh, I don't know which is about, yeah, I always see it and I always pick it up and I haven't bought it, but it's basically about the history of Israel as, like a developer of really advanced surveillance technology that the rest of the world uses, and the US is obviously implicated in that, because of our relationship to Israel. And it's just, it's something that I've always wanted to read. So those would be my two ideas.

Traci Thomas 38:01

Those are great. Katie, if you read them, let us know what you think everyone else. You can email. Ask the stacks at the stats podcast.com to get your recommendations read on the air. Okay, I'm so excited. Two books you love, one book you hate.

J Wortham 38:16

Okay, I could not come up with a book that I hate, Jay

Traci Thomas 38:21

tell me why I really couldn't. I don't know. People were assigned in school, nothing that you read where you were like, What the fuck

J Wortham 38:28

this sucks. Well, sure, yeah, many books like that. I mean, ooh. I mean, so. I mean, there's so many books, I'm sure, but there isn't a book that like I think I've just blacked out a lot of those books, like, I'm sure there's like, Heart of Darkness or something that really just grinds my gears, but I honestly just don't think about that stuff anymore. What's your book that you hate?

Traci Thomas 38:54

I hate so many books. The book that I hated the most this year was knife by Salman Rushdie. I hated it. I hated it. I thought it was like, I thought it felt rushed. First of all, I thought it felt like, sort of like a money grab kind of book, like people want me to write this, so I'm gonna write this. There was some weird fetishization I felt of his wife, who's a black woman, in the way that he wrote about her. It just kind of got my spidey senses up. And I also thought that, like it was playing on some weird racial stuff, kind of more broad, like I just didn't, I didn't, I didn't think it was that good. I also hated it more as the year went on the more lists it was on, because it also feels like a book that like writing people think is great because of how he writes about writing which I don't necessarily think is good. I think that's just like critics, who are writers, who write, they like it because it speaks to what they do. Just like how Oscar movies are always like movies about movie making, because all the people in Hollywood are like, this is about me. Like, I can't see myself here. Um. Um, so that's my most recent hate. But I hate a lot of books. I enjoy hating art, like I enjoy seeing something or watching reading something and being like, this is so bad. I hate it here. It's like, totally, are

J Wortham 40:11

you a Capricorn?

Traci Thomas 40:12

No, but both my kids are, and my dad was, Wow, I'm a Leo, which is extremely intense in a different way. Yeah. Okay,

J Wortham 40:21

cool. Well, that makes sense. I mean, I guess sometimes when I when I engage with something that I don't think is particularly well made or good, I actually kind of enjoy it more, because I'm very curious about what it is invoking inside of me. Like, why am I activated? Why am I angry? I mean, this sort of analysis. You're giving a knife, which I haven't read yet, but, I mean, that's really interesting, maybe to me more so than if you're like, this book deals with, you know, perfectly paced, and it has a great racial analysis and great interracial I don't know, it's like, there's some I'm like, Oh, maybe I will read it now, because I'm curious to see what this reveals about a process and a person, and maybe even a contemporary landscape, if this was something that it felt like it just had to come out, like, I'm always kind of like, ooh, the story behind the story. And we're also in a moment too, when, like, the media around media is almost as interesting as the media itself. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 41:17

yeah, I think that's right. Okay, you're off the hook for a book you hate because you hate because you explained it. I get it. I hear you. I'm letting you off the hook because I like you. But you do have to tell us two books you love.

J Wortham 41:28

Okay, I've just picked these are, like, obvious ones, and I just felt like I had to use them because they're books I just think about all the time in terms of craft and story structure, but the color purple, okay, I think about that book all the time. And just like the genius of starting this book with a little girl's prayer, like Dear God, it is so incredible. And then beloved, which is also a book I think about all the time, because it is truly one of the most layered. You know, if this world was just and not organized around whiteness as like, the default setting for everything, there would be, and there may be, honestly, I haven't looked into this, but there would be, just like so many Reddit threads devoted to the layers and layers and layers of reference, referential symbolism, and, you know, Christina Sharpe, who wrote ordinary notes, which is, which is actually one of the best things I've ever read. It's, like, amazing. That's a book I'm saying love, like, an incredible book. I sat in on one of her classes that she was teaching in, teaches in Toronto, but, like, I don't know, I forget university now, because my brain is at half speed. But she was teaching a graduate seminar on beloved, and I was able to, I was like, I want to audit this whole class. You know? She was like, lol. And I was like, No, I'm so serious. Like, I would come live here and take this class. But the day that I got to watch her talk, you know, she was, she was giving this lecture, and actually the students were presenting. But one of the things that came up in these conversations was about how Tony rewrote all the great American novels through Beloved. So like right now, a book this year that people are talking a lot about is James right first of all, Everett and sort of rewriting the story of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. But like that happens in Beloved, you know, Denver, the white girl who finds beloved before she's fully escaping, finds her laying in the grass, just like Jim. So you and she describes her as a snake, which is kind of how Jim describes seeing Huck Finn and or maybe I'm not getting that detail right, but the snake imagery is also invoked in that initial encounter. And it they get on a boat together and they travel down the river. I mean, she does this over and over again in this book. And so, you know, I just saw interstellar and IMAX in Lincoln Center, like, when I should have been working, but like, instead, we went to we got tickets and went and then I got home, and I was reading all of the comments on Reddit, and it's just like, yeah, beloved deserves the same obsession. It is such an incredibly rich text. Have you

Traci Thomas 44:01

read or heard Toni Morrison's lecture on goodness?

J Wortham 44:07

Probably ages ago. It's from like the Harvard

Traci Thomas 44:08

Divinity School. So I just, I just read it on a recommendation from said Jones. And one of the things that she talks about to your point is like, how goodness and evil show up in American literature. And she sort of frames this lecture by going back through her own catalog and how she deals with goodness. And she's very interested, and I think, I think this comes up in a lot of her other work, but in this lecture, she's clearly very interested in her work's place in the American canon, not necessarily like that she feels she deserves a place, but that her work is always referencing those things. So it does not surprise me to think about Huck Finn in relationship to beloved or any other sort of air quote Great American Novel showing up in any way in her work. Work. And I love Shakespeare, and I'm convinced she did too, because so much of there are so many, like, references or little scenes that remind me of, like, other moments in Shakespeare where I'll have that feeling of like, this is that scene? Or like, this is this is Macbeth, this is whatever, and, and so I think she really was like leaving us or wanting us to connect the dots between the things that we consider we consider great, and that both we and great should probably go in air quotes too there. Yeah, um, what's the last really great book you read?

J Wortham 45:39

Um, I did write some of these down. This was a tough, tough one. Also because great, I was like, Well, what did constitute great? But I think some of the things I read most recently that really has stayed with me. Well, we talked about James at Percival Everett, because I just, I really love the RE interrogation of historical moments and just kind of historical framings of the American fantasy and the American canon. So I think that just felt really right on time and appropriate. I wrote down Searcy by Madeline Miller, is that? Alan Miller, yeah, that's right, because that's a book where the writing is so evocative. It's a book I read often when I'm kind of stuck in my own writing and I'm trying to shake loose more descriptions, because it's just, it's a book that is so beautifully planned, also like this. You know, it's like you read, I read a lot of books that are great, and then they you can kind of tell that things fall off by the last third, and everyone's like, tired of writing. We gotta go. What happened? What happened here? And the book just does not like it is it is actually like a perfectly laid out book. Did you ever read the Broken Earth trilogy by still

Traci Thomas 46:55

have never read it. That's on my to do list in 2025 at least the first, my

J Wortham 47:01

God, also brilliant. I just really was, like, blown away. And I don't, I'm not like a I struggle with kind of, it's like a sci fi. It's like more fantasy, though, and it's like, that's just not my realm. I would, I would love it to be, but it's just not okay. But you picked Ministry of time, but that's more science, science fiction than fantasy. Okay? I think,

Traci Thomas 47:19

right, well, I don't know, but so you so you'd like a little sci fi in your

J Wortham 47:24

and, yeah, I like, I thought ministry time was great, I think, and we'll talk about more, but I thought it was a great book, because I like books that are set in the future, or, like the near future, but they sort of read like present day. And, yeah, the only thing that's different is, you know, there's a bit of, um, there's a bit of embellishing around, you know, just giving you these hints, like, Oh, we're not in 20 the 20th century, the 21st century, I think that movie, the new Aubrey Plaza movie, my old ass. Oh, yeah, does that really well, okay, I haven't seen there's like, these little moments, yeah, it's, it's a funny. It's basically like this teen girl is able to access herself as a 30 year old, and they form this friendship. And there are these moments when Aubrey positive, the adult, will be like, Damn, you're eating that salmon. Enjoy it. We don't have that anymore. And then you're like, Oh, shit. And then you're like, wait, what year is the current movie we're watching? Right? Because they're so rural that you can't tell so I love those kind of intimations. Wait, I was also gonna say the vast Wilds by Lauren Groff, oh yeah, okay,

Traci Thomas 48:24

you love books insane.

J Wortham 48:26

I mean, it's I just really appreciate the craft of fiction. I'm not a fiction writer. I do pretend to write fiction in my spare time, just for fun. But I really admire when someone can really create an entire world that I just get so absorbed into, which is very hard to do. I read a lot of fiction, a lot of it, I'm just kind of like, thumbing through, like, I want to see how it ends, but, but this book, I was just like, and the story, yeah, I was in it, and the story is, like, you know, it's, if anyone hasn't read it, or they're interested in it, it's, it's the story, to the best of my memory. But it's about a young woman who is like an indentured servant who gets conscripted to travel with this wealthy family to a colony in what we call America, and the family runs out of money, there's no food, and they're all starving, and she's being abused by the family, and so she just takes off into the wilderness. And you know, you're not rooting for her. Like, it's not, you know, she's not the problem in the construct of this new world that's being stolen. But you know, she's also part, in some way, though, the problem. And so it's really interesting to read the story of, like, what this land was like, this imagining that Lauren has of what this parcel looks like, it's in there in Virginia, and like what it was like who's living there, like what it looked like, what it smelled like before Americans, future Americans, fucked it all up. And it's just this really tender portrait where there's a bit of neutrality around this protagonist. I. Just that was phenomenal. I was like, Lauren, your mind, wow. I never feel that way. I was like, your mind, wow. And then I was gonna also say aro Kwan exhibit, because it's a, it's a, it's a slim book, and it just, but it doesn't feel short like it just does a lot with the space. And it's a book about desire, and it's a book that put a lot of things, you know, into queer desire that I don't often read about, some of the pleasures of, you know, subjugation to another person, and the desire to be consumed by someone else through a lovership, which is just, the whole book is devoted to that. And it's just truly, it's just such an accomplishment.

Traci Thomas 50:40

I love lovership. I've never heard that before. That's good. I like that a lot. How do you decide what you're going to read next? Do you have trusted sources? Do you go? Do you read reviews? Are you just browsing the bookstore covers like, what? What is it for you?

J Wortham 50:56

People give me a lot of books. I'm very lucky. People give me books I have authors that I keep tabs on. I mean, you know, my reading diet is kind of divided by books that I'm reading for research, so things that I'm reading about the body and pain and consciousness and blackness and Black Studies and art criticism. So like all of those, live in the room where my desk is, and then all the books that live where I'm talking to you from are like, things that I like reading or want to read just for pure pleasure, and sometimes like craft notes, yeah? So it really depends. Sometimes I'll hear about a book, but oftentimes the books that you know, reading a book is so specific, and a lot of times what people recommend for me, my brain just does not latch on to, yeah, and I don't actually know what, what are the characteristics or quality of a writing sometimes it's about, like, the type font, like, it's just, it can be really

Traci Thomas 51:48

specific. Yeah, do you have like, specific taste like, how would you define your reading taste like, what do you love in a book? What do you look for in a book? I

J Wortham 51:59

think it's pacing like, I loved it's not an air of vice, but it has the word vice in the title, Age of vice. Age of vice. Yes, Age of vice. Deepti Kapoor, yeah. Age of ice, Age of ice. So that book, I think somebody mentioned it offhanded a newsletter as it being really captivating. And I read it and, like, it's a very fast paced book. It's a very engrossing book. It's like a kind of a scary book. It's a thriller. And I was, I was like, immediately sucked in. And that's not a book I would have picked up or even thought that I would necessarily like to read. It got me good. So I think it's and then you but then I was also looking at my shelf, I'm seeing Leslie Jameson Splinter, which is a book I loved reading, which is a very well paced and very slow moving, very kind of liminal, dreamy book, almost. And that also really hooked me because it was just, it was evocative. So I think I'm because I'm always trying to think, I'm always trying to do the work of what it means to be a human and and I don't necessarily just want to keep reading, like, I don't know, Pima Trojan, and it's like, I really look for all books that kind of explain something to me more about the experience of the gift of life, or just what it means to be alive. And so I'm just kind of looking around. I loved what it takes to heal Prentice Hemphill this year. And I think that was also a book where the writing was just so I think I think when I just, I feel like, when I've I see someone on the page, like I see something about someone, whether it's themselves, like Prentice or Leslie, or in the age of vice, like, someone is trying to bring forward something really personal about their culture, or, like, a collective cultural history. Yeah, it really moves me. But I have to think about this more, because I actually don't know. I think the range of like, what I read is so vast, yeah, and it's, it's, it's not always about like, good or bad. It's like, sometimes it's just there's an idea in there that really sticks with me. That's interesting.

Traci Thomas 54:03

Do you ever, do you think about publishers at all? Because all three of the fiction you mentioned read aro kwans book, Master wild, deep DS book, Age of eyes are all Riverhead fiction.

J Wortham 54:17

Oh, I don't think about publishers. Which I should more now that I'm I wonder if

Traci Thomas 54:20

they all have the same editor. That would be really interesting to find out. That would be really interesting. I started tracking editors because I was noticed, like, because I read so much, and I was like, Oh, this is from the same place, but like, might not be the same person. And I read the acknowledgements. I love the acknowledgements. And I started realizing, like, I have favorite editors. I didn't even know, but I have favorite like, there are people who edit that I'm like, Oh, I love what you do, like, I love your books. And that's like, become a really fun, like, super inside books kind of opinion to have, like, who's your favorite editor?

J Wortham 54:49

That's cool. I

Traci Thomas 54:50

also think publishers should treat their editors more like celebrities, because they are the thing that stays right, like they are the thing that shapes what. What it means to publish a book at Penguin Press versus Riverhead versus FSG or whatever that looks like. But nobody ever wants, no editors ever want to be in front of anything. Are

J Wortham 55:12

there? Do they List Editor? I'm like, I should know this, but I don't. But our editors names like listed in the books. Like, how do you find this out? Usually

Traci Thomas 55:18

it's just in the acknowledgement so, like, I want to thank my editor, and then I in my little spreadsheet. But some some publishers are starting to have, like, credits pages. I think Pantheon started doing it. So it'll be not only the editor, but the marketing person. And I love that too, because first of all, those people work really hard on books, and books are not just by an author, except also I love to just see whose hands are in what, and to like compare my experience with them. But enough about me. Okay, what is? What is the last book that made you laugh?

J Wortham 55:56

Um, okay, let me think about this one. I one is a book called An absolutely remarkable thing by Hank Green. Did you read that? I didn't. It really scratches I have, I don't know if that's like, actually a YA book, but I have, like, a real secret, like, late at night before I go to bed, I read YA okay, because it's just pure pleasure. And it's like, I'm not, you know, being a cultural critic and a cultural writer, culture writer, it's like, I'm always like, is this something? Is this something? And like, it's just like, you can unplug a little bit, yeah, a magic school book, you know, obviously not. JK, but like, a magic school book is not gonna like, I'm not gonna write about it, although now I'm, because I'm trying to, like, write this end of year newsletter for my subset about how much magic, like fictional in the real world, like, defined this year for me, because I just truly read, like, all the big magic school books, again, you know, wow, which is, like, a whole, like the Naomi Novak, like Lev Grossman, like, there's another one. Like, I just, like, read all of them, and I'm like, What's, what's tea? What's up with that? But anyway, so the Hank Green books. They're called, I think there's supposed to be a third one in this trilogy, but it's like the Carl's trilogy, and it's about a statue that lands on Earth. It's actually made by aliens. And it's about this young YouTuber that comes across the first one and makes a video about it. And the book is written in this, like, you know, the first one is written in this, like, very obnoxious, chronically online, versus, you know, person's voice, and it's, it's just funny. It's like funny to think about, you know, and the greens are well known YouTubers, and so they're drawing from, like, a deep well of personal experience, of, like, all the archetypes of people who do that, but they're self involved, and it ruins their lives. And so it's about this incredibly narcissistic woman who has to kind of become a different person to deal with this revelation, which is, like, aliens have landed on Earth. Alien technology is not on Earth. And so there's just some parts of that book that are funny, because she's pretty she's both unaware and pretty aware. And so it's just, yeah, laugh out loud. The other book is kind of a weird one, but it's weird one for this question, but it's delicious, delicious foods by James hannahan.

Traci Thomas 58:04

I know James hannahan, but I don't know that one. I read that other book.

J Wortham 58:09

It's a very, very devastating book about a black family that gets kind of conscripted to work at this it's either like a food processing plant or a I think it's a farm actually. And so it's kind of about the afterlife of slavery. And at one point you meet this woman, and she's struggling with a very intense addiction to crack cocaine, and you're reading about her, and it's just like, you know, so disturbing and sad. And then you flip to the next chapter, and that chapter is told by a character named Scotty, who is the crack itself. And there is something about that switch. I cackled because it was so unexpected, such a surprise. What a surprise, a delight. Yes, I was like, what a freaking freak genius. You are James, like it really, and it's so I laughed, but it wasn't because the material was necessarily funny. But I have, I've never been that amazed by a writer before. I've never been that surprised in text. Yeah, it's incredible.

Traci Thomas 59:17

What's the last book that made you angry?

J Wortham 59:21

The books that make me angry are usually books about the history of Silicon Valley and something to do with technology. I think I just read most of Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto for a column I was writing about blue sky and sort of this, sort of the waves of optimism that I was seeing on people as they're kind of arriving on on this new shore. And just to be like, started by the same guy, same investors. Elon was an investor, like, let's just take a B about what we're hoping from these services. And I think Malcolm, I mean, there's a lot to be said about that book. And sort of, it's kind of, it's a very didactic. Book, but it also unveils a lot about the creation of California as a monument to whiteness, as you know, and it's, it's hard not to see some of that through line to this, all the services and products that we use today. And I think he does a very good job of kind of connecting the dots. And it makes me really mad. It makes me really angry, because we are all just being data mined, and that data is sold back to us, basically. And so that's usually what gets me angry, or something about surveillance capitalism, or like a Simone brown Stark matters, and just like understanding how blackness has always been mediated as a as something to be surveilled. So those are the books that usually I'm like, you know, I just,

Traci Thomas 1:00:43

what about a book that bring you joy?

J Wortham 1:00:47

A book that brings me joy? Now I'm just looking at my bookshelf again, because I always think of Ross gay when people mention that, you know, like anything about joy, I feel like that's just a really easy answer. But you know what brings me a lot of joy reading books with my friends. So reading like Mary H K Choi's books, like going back and reading Jenny Hans early books, like, those are the things I just I really get excited, because we know intimately how hard it is to write a book. Yeah. So I just feel this like pride. And I'm like, You did it. You did it. So those are the things that like, really lighten your like Angela flour noise, new book coming

Traci Thomas 1:01:22

out the wilderness, that's coming in September. I think right whenever

J Wortham 1:01:24

I see the cover, I'm just like, I don't even know what it's about. And I'm just, I'm like, oh so happy. I

Traci Thomas 1:01:30

love that. I love that you're friends with Mary. That's like, the coolest friendship ever. I think everyone listening is like, we want to be friends with Mary and Jay. Okay, we're running out of time, so we've got to just got to just do the last few I do want to know, if you were a high school teacher, what's a book you would assign?

J Wortham 1:01:49

What? What are high school books? Also, like, is it?

Traci Thomas 1:01:54

I mean, now, nowadays, I feel like teachers, like some of them, are like, branching out a little bit. They're not doing like, the same, but I do think still people are doing Great Gatsby, like, I still think there are some, like, some of the same same old, same old are still around. But I also think some teachers are trying to teach more YA books in school, which is, like, we didn't have that, like, why I didn't really exist, you know. Like, I think if To Kill a Mockingbird came out today, it would probably be considered, ya, right, like Catcher in the Rye would probably be like, dark, ya, moody, ya. So I am ya, I think they're trying to do some of that, but I don't know. I'm not in high school and I'm not a teacher.

J Wortham 1:02:39

I would definitely teach Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which is a book that really transformed me when I read it as a young person. I had never read anything in that kind of graphic style, and the visual narrative and grammar is so compelling. But I would also teach. I would teach like the black greats, and kind of find a way to draw contemporary comparisons to, like things on tick tock. I'm obsessed with tick tock, so I would probably to like Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is a book I love, and then be like, yeah, you could think about this book in a way of, like the T series, kind of, who T, F, the fuck did I marry? And like, you know, because, yes, there's, you know, that's what Jamie is doing. Janie is just, Who the f am I with? And then she eventually is like, Oh, I have to be with myself. And so I really there's so much in there, like the writing, the prose, the detail. I mean, God, Janie and TK is just everything. I mean, that's a book I would love to teach and talk about that.

Traci Thomas 1:03:37

I love that. Okay, this is the last one for you, and this is very important, because you are the last person who will answer this question in this way. Oh, my God. Four years which is, what is the book? If you could require the current president of the United States to read one book, what would it be? And as of now that current president is Joseph Robinette Biden, this will be his last month getting this recommendation.

J Wortham 1:04:04

I mean, any book, like any recent book, I mean, I don't even know, like, what I don't even know. Like,

Traci Thomas 1:04:13

there is no limit, no,

J Wortham 1:04:15

oh, my God, I don't know. Is it like Pelosi book? Like, do I want him to be the art of power and then just have to, like, don't

Traci Thomas 1:04:21

you think he probably got an arc of that? He's probably, like, already read it,

J Wortham 1:04:25

yeah? He looks on audiobook while he's, like, in his cryo tank. He's like, Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I want him to read something about, like, I don't even know. Okay,

Traci Thomas 1:04:35

we can get, give him the Pelosi. That's, that's, we'll take it.

J Wortham 1:04:39

Because I just feel like he just, he needs to read something about, like, how his actions have set into motion, like just a cataclysmic series of events. I just, but I'm like, is he even gonna absorb it? I don't know. Maybe I'm just like, it would be cool if he read like. Looking at this anthology of black lesbian literature called, does your mama know? Like it would be great if he just read

Traci Thomas 1:05:05

that? Yeah, I'll take that, you know. Great. Okay, okay, Jay is out of here for now. They'll be back january 29 where we're discussing the ministry of time for book club. Jay's already read it. I've not read it, so we'll see. I know this book has been very polarizing among people in the book space, so I'm excited. Yes, some people really don't like it. Some people love it. We have not really done sci fi on the show very much, so I'm excited to do that, because that's sort of out of my comfort zone. So New year, new me. I will link to everything we talked about today in the show notes, and everyone else we will see you. Else we will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much again to J Wortham for joining the show. Don't forget, J will be back on Wednesday, January 29 for the stacks book club episode on our January pick, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, if you love this podcast, you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join the stacks pack and check out my substack at tracithomas.substack.com. Make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, please, please, please leave us a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media @thestackspod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok, and @thestackspod_ on Twitter, and you can check out our website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight, and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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