The 10 Books I Read in 2022 That Impacted Me the Most (So Far . . .)

What have I been reading this year and what might you also enjoy?

This past year has been unusually productive for my reading life, as I have so far finished 30 books, almost all nonfiction. Many of these books centered on music, especially relating to articles and blogs I was writing and books I was hoping to write (that did not pan out, at least yet). I also read my first volume of poetry in many years.

But as this year draws to a close, I’m thinking about what I want to read more of in 2023, and many works of fiction are at or near the top of my list. We shall see if that plan pans out, but in the next ten days or so, I am hoping to finish books for rethinking my relationship to reading, especially Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now. I also want to read my first graphic novel(s) from the Heartstopper series.

That said, these ten books—as well as another several that I considered for this list—made a significant impact on me this year in myriad ways. Many books I read this year dealt with marginalization in different capacities, including in terms of race and gender, as well as several that dealt with music and popular culture. I want to share what these books meant to me this year, so here are the ten books I have read this year that have made the biggest impact on me so far.

Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll, Maureen Mahon (2020)

I have long studied rock music and its relation to race, and there is a surprising dearth of full-length books focusing on the topic, let alone its intersectionality with gender issues. Addressing a significant gap in the field, scholar Maureen Mahon convincingly argues for the central presence of African American women in the creation and flourishing of rock music. Focusing on the 1950s through the 1980s, Mahon's case studies of figures like Labelle, Betty Davis, and the Shirelles illuminate the difficult choices African American women have been forced to make to participate in a genre in which their foundational role is often overlooked. Black Diamond Queens is one of the best researched music history surveys I’ve read from the last decade, using sources ranging from interviews, trade publications, and academic scholarship to create a cohesive whole with clear implications for our time.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong (2020)

This impassioned collection of essays struck me for its mix of exceptional historical insight, poignant personal narrative, and analysis of literature and pop culture. A key theme is the damage the model minority myth—for example, stereotypes about Asian Americans’ success in education—has caused in the lives of Asian Americans. Cathy Park Hong clarifies both the origins of that myth and its consequences when Asian Americans face discrimination. Her analysis of different literary conventions used to uphold American imperialism, cultural appropriation, “bad English,” standup comedy, and the trope of white innocence in the works of Wes Anderson all struck me as brilliant, and this was easily one of the most important books I read this year.

The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s, Emily J. Lordi (2020)

I read many books this year about music, especially for this article, but none struck me more than this one—partly because I had underestimated its quality when I first read it in 2021. Rereading it, I noticed Emily J. Lordi’s exceptional close reading skills when it comes to music—the longer I write about music, the more I realize how difficult it is to close read sound, and Lordi masterfully links seemingly peripheral practices, including soul cover recordings and false endings, across eras and styles of soul music to argue for their centrality to the genre. In my article, I called this the most important book on soul music ever released, especially for its unusual periodizing of the peak of soul music as in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when women and queer people held greater prominence in the genre. Lordi’s survey of practices of what she calls soul logic, as well as her literature review of the concept of soul to establish her definition of soul as resilience from struggle, establishes her as one of the most important music scholars of her generation.

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985, James Baldwin (1985)

Partly inspired by my peer reviewed article on James Baldwin’s writing about music, I returned  to my favorite essayist’s work this year.  I had read everything in this 700-page anthology—all of it plus nine other essays are collected in the later collection, Collected Essays—but I decided to read this because of its chronological arrangement, which no other Baldwin nonfiction anthology boasts. This recently reissued anthology was essential to get a better sense of the evolution of his nonfiction. Hearing it in an audiobook gave me a greater appreciation for Baldwin’s nuanced ideological precision and stylistic genius, and I once again came away from this work with the conviction that Baldwin’s work after the 1960s is criminally underappreciated. Written off by critics like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Julius Lester (among many) for the pointed anger in his later work, Baldwin is perhaps the most relevant of any “classic” author to today’s political struggles. By my estimation, Baldwin’s stark and unusual clarity on subjects like race, sex, guilt, popular culture, rage, power, and protest literature makes a survey of his nonfiction oeuvre essential for any collection.

Killing Rage: Ending Racism, bell hooks (1995)

The Black feminist cultural critic bell hooks has long been one of my favorite academics and intellectuals—as she makes a distinction between the two categories in this book—and after her death in late 2021, I found myself rereading essays like “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” from Black Looks: Race and Representation. In 2022, I completed my fourth book of hers, this volume of critical essays on racism in the U.S., including several essays, such as the revelatory and essential “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” republished from earlier books I had read. hooks captures the extent to which women and feminist perspectives are often ignored in contemporary discourses on race and reveals much about that limitation in discussions of anti-Semitism, popular culture, definitions of racism and white supremacy, travel, and beauty standards, among many other still relevant topics. hooks's unapologetic clarity, honesty, passion, nuance, and insight are revealed in every chapter. Killing Rage is a crucial work that I plan to return to again and again.

Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz (2020)

After attending a workshop on this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, led by a retired professor at my college’s Homecoming in October, I made this collection the first book of poetry I had read in many years. As an autistic person who struggles with figurative language, I can find poetry difficult to process and understand (despite having relatives who founded the Poetry Center of Chicago). But listening to Diaz, an Indigenous American poet, read these poems in an audiobook, I was especially struck by their lyricism and chilling evocation of the effects of genocide and the limitations of resources, especially water, to Indigenous communities. Diaz’s work illuminates the links between the overtly political with the personal realm, and I loved this book. I look forward to rereading this book with more careful attention to detail, as I experienced at my college’s workshop, soon.

The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron (1992)

Julia Cameron seems to be one of the most creative writers and thinkers of the last several decades, but as she makes clear in The Artist’s Way, everyone is creative—it’s how we choose to use that creativity that counts. Whatever one’s conception of God, Higher Power, or anything else, Cameron makes the idea of a nonspecific Force in the universe—GOD = Good Orderly Direction—accessible to all, regardless of religious beliefs or lack thereof. In carrying out these suggestions and instructions, I found it difficult to maintain a schedule of morning pages—three pages of daily longhand writing done first thing in the morning—but I remember how helpful they were when I did them and would like to return to the practice soon. It was indeed helpful and clarifying, though with my constantly active mind, it proved a challenge to focus on the writing. The artist’s date and other tools and other exercises proved more fun for me, but I did appreciate the effects of the morning pages. These exercises demand continuous practice, but they did prove exceptionally helpful. I look forward to restarting them soon to jumpstart my songwriting and other creative work.

Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music, George Lipsitz (2007)

Colonialism, gentrification, censorship, digital capitalism, and diaspora: these are just a few of the key issues of our time that historian George Lipsitz ties to popular music in this book. Lipsitz is one of the most astute and respected scholars on race, ethnicity, and class, and when he hears something historically significant in a song or trend, all readers’ listening skills improve. The subtitle of this book suggests that Lipsitz is interested in excavating what isn’t talked about in different discourses on pop music, and in Footsteps in the Dark, Lipsitz writes easily the most nuanced and well executed critique I have seen of Ken Burns’s Jazz documentary alongside brilliant analyses of techno, teen pop, hip hop, and salsa. What he uncovers in various music scenes in the 1990s and 2000s in relation to what he calls the long fetch of history manages to reveal more about the music and its surrounding contexts than most writing about music, scholarly or otherwise, that I have read. Lipsitz welcomely emphasizes Hispanic traditions, including from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, in a book on the wide range of effects of history on music and of music on history. This is not a comprehensive survey of all popular music from the ‘90s and ‘00s, but it reveals more about the times and their music in its seeming tangents than most writers could match in entire books.

Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary,Sasha Geffen (2020)

Reading the introduction to this book, I was immediately struck by Sasha Geffen’s tying of gender binaries to colonialism and of popular music across the ages to critiques of such binaries. Geffen focuses on the 1960s through the 2010s as a time when the always broken binary lines between masculinity and femininity became further broken, blurred, and questioned. Writing about gender issues in glam rock, grunge, hip hop, punk, synthpop, and more, Geffen made me want to relisten to Labelle, Prince, Missy Elliott, Nirvana, and others with new ears. Glitter Up the Dark is easily one of the most pathbreaking and innovative books on music history I’ve ever read in a lifetime of reading about music history. Geffen’s insights taught me a lot and made this book a joy to read.

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, Danyel Smith (2022)

Like other books I read this year, including Black Diamond Queens, The Meaning of Soul, Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions, and Daphne A. Brooks’s Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, veteran journalist Danyel Smith places Black women front and center in her book about music, one of the most acclaimed music books that has been published this year. Though not a comprehensive history, Shine Bright highlights Smith’s exceptional research on many Black women in pop, from Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson to Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston and multiple lesser known but critical figures, consistently highlighting the contributions of Black women to the world’s music and cultural landscape. In fact, Smith’s book gives a passionate testimonial to the decisive and regularly overlooked role of Black women in pop music history. Shine Bright also highlights Smith’s own struggles in and ties to the music business, making this book not only one of the best music books of the year, but also one of the best memoirs I’ve read about the centrality of music. And as I mentioned in my above-mentioned article, listening to Smith in the audiobook enhanced my experience of the book.

What about you? What have you been reading that has impacted you significantly this year?