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How to Read Now
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83/99
Critics' Rating Index
37/99
Readers' Rating Index
90/99
Scholars' Citation Index
89/99
Volume of Reviews
48/99
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About This Book
How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico. At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.
Reviews
"Each of the book's eight essays burns bright and hot from start to finish ..."
"Its eight chapters engage the readers who have most informed her own practice ..."
"This is not a collection of essays to race through; instead, it should be read thoughtfully and with an open mind to encourage fresh understanding."
"Their story is your story, too."
"Suppose the reader agrees — then what?"
"From reading Jane Austen to the fear and hatred fueling book challenges, Castillo's investigations are incisive, reorienting, sometimes funny, and truly revolutionary."
"Castillo's knowledge, along with her firebrand style and generous humor, result in a dynamic and necessary look at the state of storytelling."
"Castillo's arguments on behalf of unexpected reading are, therefore, not only striking but vital."
"Her voice is eviscerating, dramatic and funny as she lays out the ways that universalizing the white experience reduces writers of color to teachers of historical trauma and nonwhite cultures ..."
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