A listmaker confesses

TL;DR: best of 2023 and a human rights action call

I used to be a secret listmaker, a covert organizer, and quietly, obsessively on time. Secret because the cool kids always bragged that being disorganized and late was better.

No longer. Now, I lean into my inner control freak. As my stepmother says, “She who plans wins.” That’s a life lesson that has served me extremely well.

My tribe of fellow tidiers anticipates no date more than the beginning of a new year and the prospect of refreshed calendars, new resolutions, and carefully considered to-do lists. For a brief moment, we rule the media feeds.

Here’s a tip. To plan for the future effectively, you must first reflect on the previous year’s achievements and highlights. For me, 2023 was a doozy (ankle break!). Much more importantly, the writers and human rights communities that I’m a part of are struggling with how to address the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Beginning in October, the world witnessed the impact and aftermath of the Hamas murders, rape, and torture of Israeli civilians and Israel’s horrific and ongoing atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank.

What follows is my own, very idiosyncratic reflection on 2023.

A stunning photograph

Both wars highlight profound challenges facing human rights. When I teach Introduction to Human Rights, I emphasize that human rights aren’t “self-executing.” There is no automatic enforcement. We, as individuals, groups, courts, and governments have to collectively make rights matter. We have to protest, cajole, argue, and shame. We have to care.

The most powerful (though not the only) way to do that is through governments like the United States. To be sure, the US has a very checkered history in this area. The US was the prime mover behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, finalized in 1948 (the drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt). Also, the US has been a leading violator of human rights, both in terms of domestic actions (the death penalty is a glaring example) and internationally (torture and “disappearances” post-September 11 is just one example).

I’ve been impressed by how many people around the world are marching to demand that Hamas release hostages and that Israel cease actions that cause massive civilian casualties and suffering. Yet so far, the United States—the main entity that could obligate Israel to respect the laws of war and avoid slaughtering civilians—is either not taking effective action or is ineffective in pressuring Israel’s hard right government.

After the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, it’s another massive foreign policy failure for the Biden Administration.

What we witness through social media every day is devastating (the ICRC is a very reliable follow). I’ve seen hundreds of shocking images. Yet no depiction has reached me with a power greater than this photo from Gaza taken by Mohammed Salem for Reuters.

In it, Inas Abu Maamar holds her dead niece, five-year-old Saly, killed in an Israeli airstrike. The photo is even more moving when you take into account that Salem is a Palestinian in Gaza who every hour faces possible death.

Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times wrote about this photo and Salem’s work back in November. The photo was recently included in Time Magazine’s top Ten Photographs of 2023.

On a technical level, the composition is perfect. The color, texture, and contrast—the aunt’s knobby hijab, the folds of the shroud, the vivid blue of the dress, the tiny teal feet—are arresting. As Polgreen notes, the meaning of this quiet image is unmistakable.

“[Michelangelo’s La Pietà] depicts Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus after he is taken down from the cross. It is the ultimate symbol of maternal grief, of the sacrifice of a child to a cruel world. In her agony she could be any mother, grieving any child stolen too soon, anywhere in the world.”

Most winnable battle

The campaign to ban books has imploded and that gives me hope. 2023 seemed to presage a different story, one where a few hard-right activists would overwhelm parents, schools, and libraries with well-funded and baseless attacks.

One Iowa law led to the removal “of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault, according to Book Riot’s newsletter Literary Activism.

Not so fast.

Concerted action by many, including teachers and librarians (follow one of my favorites, @Mychal3ts, on TikTok) is rolling these bans back. The good news is that on December 29, a US District Court judge issued an injunction against Iowa’s law. As Literary Activism notes (please subscribe!), “the judge recognized not only the First Amendment rights being infringed upon by such a sweeping ban of books across the state, but also emphasized the specific types of books being scrutinized by it.”

Those books either discuss American history, particularly slavery and segregation, or are written by gay, queer, and transgender authors who are telling their stories in a way that can reach the young people who need them.

This is not yet a victory, I should emphasize. But even limited wins like this illuminate a path to effective support for freedom of expression, the arts, and stories that need to be told. PS: Who could not love the sex scandal that ensnared the Florida GOP chair, Moms for Liberty founder, and book banner. Sex between consenting adults is fine by me; it’s the hypocrisy that’s delish.

Best non-fiction

Being a list maker, I log my reading on Goodreads (for better or worse, still my site of choice). Setting a reading goal also helps me (sometimes) choose pages over streaming eye candy.

This year, I read dozens of non-fiction books: history, picture books, some self-help, and some writing craft books. But the one that shocked me was among the last I read in 2023, Ben Raines’ The Last Slave Ship.

You may have heard the story. A river guide (Raines) located the burned and sunken timbers of the Clotilda, a schooner used in 1860—decades after the international slave trade was prohibited—to import 100 Africans from modern-day Benin into the harbor at Mobile, Alabama.

That description doesn’t do the story justice. Raines delves into how the slave trade worked in the Dahomey kingdom at the time; the character of the white investors, scam artists and chancers all; the singular dignity of the trafficked Africans, including Cudjo Lewis (born Oluale Kossola) in his interviews with American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston; and the persistent efforts of the Africans to remain together and resist subjugation.

The story doesn’t stop in the past and that’s what I loved most about the book. Raines uses his deep knowledge of the area to detail how Africatown—where many of the Africans settled after the Civil War—fought against violence and fought to retain their unique history.

I found the chapter on environmental justice especially moving. Violence against the descendants who remain in the area continues to the present day via the industries that poison the water and land where Africatown is located. This is an essential read for Americans who need to know about our history and its continuing and often damaging effects on us.

(Africatown) is the first and only community in the nation started by enslaved Africans.

Best fiction

I read several good stories this year, but for my standout, I’m choosing— a picture book! If you are an adult without small children in your life, I strongly recommend that you continue to read picture books. We are in a picture book Golden Age. Picture books deliver a reading experience unlike any other. When the art and the words are right, these books do things that supposedly “adult”: books do not.

My hands down favorite this year is Bear Is Never Alone: written by Marc Veerkamp, illustrated by Jeska Verstege, and translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson.

For someone like me (I AM PIANO BEAR!) who enjoys and needs their solitude, this book hit home. Bear plays beautiful music on the piano and his friends are transfixed. But Bear also needs to not be making music and be by himself. When he tries to escape, the friends follow and he snaps at them.

But one friend, Zebra, seems to understand that Bear needs his quiet. The art made me laugh out loud. Take a look at this image with the upset hippo.

As so many have said, 2024 promises to be even more eventful than 2023. If there’s one thing we all need to do it’s ensure that we work for good even as the world overwhelms us. That good could be advocating for human rights; ensuring that your community is healthy; caring for someone who needs your help; supporting teachers and librarians; or speaking out against hate and violence.

As the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin said, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”

Resolve to be that “angelic troublemaker” in 2024. Thanks for reading!