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- [00:01]
Jenna J. Wortham
Most weight loss plans are one size fits all, not taking into account each person's individual needs. Noom, on the other hand, is built for your psychology and your biology meeting you where you are. NOOM Weight uses psychology and that's why they say losing weight starts with your brain, but it also takes into account your unique biological factors which also affect weight loss success. The program helps you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have cravings. Stay focused on what's important to you with NOOM psychology and biology based approach. Sign up for your trial today@noom.com that's n o o m.com 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 a 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? Cause it was like in a Judy Bloom. It's in that Judy Blume book Wifey when she started switching more to like adult books, I actually tricked my mom into buying that cause she was like oh Judy Blume. And I was like yeah, it's a kid's book. And I was like, knew it was.
- [01:17]
Tracy Thomas
Not, you know, like there's dildos in here, can't wait to get there.
- [01:21]
Jenna J. Wortham
What's that dildo? And my mom was like where did you hear that word? And I was like, I don't know.
- [01:25]
Tracy Thomas
In that kids book you bought me.
- [01:27]
Jenna J. Wortham
I know you bought bought me the book.
- [01:34]
Tracy Thomas
Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host Tracy 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 29th 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 this show and you want inside access to it, there's two ways to support us. You can subscribe to my newsletter unstacked@tracy thomas.substack.com and you can join the Stacks Pack, which is our incredible reading community@patreon.com the stacks. One of the perks we offer around here is a shout out on the show. And this perk will be all gone come January 31st. So if you want to have your name read on the show, go to patreon.com thestacks to join. And here are some of our newest members of the Stacks package. Lashawn B. Danielle Clark, Kevin McCarrick ES, Candice Lagunce, Malort, Rachel Weatherimer, Stephanie Levitt, Julia Samantha and Cindy Griffin. I could not make this show without the support of all of you. Okay, now it's time for my conversation with Jay Wortham. All right, Everybody, it is January 1st, 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 it, but I'm so excited to welcome friend of the show back back in action. Jenna J. Wortham. Welcome to the Stacks.
- [03:46]
Jenna J. Wortham
Happy New Year. I didn't realize this is when this episode would go out. Wow, I feel so honored.
- [03:51]
Tracy Thomas
I know. I'm really excited to get this brand new year with you. Even though we are still back in Luigi Mangione's year, the year of Luigi.
- [04:02]
Jenna J. Wortham
But we're, we're, you know, we're preparing for the new year, so the 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.
- [04:15]
Tracy Thomas
So do you do, like, Reiki or something? You're very focused on energy. I'm just very curious.
- [04:21]
Jenna J. Wortham
I do. I. I do, Tracy. I do all kinds of things. Pre Pandy one, I got trained in Reiki, sound healing, trauma, informed breathwork. 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.
- [04:57]
Tracy Thomas
When you say that you Wanted to like, make that more part of your life. Was that in place of writing?
- [05:03]
Jenna J. Wortham
No, 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 nonfiction 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 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 2, 3, 4, $500 for one hour, which is accessible for some, but not my people. Really, for the most part, it's 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 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 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, but in different ways, I want it to be this. In different ways, I'm like, I want it to be this incredibly dreamy and like, romantic and just like soul replenishing experience.
- [06:55]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, my gosh, that sounds so lovely. I want to come. Let me know when. Let me know when the island's ready for me. I'll just get in my little boat. Here I come.
- [07:05]
Jenna J. Wortham
We need it. We're going to need it. That's the thing.
- [07:07]
Tracy Thomas
We definitely are going to need a. A boat to heal, to take us to healing. 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 got to get, like, very far away, not just, like, right off the coast. 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.
- [07:44]
Jenna J. Wortham
So a few days ago, Dana Tirichi, who I don't know very well, but you know, is the editorial director of N1 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 staped 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 D.C. virginia, Maryland area, right outside D.C. in a place called Alexandria, Virginia. Most of my family works in the military. A government job is a good job. 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 could 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 the cashew cheese.
- [09:45]
Tracy Thomas
If I could get pizza for the one that I Do. I'm telling you, like, and I. I mean, I can, like, I get paid and I could buy a pizza. No, it's not. But it's not the same because it also has to, like, not very good pizza, you know, like, it's gotta be.
- [10:00]
Jenna J. Wortham
Like, it's gotta be cardboard. And we also have to all, like, gather.
- [10:04]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. I need recognition while I. For my reading and my eating.
- [10:10]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [10:40]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [10:41]
Jenna J. Wortham
The human touch or human voice or human context.
- [10:44]
Tracy Thomas
And I think 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 could think about these same exact words? And it's. So that's what makes being on social media for me very uncomfortable.
- [11:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
I am with you a hundred percent. And I think it's. It's very much a condition of kind of living more in our heads and less in our bodies, which is, 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 monologues can really leech out and to 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, narrator's 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 and nonfiction. It's like you actually build up, like, a vocabulary and, like, mental muscle for dealing with the world in a way that I really feel like we're losing.
- [12:20]
Tracy Thomas
So I think that's right.
- [12:21]
Jenna J. Wortham
Everyone needs a pizza party.
- [12:23]
Tracy Thomas
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?
- [12:40]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [12:59]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, my God, I love this.
- [13:00]
Jenna J. Wortham
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? Cause it was like, in a Judy Bloom. It's in that Judy Blume book, Wifey. The, like, one when she started switching more to, like, adult books.
- [13:19]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [13:19]
Jenna J. Wortham
And then 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.
- [13:27]
Tracy Thomas
You know, like, there's dildos in here. Can't wait to get there.
- [13:30]
Jenna J. Wortham
What said dildo? And my mom was like, where did you hear that word? And I was like, I don't know.
- [13:34]
Tracy Thomas
In that kids book you bought me.
- [13:36]
Jenna J. Wortham
I know you bought me the book.
- [13:37]
Tracy Thomas
You got it.
- [13:38]
Jenna J. Wortham
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, which is, 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 for Jennifer. And I definitely. It's not appropriate for the class, even if it's like, they're at the level 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?
- [14:09]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. What did they want? What did the teacher want you to do them to do?
- [14:14]
Jenna J. Wortham
I think just, like, a better book for the assignment. Just read something else to the class. But there were 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. 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 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 with music. Like, stereo. You know, music on the stereo, Something cooking in the kitchen and, like, reading.
- [15:13]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [15:14]
Jenna J. Wortham
And that was a real gift of my childhood.
- [15:16]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. How do you like to read now?
- [15:18]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, my God, Tracy. 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 hard cover and, like, reading it in the tub or, like, reading at the beach.
- [15:39]
Tracy Thomas
I'm a tub reader. You're a water person. You're a water stream, water person. What's your sign?
- [15:45]
Jenna J. Wortham
Scorpio.
- [15:46]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, not.
- [15:47]
Jenna J. Wortham
I have a Stella in Scorpio. It's, like, so intense. I'm 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.
- [16:05]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [16:05]
Jenna J. Wortham
But it's, like, too hot to be on my phone. It's like I'm underlining and, like, annotating.
- [16:11]
Tracy Thomas
Do you have snacks and beverages in this perfect place?
- [16:13]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yes, always.
- [16:14]
Tracy Thomas
What are they?
- [16:15]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, my 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, 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.
- [16:58]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. We can read together, you and I. We have. We have similar reading fantasy life. I'm definitely a tea girl.
- [17:05]
Jenna J. Wortham
Do you read to fall asleep?
- [17:07]
Tracy Thomas
I 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.
- [17:15]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah.
- [17:16]
Tracy Thomas
But if a book is really good or scaring me, I will stay awake.
- [17:22]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay. Do you read on, like, a Kindle or, like, are you ready?
- [17:26]
Tracy Thomas
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've 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.
- [17:54]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah.
- [17:55]
Tracy Thomas
Or like, a candle. But I can't really read by candlelight. 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?
- [18:18]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah. Yeah.
- [18:19]
Tracy Thomas
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.
- [18:27]
Jenna J. Wortham
That's right. Yeah. That's right.
- [18:29]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [18:29]
Jenna J. Wortham
I'm trying to get back into a Kindle.
- [18:31]
Tracy Thomas
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.
- [18:55]
Jenna J. Wortham
That makes sense.
- [18:56]
Tracy Thomas
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?
- [19:09]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah. Oh my God.
- [19:10]
Tracy Thomas
I wasn't sure. When is it coming? Do you know?
- [19:12]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [19:34]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [19:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 Future is 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 oriented.
- [19:50]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:51]
Jenna J. Wortham
So it was just really like man hours, human hours. Like how. You know, just like. And then we finally hired an assistant and we're like, oh, this is so much easier. We should have done this from 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, and we should back up.
- [20:13]
Tracy Thomas
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?
- [20:21]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 very particular series of contexts, contextual reasons why. And then interviewing. I think I interviewed over 100 people for this book, but just coming to realize that, yeah, so many people enter third places for pain management, for artistic, Artistic channeling, for preve. 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. To gain access to other experiences of ourselves. And then there's kind of in a spectrum of more maladaptive responses, which I kind of get into as well. Interesting.
- [21:51]
Tracy Thomas
So it's got some memoir to it and then some sort of, like, a.
- [21:54]
Jenna J. Wortham
Lot of research, a lot of memoir. Yeah, it's a blend in.
- [21:57]
Tracy Thomas
Am I crazy to think that at one point this book was about butts? Like, the rear end? Did I make that up? That you were writing a book about, like, booties?
- [22:08]
Jenna J. Wortham
Whoa. I mean, should I do a book on booties now? Like, why did I think you were.
- [22:14]
Tracy Thomas
Doing, like, a whole book on the backside or something? Did I make that up?
- [22:17]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, no, you didn't make that up, but I think that's someone else. I think there is a book on the back side.
- [22:23]
Tracy Thomas
There is a book that came out about butts, but I, for some reason in my mind, decided that's a different book. It's like, yellow and it's got a peach on the COVID But I, for some reason, feel like I heard you say this years ago, but I.
- [22:36]
Jenna J. Wortham
Maybe I wanted.
- [22:37]
Tracy Thomas
I don't.
- [22:37]
Jenna J. Wortham
I don't know. You don't remember something, but that isn't. I don't remember a lot of things. Like, maybe you tapped into something that this. Well, anyway, so this is not the but book, but I would love to.
- [22:47]
Tracy Thomas
Do never a butt book.
- [22:49]
Jenna J. Wortham
There's so much to say about butts.
- [22:52]
Tracy Thomas
I feel like there Is that's why I was like, jenna's writing a book about butts.
- [22:55]
Jenna J. Wortham
But. Yeah, I mean, the but 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 trans story. So there is some butt stuff in there. But. Okay, I want to write this down. I'm going to look into this. I don't know. Let's see. This is. This is the point, Tracy, 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.
- [23:32]
Tracy Thomas
So I'm gonna go back and listen to, like, everything you've ever said to try to find where you mentioned a bug.
- [23:39]
Jenna J. Wortham
Bug. I'm sure I did.
- [23:40]
Tracy Thomas
I don't. I. 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. And like, comfort foods. Yeah, that episode. And that. The Stay Woke episode. 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. 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 J. 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 Sant 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. It went from Luc to Lucy. 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.
- [25:14]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah, it's been a real conundrum for me, and I think too, it's. 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 is named Virginia. But because I lived in Virginia, it was like, are you going to be Virginia in Virginia? No. So Jennifer's close. And then when I was in some grade, some elementary school grade, there were many. Jennifers was a popular name in the 80s. And the teacher mixed us 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 does 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 zell 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, it's just so. Or like traveling with friends, and like, they see your passport and they're so horrified, and they're like, you're such a Scorpio. 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 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.
- [27:41]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, well, can you just record a little bit for me and just send me one?
- [27:44]
Jenna J. Wortham
We should. 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 going. You know, we're just like having this whole back and forth about, like, Luigi and pain consciousness and Wicked and the fact that there's this global movie out that's about erasure and pain and the cost of society run by essentially corporations. And we're not 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 so busy.
- [28:37]
Tracy Thomas
I mean, you're both so busy. You've both totally glowed. Not glowed up, glowed out. Like, you've glowed more. But 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 Wesley would say.
- [28:52]
Jenna J. Wortham
I 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. I'm trul. Grateful around that. But I think. But going back to the nails, back.
- [29:23]
Tracy Thomas
To the cul de sac, or out of the cul de sac.
- [29:25]
Jenna J. Wortham
Out of the cul de sac and 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 J quotations, you know, Jenna quotations, J. Wortham. Because I want it to.
- [29:43]
Tracy Thomas
I don't think so. Because your last name is so distinctive to me. So to me. And. 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.
- [30:10]
Jenna J. Wortham
It does. Yeah.
- [30:10]
Tracy Thomas
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. 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 name. Right. Like, it's still Jay. Worth them or worth them comma J.
- [30:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, you're blowing my mind.
- [30:35]
Tracy Thomas
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 finding it. 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.
- [30:59]
Jenna J. Wortham
But 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 legitimacy. It's just a thing that happens. And I'm trying to also remember that for myself. I think, too, that 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 Wortham archive. And I'm getting them to combine them with Jay. You know, the height you would have in the middle. Sorry, Jenna. Quote Jay Wortham. 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, and then when you 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 myselves 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, who are they talking about? But 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.
- [32:33]
Tracy Thomas
And I'm like, we're going back to Jennifer. Okay.
- [32:37]
Jenna J. Wortham
No, truly, like, my sister is just like, I'm just calling you, which is what she's always called me.
- [32:41]
Tracy Thomas
But. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so. 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 I know 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?
- [33:07]
Jenna J. Wortham
Whoa, that's cool.
- [33:08]
Tracy Thomas
I'm terrified by this. I'm like, you don't have 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. 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 tvt, which are my initials. But I don't have, like, a. You can't really shorten my name. Like, so I've always just. Yeah, sometimes people, but not really. Never. Stop.
- [33:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay.
- [33:35]
Tracy Thomas
My brother sometimes calls me Trey. Like, there are people who call me nicknames, but the name Tracy 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. You 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.
- [34:01]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 is 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. I need to get a fat one. So if anybody has recommendations. Yeah, I just like a fat ass J. But I also want like a fat ass Scorpio. So I'll get both. We'll see.
- [34:39]
Tracy Thomas
Like, let me get together. Maybe the Scorpio has like a, a diamond J on its back 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 would work.
- [34:49]
Jenna J. Wortham
Can 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.
- [35:00]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna come back and talk about books. Hey, y'all. Happy New Year. Same book as you, I hope. I wanted to quickly tell you about what's going on and how you can support the work of this show. As you may know, I have a Patreon. It's called the stacks pack@patreon.com the stacks. And it's a bookish community complete with a very active discord where you get monthly bonus episodes of virtual book club meetup. And right now we have some special offers going on all month through the end of January. When you join the Stacks Pack, you get our reading tracker, you get to vote in the Stacky Awards and you get a shout out on this show. That perk is going to be no longer starting February 1st. So now's the time you get all of that for just $5 a month at patreon.com thestax if that doesn't sound like you, I also have a newsletter called unstacked over@tracythomas.substack.com where I tell you about all the books I'm reading. I give you personal hot takes about pop culture. I even rank every book I read each month. And In December of 2024, I actually ranked every single book I read from least to most favorites. You can find that and so much more over@tracy thomas.substack.com if you love the show and you want to make sure that you hear it every single week, those are two incredible ways to support my work and I really appreciate it. All right, we are back. I. 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.
- [36:40]
Jenna J. Wortham
No. Okay.
- [36:41]
Tracy Thomas
This is from Katie. Katie said I need help reading about history from other countries. I read a lot of u. S History, but I'm in despair about how our country fund things up and continues to things up. So I'd like to get some global perspective. Any titles about other countries history and how they things up slash we are all doomed. J.K. 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.
- [37:17]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah.
- [37:19]
Tracy Thomas
So my first pick is King Leopold's ghost, a story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa. And it's by Adam Hofschild. Yeah, I think that's his name.
- [37:30]
Jenna J. Wortham
Mother Jones. Conor. Mother Jones.
- [37:32]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. And it's a deep dive into king Leopold II 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 going to 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 things up.
- [38:27]
Jenna J. Wortham
That's.
- [38:27]
Tracy Thomas
That's this one. And then the last one I picked is the Hundred Years War on Palestine, A 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 a hundred years from 1917 to 2017. So those are my picks for you, Jay.
- [38:52]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 Isabel Wolferson 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 caste 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. In their different social systems and kind of what those systems look like. Like, it's just a really diabolical book for understanding how much coordination there was. 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. It didn't happen in isolation. And I think that's really an important thing to kind of understand and 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. Okay, so those would be my two.
- [40:37]
Tracy Thomas
Those are great, Katie. If you read them, let us know what you think. Everyone else, you can email ask The Stacks, the Stacks podcast.com to get your recommendations. Read on the air okay. I'm so excited. Two books you love, one book you hate.
- [40:52]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay. I could not come up with a book that I hate, Jay.
- [40:57]
Tracy Thomas
Tell me why.
- [40:58]
Jenna J. Wortham
I really couldn't. I don't know.
- [41:00]
Tracy Thomas
Nothing you were assigned in school, Nothing that you read, where you were like, what the fuck? This sucks.
- [41:06]
Jenna J. Wortham
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?
- [41:30]
Tracy Thomas
I hate so many books. The book that I hated the most this year was Knife by Salman Rushdie. I hated it.
- [41:37]
Jenna J. Wortham
I hated it.
- [41:38]
Tracy Thomas
I thought it was like. I thought it felt. Felt rushed. First of all.
- [41:42]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay.
- [41:42]
Tracy Thomas
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 like. I just didn't. I didn't. I didn't think it was that good. I also hated it more. 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 moviemaking. Because all the people in Hollywood are like, this is about me. Like, I can see myself here. 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.
- [42:45]
Jenna J. Wortham
It's like, totally. Are you a Capricorn?
- [42:48]
Tracy Thomas
No, but both my kids are, and my dad was.
- [42:50]
Jenna J. Wortham
Wow.
- [42:51]
Tracy Thomas
I'm a Leo, which is extremely intense in a different way.
- [42:55]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, that's. 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 of 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 something. 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 is something that it felt like it just had to come out. Like, I'm always kind of like, ooh, the story behind this story. And we're also in a moment, too, when, like, the media around media is almost as interesting as the media itself.
- [43:53]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, you're off the hook for a book you hate because you explained it.
- [43:57]
Jenna J. Wortham
Sorry.
- [43:57]
Tracy Thomas
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.
- [44:03]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay. I've just picked. These are, like, obvious ones, but 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 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.
- [45:02]
Tracy Thomas
It's amazing. That's a book I love.
- [45:05]
Jenna J. Wortham
Like, an incredible book. I sat in on one of her classes that she was teaching in, teaches in Toronto, but I'm like, I don't know. I forget what university now because my brain is at half speed. But she was teaching a graduate seminar on Beloved, and I was able to sit. 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, by Percival 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 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 I just saw Interstellar and IMAX in Lincoln center when I should have been working, but instead 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.
- [46:36]
Tracy Thomas
Have you read or heard Toni Morrison's lecture on goodness?
- [46:42]
Jenna J. Wortham
Probably ages ago.
- [46:43]
Tracy Thomas
It's from, like, the Harvard Divinity School. So I just. I just read it on a recommendation from Saeed 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. Of air quote, great American novel showing up in any way in her 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 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. What's the last really great book you read?
- [48:17]
Jenna J. Wortham
I did write some of these down. This was a 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 have stayed with me. Well, we talked about James at Percival Everett. Because I just. I really love the reinterrogation 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 Circe by Madeline Miller. Is it Miller?
- [48:54]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, that's right.
- [48:55]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 the. 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 or we.
- [49:19]
Tracy Thomas
Gotta go, what happened here?
- [49:21]
Jenna J. Wortham
What happened here? And that 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 N.K. jemis?
- [49:31]
Tracy Thomas
I still have. Never read it. That's on my to do list in 2025. At least the first.
- [49:36]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, my 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. Is not okay.
- [49:49]
Tracy Thomas
But you picked Ministry of Time.
- [49:51]
Jenna J. Wortham
But that's more science fictiony than fantasy.
- [49:54]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [49:54]
Jenna J. Wortham
I think. Right.
- [49:55]
Tracy Thomas
Well, I don't know, but. So you. So you'd like a little sci fi in your. In your.
- [50:00]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah, I like. I thought Ministry of Time was great, I think, and we'll talk about it more. But I. 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 the only thing that's different is, you know, there's a bit of. There's a bit of embellishing around, you know, just giving you these hints like, oh, we're not in the 20th century. The 21st century, I think that movie, the new Aubrey Plaza movie, my old ass.
- [50:27]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, yeah.
- [50:27]
Jenna J. Wortham
Does that really?
- [50:28]
Tracy Thomas
Well, okay. I haven't seen it.
- [50:29]
Jenna J. Wortham
There's like these little moments. 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 you get. There are these moments when Aubrey Plaza, who's 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? Because they're so rural that you can't tell. So I love those kind of intimations. Wait, I was also gonna say the Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.
- [50:59]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, yeah. Okay. You love that.
- [51:01]
Jenna J. Wortham
That book's insane. I mean, it's. I. 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. And the construct of this new world that's being stolen. But, you know, she's also part in some ways of 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 of land. They're 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 Thought it was. I just thought it 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 Ro Kwan's exhibit, because it's a slim book and it just. But it doesn't feel short. Like, it just. 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. It's just truly. It's just such an accomplishment.
- [53:16]
Tracy Thomas
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?
- [53:32]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [54:05]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [54:06]
Jenna J. Wortham
So it really depends. Sometimes I'll hear about a book, but oftentimes the books that, you know, reading a book is. Is so specific. And a lot of times what people recommend for me, my brain just does not latch onto.
- [54:16]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [54:17]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 specific. Yeah.
- [54:26]
Tracy Thomas
Do you have, like, specific. Like, how would you define your reading taste? Like, what do you love in a book? What do you look for in a book?
- [54:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
I think it's pacing. Like, I loved. It's not inherent vice, but it has the word vice in the title.
- [54:42]
Tracy Thomas
Age of Vice.
- [54:44]
Jenna J. Wortham
Age of Vice. Yes. Age of Vice. Deepti Kapoor. Yeah. Age of Vice. Age of Vice. So that book, I think somebody mentioned it offhand in 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 I was also looking at my shelf. I'm seeing Leslie Jameson's 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 I don't necessarily just want to keep reading, like, I don't know, Pima Chodron. 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. 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. And 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.
- [56:39]
Tracy Thomas
Do you ever. Do you think about publishers at all? Because all three of the fiction you mentioned, Ro Kwan's book, Vaster Wilde's Deep Dee's book, Age of Ice, are all Riverhead fiction.
- [56:52]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, I don't think about publishers, which I should. More now that I'm like, I wonder.
- [56:56]
Tracy Thomas
If they all have the same editor. That would be really interesting to find out.
- [56:58]
Jenna J. Wortham
That would be really interesting.
- [57:00]
Tracy Thomas
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 acknowledgments. I love the acknowledgments 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?
- [57:24]
Jenna J. Wortham
That's cool.
- [57:25]
Tracy Thomas
I 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 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.
- [57:47]
Jenna J. Wortham
Are there. Do they list editor? I don't know. I'm like, I should know this, but I don't. But our editor's names, like, listed in the books. Like, how do you find this out?
- [57:54]
Tracy Thomas
So usually it's just in the acknowledgments. So, like, I want to thank my editor, and then I just put it 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.
- [58:10]
Jenna J. Wortham
Oh, I love, you know, like.
- [58:11]
Tracy Thomas
Like, and I love that too, because, first of all, those people work really hard on books, and books are not just by an author, but also I love to just see whose hands are in what and to, like, compare my experience with them. But enough about me.
- [58:25]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay.
- [58:25]
Tracy Thomas
What is. What is the last book that made you laugh?
- [58:33]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay, let me think about this one. I One is a book called An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. Did you read that?
- [58:43]
Tracy Thomas
I didn't.
- [58:44]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [58:52]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [58:53]
Jenna J. Wortham
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?
- [59:01]
Tracy Thomas
And, like, it's just like, you cannot unplug a little bit.
- [59:04]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 substack 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, like, what's t. 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 that'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 person's voice. And it's just funny. It's funny to think about. 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 now 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 a weird one for this question. But it's delicious. Delicious Foods by James Hanahan.
- [60:40]
Tracy Thomas
I know James Hanahan, but I don't know that one. I read their other book.
- [60:44]
Jenna J. Wortham
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.
- [61:30]
Tracy Thomas
Such a surprise.
- [61:31]
Jenna J. Wortham
What a surprise.
- [61:32]
Tracy Thomas
Like, surprise and delight.
- [61:34]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yes. I was like, what a fricking freak genius you are, James. Like it, really? And so I laughed. But it wasn't because the material was Necessarily funny, but I've never been that amazed by a writer before. Never been that surprised in text. Yeah. It's incredible.
- [61:53]
Tracy Thomas
What's the last book that made you angry?
- [61:56]
Jenna J. Wortham
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's Palo Alto for a column I was writing about blue sky and. And sort of the, sort of the waves of optimism that I was seeing on people as they're kind of arriving 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 beat 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 hard not to see some of that through line to 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 Simone Brown's Dark 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, ugh. You know, I just.
- [63:20]
Tracy Thomas
What about a book that brings you joy?
- [63:23]
Jenna J. Wortham
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, 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 HK Choi's books, going back and reading Jenny Han's 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.
- [63:48]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [63:49]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 delight me. Or like Angela Flournoy's new book, coming.
- [63:57]
Tracy Thomas
Out the Wilderness that's coming out in September, I think. Right.
- [64:00]
Jenna J. Wortham
Whenever I see the COVID I'm just like, I don't even know what it's about. And I'm just I'm like, oh, so happy.
- [64:06]
Tracy Thomas
I 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. We're running out of time, so we've got to just do the last few. I. I do want to know, if you were a high school teacher, what's a book you would assign.
- [64:26]
Jenna J. Wortham
What. What. What are high school books also? Like, is it.
- [64:30]
Tracy Thomas
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.
- [64:51]
Jenna J. Wortham
That's cool.
- [64:51]
Tracy Thomas
Which is like, we didn't have that. Like, YA 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 on the Rye would probably be, like, dark ya. Like, moody ya. I think they're trying to do some of that, but I. I don't know. I'm not in high school, and I'm not a teacher.
- [65:14]
Jenna J. Wortham
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 TikTok. I'm obsessed with TikTok, so I would probably do, 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 TF The Fuck did I Marry? And, like, you know, because, yes, there's. You know, that's what Janie is doing. Janie is just. 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, Jeannie and tk, it's just everything. I mean, that's a book I would love to teach and talk about.
- [66:13]
Tracy Thomas
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. For the next 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.
- [66:39]
Jenna J. Wortham
I mean, any book, like, any recent book. I mean, I don't even know, like, what. I don't even know.
- [66:46]
Tracy Thomas
Like, there is no limit.
- [66:49]
Jenna J. Wortham
Know. Oh, my God. I don't know. Is it, like, Pelosi's book? Like, do I want him to read the Art of Power and then just have to, like.
- [66:57]
Tracy Thomas
Don't you think he probably got an arc of that? He's probably, like, already read it.
- [67:00]
Jenna J. Wortham
Yeah. He lists on audiobook while he's, like, in his cryo tank. He's like, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I want him to read something about, like, I don't even know.
- [67:11]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, we can get. We can give him the Pelosi. That's an oak. That's. We'll take it.
- [67:15]
Jenna J. Wortham
Because I. 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, I'm looking at this anthology of black lesbian literature called does yous Mama Know? Like, it would be great if he just read that. I don't know.
- [67:41]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I'll take that.
- [67:42]
Jenna J. Wortham
You know.
- [67:43]
Tracy Thomas
Great.
- [67:43]
Jenna J. Wortham
Okay.
- [67:44]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. Jay is out of here for now. They'll be back January 29th, 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 in the stacks. All right, y'all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much again to Jay Wortham for joining the show. Don't forget, Jay will be back on Wednesday, January 29th. But stack book club episode on our January pick, the Ministry of Time by Kellyanne Bradley. If you love this podcast, you want Inside access to it, head to patreon.com the stacks to join the Stacks Pack and check out my substack newsletter@tracy thomas.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 at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram threads and TikTok, and check out our website@thestackspodcast.com this episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin McBrite, and our theme music is from Tagirius. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.