{"product_id":"ordinary-notes-9780374604486","title":"Ordinary Notes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe critically acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eIn the Wake\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Christina Sharpe is a brilliant thinker who attends unflinchingly to the brutality of our current arrangements . . . and yet always finds a way to beauty and possibility\" (Saidiya Hartman).\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA singular achievement, \u003ci\u003eOrdinary Notes\u003c\/i\u003e explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past--public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal--with present realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. The themes and tones that echo through these pages, sometimes about language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, art, photography, and literature--always attend, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt the heart of \u003ci\u003eOrdinary Notes\u003c\/i\u003e is the indelible presence of the author's mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. \"I learned to see in my mother's house,\" writes Sharpe. \"I learned how not to see in my mother's house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.\" Using these gifts and other ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to the page. She practices an aesthetic of \"beauty as a method,\" collects entries from a community of thinkers toward a \"Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness,\" and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a brilliant new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/25\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780374604486\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 392\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.25h x 5.50w x 1.00d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal Prepub Alert\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/01\/2022 pg. 13\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/13\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/15\/2023\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Christina Sharpe","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42753373372597,"sku":"9780374604486","price":29.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_7a249ae3-0e5a-4e12-a963-6fae5d044d7c.jpg?v=1677594197","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/ordinary-notes-9780374604486","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}