Desert Island List 🌴

This page contains some thinkers and texts that have shaped how I approach literature, culture, and history or made a particularly strong impression on me more generally, regardless of whether they are explicitly cited in my published work. It is not exhaustive and the entries are listed randomly (not in order of their perceived importance). Given my concentration in decadence studies, I have refrained from including any decadent works here or from my book project (though some may still have tangential connections to decadence!)


Poetry

My lover comes to me like darkfall—long,

and through my open window. Mullion, transom.

A good window lets the outside participate.

I keep time on the hematite clocks of her shoulders.

And I’ve done so much of it—time.

— Natalie Diaz, Like Church.


Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs

What am I seeking? To change my origins? To change, along with myself, others, too?

— Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (translated by Ann Goldstein).

Plays

teá:

I think it’s really important to reiterate

that

what we all just explored

was incredibly difficult

and triggering,

but it was also fantasy.

Right?

— Jeremy O'Harris, Slave Play.

Critical and Theoretical Essays

What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there...

— James Baldwin, Nothing Personal.
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