March report

Heads up: I talk about the NYC mayoral race (and therefore, about politics) a lot in this Report. I hope it will be the first and last time I get so capital-p Political in a Report, because I think we all enjoy when this is a space about the books I’ve read. It’s important to have spaces where we take a break from staring into the abyss, but I must discuss the subject this month, as it is the reason for my lack of a Book Report.

After I finished grad school in May 2016, I didn’t read for what felt like a long time. I must have gone months without reading a full book. Between adjuncting at 2 different schools and applying to tenure track jobs I was never going to even be interviewed for, I had neither the time nor the desire to read anything longer than the short stories, poems, and essays I’d assign for my classes. Then the election happened. And a few months later, I started to accept that I wouldn’t be leaving New York for a tenure-track job, at least not without a lot more unpaid work and even more dumb luck.

I started a book club with Friend of the Report, Neeru, because our friends kept moving away and we wanted to make new local ones. I managed to read a book each month.

I joined the executive committee of my university’s faculty union. I joined my block association and sued the mayor with my neighbors. I volunteered at the city animal shelter. I joined my community board, sitting on the Housing + Land Use and the Sanitation + Transportation committees. I started organizing my neighbors for a tenants’ union. I taught 4 classes a semester on 2 different campuses. I became a VIDA counter. I went to monthly Civic Minded meetings held by my Assemblymember and worked on ad hoc committees to fight for real affordable housing in the neighborhood.

It was exhausting and it was exhilarating, doing things. And, looking back, it was all so obviously response to the election and also a way of exploring all the possibilities for the energy I’d previously poured into a terminal degree. I was out of the ivory tower (had I ever really been in it?) and participating in my community.

Then I switched careers, began focusing my attention on learning my new field. I had more time to read, and had finally started to miss books. Two years later, I was reading multiple books a month and thinking about writing about what I was reading, but not in an academic way.

The pandemic started. I’d been tired for a while by that point and used the moment to resign from the community board. Then another election happened. I moved to a different neighborhood for a bigger apartment and more space from people overall. I did not join my community board. Next, a local election—I thought that telling my friends that Eric Adams was not a good person would be enough to help him not get elected. We all know how that went!

Would you believe me if I told you I forgot about most of what I did in the years immediately following graduation? Just memory-holed so much of it as I grew increasingly comfortable in my cozy little bubble.

Well, yet another election has happened, and another mayoral one is on the horizon.

In October, a former fellow Civic Minded participant declared he was running for Mayor. Since 2018 he’d be doing real things on the state level to make life measurably better for New Yorkers, beginning with unseating a member of Cuomo’s beloved legislation-killing “Independent Democratic Conference.” I obviously vowed to devote all my waking hours to helping make Eric Adams a one-term Mayor.

Which brings me to today, and the glaring absence of a “What I read this month” section of the Book Report.

Last month, I wrote the Report after a morning of petitioning for signatures to get Zellnor on the ballot. I’d never petitioned before. I didn’t really understand the scope of the project of getting 13,000 signatures in one month. The next day, I went out again for more signatures. I knocked on doors in my neighborhood during the week. Then I did another weekend of petitioning, and another, and another. All over New York City. At night, I helped with quality control on the petitions, deciphering all kinds of handwriting to confirm whether a signature would be deemed valid by the Board of Elections.

I didn’t read any books this month. I talked to a lot of people. Strangers. It was actually fun? And only sometimes scary!

There’s no “What I read this month”—no Book Report—because I’ve been living and breathing volunteering on this campaign. For the first time in my life in this city, we have the opportunity to elect a mayor who not only doesn’t suck shit, but who will actually do real things that help real people, not himself and his billionaire donors. I’m daring to dream!! To DREAM.

I want to thank all the Friends of the Report who signed a petition and all my loved ones who have gracefully abided my turning this race into my personality for a month.

The petitions are in. It will take the Board of Elections a month to certify all the candidates’ applications, which means I’ll have time to read in April so that you have some books to read about in next month’s Report.

What I’m looking forward to reading in April:

Alba De Céspedes, tr., Ann Goldstein, There’s No Turning Back (1938/2025)¹

Francisco Delgado, On Remembering My Friends, My First Job, and My Second-Favorite Weezer CD²

Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April (1922)³

Might mess around and read that new Hunger Games book (2025)

1  I read ~80 pages of it this month.

2  🚨🚨🚨 The Report brings you its second ever Friend who is a Published Author, and first ever Friend who is a Published Novelist 🚨🚨🚨. I am not responsible for these Friends’ accomplishments but I am responsible for HYPING THEM UP.

3  Book Club selection for April.