Greetings, earthlings! I write to you today from the sandy beaches of Ye Olde Tybee Island, where I’m on our yearly family vacation for the 4th. Rotten of me, I know, to send this dispatch to you while you’re not quite fortunate enough to be sitting on this sandy shore- but I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend in your own chaotically patriotic fashion.
Perhaps you could channel boat day vibes with your choice of reading? People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry was a favored choice earlier this year, and The Summer I Turned Pretty series has good years-of-pining-on-your-summer-vacation-crush vibes for those of us that prefer our romance to be of the overly dramatic Young Adult variety. The Summer of Broken Rules by KL Walther has made my top 5 list this year, and Emily Wibberly’s The Roughest Draft is what Beach Read (from summer 2020) could have been.
I just realized all of these recommendations are Romance books, so if you have other summer/beach/boat/vacation themed books in any genre, please sound off in the comments!
As for my personal vacation library, I packed for this week with the energy of a Tasmanian Devil stuck in a tornado, and my book options are truly reflective of that… I read Heartstopper Vol. 4 on the beach today and then started a little hardback called On Lighthouses- written by Jasmine Barrera and translated by Christina MacSweeney- which is of course, about lighthouses.
I brought along a weird conglomeration of library books and things I’ve bought over the last year that I haven’t actually read yet: Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket (which I’ve read the synopsis for multiple times and I’m still not sure how to summarize it), Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon (of The Ex Talk fame), Field Study (a book of poetry by Chet’la Sebree), and Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead.
I think I’ll start Weather Girl next! I’ll keep you posted on how things shape up, but in the meantime… What are you reading? What’s on your vacation TBR list? What’s your summer reading assignment?
And lastly, I’d like to leave you with this poem, “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes, a favorite of mine that I revisit every July.
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
Thanks for reading, and happy long weekend.