Founders Shelf: October Reads

October has been a month of thinking about place & belonging (as has much of the past few months!)

After spending time at Black Portraiture[s] in Los Angeles, visiting exhibitions and exploring the city's cultural spaces, I've found myself increasingly interested in the relationship between art, history and community.

This month's shelf reflects some of those interests, bringing together photography, Black art history and literature from the Caribbean.

When Home Is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World - Leigh Raiford

What does it mean to make a home somewhere, and how do we document that feeling?

In When Home Is a Photograph, Leigh Raiford explores how Black artists, activists and thinkers have used photography to understand their place in the world. Through figures including Marcus Garvey, James Van Der Zee and Kathleen Neal Cleaver, she considers the role images play in shaping identity, preserving memory and creating a sense of belonging across geographical boundaries.

I've been thinking a lot about archives recently, particularly the photographs we keep, the stories attached to them and what these collections reveal about our personal and collective histories.

As we begin developing On Belonging, I'm interested in exploring how people document home, particularly when home exists across countries, communities or generations.

South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s - Kellie Jones

Spending more time in Los Angeles has made me curious about the city's cultural history, particularly the communities and artists who helped shape it.

In South of Pico, art historian Kellie Jones documents the Black arts scene in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, exploring the work of artists including Betye Saar, Noah Purifoy, Charles White and Senga Nengudi.

Beyond their individual practices, the book looks at how Black artists developed their own spaces, networks and opportunities while navigating the racial and social landscape of the city.

It's an interesting perspective on cultural organising and the importance of building spaces outside traditional institutions. As someone building an independent publication and community, I'm especially interested in the ways creative communities have come together to support, document and sustain one another.

Fugitive Tilts: Essays - Ishion Hutchinson

I've been wanting to spend more time with Caribbean literature, particularly writing that explores the relationship between memory, identity and place.

Fugitive Tilts is a collection of essays by Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson, moving between literary criticism, personal reflection and cultural history. His writing draws on literature, music, art and his own experiences growing up in Jamaica, exploring the influences that have shaped his perspective.

I'm particularly drawn to the way Hutchinson brings Caribbean history and culture into conversation with a much wider literary world.

With my own family ties to Trinidad, I've become increasingly interested in exploring Caribbean writing beyond the authors I already know. I'm curious about how Hutchinson approaches questions of language, migration and the relationship we maintain with the places we come from.

This month's selection brings together three different approaches to understanding place and cultural memory, whether through images, art or literature.

As I continue researching On Belonging and spending time in new cultural spaces, I'm looking forward to exploring these ideas from different perspectives.

Jodie - Founder, Listen Journal