SHELF | Working Liyterature

Context is what appears when you hold your attention open for long enough; the longer you hold it, the more context appears. — Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy (2019)

What does it mean that something is named here?

It means that I have access to it and it informs the reading and thinking notes that I file into my system. It does not mean that I inherently admire the author and recommend every text. What's listed is certainly interesting enough for me to pay attention to as I make sense of the world! At minimum, I am thankful for the labour behind each one and that it reached me.

WORKING LIBRARY | ANTILIBRARY

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali translated by Muhammad Abul Quasem, The Jewels of the Qur'an: A-Ghazali's Theory: A translation, with an introduction and annotation of al-Ghazali's Kitab Jawahir al-Qur'an (1983)

Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (2016)

Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (2007)

Amar Alfikar, Queer Menafsir: Teologi Islam Untuk Ragam Ketubuhan (2023)

amb, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017)

Amber Murrey (editor), A Certain Amount of Madness: The Life, Policies and Legacies of Thomas Sankara (2018)

amina wadud, Qur'an and Women: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (1992)

amina wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (2006)

amina wadud, Once In A Lifetime (2022)

Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable (2016)

Andrea J. Ritchie, Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies (2023)

Andrew Boyd, I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor (2023)

Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (2020)

Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015)

Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (editors), The Qur'ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur'ānic Milieu (2009)

Angelika Neuwirth translated by Samuel Wilder, The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 1: Early Meccan Suras: Poetic Prophecy (2022)

Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (2023)

Annie Kotowicz, What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum (2022)

Andreas Malm, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century (2020)

Andreas Malm, Fighting In A World On Fire: The next generation’s guide to protecting the climate and saving our future (2023)

Anissa Hélie and Homa Hoodfar (editors), Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance (2012)

Anne Applebaum, Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run The World (2024)

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)

Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology of Occupation Around The World (2023)

Arif Nuh Safri, Memahami Keragaman Gender & Seksualitas: Sebuah Tafsir Kontekstual Islam (2020)

Arun Kundnani, What Is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism (2023)

Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making Of Worlds (2018)

Ashley Shew, Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023)

Asma Barlas, Believing Women In Islam: Unreading patriarchal interpretations of the Quran (2019)

Audre Lorde, Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978)

Azar Nafisi, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times (2022)

Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Health Communism (2022)

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021)

Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate (2019)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983)

Benjamin Y. Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge (2023)

Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the subjugation of women became gospel truth (2021)

Bruno Manser, Voices From The Rainforest: Testimonies of a Threatened People (1996)

C. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency As Art (2020)

C. Thi Nguyen, Trust and Sincerity in Art (2021)

C.A. Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945 (2004)

C.A. Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire (2007)

Camille Helminski, Women of Sufism, A Hidden Treasure: Writings and Stories of Mystic Poets, Scholars & Saints (2003)

Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (2018)

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time (2017)

Caroline Criado Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019)

Christopher Choong Weng Wai, Anti-colonial raced capitalism in Malaysia: Contested logics, gendered repertoires (2024)

Cindy Barukh Milstein (editor), Constellations of Care: Anarcha-feminism in Practice (2024)

Cindy Milstein (editor), Deciding For Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy (2020)

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity And Paved The Way To Fascism (2022)

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (2022)

David Graeber, Direct Action: An Ethnography (2009)

Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next) (2020)

Deborah Blum, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (2010)

Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering The New Faces of Neurodiversity (2022)

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008)

Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us (2022)

Edith Sheffer, Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna (2018)

Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971)

Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America's most powerful corporation (2001)

Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2010)

Emran El-Badawi and Paula Sanders (editors), Communities of the Qur'an: Dialogue, Debate, and Diversity in the 21st century (2019)

Eric Laursen, The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State (2021)

Esther Farmer, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Sarah Sills (editors), A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism (2021)

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (2007)

Farish A. Noor, Yoginder Sikan, Martin van Bruinessen (editors), The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages (2008)

Farish A. Noor, America's Encounters with Southeast Asia, 1800-1900: Before the Pivot (2018)

Farish A. Noor, The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951-2013: Islamism in a Mottled Nation (2014)

Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (1980)

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South (2023)

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022)

George Monbiot, Peter Hutchinson, Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (2024)

George Quinn, Bandit Saints of Java: How Java's eccentric saints are challenging fundamentalist Islam in modern Indonesia (2019)

Goneng Awang, Growing Up in Trengganu (2007)

Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, David Shneer, Torah Queeries: Weekly commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (2009)

Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (2019)

Hanna Alkaf, GILA: A Journey Through Moods and Madness (2016)

Hannah Proctor, Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat (2024)

Harsha Walia, Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021)

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan (1911)

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Music of Life (1977)

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Art of Being and Becoming (1979)

Hazrat Inayat Khan, Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology (1988)

Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time (2023)

Hisham D. Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture (2014)

Ibn Khaldun translated by Franz Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (1377, 1967)

Ingrid Robeyns, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth (2024)

Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (2024)

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi as translated by Jawid Mojaddedi, The Masnavi, Books 1-4 (1270)

James D'Amato, The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide (2019)

James P. Ongkili, The Borneo Response to Malaysia, 1961-1963 (1967)

James S. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009)

Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Patterns in Narrative (2019)

Jasbir K. Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017)

Jason F. Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018)

JB Phillips, Your God Is Too Small (1952)

Jean Duruz and Gaik Cheng Khoo, Eating Together: Food, Space, and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore (2015)

Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019)

Jessa Crispin, The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide To An Inspired Life (2016)

Jessica Abel, Out on the Wire: Uncovering the Secrets of Radio's New Masters of Story with Ira Glass (2015)

Jessica Dore, Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth (2021)

Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy (2022)

Jessica Fern, Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships (2023)

Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse (2019)

Jinan Yousef, Reflecting on the Names of Allah: Understanding and connecting to God in our daily lives (2020)

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

John Robb, Punk Rock: An Oral History (2006)

John Wackman & Elizabeth Knight, Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture (2020)

Jonathan A.C. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy (2014)

Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep (2014)

Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny (2024)

Karen Bakker, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants (2022)

Karima Bennoune, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism (2013)

Katherine Natanel and Ilan Pappé (editors), Palestine in a World on Fire (2024)

Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (2006)

Kecia Ali, The Lives of Muhammad (2014)

Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing And The Revolution Of Reciprocal Care (2023)

Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari'ah in the Modern Age (2014)

Klaus Theweleit, Mannerphantasien, Volume 1. Frauen, Fluten,
Korper, Geschichte (1987), translated by Chris Turner with foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, Male Fantasies, Volume I: Women, Floods, Bodies (1987)

Kyla Schuller, The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism (2021)

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, A New English Version by Ursula K. Le Guin (401, 1997)

Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (2022)

Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women: From Incels To Pickup Artists, The Truth About Extreme Misogyny And How It Affects Us All (2020)

Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love (2022)

Layla K. Feghali, The Land In Our Bones: Plantcestral herbalism and healing cultures from Syria to the Sinai (2024)

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999)

Emma Lee, Jennifer Evans (editors), Indigenous Women's Voices: 20 Years On From Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies (2022)

Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents (2015)

Lizzie O'Shea, Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology (2019)

Lola Olufemi, Experiments In Imagining Otherwise (2021)

Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

Marco D'Eramo, The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age (2021)

Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994)

Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (1983)

Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (2021)

Matthew T. Huber, Climate Change As Class War: Building Socialism On A Warming Planet (2022)

Mawlana Abul Kalam Azad, The Opening Chapter of The Qur'an (1930, 1962)

Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (2009)

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (2020)

Michael Largo, Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession, and Reckless Abandon Through The Ages (2008)

Michael Muhammad Knight, Muhammad: Forty Introductions (2019)

Mohamed Abdou, Islam and Anarchism, (2022)

Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Tajdeed-e-Fikriyat-e-Islam) (1934)

Musimgrafik, Where Monsoons Meet: A People's History of Malaya (2007)

Nada Elia, Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine (2023)

Nadia Eghbal, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software (2020)

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It (2022)

Nathan Rochelle DuFord, Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory (2022)

Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills, David Miller (editors), What is Islamophobia? Racism, social movements, and the state (2017)

Navid Kermani, God is Beautiful: The aesthetic experience of the Qur'an (2014)

Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic words of Jesus (1990)

Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish (2005)

Neil Douglas-Klotz, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The hidden teachings on life and death (2022)

Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (2010)

Nezar AlSayyad, Mejgan Massoumi (editors), The Fundamentalist City? Religiosity and the remaking of urban space (2011)

Nick Bryant, The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict With Itself (2024)

Nick Estes, Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (2019)

Nicolai Sinai, Key Terms of the Qur'an: A Critical Dictionary (2023)

Nijay K. Gupta, Strange Religion: How The First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling (2024)

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) (2022)

Omid Safi, Progressive Muslims: On justice, gender, and pluralism (2003)

Omid Safi, Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (2018)

Parthiban Muniandy, Politics of the Temporary: An Ethnography of Migrant Life in Urban Malaysia (2015)

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition (1968)

Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change The World (2024)

Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (2019)

Rachel Mann, Dazzling Darkness: Gender, Sexuality, Illness and God (2012)

Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism: Notes On Disruption (2021)

Ramon Harvey, The Qur'an and the Just Society (2017)

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020)

Raul Zibechi with George Ygarza Quispe, Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America (2024)

Ricardo Wilson-Grau, Outcome Harvesting: Principles, Steps, and Evaluation Applications (2018)

Rkia Elaroui Cornell, Rabi'a From Narrative to Myth: The Many Faces of Islam's Most Famous Woman Saint, Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (2019)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People's History of the United States (2014)

Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow The World We Want (2022)

Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto (2024)

Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History (2019)

Sa’diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender, and Sexuality (2012)

Sa'diyya Shaikh and Fatima Seedat, The Women's Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World (2022)

Saidiya Hartman, Venus in Two Acts (2008)

Sam Wallman, Our Members Be Unlimited: A comic about workers and their unions (2022)

Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (2017)

Sarra Tlili, Animals in the Qur'an (2012)

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe, Thunder Song: Essays (2024)

Shadaab Rahemtulla, Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam (2017)

Shane Burley, No Pasarán: Antifascist Dispatches from a World In Crisis (2022)

Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide For Fighting Antisemitism (2024)

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For A Human Future At The New Frontier Of Power (2018)

Siddarth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (2023)

Silky Shah, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition (2024)

Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (1998 edition)

Sophie Mort, A Manual For Being Human (2021)

Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking: 2nd ed. (2022)

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (2022)

Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean (editors), Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (2020)

Susan Blackburn and Helen Ting (editors), Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements (2013)

Susan Williams, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa (2021)

Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Some Aspects of Sufism: As Understood and Practised Among the Malays (2020)

Syed Hussein Alatas, Islam and Socialism, (1976)

Syed Hussein Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A study of the image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th century and its function in the ideology of colonial capitalism (1977)

Sylvia Wynter, Unsettling the Colooniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation - An Argument (2003)

Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (2009)

Tamim Ansary, The Invention Of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection (2019)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message (2024)

Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You?: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women (2001)

Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (2011)

Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century (2019)

Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (1994)

Verso, The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad (2010)

Verso, The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger (2024)

Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning (1946)

Vincent Bevin, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (2023)

Vincent Bevin, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (2020)

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1971)

Walter Rodney, Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution (2021)

Walter W. Skeat, Malay Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula (1900)

William R. Roff, Studies on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia (2009)

Zahra Ayubi, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic ethics of the self, family, and society (2019)

Is this list meant to be a flex?

Rather than see this as me showing off, I hope you can see this list as the opposite of gatekeeping, like as:

1. starting points for non-fiction or to encounter ideas and topics you want to learn more about (if you're not much of a reader, ask me to walk you through my notes from a particular text— I could be open to it)
2. a practice of citation as feminist memory— although I will always share references for each Thing I make, I still think it is a worthy exercise to put it all in one place, so that so people who are interested in my working collection can have a full list
3. a practice of self-disclosure to show you what informs my lifelong learning (and therefore where my gaps in exposure are too).