{"product_id":"ordinary-notes","title":"Ordinary Notes","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cb data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWINNER OF THE 2023 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary Black life.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“I wanted to write about \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003esilences\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eterror\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e and acts that hover over generations, over centuries. I began by writing about my mother and grandmother.” —from “Note 18” in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOrdinary Notes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA singular achievement, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOrdinary Notes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e explores with immense care profound questions about loss, and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 brief and urgent notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"atm_keep-reading-flag\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003csmall data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ci class=\"fa fa-arrow-down\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/small\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e that are poignantly personal—with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. Through the striking images and words in these pages, themes and tones echo: sometimes about life, art, language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, photography, and literature—but always attending, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt the heart of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOrdinary Notes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e is the indelible presence of the author’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. “I learned to see in my mother’s house,” writes Sharpe. “I learned how not to see in my mother’s house . . . My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words.” Using these and other gifts and ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to become present on the page. She articulates and follows an aesthetic of \"beauty as a method,” collects entries from a community of thinkers towards a “Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness,” and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44340768309504,"sku":null,"price":45.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0084\/8081\/7207\/files\/IMG_3594.jpg?v=1707420909","url":"https:\/\/www.secretplanet.ca\/products\/ordinary-notes","provider":"Secret Planet","version":"1.0","type":"link"}