Christina Sharpe has long been interested in how slavery and its aftereffects have continued to persist in American life—in particular Black American life. In her book Monstrous Intimacies, she examined how the violence of slavery has continued to haunt the United States, and in In the Wake, she combined meditations from her own life with close readings of contemporary Black art to consider how Black culture has been shaped by “being in” slavery’s “wake.” Now, in her latest book, Ordinary Notes, she offers a lush enmeshment of photography, criticism, and biography to consider how Black art and art about Black America have memorialized the past and present. “Drawing from photographs in her own personal library as well as those found in various archives,” writes Omari Weeks in an essay on the book, “she shows how each picture—especially those featuring Black subjects—always documents a negotiation of power among the people in the photographs, those taking them, and those viewing them.” Read “Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life”