Here we are again, arriving at another December 31st. We are alive; a miracle I celebrate every morning I wake to find I have not died in my sleep. We are alive with hope in our hearts and despair daring to blight our bones. We are not alone in this aliveness, nor is our aliveness guaranteed. Books continue to remind me of this.
It is a tradition of mine to celebrate December 31st with a remembrance and appreciation for some books I encountered during the year, books that brought company, wisdom, linguistic splendor, and perspective — for in times of ever uncertainty, books are a stalwart, omnipresent friend. Throughout loving days, blue days, and the always-prowling fog — a book is here, waiting to sing to you as you hold each other close.
This year, as our world continues to burn and flood and genocides too keep blazing, I am ever grateful and changed by the books I read in 2025 (see the collage and full list below). Inspired by the worlds that they plant and imagine and build and the systems they challenge and dismantle, I’m asking myself (and encouraging you too): What would living in a Freeland be like?
Is it where we go to dervish and poetize under the full moon?
Is it found in the rewriting and reclaiming of an old tale?
Is it a world free of ableist thinking and technologies?
Is it a monoculture grassy lawn being killed and in its place is planted a nutritious and resilient prairie to feed and protect the land and all who live there?
Is it a place where bombs fall on the heads of children?
Is it a place where dams are demolished and the salmon swim and spawn again as they have always done?
Is it a place where neighborhoods lie down in front of bulldozers and cook food for each other and build a community park full of murals and playgrounds where secret plans for a new police station had been?
Is it the site of a prison?
Is it a place where no one has to hide the gender that they are, the gender they have known themselves to be, the gender that they wish to be known as by others?
Is it a place you can get to by boat, by water? Can you drink the water there?
Is it where we go to access and process grief, ancestral trauma, memory?
Is it a place which continues the exploitation of Black and Indigenous peoples?
Is it a place where bodies of all abilities can find love, closeness, warmth, tenderness, and understanding?
Is it a place of undead people, roaming around with crows in their chests?
Is it a place where the snow sparkles and sinters and has staying power into the spring? Where the snow teaches us how to rise above capitalist individualism and become aware again of our potential for collective strength and care?
Oh, friends, we are on our way to making our Freeland. And there is much work still to be done. Reading will always be an essential part of that work for me. So, on this day of old and new, many thanks to those who write books, make books, bind books, share books, give books, read books, and love books. May 2026 be filled with liberation and housing, an end to genocides everywhere, poetry, mutual aid, seed planting and harvesting, open hearts, dancing, stretches, mask wearing, abolished state violence, and love.
(If you like these books, you might consider donating or learning more about the following organizations):
The Refaat Alareer Camp – by The Sameer Project (link)
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (link)
Point of Pride – Free chest binders for trans folks who need them (link)
Disability Visibility Project (link)
Can you find them all?
Grievers – adrienne maree brown
Water – Rumi (trans. Haleh Liza Gafori)
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – Omar El Akkad *
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over – Anne de Marcken
Disability Intimacy – edited by Alice Wong *
Ordinary Notes – Christina Sharpe *
We Planted a Prairie – Esha Biswas
The Story of Silence – Alex Myers
What is a River? – Monika Vaicenavičienė
Moomins in Cometland – Tove Jansson
Root Fractures: Poems – Diana Khoi Nguyen *
Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations — Vol. 3: Partners – co-edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer
Remote Control – Nnedi Okorafor *
Freeland: Poems – Leigh Sugar
Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Against Technoableism – Ashley Shew *
The Gift is in the Making: Anishinaabeg Stories by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson *
Fagin the Thief – Allison Epstein
Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park – Maria Dolores Aguila
Seven Surrenders – Ada Palmer *
* a star means that I also enjoyed the audiobook version, and you might, too! Did you know you can borrow audiobooks from your library system through the Libby app?