This will not be a complete list, nor will it offer reviews; do with that information what you will before proceeding! My thoughts on THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE follow my initial list, so feel free to scroll ahead.
Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison, A. J. Verdelle (2022)
Desdemona, Toni Morrison (2012)
Toni Morrison: The Last Interview (2020)
On Morrison, Namwali Serpell (2026)
Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon, Toni Morrison (2026)
The Book of Mean People, Toni & Slade Morrison and Pascal LeMaître
(I wonder if you’re sensing a pattern here…)
I’ve basically been down a very serious Morrison rabbit hole since Toni at Random came out last year. Notably, one of my best friends was like, "You’ve been on a Morrison rabbit hole since we’ve met.” I met her almost ten years ago.
Well.
She’s right, of course, I’ve just never had the time to do a really concentrated deep dive as I’m doing now. I hit most of the novels in grad school and spent a lot of time with Playing in the Dark for the dissertation, but now we’re in the weeds. I’m actually having the time of my life, I’ll admit. I’ll let y’all know the result of the research if I ever wrangle my thoughts into something coherent.
The Starseekers, Nicole Glover (2026)
This is hands down my favorite recently published novel. It’s just one of those novels that is a near perfect encapsulation of the inside of my brain: Black history! Magic! Confident Black women kicking butt! Astrology based magic system! Witty banter! Romance! Mystery! Fast pace! Sister relationships! Cozy! It was the kind of book that I finished and immediately wanted to restart. There were so many things I know I missed, and I want to read it again and again until I know it by heart. It has so much heart and charm, easily the kind of thing that I know I’ll find comforting for many years to come. Plus I’m actually delighted to jump in at this juncture of the series because it means I have three books I can go back and read!1
Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism, Jenn M. Jackson (2025)
I was so delighted to be able to be in conversation with Dr. Jackson around their book at Resist last month!2
Memphis, Tara Stringfellow (2022)
Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat: Poems, Khalisa Rae (2021)
My Monticello, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (2021)
I have had this book basically since it came out but it’s been sitting, unread, in my living room. I kept having this intuitive nudge to read it the last couple weeks, and if you’ve been following allow with my posts, you know how my intuition is. And you guessed it: it was right. on. TIME. Whew. Especially as I’m working through a novel in which a central strand is thinking about what it means to be a Virginian who has stayed on this land through the generations? Perfect timing.
Curlfriends: Back in Business & Curlfriends: New in Town, Sharee Miller
I LOVE MIDDLE GRADE GRAPHIC NOVELS STARRING BLACK GIRLS. And this one with such a cute friend group at the center is unthawing my cold little heart. Get it for your littles! Get it for you! I love these books!3
Dominion, Addie E. Citchens (2025)
I don’t know what else to say except Addie put her foot in this novel. I inhaled it. Need to read it again, IMMEDIATELY.
Threads of Destiny (Star Trek Deviations), Stephanie Williams & Gregory Maldonado
No Place #2-3, Tim Seeley and Stefano Simeone
Temporal #3-4, Stephanie Williams & Asiah Fulmore
Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832, Wilfred Lupano and Stéphane Fert (2020)
Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer, David Crownson and Courtland Ellis
Bitter Root, vol. 1, David Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene
I really do not like horror anything, but my friend Keisha of The Blerd Library convinced me to give HTDS and BR a try. And I was really glad I did! Both are really great stories. BR in particular I found super rich and I’m looking forward to reading the next volumes.
XO, Kitty (Season 3)
What can I say? My favorite Chaos Queen is back in action and I’m living for it!
Bridgerton (Season 4)
…Well. I watched it.
“Inquistitor and Insurgent: Black Woman with Pencil, Sharpened,” Nikky Finney from Lovechild’s Hot Bed of Occasional Poetry (2020)
“‘She dared to be difficult’: How Toni Morrison shaped the way we think,” Namwali Serpell, The Guardian (2/15/2016)
This is an excerpt of On Morrison. I actually think this portion/the chapter it’s from needs to be required reading before engaging with me.
“Black Girl Magic in ‘Watercolors’ by Ravynn Stringfield,” The Blerd Library (2/20/2026)
Keisha wrote about my short story in the first midnight & indigo speculative issue from 2020 on The Blerd Library, I was so honored. I’ve been having a hard time recently, and these moments of being so seen by people I equally admire moved me beyond words. So, you’ll have to forgive me if including this is self-indulgent. This is, after all, my blog, and I make the rules here.
“Being a Therapist When the World is On Fire,” Vanessa Anyanso, Black Youth Project (3/23/2026)
I am so, so, so proud of my friend Vanessa, who had this really incredible piece published recently. She so clearly articulates the fact that we cannot therapy our way out of the state of the world. We cannot therapy our way out of systems designed to annihilate us. Certainly we do not stop caring for ourselves and others, but we need an honest assessment of what we’re actually up against. It was so smart, and very needed.
“The Paradox of Thrift,” Tina Vasquez, The Flytrap
“Black Book People: Tyiana Combs,” midnight & indigo
We started a new initiative over at m&i (where I am an editor) that highlights different folks in and around the publishing/book industry for their perspectives on what’s going on as things shift and respond to world events. I’m excited that we’re going to be looking for folks beyond just authors: we’re talking to editors, booksellers, content creators, librarians, teachers, publicists, marketers, etc. Our first feature is already up! I’d love for y’all to take a look.
Jessica Lynne just dropped this essay on Missy Elliott in Literary Hub that I have been meaning to read since it dropped. The 75 girlies love Missy down.
I also just picked up a Toni Morrison Treasury with eight of the picture books she did with her son, Slade, from the library. I’m very excited to get into that, although I already read through a few that I found before I requested the collected edition. On that same note, my Secret Leprechaun got me The Black Book, which I’m excited to look through.4
The trade book of Jordan Clark and Atagun Ilhan’s Ancestral Recall will be out on April 14! Very excited about this one!
And! Issue 16 of midnight & indigo is dropping on April 20th! I love new issue drops, especially when pieces I’ve worked on appear in print! This will be the second issue with a piece I edited. Preorders are open, go ahead and get your order in!
Welcome, darlings, to the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
You need a few pieces of context about me for what follows.
First, I would say I’m an equal opportunity art girlie. I love expression, which I guess makes sense because I was blessed/cursed with an excess of thought, emotion, and energy and it’s got to go somewhere. While I’ve always loved reading, writing and making visual art, the fact that I do this for a career now eclipses the fact that I was a huge music girlie. A committed theater kid.
We’re talking: weekly piano lessons for twelve years. Ten years in the National Piano Players Guild. Auditioned for the regional arts governors’ school for classical piano. Aspired to be a concert pianist. My first love was a Pearl River baby grand. Violist for five years. A few years both in high school and college theater. Spent most of my time my freshman year performing the Fame (2009) soundtrack from start to finish in my bedroom. Would signal a bad mood by thundering “Phantom of the Opera” on piano as loud as I could.5
I adore excess. I relish abundance.
I am the kind of person who delights in the beauty of everything all at once.
The technicolor whirlwind of my mind and heart is far too much for most people, but every so often, I encounter a piece of art that matches everything I’ve got in me and more.
Listening to this album, I knew Raye and I are a kind of kin. The kind of people who feel so much, so many memories latching to our hearts, and let it spill out in a flood. The same person who could create a song like “Joy.” is the same person who could feel enough to create a “Nightingale Lane” or a “I Will Overcome.”
Raye is the kind of artist where every single thing she’s doing on every single song is interesting. You don’t even know where to look first. THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE has the effect of walking into a well stocked apothecary, bursting to the seams with colors and smells and textures waiting for your eyes to land one magic after another.
This is the music someone who loved the stories of her family, scattered across many diasporas, and decided to make the most opulent quilt she could and cover us all with it. It is homage and yet most decidedly hers.
She took her heartbreak and wove it into glory.
It is truly a thing with wings.
It is so playful, smart and tongue-in-cheek. She bounces from a witty “The WhatsApp Shakespeare.” to the cinematic “Beware.. The South London Lover Boy.”; a Vivaldi sample on “Winter Woman” to an Al Green feature on “Goodbye Henry.” She made a song with Hans Zimmer, for God’s sake!
The thing that I love about this girl is that she is so incredibly smart musically. She’s snatching at everything this can get her hands on to create this and it’s my perpetual reminder that Black artists often know “the canon” forward and backward so they know exactly where to break it open, our own canon so we know where to pull in tradition, and as a result, where exactly is the space for us, as new artists, to walk in and put in our two cents.
It is a type of genius so big it feels impossible to grasp.
And I imagine folks won’t. But I hope that’s not the case. I hope she gets critical acclaim for this album.
This likely won’t mean anything to her, but this album was everything to the kid I was and had to leave behind. An affirmation that somewhere out there, a Black girl is making music that bursts at the seams, that takes up an incredible amount of space, that zips us through time and space, moving from genres and sounds that belong to different decades of years past and to the future.
I’m so grateful.
And Raye, if you see this: if my novel Love Requires Chocolate ever gets turned into a movie, please do a song for the soundtrack! Because this is Whitney Curry music, for sure.
<3
Media, Lately (December Edition)
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December 1, 2025
This will not be a complete list, nor will it offer reviews; do with that information what you will before proceeding!
If you’re new here and you don’t want to do all that clicking to find out what I’m about: I’m Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield, a writer, editor, artist and former Peanut Fest Queen from Suffolk, Virginia. I am the author of two novels for young adults, Love in 280 Characters or Less (Feiwel & Friends, 2025) and Love Requires Chocolate (Joy Revolution, 2024). I am a product of Virginia public schools (Suffolk Public Schools) and universities (University of Virginia), all the way up to my PhD in American Studies from William & Mary. I’ve been published in a variety of venues for the last six years—book collections, magazines, scholarly journals—but most importantly, I’m a life long reader and a maker of beautiful things.
I know it seems like I might be biased because Nicole is a 757 Virginia writer, but I’m not—she really is that good.
I keep telling my academic friends to let me enjoy my retirement in peace and here they come, asking me to do academic or academic-adjacent stuff. I’m kidding, I love them and would do anything to help a pal <3
I regret not buying two copies like I started to at Resist. Because as soon as my neighbor sees these she’s going to steal them from me.
Secret Leprechaun is just Secret Santa with my internet friends, except we do it in March/around St. Patrick’s Day so we call it Secret Leprechaun. This was our fourth annual exchange.
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