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Ordinary Notes
A singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past--public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal--with present realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. The themes and tones that echo through these pages, sometimes about language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, art, photography, and literature--always attend, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life.
At the heart of Ordinary Notes 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 gifts and other ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to the page. She practices an aesthetic of "beauty as a method," collects entries from a community of thinkers toward a "Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness," and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a brilliant new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.
At the heart of Ordinary Notes 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 gifts and other ways of seeing, Sharpe steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to the page. She practices an aesthetic of "beauty as a method," collects entries from a community of thinkers toward a "Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness," and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a brilliant new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published April 25, 2023
277 people are currently reading
14606 people want to read
About the author
Christina Sharpe
22books220followersChristina Sharpe is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Duke 2010), In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke 2016) and Ordinary Notes (Knopf/FSG/Daunt 2023).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 266 reviews
September 13, 2023
Really liked the notes format and the way each note stands alone and in concert with the others. Brilliant, provocative thinking throughout. Gave me lots to contemplate.
June 3, 2024
The joy of reading Christina Sharpe is one of knowing that this book, this thing here, in your hands, these words will become part of your cellular structure. I'm mesmerized by her work, emotionally and intellectually, and often upended by it. To read such intelligent, rigorous, and luminous insights�about art, grief, memory, community, and what it means to eke out a sense of “beauty as a method� in times of great rupture�feels like an enormous gift and I can only begin to speak my gratitude. If I could venture out into the world right now and reverently press this book into every single reader’s hands, believe me I would.
October 26, 2023
This book is so wonderful. I loved it. It is smart and sharp(e) and just brilliant. The notes style allowed me as a reader to glimpse the brilliance of Christina Sharpe's thinking. The format is smart, the commentary is spot on. Just a beautiful portrait of Blackness written for Black people.
May 12, 2023
In Ordinary Notes, writer and academic Christina Sharpe presents readers with a series of fragments or 'notes' that seek to observe, study, record, sound, explore, and effect what it means to be Black at this moment in time. Taking inspiration from her mother Ida Wright Sharpe, who instilled her with a love for beauty and an awareness of the richness of Black ideas, the author here assembles her reflections on art, artifacts, and affective experiences alongside her memoirs, personal correspondences, and critiques of contemporary socio-political events, and purposes them to interrogate the persistence and brutality of anti-black racism in juxtaposition with a variety of "Black notes" (i.e. the ways of being, seeing, surviving, and bearing witness that serve to decenter such a regime).
While Sharpe's formal inventiveness allows this book to subvert the expectations of narrative and resolution, hers is discernable as a practice of creating parts towards a whole: the idea of family history as a personal and political entity, especially in context of a history of enslavement and colonisation, is foregrounded early in the book. Sharpe, like Toni Morrison � whose work and ideas along with those of Hartman, Spillers, Audre Lorde and Frank B. Wilderson III are extensively engaged with herein � is unforgiving about whiteness and its relationship with slavery, and in particular about how it embraces a narrative of white guilt (rather than reparations and Black rehabilitation) that "acknowledges violence only to frame it as anomalous and intermittent and not foundational and ever-present." Such an understanding of violence and of abstract guilt (instead of real care or responsibility) is what, according to her, leads to a focus on memorialising atrocities. Sharpe then looks at several varieties of such memorial work, from state-funded monuments to movies and art installations to form a sharp and incisive critique that points the several ways in which "every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure."
Speaking of memorial, Ordinary Notes brilliantly tears apart at the Barthesian understanding of photographs as memorials, pointing out Barthes' dismissal of James VanDerZee's portrait of his maternal aunts an uncle in Camera Lucida (for supposed naivete and the desire to assume the white man's attributes) as a result not of the sensitivity of his gaze but of his "refusal to know, at the level of consciousness, that it is the ordered hierarchy of the plantation that conditions all his seeing." The segment heralded by this particular 'note' is one that painstakingly takes stock of a variety of spaces � such as those of art, media, and photography � in which racist power-relations and reproduced and represented, and racial violence and black pain turned into spectacle (and into what she calls "a culture of surprise"). This, according to Sharpe, is done through an active bypassing of Black joy, Black pain, and Black agency, as well as overlooking the manifold ways in which whiteness is foundationally conceptualised against it.
With an aim to counter the marginalisation of blackness in discourse-formation of the past, present, and the future, Sharpe also sets out to explores some "preliminary entries towards a dictionary of untranslatable blackness" wherein she reconsiders critical concepts such as that of the gaze, of memory, of elegance, and � of course � beauty, weighing in with the radically different definitions that would arise "if one began from Black." The author is here both implicitly and explicitly pointing at the pervasive and deliberate anti-blackness of political institutions and the deliberate marginalisation and omission of black intellectual thought from academic ones. It is thus unsurprising that she is critical of institutional remedies and rejects narratives of socio-political or national redemption. Instead, her interests lie in collective care, mutual aid, abolitionist remaking, as well as a personal practice that she refers to as "beautyeveryday" that seeks, in part, to fight the way white supremacy upholds itself by keeping Black people mired by the same conversations.
Brimming with tenderness and disquiet, this book is an extraordinary achievement from emerges an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence, and from which a powerful vision of American life threatens to break free. Critical, lyrical, and affirming, this is yet another instance of Black feminist writing that deserves to be called essential reading � not just for those seeking to understand Blackness, or identity, but for the enrichment of all and each of us:
While Sharpe's formal inventiveness allows this book to subvert the expectations of narrative and resolution, hers is discernable as a practice of creating parts towards a whole: the idea of family history as a personal and political entity, especially in context of a history of enslavement and colonisation, is foregrounded early in the book. Sharpe, like Toni Morrison � whose work and ideas along with those of Hartman, Spillers, Audre Lorde and Frank B. Wilderson III are extensively engaged with herein � is unforgiving about whiteness and its relationship with slavery, and in particular about how it embraces a narrative of white guilt (rather than reparations and Black rehabilitation) that "acknowledges violence only to frame it as anomalous and intermittent and not foundational and ever-present." Such an understanding of violence and of abstract guilt (instead of real care or responsibility) is what, according to her, leads to a focus on memorialising atrocities. Sharpe then looks at several varieties of such memorial work, from state-funded monuments to movies and art installations to form a sharp and incisive critique that points the several ways in which "every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure."
Speaking of memorial, Ordinary Notes brilliantly tears apart at the Barthesian understanding of photographs as memorials, pointing out Barthes' dismissal of James VanDerZee's portrait of his maternal aunts an uncle in Camera Lucida (for supposed naivete and the desire to assume the white man's attributes) as a result not of the sensitivity of his gaze but of his "refusal to know, at the level of consciousness, that it is the ordered hierarchy of the plantation that conditions all his seeing." The segment heralded by this particular 'note' is one that painstakingly takes stock of a variety of spaces � such as those of art, media, and photography � in which racist power-relations and reproduced and represented, and racial violence and black pain turned into spectacle (and into what she calls "a culture of surprise"). This, according to Sharpe, is done through an active bypassing of Black joy, Black pain, and Black agency, as well as overlooking the manifold ways in which whiteness is foundationally conceptualised against it.
With an aim to counter the marginalisation of blackness in discourse-formation of the past, present, and the future, Sharpe also sets out to explores some "preliminary entries towards a dictionary of untranslatable blackness" wherein she reconsiders critical concepts such as that of the gaze, of memory, of elegance, and � of course � beauty, weighing in with the radically different definitions that would arise "if one began from Black." The author is here both implicitly and explicitly pointing at the pervasive and deliberate anti-blackness of political institutions and the deliberate marginalisation and omission of black intellectual thought from academic ones. It is thus unsurprising that she is critical of institutional remedies and rejects narratives of socio-political or national redemption. Instead, her interests lie in collective care, mutual aid, abolitionist remaking, as well as a personal practice that she refers to as "beautyeveryday" that seeks, in part, to fight the way white supremacy upholds itself by keeping Black people mired by the same conversations.
Brimming with tenderness and disquiet, this book is an extraordinary achievement from emerges an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence, and from which a powerful vision of American life threatens to break free. Critical, lyrical, and affirming, this is yet another instance of Black feminist writing that deserves to be called essential reading � not just for those seeking to understand Blackness, or identity, but for the enrichment of all and each of us:
There is a certain mode of reading connected to a tradition of colonial practices in which every book by any Black writer appears as sociology. Then all of that book's explorations, its meanings, and its ambitions lodge in a place called identity. This often-white reading either does this directly, as in, in this book about identity... or indirectly, by way of excepting a particular Black writer from this dreaded trap by writing that they "bravely" eschew identity. The reviewer might then draw a comparison between that Black writer and Sebald and imagine this a compliment of the highest order. Or the reviewer might make clear that the Black writer in question is not one-of-those- Black writers who center their work in the abundance of Black life.
These readers and reviewers are stuck on something they call identity and not something called life or genre or craft or intertextuality or invention or literary tradition.
These readers continually misread the note. They decant all complexity, all invention into that thing they name identity that they imagine is both not complex and not relevant to them.
December 24, 2024
In Note 242, Christina Sharpe gives the aim of these notes: "I write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under brutal regimes."
This book is made up of notes, which are observations and remembrances and imaginings of alternative possibilities and realities by the writer. Christina Sharpe is fastidious and the notes are succinct. They chronicle the devastations racism and anti-Blackness cause; recall moments of joy and tenderness shared with loved ones; critique art and literature. This was really extraordinary, and I’m marvelling at the ways in which she melds the quotidian and personal and political and artistic in merging threads so that what would have been otherwise very ordinary notes, as the title suggests, turns into an extraordinary account and chronicle.
Some of my favourite notes below.
“Stories in and of themselves aren’t right or wrong. Who writes, how one writes–as in from what subject position–and what one writes matters. It matters because while films, novels, plays, and poems are works of imagination and are not collapsible into the narrowly political, all work arises out of particular spaces/places/needs/and times, all works are produced and received within a context, all works are political. The how, who, when, and why of what stories are published and become bestsellers and what films are made and circulated and go on to win prizes matters because they are, to quote the Nigerian novelist and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ”really dependent on power.� Certainly, the power of publishing, financing, and distribution, but also of course representational power, the power of stories to shape realities–to shape how we see each other and ourselves.� Note 58
“Art is argument. Visuality is not simply looking. It is a regime of seeing and being, and any so-called neutral position is a position of power that refuses to recognize itself as such. It is a useful fiction, but it is only a fiction, to insist that art lies beyond critique. And intention aside, among the things that art may do is produce and reproduce pain; art can be cruel interpretation or malevolent intervention.� Note 79
“But elegance is not the province of leisure or the domain of wealth; it is not fashion; it is the persistence of style.� Note 124
“Care is complicated, gendered, misused. It is often mobilized to enact violence, not assuage it, yet I cannot surrender it.� Note 234
This book is made up of notes, which are observations and remembrances and imaginings of alternative possibilities and realities by the writer. Christina Sharpe is fastidious and the notes are succinct. They chronicle the devastations racism and anti-Blackness cause; recall moments of joy and tenderness shared with loved ones; critique art and literature. This was really extraordinary, and I’m marvelling at the ways in which she melds the quotidian and personal and political and artistic in merging threads so that what would have been otherwise very ordinary notes, as the title suggests, turns into an extraordinary account and chronicle.
Some of my favourite notes below.
“Stories in and of themselves aren’t right or wrong. Who writes, how one writes–as in from what subject position–and what one writes matters. It matters because while films, novels, plays, and poems are works of imagination and are not collapsible into the narrowly political, all work arises out of particular spaces/places/needs/and times, all works are produced and received within a context, all works are political. The how, who, when, and why of what stories are published and become bestsellers and what films are made and circulated and go on to win prizes matters because they are, to quote the Nigerian novelist and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ”really dependent on power.� Certainly, the power of publishing, financing, and distribution, but also of course representational power, the power of stories to shape realities–to shape how we see each other and ourselves.� Note 58
“Art is argument. Visuality is not simply looking. It is a regime of seeing and being, and any so-called neutral position is a position of power that refuses to recognize itself as such. It is a useful fiction, but it is only a fiction, to insist that art lies beyond critique. And intention aside, among the things that art may do is produce and reproduce pain; art can be cruel interpretation or malevolent intervention.� Note 79
“But elegance is not the province of leisure or the domain of wealth; it is not fashion; it is the persistence of style.� Note 124
“Care is complicated, gendered, misused. It is often mobilized to enact violence, not assuage it, yet I cannot surrender it.� Note 234
July 7, 2024
Christina Sharpe makes the ordinary feels extraordinary
I don’t think there are words I can use to accurately describe what is like reading this book. It is a collection of “ordinary notes� but it is more than that. It is an exploration of what it is like having a Black experience, moving through the world and the author losing their mom. A lot is explored in this book, and it is done in a powerful way. I am not lying when I say, I think I underline the entire book because so much of these notes struck a chord and I felt seen in so many ways.
I recommend reading this slow, taking your time to fully engage with what the author is showing you, leave the book and come back to it.
This is my first book by Sharpe and now I must read her entire cannon.
I don’t think there are words I can use to accurately describe what is like reading this book. It is a collection of “ordinary notes� but it is more than that. It is an exploration of what it is like having a Black experience, moving through the world and the author losing their mom. A lot is explored in this book, and it is done in a powerful way. I am not lying when I say, I think I underline the entire book because so much of these notes struck a chord and I felt seen in so many ways.
I recommend reading this slow, taking your time to fully engage with what the author is showing you, leave the book and come back to it.
This is my first book by Sharpe and now I must read her entire cannon.
May 17, 2023
Some books are like doorways. was like that for me, back in the day. There was my life before that book and my life after it.
This is an entire hallway.
This is an entire hallway.
October 13, 2023
‘The archive is meaningful in its context, it is not “truth,� it belongs to an entire social environment. � FRANÇOISE VERGÈS'
To be honest (/rather - to be 'annoying') it was a 4* for me, because stylistically, it wasn't what I tend to gravitate towards/'like' (too many quotes was rendering me dizzy; but Sharpe is fully aware of it, and I like that; she mentioned in the latter part of the book about how this book was almost consumed by the amount of quotes/notes), but considering the tenderness and importance of the text, it would feel like a lie to give it less than a 5*. Despite the length it was actually a very quick read as it's decently loaded with relevant photos and alike. proper rtc later.
‘The appeal to the so-called universal from which we are excluded. What brutal arithmetics.�
‘There are many books that produced in me a feeling I needed or wanted to feel. Some of them are books that I love (Head, Brand, Morrison), and others are not (Lessing). But love is beside the point. What these books share is that they produced in me the feeling that I needed.
Books-poetry, fiction, nonfiction, theory, memoir, biography, mysteries, plays-have always helped me locate myself, tethered me, helped me to make sense of the world and to act in it. I know that books have saved me. By which I mean that books always give me a place to land in difficult times. They show me Black worlds of making and possibility.�
‘Rock to soil, soil to sweat, sweat to water, water to microbes, microbes to memory, memory to work. Ghost to ghost. Ghost as what lingers. A haunting flavour. It used to taste like.�
May 2, 2023
5 stars aren’t even enough to encompass how profound and generous and important Christina Sharpe’s work is. Undoubtedly one of the best thinkers and writers currently working.
September 22, 2023
This work of cultural criticism takes the form of 248 numbered micro-essays, some as short as one line and others up to a few pages. The central topics are Black art and Black suffering � specifically, how the latter is depicted. The book kept slapping me awake, because her opinions were not what I was expecting. Her responses to her 2018 visits to two landmarks in Montgomery, Alabama, the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, give a taste of her outlook. The museum draws a direct line between slavery and mass incarceration; the memorial documents all known cases of lynching, and she’s in its graveyard when a white woman comes up to her, crying and apologizing. When people ask Sharpe why she didn’t reply, she says, “she tries to hand me her sorrow � to super-add her burden to my own. It is not mine to bear.�
Many of these early notes question the purpose of reliving racial violence. For instance, Sharpe is appalled to watch a Claudia Rankine video essay that stitches together footage of beatings and murders of Black people. “Spectacle is not repair.� She later takes issue with Barack Obama singing “Amazing Grace� at the funeral of slain African American churchgoers because the song was written by a slaver. The general message I take from these instances is that one’s intentions do not matter; commemorating violence against Black people to pull at the heartstrings is not just in poor taste, but perpetuates cycles of damage.
The book is a protest, strident yet calm, but also a celebration of the Black humanities and an elegy to her late mother, who prepared her to live as a confident, queer woman of colour in a white world. Sharpe decries the notion that art by BIPOC is only of sociological interest, to inform white people about “identity� � this is both a simplification and a means of othering.
And she mainly credits her mother for introducing her to the literature that would sustain her: “My mother wanted me to build a life that was nourishing and Black. � My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of works. She gave me every Black book that she could find.� I loved the account of their Sunday afternoon teas, when they had cake and each read aloud a short piece they had memorized by the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks or Langston Hughes.
I found the straightforward autobiographical material, particularly the grief over the loss of her mother, more emotionally resonant than much of the book’s theorizing. The scholarly register can occasionally be off-putting, e.g., “I write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under these brutal regimes.� The other media include letters, headlines, lists, and photographs, creating an overall collage effect. That the book occasionally made me uncomfortable is, no doubt, proof that I needed to read it.
Originally published on my blog, .
Many of these early notes question the purpose of reliving racial violence. For instance, Sharpe is appalled to watch a Claudia Rankine video essay that stitches together footage of beatings and murders of Black people. “Spectacle is not repair.� She later takes issue with Barack Obama singing “Amazing Grace� at the funeral of slain African American churchgoers because the song was written by a slaver. The general message I take from these instances is that one’s intentions do not matter; commemorating violence against Black people to pull at the heartstrings is not just in poor taste, but perpetuates cycles of damage.
The book is a protest, strident yet calm, but also a celebration of the Black humanities and an elegy to her late mother, who prepared her to live as a confident, queer woman of colour in a white world. Sharpe decries the notion that art by BIPOC is only of sociological interest, to inform white people about “identity� � this is both a simplification and a means of othering.
Books—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, theory, memoir, biography, mysteries, plays—have always helped me locate myself, tethered me, helped me to make sense of the world and to act in it. I know that books have saved me. By which I mean that books always give me a place to land in difficult times. They show me Black worlds of making and possibility.
And she mainly credits her mother for introducing her to the literature that would sustain her: “My mother wanted me to build a life that was nourishing and Black. � My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of works. She gave me every Black book that she could find.� I loved the account of their Sunday afternoon teas, when they had cake and each read aloud a short piece they had memorized by the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks or Langston Hughes.
I found the straightforward autobiographical material, particularly the grief over the loss of her mother, more emotionally resonant than much of the book’s theorizing. The scholarly register can occasionally be off-putting, e.g., “I write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under these brutal regimes.� The other media include letters, headlines, lists, and photographs, creating an overall collage effect. That the book occasionally made me uncomfortable is, no doubt, proof that I needed to read it.
Originally published on my blog, .
June 27, 2023
I wish I could arrange the right words to properly describe this book, which centers language and meanings in ways I've never before seen. The scholar's approach to antiblackracism is as much a gut punch as it is a revelation. I had to take reading breaks, because of the emotional excavation of this extraordinary work.
I felt eviscerated and rearranged by the end of this book, but my state of upheaval was hardly chaotic. Rather, it helped me to focus completely on listening and absorbing, without interrupting with my own clanging commentary. Never have I heard so much while reading.
It is clear that any progress in antiracism cannot be completed without a true reckoning. This can be hard for some to hear, and stretch hope too thin for others. The path forward promises to be messy, and the timeline of progress is always nonlinear.
The conceptual framework of the book and the author's consistently incisive analysis have fully impressedme. I may be late to the party, but add Christina Sharpe to the pantheon of great writers, academics, thinkers, and poets, like Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lord, Gayl Jones, Morgan Parker, and Bell Hooks.
I felt eviscerated and rearranged by the end of this book, but my state of upheaval was hardly chaotic. Rather, it helped me to focus completely on listening and absorbing, without interrupting with my own clanging commentary. Never have I heard so much while reading.
It is clear that any progress in antiracism cannot be completed without a true reckoning. This can be hard for some to hear, and stretch hope too thin for others. The path forward promises to be messy, and the timeline of progress is always nonlinear.
The conceptual framework of the book and the author's consistently incisive analysis have fully impressedme. I may be late to the party, but add Christina Sharpe to the pantheon of great writers, academics, thinkers, and poets, like Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lord, Gayl Jones, Morgan Parker, and Bell Hooks.
March 1, 2024
I bought this book last year and picked it up a few times thinking I could just slip it in between other reading and finish it over a period of months, but then I realized that, no, this is a work that demands focused attention, thoughtful reflection, and moments of quiet. If this book does not challenge your worldview—no matter where it has been formed—then you are not reading carefully enough. A consideration of the questions, concerns and realities that shape and inform Black life, and a loving gift to her mother, Sharpe has created a vital work. As a white reader who grew up in a place with very little colour, where defenders of whiteness now feel under threat, I am aware that many who need to read this won't.
A longer review is now available here:
A longer review is now available here:
May 15, 2025
a revelation of a book� and proof that you never have to say too much to say it all. Years of Sharpe’s vigorous research are distilled into the cutting notes that she allowed us to access - not just academically but also through an intense journey of self-reflection. Sharpe’s tender and reverent writings on her mother never failed to make me cry. Wildly imaginative and meditative. I also love when books I’m reading naturally form a through line - Sharpe’s discussions of visits to the Legacy Museum + the National Memorial for Peace and Justice as well as her meditations on Black art and Confederate monuments toppling offered different perspectives on what I’d just read in ‘In Open Contempt�. And then to find out Dr. Saidiya Hartman is a friend and advisor to the book (also Sharpe’s beautiful commentaries on Dr. Hartman’s work) was seriously such a treat. There were many references that I will be sure to note down. AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING PICTURES NEXT TO YOUR DISCUSSIONS OF THEM!! Extraordinary!!
November 26, 2023
Doesn't totally click with me, but Sharpe's mind is... sharp! All of the writing about museums/memorials to genocide and the act of representation (her desire to challenge the standard notion of our need to bear witness) really resonated and challenged. The convergence of memoir, image, literary criticism, and historical consideration come together to mark the act of cognition as a means of cultural criticism.
May 26, 2023
singular work.
July 3, 2023
stunning
May 13, 2024
Sharpe is incredibly incisive throughout this subtle, beautiful book, and her sentences, direct and powerful. The “ordinary� is a jumping off point for her observations about Black Lives, a blend of cultural analysis, deeply personal memoir, philosophy, art and literary criticism, museum studies and history.
These notes are direct in naming and analyzing white violence exerted against the lives of Black people in everyday experiences, many of them Sharpe’s experiences firsthand. The notes also meditate on the many moments of connection, recognition, joy, care and tenderness that Sharpe observes in spite of or outside of this violence.
I understood the construction of “white innocence� in a deeper way through this book as well as how representing Black suffering in film, photos and art does not undo/does little to counter white-led violence and in many cases strengthens its narratives and political power.
Sharpe is also a reader and lover of beautiful sentences, so this book made me want to read even more books.
These notes are direct in naming and analyzing white violence exerted against the lives of Black people in everyday experiences, many of them Sharpe’s experiences firsthand. The notes also meditate on the many moments of connection, recognition, joy, care and tenderness that Sharpe observes in spite of or outside of this violence.
I understood the construction of “white innocence� in a deeper way through this book as well as how representing Black suffering in film, photos and art does not undo/does little to counter white-led violence and in many cases strengthens its narratives and political power.
Sharpe is also a reader and lover of beautiful sentences, so this book made me want to read even more books.
November 11, 2023
There are many definitions of the word note - a short comment or explanation, a short written message, a particular quality or tone that reflects a message, to pay particular attention or remark on something to draw attention, to record something in writing. In Ordinary Notes, Sharpe hits on all of these definitions. In this collection of 248 notes - some a single sentence, others up to a few pages, Sharpe explores some of her observations and reflections about her experiences. Some of these are deeply personal and intimate such as those that reflect on her relationship and experiences with her mother. Others are deeply intimate, but speak to her interactions with the world as a Black woman and explores Blackness as identity and community. Sharpe’s writing is so precise - each word feels carefully chosen not only to convey meaning but also to convey a sense of movement through the aspects of Sharpe’s world. There is so much in here that is thought provoking - it is definitely a work worth reading more than once. Some of my favorite passages in here were related to her love of language and books and how central this was to her relationship with her mother. I started this in audio, but then switched to the print version. While the audio is fine, the print format is a work of art in and of itself. The blank spaces on the page create a cue to linger and pause in a way that you don’t experience in the audio. This text is also interspersed with accompanying art and photographs that you greatly enhance the reading experience. I can see why this made the National Book Awards finalist list.
“There are all kinds of ordinary notes; there are unreservedly anti black notes; there are notes that attempt, but fail, to undo anti black logics; then there are notes that refuse altogether to accede to those logics that simultaneously de/re/and inhuman Black people. These Black notes may land in silence or a tone, a sound, a pitch, a record, or an observation made with care; these notes might just reach you across distance, time, and space and with them you may be “held, and held.”�
“These ordinary notes multiply.�
“This Black note changed the course of my life.�
“It is the ordinary note of a mother’s love for her daughter, evidenced in the way they lean into each other, evidenced in the making and the sitting.�
“The ordinary notes of our use and erasure.�
“There are all kinds of ordinary notes; there are unreservedly anti black notes; there are notes that attempt, but fail, to undo anti black logics; then there are notes that refuse altogether to accede to those logics that simultaneously de/re/and inhuman Black people. These Black notes may land in silence or a tone, a sound, a pitch, a record, or an observation made with care; these notes might just reach you across distance, time, and space and with them you may be “held, and held.”�
“These ordinary notes multiply.�
“This Black note changed the course of my life.�
“It is the ordinary note of a mother’s love for her daughter, evidenced in the way they lean into each other, evidenced in the making and the sitting.�
“The ordinary notes of our use and erasure.�
December 19, 2024
like every Christina Sharpe book, she is a genius and her books warrant multiple re-reads. This one is a gift.
July 19, 2024
i write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under these brutal regimes
September 9, 2024
I have never read anything like this before.
It took me a long time to read, not because it wasn't interesting but because I could not stop thinking about the notes. Dr. Sharpe is undeniably brilliant, her perspective, life work and shared experiences are... well I'm not sure any word(s) would be suitable, enough, correct, appropriate, it's ineffable. A one of a kind compilation that questions freedom and what it looks like for black life.
It took me a long time to read, not because it wasn't interesting but because I could not stop thinking about the notes. Dr. Sharpe is undeniably brilliant, her perspective, life work and shared experiences are... well I'm not sure any word(s) would be suitable, enough, correct, appropriate, it's ineffable. A one of a kind compilation that questions freedom and what it looks like for black life.
March 22, 2025
This book finished me. It took me so long because so much was cited as a side quest for me and also because this was personally DEVASTATING and so I had to figure out how not to be heartbroken all the time. This is really good and I will be reading her other book.
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March 15, 2024So good!!! Read for my culture and the text class and did a presentation on this book and Roland Barthes� Camera Lucida book. Super interesting to see how Sharpe uses Barthes to highlight the problems in his work.
July 26, 2023
First read (6/14):
Memoir-ish. Radically subversive critique of America today (at least with respect to what I'm familiar with). Warranted and disorienting. What grounds her search for “beautyeveryday�? What constitutes her standard for acceptable solutions to an anti-Black culture, and why? Will re-read.
Reread (7/26):
A large part of Sharpe’s work in Ordinary Notes seems like her philosophy of memorials and museums. It’s not entirely unclear to me what she hopes memorials will contain and not contain, but she hints at appropriate markers of delineation. The biggie is beauty: memorials should not induce trauma (spectacle � repair); they must insist on the beautiful. Survival depends on making space for beauty.
Here, my understanding hits limits: I default to Aquinas� definition of beauty (a transcendental notion of God) and I don’t have a background in designing memorabilia, so I can’t speak to the specifics of Sharpe’s concerns. I suspect the “right� answer may be found somewhere in the mix of transcendentals (truth, goodness, beauty). Sharpe might disagree. But as I previously noted after my first read, I think Sharpe (and we all) need some sort of metaphysical ground to sustain our search for beauty. I’m not sure what her logic looks like.
In terms of politics, I recognize her critique of some of ’s decisions during his presidency. However, I wonder whether or not one can be an effective leader if one doesn’t possess a modicum of honest optimism and perhaps even idealism. I have similar thoughts on her criticism of and EJI. Stevenson uses the first-person plural when advocating for change, an inclusion against which Sharpe sharply dissents. Conjuring a solution to anti-Black racism cannot fall on her shoulders.
I can imagine someone reading sections of her work and responding by suggesting Sharpe inserts assumptions based on race: “How can you make that conclusion on the basis of x person being white?� This is not a critique but only an observation. Imo, it goes without saying that a person of color just knows bc we gather experiential, quantifiable data.
The most beautiful element of Ordinary Notes for me was how Sharpe honors (memorializes) her mother.
Memoir-ish. Radically subversive critique of America today (at least with respect to what I'm familiar with). Warranted and disorienting. What grounds her search for “beautyeveryday�? What constitutes her standard for acceptable solutions to an anti-Black culture, and why? Will re-read.
Reread (7/26):
A large part of Sharpe’s work in Ordinary Notes seems like her philosophy of memorials and museums. It’s not entirely unclear to me what she hopes memorials will contain and not contain, but she hints at appropriate markers of delineation. The biggie is beauty: memorials should not induce trauma (spectacle � repair); they must insist on the beautiful. Survival depends on making space for beauty.
Here, my understanding hits limits: I default to Aquinas� definition of beauty (a transcendental notion of God) and I don’t have a background in designing memorabilia, so I can’t speak to the specifics of Sharpe’s concerns. I suspect the “right� answer may be found somewhere in the mix of transcendentals (truth, goodness, beauty). Sharpe might disagree. But as I previously noted after my first read, I think Sharpe (and we all) need some sort of metaphysical ground to sustain our search for beauty. I’m not sure what her logic looks like.
In terms of politics, I recognize her critique of some of ’s decisions during his presidency. However, I wonder whether or not one can be an effective leader if one doesn’t possess a modicum of honest optimism and perhaps even idealism. I have similar thoughts on her criticism of and EJI. Stevenson uses the first-person plural when advocating for change, an inclusion against which Sharpe sharply dissents. Conjuring a solution to anti-Black racism cannot fall on her shoulders.
I can imagine someone reading sections of her work and responding by suggesting Sharpe inserts assumptions based on race: “How can you make that conclusion on the basis of x person being white?� This is not a critique but only an observation. Imo, it goes without saying that a person of color just knows bc we gather experiential, quantifiable data.
The most beautiful element of Ordinary Notes for me was how Sharpe honors (memorializes) her mother.
May 20, 2023
As I was reading Christina Sharpe's stunning "Ordinary Notes," I kept thinking to myself: I want to re-read this, even as I was in the middle of it. How to talk about this book? Perhaps one way I can speak of its impact is to say that I was in tears by the end of the class we discussed this in. It was not only Shapre's beautiful words that drew that from me, but the reactions she arose in others around me, the things she allowed us to say because her text held us and made space for those feelings.
"Ordinary Notes" is part of the work towards a new vocabulary of Blackness. In Shapre's hand this vocabulary not renders visible the violence embedded in whiteness and white supremacy, and what it takes to survive it, but the acts of resistance, care, and beauty that permeate Black life in the US (and beyond) despite it. It is a work that challenges our conception of space and time. It shows that the past is still with us, and any attempts to grapple with it cannot discount the past's very presence, its heavy shadow.
In a world where we are saturated with images of violence that are supposedly there to make us care, in a culture of museums supposedly built to make us remember, Sharpe shows the faultlines in our presumption of how time works, of how whiteness works.
"Ordinary Notes" is also a love letter to Sharpe's mother, and in a sense a work about what it means to live through love and grief.
A life changing book, without question.
"Ordinary Notes" is part of the work towards a new vocabulary of Blackness. In Shapre's hand this vocabulary not renders visible the violence embedded in whiteness and white supremacy, and what it takes to survive it, but the acts of resistance, care, and beauty that permeate Black life in the US (and beyond) despite it. It is a work that challenges our conception of space and time. It shows that the past is still with us, and any attempts to grapple with it cannot discount the past's very presence, its heavy shadow.
In a world where we are saturated with images of violence that are supposedly there to make us care, in a culture of museums supposedly built to make us remember, Sharpe shows the faultlines in our presumption of how time works, of how whiteness works.
"Ordinary Notes" is also a love letter to Sharpe's mother, and in a sense a work about what it means to live through love and grief.
A life changing book, without question.
August 28, 2024
Note 23 "The architecture of the memorial stages encounter. / Spectacle is not repair."
Note 25 "Every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure."
Note 73 asked about "the process of writing an academic book that speaks to and beyond the academy" & "the form" & "first chapter 'The Wake' which begins in the register of the autobiographical" telling of 3 family members' deaths, "I thought that this loss also needed to be on the page explicitly, not just implicitly in the ways that, whether one admits it or not, one is oriented to one's work from the location of the body and all that that may mean."
Note 25 "Every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure."
Note 73 asked about "the process of writing an academic book that speaks to and beyond the academy" & "the form" & "first chapter 'The Wake' which begins in the register of the autobiographical" telling of 3 family members' deaths, "I thought that this loss also needed to be on the page explicitly, not just implicitly in the ways that, whether one admits it or not, one is oriented to one's work from the location of the body and all that that may mean."
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March 16, 2024virtuosic
February 20, 2024
I'm going to be sitting in this one for a while.
Impactful quotes to come.
Impactful quotes to come.
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April 12, 2024April book club!
December 1, 2024
An absolutely brilliant book in an entirely unique notes format, and a reading experience that has left me feeling forever shifted.
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