We’ve got a special readerly treat today: a new installment in our Literary Gallery series, in which writer, cultural critic, author, and brain-we’d-like-to-be-inside Rebecca Carroll curates 10 totally inspired art + book pairings.
You might have seen Carroll’s name earlier this month in New York Magazine’s The Cut, where she was interviewed for their How I Get It Done series. In June, she penned this poignant piece for The Atlantic, mining a personal memory in describing the epidemic dehumanization of Black people and the imperative of white intervention. Maybe you’ve read one of her brilliant books. If not, Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America is a great place to start. For future reading, her new memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, delves into her experience growing up Black in a white family in a predominantly white town. It’s forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in February 2021 (but available for pre-order now!). Carroll also wrote this image-rich introduction to her friend Leah Giberson’s limited-edition 20x200 print. And as of this spring, she hosts an unmissable podcast. WNYC’s Come Through with Rebecca Carroll is an incisive 15-episode series exploring race in America in 2020, with guests like Ava DuVernay, Julián Castro, Walter Mosley, and Issa Rae.
All of which is to say: it’s no shock Carroll’s Lit Gallery pairings are so extra excellent. Don’t forget her book selects double as a (really good) recommended reading list.
— Team 20x200
You might have seen Carroll’s name earlier this month in New York Magazine’s The Cut, where she was interviewed for their How I Get It Done series. In June, she penned this poignant piece for The Atlantic, mining a personal memory in describing the epidemic dehumanization of Black people and the imperative of white intervention. Maybe you’ve read one of her brilliant books. If not, Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America is a great place to start. For future reading, her new memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, delves into her experience growing up Black in a white family in a predominantly white town. It’s forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in February 2021 (but available for pre-order now!). Carroll also wrote this image-rich introduction to her friend Leah Giberson’s limited-edition 20x200 print. And as of this spring, she hosts an unmissable podcast. WNYC’s Come Through with Rebecca Carroll is an incisive 15-episode series exploring race in America in 2020, with guests like Ava DuVernay, Julián Castro, Walter Mosley, and Issa Rae.
All of which is to say: it’s no shock Carroll’s Lit Gallery pairings are so extra excellent. Don’t forget her book selects double as a (really good) recommended reading list.
— Team 20x200
Art and books are two of my favorite things, because they both create these magnificent, textured worlds and endless ways to engage. They speak to each other, honor each other, laugh and breathe and create community together. What else is there? — Rebecca Carroll
 |
 Victorian Interior II by Horace Pippin |
 |
 Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint, Saturday evening, outside Clarksdale, Mississippi by Marion Post Wolcott |
 Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara |
 Harlem Tenement in Summer, a 20x200 Vintage Edition |
 Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala |
 Backsplash by Negar Ahkami |
 Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob |
 Time Don't Mean a Thing by Hiro Kurata |
 Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon |
 nobody's free until everybody's free by rayo & honey |
 Tracks by Louise Erdrich |
 She Tumbles Mountains to the Sea by Yen Ha |
 Sula by Toni Morrison |
 Camp Fern Rock (archer) by Gordon Parks |
 The Mothers by Brit Bennett |
 Interconnected 1 by Carrie Marill |
 A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei |
 Gosling Lake by Kurt Tong |
The 411 on Rebecca Carroll
Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, and host of the podcast Come Through with Rebecca Carroll. Her memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
