Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

A blade that sings. A chorus of mouths that try to drown it out. We dive into Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark and trace how horror and history intertwine to reveal the real machinery of white supremacy—from Stone Mountain’s ritual power to the propaganda engine of The Birth of a Nation. We unpack why casting the Klan as literal monsters isn’t exaggeration but precision, and how Black Southern spiritual traditions turn music, memory, and community into weapons of defense.

We spend time with Maurice, Sadie, and Chef—three Black women monster hunters whose distinct voices and wounds shape the heart of the story. Guided by Nana Jean and the ring shout, they face a resurgence of terror that feeds on fear. Maurice’s shattered sword becomes a turning point: when Night Doctors force her to confront the buried trauma that fuels self-protective hatred, she reforms the blade and reclaims power. That journey opens a larger question we wrestle with: what separates righteous anger, which moves us toward justice, from hatred, which corrodes and empowers the very forces we resist?

Along the way, we connect the novel’s supernatural frame to concrete history: the Klan’s 1915 revival, Stone Mountain’s monument politics, and the textbook wars that reframed the Civil War to sanitize slavery. By reading the symbols against the record, we show how myths become policy, how monuments shape memory, and how communities fight back with ritual, song, and stubborn joy. The takeaway is clear and urgent: joy can be strategy, memory can be armor, and anger can be disciplined into action without becoming the poison it opposes.

If this conversation moved you, tap follow, share it with a friend who loves bold fiction, and leave a quick review—what image from Ring Shout will you be thinking about tomorrow?

Transcript

Welcome To Lit On Fire

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

A warning about what happens when voices are raised, and a promise that stories once lit are impossible to be without.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm Peter Wetzel.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

Why Ring Shout Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:41

And this is Lit on Fire. Welcome back. Today we're diving into Ringshot by P. Jelly Clark, a novella that refuses to let America forget what it would rather bury. Set in 1920s, Georgia, Clark reimagines the Ku Klux Klan not just as a racist, terrorist organization, but as something far more literal and far more honest. Monsters. Demonic, parasitic, hate-fueled creatures feeding on white supremacy and violence. But this story isn't just about monsters in robes. It's about women who conjure. It's about black, southern spiritual traditions as weapons. It's about cultural memory as armor. And it's about community warfare, what it means to fight back when the evil is both supernatural and systemically American. Clark pulls from gula, gee cheat, ringshaut traditions, hoodoo practices, and ancestral memory to create a narrative where resistance is sacred. Music is power, and joy itself becomes defiance. The clan isn't just a ghost of the past, it's a system, a structure, a legacy, and Clark asks, What if we saw it for what it truly is? So light the fire, step into the circle, and let's shout. Alright, Liz, what is your overall take on the book?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

I really loved this. It was unique. It was a take I had not heard before. It gave me a different perspective. I have to acknowledge up front that I had to do a lot of research on this book because clearly the author is writing from a perspective and a culture that I myself am not familiar enough with. So I did not want to oversimplify this book. I did not want to try to interpret things that I didn't really understand. So I did take some time to really look up and read articles so I could understand some of the cultural significance of the things that Clark mentions in this text. And I feel like I have learned a lot from what is actually a very short text, but is just packed with meaning and information that I think is very relevant.

First Impressions And Research Gaps

SPEAKER_01 2:45

What about you? I completely agree. I read this a long time ago, and I was so excited to discuss it with you. But I'm so glad that I decided to just go ahead and reread it again because there's so much I needed to wrap my head around again, because I remember it giving me a lot to think about. And like you, I also had to do some of my own research into the history that he brings up in the book and the things that he pulled from real history and the things that are purely fictional, which I thought was interesting. And I just felt like even though it is such a short story, it doesn't need to be any longer. It is the perfect length for the story that he has to tell. I absolutely loved it. Why don't you give a quick basic summary for us before we start breaking down the different elements that we appreciated about it?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Well, we're in 1920s, Georgia. And the first most important thing to understand is even though we're in 1920s Georgia, our novel is going to be exclusively from black women's perspective. So our main character is Maurice, who is a young black woman. And essentially, we have this 1920s resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. And a lot of it is based very much in history that was really happening at the time, but we have this supernatural, magical realism, fantasy element of the Ku Klux Klan as monsters that these women are fighting. Some people can see what they really are, and those people have to fight, are in spiritual warfare against these monstrous beings that exist within the structure of the Ku Klux Klan. And three of these young women in particular, it's always three, are fighting against these spiritual monsters, these demonic forces that exist within the Ku Klux Klan. We hear a lot of historical reference to things that are very real, not just the KKK, but a 1915 film called The Birth of a Nation, and a lot of references to things going on in Macon, Georgia, and other locations that we are familiar with. So it is set around this battle with this resurgence of this racism and hate.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Right. And significantly, I think our three main characters who have the ability to see these monsters, which they call Ku Kluxes, have all experienced a significant amount of trauma in their past. Correct. And they carry that with them, and that opened their eyes to the nature of these beings. So we're going to do something a little bit different rather than go ahead and talk about a rating scale of one to five stars, which is pretty unhelpful and not a very detailed way of reviewing books. We're going to go with a new method that is promoted on Book Talk called the Copile method. So it breaks it down into different elements like character, atmosphere, the writing style, the plot, the intrigue, the logic, and the overall enjoyment. So, first off, how did you feel about the characters in the book?

Synopsis And Three Monster Hunters

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well, this is really amazing to me. Again, as a literature teacher, character development takes a certain amount of time. But Peach Ellie Clark manages to develop these really wonderful characters that you have attached to in a really short novella. Maurice is an incredible character. Then we have, of course, Sadie and Chef as well as the three main female friends. You just distinctly realize them all as very individual people. And I don't know if you felt the same way, but Maurice is our main character. Sadie is the loudmouth, really extroverted, outgoing, young woman who just has no fear. And then Chef is someone who had posed as a man to fight in World War I and is an explosives expert and also a lesbian. And she has this really subtle, beautiful development in her character. I am just drawn into their characters. Like these are women I want to sit down and get to know more. So I thought the characters were really good for needing to develop them in a short period of time over a novella. I thought he gave us just the right amount of detail and insight into their lives for us to infer a lot about what was going on with them.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

I agree. Personality-wise, they are so distinct from one another, and I like that. They were great uh balances to each other's personalities. I really feel like the character we really get to know the most about their past and the journey in the beginning is Chef. She is the one that draws upon her experience in war and her experience in the past the most to talk about why she's doing certain things and why she is the way she is. I didn't really feel like I knew too much about Sadie's past. We have this kind of hint of what happened to her. And then, of course, Maurice, we know something tragic happened, but she's really closed off and she's kind of hiding that and guarding that very closely. And that's a big part of her journey, is coming to terms with this trauma. So, yes, I do think that they were really well developed, and I do think that their journey in the book really felt whole for me. As far as atmosphere goes, I think that the book had perfectly developed atmosphere. Obviously, it's not a multi-locale book. We're taking place in Macon, Georgia, and then we're taking place in Stone Mountain at one point. But wherever we are, I felt the mood and I felt the tension and the stakes were real, and he really had a way of developing and describing the action in a way that I felt. I kind of relate that to atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

He established very well the atmosphere of the 1920s as well. Besides the southern make in Georgia, which felt very recognizable, even though we're set back quite a few decades, the 1920s feel was also there.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

As far as writing style goes, he's a good writer. However, it was kind of a different writing style than I'm typically used to.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

It is. The writing style is subtle in places as it transitions. And I found myself having to go back every once in a while and figure out where we went. So every once in a while you lapse into singing or chanting, because this is called ring shout, and we will talk about some of that symbolism and what's going on with that tradition. But if you choose to listen to this book, it will move forward and things will be said and you will be okay. Wait a minute, what's happening? If you are reading the physical copy, you will see things change into italics, and you'll see some of those signposts within the hard copy of the text that trigger your visuals to understand where things are going. But there are a lot of moving parts with what he is writing and the way he's using culture in his writing as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

As far as plot goes, I think we've already said how much we like the plot. Love it. To further expand on the plot, what we have is these three monster hunters, these women, like you said, Maurice, Sadie, and Chef, who have actually lived separate lives until they were drawn by this voice of this matriarch called Nana Jean, who they felt in their spirit that she was calling to them, and she drew them together to form a monster hunting team. She brought them to Macon, Georgia, where they could be part of this community that is resisting hates and monsters and fighting the Ku Klux. The turning point happens when they start realizing that there's kind of a storm brewing. Nana Jean feels it in her spirit. These three haints that Maurice is in touch with spiritually, who actually gave her this magical sword that she's able to draw from thin air, they warn Maurice that a storm is coming, something big is brewing. The Ku Klux Klan has something planned that is going to be a turning point in their fight. And it all centers around the film Birth of a Nation.

COPIL Rating Approach

Character Depth In A Novella

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Correct. And if you don't know what a hint is, if you're like me and you had to go and you had to look up some things, you you investigate these words that you're unfamiliar with. Haint is referring to a restless spirit. We have good restless spirits, and then we have some evil restless spirits, and we have spirits that seem to be somewhere in between. And so those things are operating. I love the use of weather in this, and this moves us into intrigue because I think within the setting, within the characters, within the plot points, the author does a beautiful job of moving us forward little bit by little bit, peeling back just a little bit of the surface, so we get a hint of things to come, and the entry kind of builds, and the tension kind of builds in the text. Everything is not revealed all at once. It is very much a tension building all the way through. So we know the storm is symbolic. I mean, it is literal and symbolic. So it is building. We know something's coming. We know something's going on with Maurice, and we're waiting to really get the reveal of what her trauma fully is. We know there's going to be a battle. What is that gonna look like? So the intrigue really does build across the entire novella.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And as far as logic goes, well, I mean it's magical realism. It is. But there's a lot of symbolism too, which we'll we'll break down, and I really appreciated that. And of course, he's drawing upon real historical events.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So the logic is there. I never felt like, wait a minute, how did we get here? The history is succinct, it is all relevant, and then the magical realism is woven in to bring in that symbolism and that meaning, that meaningful layer on top of the history.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

And because it's deeply rooted in cultural tradition, it feels very natural. Natural, yes. So all our enjoyment, yeah, we are that's that goes without saying.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

We really did enjoy this book, and I felt it to stir up a lot of meaningful conversations. I was telling Peter earlier that my husband and I sat and had a long conversation about historical landmarks in Georgia, particularly Confederate ones. And this just is a book that has a lot of talking points, a lot of things that I think you will be thinking about for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

As far as the history that this book is deeply grounded in, I think it would make sense for us to talk a little bit about that, about the KKK and its history, the truth and the fiction that we find in this novel.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

And I think it's important for us to also say, now that we've gotten past our more detailed review, that there may be some spoilers from this point forward. So if you would like to stop the podcast and come back to it after you have read the novella, feel free to do so because spoilers are ahead.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah. You can't talk about this one without some spoilers, I'm afraid. Okay, so Birth of a Nation plays a key role in what's going on in this book. So Birth of the Nation was this silent film by D.W. Griffith based on a novel called The Klansman by uh Thomas Dixon Jr., I believe. And it originally premiered in 1915, seven years before this book takes place. And it was used as this propaganda tool by William J. Simmons to reform the Ku Klux Klan. And he did so by gathering them all together at Stone Mountain, which is his actual location in Georgia.

Atmosphere And 1920s Setting

SPEAKER_00 13:39

And Stone Mountain is now a huge Confederate monument. At the time, what he did was take them up to the top of Stone Mountain. They burned a cross at the top of the mountain, they had a huge rally. It is this huge resurgence of the Klan. And then later on, we had the United Daughters of the Confederacy decide that this should be the place of a Confederate monument. And this is spearheaded by the Klan. When I first moved to Georgia, I had not gone to Stone Mountain. And then early in my marriage to my husband, we decided we're going to take the kids, they're little, we're going to take them out to some different places where we can walk around. And we made a trip to go to Stone Mountain. It was Stone Mountain. We'd heard about it. It was some kind of historical landmark. We're not from Georgia. My husband is from Delaware and I'm from California. So we're like, we're going to go visit Stone Mountain, not knowing very much about it at all. And so we went up there and we went into the museum. And I found that they were playing the silent film, Birth of a Nation. And there's a museum there. And there's a little train you can take to the top of the mountain, and you can walk in this park and you can see these Confederate signs and this information about the war and information about the stages of building this monument. I have since heard a lot more about Stone Mountain, but it wasn't until really reading this book that it caused me to go back and really look at how this mountain developed. So, yes, this push was made in the 1920s for this to become a monument. It was initiated, they hired an artist, they started to have the mountain carved, they fired the first artist and kind of blew up his work, brought in a new artist, they got the initial face of Robert E. Lee up there. And then basically in the depression, they kind of ran out of money and it was stalled. After the depression, when we get a little closer to Brown versus the Board of Education, right around the time when we're pushing for more integration into schools. So we're reaching like the 1950s, the United Daughters of the Confederacy resurge and come back along with the Klan, and they start pushing once again for this monument, and they also start pushing in the school system in the South. They start specifically pushing to reframe the Civil War. They want Stone Mountain to be a Civil War monument. They want multiple Confederate monuments put up around the state of Georgia, and they want to change the narrative about slavery. So they start deliberately picking textbooks in Georgia to push it to the school system that frame the Civil War as being about states' rights, about tariffs, and having nothing to do with slavery at all. So they start changing the narrative on the Civil War. That's when they start pushing to establish these monuments to Southern pride and the Confederacy and these great Southern statesmen across the state. Brown versus Board of Education passes, and there is this man, Marvin Griffin, running for governor of the state of Georgia, made a campaign promise that he would finish the monument at Stone Mountain. And he even had a rally on the top of Stone Mountain to reaffirm this promise. He ended up being elected right after Brown versus the Board of Education. He pushed back on the integration of Georgia schools. He added the Confederate flag to the Georgia State flag. He did indeed follow up on his promise to refinish Stone Mountain. And he specifically said this is to stand for Southern pride, Southern hope, and politeness and what the South should have been. And this is the same time where they're pushing back against black people's right to vote and basically pushing back against integration. So they're essentially saying with Stone Mountain, we want segregation to remain and we want to remind black people exactly where they belong. And this continues all through the 60s as it continues to be carved and perfected all the way into the 70s. So from the time where this rally is held with the resurgence of the KKK all the way through the civil rights movement, Stone Mountain is this continuing reminder of racist activity and racist belief and systemic racism. Like it is at the center of all the racism going on in Georgia for decades.

Style, Song, And Structure

SPEAKER_01 18:17

And given all that history, that is why in this book it plays a very significant part of the story. Because not only is it the place when the Klan was rallied in 1915, it is also the place where they plan to hold a new rally in 1922 upon the re-release of Birth of a Nation back into theaters. And that actually is historical. It did experience a re-release in 1922 and another resurgence in the rise of the Klan. The book frames Stone Mountain as this location where it is a nexus of powers where the veil between realities is sort of thin. And in the book, it is where the founder of the Ku Klux Land, or the re-founder of the Ku Klux Klan, William J. Simmons, performed these demonic cultish rituals to draw forth these demonic powers in order to empower the Klan to rise again. That is where these demonic rituals took place. That is where the Ku Klux planned to perform the ritual again in 1922. And that, of course, is the big thing that's going on in the background, the storm that is brewing. And then we have this character, Butcher Clyde, who is the grand imperial wizard for the clan in his area. He meets Maurice first in a vision. And I love the description of Butcher Clyde. I love the fact that he's this fat, sweaty, white butcher who has these sores that pop up all over his body and they open up into these mouths, and he's got these screaming mouths all over his body. And they all sing at once and create this awful cacophony of hatred and just overpowering presence. And that becomes very symbolic in the book because the Klukux are a symbol of hatred in this story. They are beings that feed on hatred, and they're beings that spread hatred.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

And their leader, Butcher Clyde, represents all the voices of hatred that try to drown out voices of hope and joy and drown out black culture and black relevance and any of the things that that black community have to offer. It is so overwhelming and so gross. And let's just say that the KKK is monstrous, for real, for real, as my daughter would say. It's monstrous in a demonic way in the book, and we have these supernatural things going on, but that is very symbolically accurate to what was going on in real life as well. But clearly we have this portrayal of these demons, and Butcher Clyde really does fall into that with all these sores all over his body. He's also always chopping. And in her vision, he's bringing this meat cleaver down, and she hears this squealing every time the meat cleaver is coming down. And even later on, when she sees him in real life, there's this squealing going on, and he's feeding people this meat that is alive and nasty.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah, they can't see it, but she could see that it's crawling across the plates, and that these people are eating this living meat.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And it's infesting them and it's breeding the hate and the evil within them.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

The connection to Butcher Clyde and his cacophonous scene that he does, and the connection to other ways in which music is used as a source of power, as a source of spiritual warfare is interesting. So, first of all, we have this idea of the ring shout.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Okay, so the ring shout that I also have to look up is an African spiritual tradition mixed with a slave tradition that developed in America. It is response singing. It involves being in a ring and circling counterclockwise, not crossing your feet, but shouting. Shuffling together and singing in a chorus and responding to one another and shouting.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

And just sort of letting the spirit move you.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

And letting the spirit move, correct. And so it did transform in the atmosphere of Christianity and slave songs, etc., in America, but it also has deep, deep traditions in African spiritual traditions as well. And so those things can merge together to create the ring shout tradition. It is a powerful spiritual moment. And in this book, a powerful moment of community power and warfare. It's not just some weird casting of a spell. That's not what it is. It is a powerful cultural presence.

Plot Stakes And Gathering Storm

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yes. They use this on a regular basis within their community to ward off evil spirits and protect their community from the evil that is without it. And while it is happening, there was this interesting scene that's depicted where the matriarch, who is Nana Jean, sits there as the ring shout is happening and just power oozes from every core of her body. This cultural history oozes from every core, and they collect it in bottles and they use it for various medicines and other things. But it's a very interesting moment. The other way that music comes into play is this sword that Maurice was given by her aunties, the three hates, which are kind of like a mother maiden crows.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

They are. She goes when she goes into the spirit world, usually when she's sleeping, but not always, but when she goes into the spirit world, she meets these three aunties, and one of them is very young and never really speaks unless she sings what she's thinking. And then the two others are older. One definitely acts like a crotchety, more angry school marm, and the other one's very gentle and caring. And they're always giving her the advice, the warnings, pushing her in the right direction. Not telling her exactly what she needs to do, but kind of providing her with that advice. And it is very mother maiden crone in a way. But it's that feminine divine that exists in this story.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

And I love how every time Maurice pulls the sword out of Fiddao, she describes it as it beginning to sing.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

And as it is forming in an instant, she gets all this imagery of cultural pain, all this history going way back of this cultural pain and these victims and all the injustices. But also this frightened little girl that keeps showing up to intrude upon the moment that she is constantly trying to ward away, but she never goes away. And what this little girl represents is very significant. When she encounters Butcher Clyde for the very first time, and she tries to fight him with her sword, he begins to sing from all of his mouths. And when he sings from all of his mouths, he drowns out her ability to think. And her sword begins to vibrate, and he strikes the sword with his cleaver and he shatters it.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Right. And she is just devastated by that. She thinks, my power has been broken. I'm not the chosen one because she's been told that she is the chosen. She was chosen to carry the sword, and she doesn't understand why he was able to shatter the sword so easily. And his singing, the difference between the song of the sword, the beauty, the pain, but the melodious beauty associated with it. The community. And the community associated with it, all those faces, all that history that's embedded in the sword, and then that horrific discordant, off-key, terrible singing noise. It's not even singing, noise, chaos that issues from the mouths that then destroy the sword. It's just this horrific contrast that takes place in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

And it's obviously very symbolic. So when that happens, of course, she goes to her aunties and asks them why that happened and what she can do about it. Can they reforce the sword? And they say to her, You're the only one who has the power to do that. They give her a very interesting direction. They talk about these other haints, these creatures called night doctors, which they sound like slendermen, basically. Yeah, they do. They sound like slendermen. But they're these creatures that that in nursery rhymes come in and they and they dissect parts of your body and steal you away until you're completely gone while you're in your sleep. Right. And they tell her how she can come into contact with these night doctors, and maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And they might help her defeat the Ku Klux because she no longer has her sword to fight them. So she goes and she performs this ritual. Won't get into too much of the details, but she goes to contact the knife doctors. And what these night doctors do is they feed off a pain. So they put her on this table and they begin to literally dissect her. They're pulling out her organs. We get a lot of history about reading entrels in order to predict the future, predict what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah.

Intrigue, Symbolism, And Tension

SPEAKER_01 26:57

But what they realize is that there's this one event in her past that she is shielding them from. So they make her face that event. And that event is tied to this little girl.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

And she is the little girl.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And of course, she is the little girl. And the little girl wasn't really a little girl at the time, but she has made her a little girl in her mind. Really, she was 18.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

But she felt like a little girl. She felt helpless like a child, hiding from a situation that was created with people coming to her house to attack her family. And this is when she lost her whole family and she was left.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

And it's when she first gets the sword, but she doesn't have the power to use it at the time.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Correct. And it is her greatest pain and her greatest fear.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

It's this big turning point for her. She is forced to face this fear finally, and she is forced to come to terms with it, to merge with this frightened self and this other warrior self. And when she does that, she manages to take her power back and reform the sword. And so here's where we get into a lot of symbolism. So we've got the ku klux that represent hatred and beans that feed on hatred. And then we have her sword, which I believe represents a tool for righteous anger and justice.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

And cultural identity, memory.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

But it was never able to achieve its full power in her hands because she was holding on to this fear. And until she was able to release that fear, she couldn't release her own hatred. And it was because she had this powerless fear that led to her own personal hatred that gave Butcher Clyde power over her. And that's how he was able to break the sword in the first place. And this is where she comes to terms with the fact that righteous anger and desire for justice are not the same as hatred. And I think that's very significant because hatred, like I said before, does come from fear and a feeling of powerlessness. But when she's able to release that hatred and go forward with pure righteous anger and a desire for true justice, that she's able to actually own her power, own her history, own her people's history, and find herself in that. And there's this really great quote that she says at the end of the book, and I just want to go ahead and do like we did in the last podcast and read it here because I think it's so good. The places where we hurt, where we hurt, not just me, all of us colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt, songs of sadness and tears, songs pulsing with pain, a righteous anger and a cry for justice, but not hate. They ain't the same thing, never was. These monsters want to pervert that, turn it to their own ends because that's what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself and make you into something like them. Only I can't forget because all those memories always with me, showing me the way.

History Warning And Spoilers

SPEAKER_00 30:04

And I think that as we sit here in Black History Month, I just want to emphasize the words of Martin Luther King Jr. when he says the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I think we're seeing a lot in the world right now that would push us toward hatred and division. And I think we need to remember that righteous anger and justice is right, that those are things we can work toward. Righteous anger, that is appropriate. Working toward justice is appropriate. Working toward what is right is appropriate. Hating is not. That is not where our power is. I think that this part of that novella really rings for all of us. And I hope that that's something we can carry away. So, why don't you tell us what we're reading next time?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

We are going to descend into R. F. Quang's book, Catabases, next time.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yep. And I finally made it through it. I'm anxious to kind of wade through that with you, so we'll see how it goes. Until then, please keep reading, please keep thinking, and definitely stay away from anything that makes you feel hatred. And we'll talk to you next time.