NEW YEAR, NEW BEGINNINGS

Happy New Year! Hopefully, your year is getting off to a reasonably decent start. There is a sense of cautious optimism in the air—new beginnings emerging as we collectively bid farewell to the year behind us. That past year asked much of us: to find ways to fend off chaos and invite calm, to endure uncertainty, and to keep moving forward. It was hard work, but we made it. Now, with the slate cleared and the lessons of the past as our guide, we can imagine new ways of operating in the next twelve months.

New beginnings, however, are never free of memory. It is often in remembering that the door cracks open to a new vision. My year began that way—by remembering the work of a few authors and returning to stories that once shaped me, stories about family, place, and lived experience.

I found myself reflecting on the quiet yet powerful presence of Jesmyn Ward and revisiting The Men We Reaped. Written to remember and honor the lives of five Black men—including her brother—Ward’s memoir is a testament to the power of the written word. Her truth is visceral; the physical and emotional pain is palpable on the page. Yet there is also triumph in finally telling a story she carried for so long. The book closes not only with remembrance, but with the possibility of a new beginning for Ward herself.

Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House similarly calls forth memory, transporting readers to Detroit streets and neighborhoods long changed but forever preserved in story. Spanning generations and rooted in the experiences of parents who migrated “up north,” the novel reveals how a city’s transformations reverberate through individual lives and family histories.

Revisiting Esther Mumford’s Calabash grounded my new year in memory as well. Published in 1990, Mumford offers a vivid tour of the people, places, and experiences that shaped Seattle’s Black community, beginning with the arrival of Manuel Lopes in the early 1800s. The book stands as both history and homage.

I have a stack of books waiting to be read this year, but instead of immediately diving into unfamiliar territory, I felt compelled to return to these works first—to remember the joy of encountering them for the first time. I didn’t want to replace that memory, even as new beginnings beckoned. I realized I could begin anew whenever I chose, and for now, I chose to remember.

Once this rereading journey is complete, I plan to move on to new titles, in no particular order: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, Confronting the Black Jacobins, by Gerald Horne, Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America, by Michael Harriot, and Limitless, Stories From the Neighborhood that Shaped Seattle, by Shelf Life Community Story Project. Black AF and Limitless are both available at ARTE NOIR.

As you step into the newness of this year and its fresh beginnings, what will you choose to remember?

Vivian Phillips, Founder + Board President,