Current healthcare measures for COVID-19 have escalated to lockdown and shelter-in-place mandates in many places in the world. For a lot of us, this is a time where we feel detached from our communities and loved ones - a moment that is uncertain, anxiety-inducing and traumatic.
Although the arts can’t directly address our fears of failing healthcare systems, we might still find comfort in them; a power that has value. While stuck at home, the arts may be a reminder of what we love in the world, a way of being with others, and a way to imagine changing the contradictions of our societies.
For now, the sinθ team has put together a list of media that they’ve taken comfort in during these times - in the hopes that they too might bring comfort to anyone reading, watching, or listening.
For book recommendations, we encourage you to support your local independent bookstores, many of whom are taking orders online or via phone! Mass shipping companies such as Amazon have flagrantly disregarded the health of their workers during the pandemic; risking not only precarious workers but also our communities at large. For exclusively online options, check out the following online independent bookstore sites for the US, UK, and Australia.
Recommendations
Jiaqi Kang 亢嘉琪
Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett (fiction)
Feverish and forthright, Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering as the world takes on a character of its own.
Elisabeth Siegel 朱明慧
Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie (fiction)
After years of watching out for her younger siblings, Isma is free to pursue a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about her sister, Aneeka, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared to prove himself to the legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces, Isma’s worst fears are confirmed. Then Eamonn, son of a powerful political figure, enters the sisters’ lives. Suddenly, two families’ fates are entwined, raising the question: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?
Emily Chen 谌月
Patron Saints of Nothing, Randy Ribay (fiction)
When Jay Reguero discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, he travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole truth - and the part he played in it.
Hayley Wu 胡禧怡
17776, or What Football Will Look Like in the Future, Jon Bois (online multimedia project)
Set in the distant future, the series follows three space probes that have gained sentience and watch humanity play an evolved form of American football, in which games can be played for millennia over distances of thousands of miles.
Jess Liu 刘韶洁
Sex Education on Netflix (TV show)
Socially awkward high school student Otis may not have much experience in the lovemaking department, but he gets good guidance on the topic in his personal sex ed course -- living with mom Jean, who is a sex therapist. When his classmates learn about his home life, Otis decides to use his insider knowledge to improve his status at school, so he teams with whip-smart bad girl Maeve to set up an underground sex therapy clinic to deal with their classmates' problems.
Julia Cheng 郑家丽
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter, Meg Jay (non-fiction)
Our “thirty-is-the-new-twenty” culture tells us that the twentysomething years don’t matter. In this book, Dr. Meg Jay reveals how many twentysomethings are caught in a swirl of misinformation that trivializes the most defining years of adulthood.
Miki Wong 黄美棋
99% Invisible, Roman Mars (Podcast)
Ever wonder how inflatable men came to be regular fixtures at used car lots? Curious about the origin of the fortune cookie? Want to know why Sigmund Freud opted for a couch over an armchair? 99% Invisible is about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.
Clarissa Grace Chang 张云晖
Gentefied on Netflix (TV Show)
In Los Angeles, three Mexican-American cousins chase the American Dream, even while that dream threatens the things they hold most dear, including their neighborhood, their immigrant grandfather and the family-owned taco shop.
Stephanie Chang 張雅雯
Oculus, Sally Wen Mao (poetry)
In Oculus, Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement, but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. With speculative imagination and sharp wit, Mao confronts the paradoxes of representation, and the roles women of color endure to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.
Joyce Lu 路加玮
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (fiction)
Italo Calvino presents a novel in the form of a compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco Polo tells the Kublai Khan about the pipes of Armilla, the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all from imagination, recreating fine details of his native Venice - or perhaps simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.
Juliette Wu 伍家荟
Feel Free, Zadie Smith (essays)
Gathering for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith’s own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive - and never any less than perfect company in this work of literary journalism.