We’ve been asking our interviewees and friends what 5 things are they recommend everyone see/do/read. If you’re feeling uninspired, maybe take a look at some of these! Here are their responses.

Ugochi Egonu

  1. Check out your local poetry slam. I think everybody should go to a poetry slam once in their life. I know a lot of people older than us who eventually go to a poetry slam and that’s so sad! 

  2. Dance! 

  3. Nikki Giovanni. A lot of people don’t listen to black women and she makes you do that! 

  4. Check out Space is the Place by Sun Ra because Afro-futurism is really cool and getting traction. People should know the roots of it. Sun Ra didn’t event it but he’s a big name in it. 

  5. Three Black Femmes podcast.

Oscar Hou

  1. The sea. If you haven’t see the sea you should go look at it. It’s fucking big.

  2. Breathless by Godard. 

  3. Lou Fratino’s work @loufratino . His work is pretty incredible and I work for him right now.  

  4. The sky.

  5. Dana Schutz exhibition which I want to go. I wrote an essay on her piece “Open casket”. She’s a very controversial painter. 

Faiyaz Kolia

  1. Incarnations: India In 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani 

  2. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

  3. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

  4. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren

  5. A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

Molly Mendoza

  1. Read up to the Enis Lobby arc of One Piece (At least)

  2. Watch March Comes in Like a Lion or Honey and Clover and cry

  3. Watch the live action Speed Racer movie -- people who said it was bad are wrong

  4. Read Ursula K. LeGuin novels (I love The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed)

  5. Look at all those Sauske Choke or OP Shaggy memes on twitter – They are currently giving me all the laughs.

M’Lynn Musgrove

  1. This podcast The Liturgists. Disclaimer: it is a podcast about spirituality, and a lot of the people featured are Christian, but they have really progressive views on Christianity and they cover a bunch of topics. I’m not religious myself. They talk about art, philosophical views, and they have a lot of guests on the show. It’s made by a scientist and a musician, and they have a lot of original music that they put in the interludes. It’s just a piece of art all the way through.

  2. Nai Palm – a kind of funk-hip-hop-jazz fusion band. You don’t have to be into jazz to like the project.

  3. Noname’s Room 25. She’s a queen. Her music is a mixture of slam poetry and great beats. You should listen to Telephone first. She’s an incredible artist.

  4.  Third Story. One of the singers in the band, Elliott Skinner, graduated from my high school. Their harmonies are so tight and soulful and beautiful. Three beautiful men singing and being amazing. 

  5. Netflix’s Chef’s Table. It has the most beautiful cinematography I’ve ever seen. Each episode talks about one chef. They come from everywhere in the world and talk about their story, and how they create their art. I think it’s really interesting because a lot of people don’t really think of chefs as artists. Chef’s Table really shows their artistry and creativity. They have the most incredible backgrounds and their cooking displays their heritage. It’s a really cool thing.

Kamau Wainaina

  1. Sampa the Great’s new album Birds and the BEE9

  2. Concerning Violence dir. Göran Olsson based on Frantz Fanon’s synonymous essay

  3. Atlanta created by Donal Glover 

Dong Ping Wong

  1. Top Gun, if you haven’t seen it.

  2. I mean from a very normal architectural point of view S, M, L, XL [by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A). It’s a hugely important book for me. I bring it up because I don’t know if it’s still an important book for students. I know people know it but I don’t know if people obsess over it. I think the reason I like S,M,L,XL is because it’s one of the only books that isn’t formatted like a normal architecture book. It’s much more narrative and much more comprehensive. I’ve still yet to see an architecture publication do something quite as interesting in terms of the mix of content. It’s organized by how the title implies, small, medium, large projects. In between, even how they present the project, there’s not real logic to the formatting of the book. There’s like five different strands through it. It’s one of those books that you can just open to any page and read it in any direction. 

  3. I’d recommend the drive or the area, the Southwest United States between Carl’s Bad Caverns and Marfa. That zone. That’s one of my favorite places in the world. Especially driving through it. There’s not really a single location in there that I’m like go to. The colors are marvelous. I feel like everyone who is from the U.S. or visiting should spend a week between Utah between New Mexico and Arizona. 

  4. Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a lab for polio? It was set up for a very specific disease and then it cured polio. What’s interesting is cause part of it is rationally set up in terms of how the labs and storage is set up and then the main fancy part is completely useless. There’s no point but it’s stunning. You never think of a science building being that beautiful. It’s definitely one of those places that you walk up the steps and it just hits yo with how beautiful it is. 

  5. The other building is Romchamp the le Corbusier building in France. Mostly cause it’s so weird. It’s really goofy but it totally works. It’s one of those buildings you can’t imagine how any of the decisions were made. There’s no rationale to anything. It’s not really surreal but it’s inexplicable. It’s the only building I can think of that when you see it, the light and proportions are incredible. It seems like a fever dream of a building in a way I’ve never seen.

Micah Pegues

  1. The Gap by Ira Glass

  2. The Creative Independent

  3. La Haine dir. Mathieu Kassovitz

  4. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

  5. Won’t You Be My Neighbor dir. Morgan Neville