Editorial

Gary Simmons, Reading Room

Closeup of a light wood desk with wooden privacy screens, and lamp, and a container of pencils in the middle. Close to the edge of the frame are two books and a pencil resting on top.

Installation view, Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, MCA Chicago, Jun 13–Oct 1, 2023. Photo: Shelby Ragsdale, © MCA Chicago.

Installed within the MCA exhibition Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, the Reading Room is a space where you can sit, relax, and reflect while digging deeper into Gary Simmons’s multilayered practice.

This page features those reading lists, accompanied by a selection of related Spanish-language titles. To find hard copies of these books, try searching Chicago Public Library’s centralized database, or visit the MCA Store or your local independent bookstore.

Gary Simmons: Public Enemy is on view through October 1, 2023.

A room labeled Reading Room over large, square windows. It features a long table with lights and dividers and a wall full of books displayed with their covers facing outwards.
Installation view, Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, MCA Chicago, Jun 13–Oct 1, 2023. Photo: Shelby Ragsdale, © MCA Chicago.

The MCA invited scholars and cultural thinkers—as well as the artist himself—to contribute reading lists related to topics or themes Simmons explores in his practice, including horror, sports, music, architecture, and education. Their selections, along with texts selected by the curators and other museum staff, are shelved, stacked, and sorted in the museum’s Lake Gallery. Also available in the gallery are bookmarks featuring each of the curated reading lists, as well as a journal to record any thoughts, feelings, or reactions to the material or works on view. We invite you to explore these titles while relaxing at a table or couch in the Reading Room.

Reading Lists

  • Una lista de lectura por Antonio Díaz Oliva, escritor y editor del MCA.

    Generación Hip-hop: de la guerra de pandillas y el grafiti al gangsta rap
    Jeff Chang

    Rey del mundo: Muhammad Ali y el nacimiento de un héroe americano
    David Remnick

    Mumbo Jumbo
    Ishmael Reed

    El complejo arte-arquitectura
    Hal Foster

    Cómo ser antirracista
    Ibram X. Kendi

    El origen de los otros
    Toni Morrison

    Bass Culture: La historia del reggae
    Lloyd Bradley y Tomás Cobos

    Cine de Terror
    Paul Duncan y Jürgen Müller

  • A reading list on architecture by artist Amanda Williams.

    Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America
    Sean Anderson and Mabel O. Wilson

    War and Architecture, Pamphlet Architecture 15
    Lebbeus Woods

    Race, Culture, and the City: A Pedagogy for Black Urban Struggle
    Stephen Nathan Haymes

    Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums
    Mabel O. Wilson

    CriticalProductive: A Journal of Architecture Urbanism and Cultural Theory 1, no. 1
    Milton S. F. Curry

  • A reading list on education by educator Lorena Germán.

    This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work
    Tiffany Jewell
    Illustrated by Aurélia Durand

    We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
    Bettina L. Love

    Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
    Monique W. Morris

    My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
    Resmaa Menakem

    Start Here, Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community
    Liz Kleinrock

  • A reading list on horror by author Kier-La Janisse.

    Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present
    Robin R. Means Coleman

    Corridors: Passages of Modernity
    Roger Luckhurst

    The Bad Trip: Dark Omens, New Worlds and the End of the Sixties
    James Riley

    The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness
    Bernice M. Murphy

    Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents
    Stephen Thrower

  • A reading list on music by historian Jeff Chang.

    Hip-Hop: The Complete Archives
    Steven Hager

    Mumbo Jumbo
    Ishmael Reed

    Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
    Dan Charnas

    When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
    Joan Morgan

    Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America
    Saidiya V. Hartman

  • A reading list on sports by journalist Robert Scoop Jackson.

    Black Market: An Insider’s Journey into the High-Stakes World of College Basketball
    Merl Code

    Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story
    David Wolf with Connie Hawkins

    Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
    William C. Rhoden

    Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball
    Lawrence D. Hogan

    King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero
    David Remnick

  • A reading list by artist Gary Simmons.

    Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader
    Tiffany Jewell

    Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop
    Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen

    The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem
    Marcus Samuelsson

    Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics
    Hal Foster

    Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices
    Stuart Hall

    Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
    Avery F. Gordon

    The Power Broker
    Robert Caro

    Flyboy in the Buttermilk
    Greg Tate

    The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
    Mark Lamster

    Horror at the Drive-In
    Gary D. Rhodes (Editor)

    Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide
    Josiah Howard

    Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film
    Adilifu Nama

    Among the Thugs: The Experience, and the Seduction, of Crowd Violence
    Bill Buford

    Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture
    Eric Greene

    Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation
    Nicholas Sammond

    The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954
    Christopher P. Lehman

    Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
    Jeff Chang

    Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop
    Jeff Chang

    Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King
    Lloyd Bradley

    Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae
    Michael Veal

    Critical Race Theory
    Kimberlé Crenshaw

    Black Girls Matter
    Kimberlé Crenshaw

    Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
    Rebecca Walker

    To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism
    Rebecca Walker (Editor)

    Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen
    Osayi Endolyn, Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, Lester Walker

    Son of the City: A Memoir
    Dante Ross

    Rockers Galore
    Josh Cheuse

    Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America
    Michael Eric Dyson

    People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
    David Katz

    The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters
    Tricia Rose

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