Toni Morrison once wrote, "My project rises from delight, not disappointment." This remark appeared in — and referred to — her 1992 volume of essays Playing in the Dark, a scintillating text exploring how the fundamentally racialized nature of American society has influenced its literature. In How to Read Now, which treads similar ground in looking at how historical constructs of power influence ways of reading and how this in turn affects…well, everything, author Elaine Castillo's subject matter is sometimes somber but her rendering of it is a delight.

Her multifaceted and playful approach is captured in the title, which can itself be read two ways: how to read literature in our contemporary moment, and how to read that moment itself — how to read the world that we're living in. The book delivers on both of these interpretations and demonstrates how they ...