Reading in Strange Places
TLDR: AJ Brown reading a book only seems odd or out of place if you find Black people reading odd or out of place.
Sideline cams caught NFL wide receiver AJ Brown of the Philadelphia Eagles reading as he waited to return to the field. A quick search also shows at least seven news outlets reported on this event. The book became an overnight best-seller. So, move over Reese Witherspoon and Oprah; we now take monthly book recs from a new person.
I am nosy; I want to know what people are reading. I go over to friends’ apartments and stare at their bookshelves. I also will swipe through those anonymous NYC subway IG accounts that take pics of folks’ books; it’s a snapshot of a random person’s interiority. Seeing what people are reading feels intimate. When you recede into your mind with a book, what words are you taking with you?
However, the obsession with AJ Brown’s reading habits didn’t feel like my nosy curiosity. As they’re on the sidelines, football players can only do so much to recharge before stepping back on the field. Eating a snack, grabbing water, stretching out a muscle, talking to a teammate, or reflecting on the previous plays seem the obvious choices at that moment. We’ve also seen players on their phones, doing dance challenges, and goofing off.
The paperback book Brown held is small and easy to fold into a pocket or stash under a seat. It’s the perfect sideline activity—something so far removed from his job that it can help him center himself in a high-stress environment. This method of stress relief has some data behind it, too. A 2009 University of Sussex study found that reading anything can reduce stress by 68%. Anecdotally, it makes sense, too. Reading requires so many of your senses that it’s grounding while also allowing space between you and your active stressors.
But, the assumedly white male commentators chortled as they regarded Brown’s calm and contemplative state. “I haven’t seen too many people read. But I saw a quarterback eat a hot dog,” one commentator said. The combination of those images was odd. The tone and phrasing from the commentator suggest that reading is the last time anyone would expect. It no longer felt like I was catching a quiet moment for a player but watching a caged animal on break at a circus.
Reading isn’t an odd activity, no matter how much book bans or quirky white women with brown hair want to make it so. And Black men reading shouldn’t be newsworthy. In the same way, we (hopefully) recognize that commenting on how eloquent a Black person sounds is a microaggression (aka racist). Likewise, a Black man who plays football reading on the sidelines shouldn’t be cause for white commentators to chuckle. That’s the odd behavior. Why are we stopping to gawk at Black people minding their Black a$$ business like their existence is up for discussion or spectacle?
This whole situation only further proves how political and racialized reading is in this country, where it was illegal for Black people to read until after the Civil War, where literacy tests kept Black people from being able to vote, and where schools and prisons ban books by Black authors at disproportionate rates.
If TikTok had gone dark, I would have been happy for the app’s demise in this one case. Booktok couples reading with white women in knit sweaters reading on loungers. BookTok and mainstream media want to convince us that these are the only readers so much so that they’ll manufacture surprise at the abundant evidence to the contrary—case in point, AJ Brown reading a self-help book.
There’s an entire economy of media dedicated to promoting the idea that the plucky, smart, awkward, well-read girl looks like Rory Gilmore and her male counterpart Dan Humphrey. I know this because this standard influenced my self-esteem and dating habits for too long. This ideal almost convinced me to stop pursuing a writing career at various points, any time anyone ever expressed that I wasn’t the “right fit” (aka white) or didn’t seem enthused enough (aka didn’t smile at the above microaggressions).
Maybe, instead of marveling that one player would rather read to unwind than eat, try asking more players (many of them Black) what they do off the field that helps them center their mind for games. It might lead to a truly shocking realization: these men are just boring humans with a wide variety of interests.