Readers push anticolonial classics
On X, users have been recommending anticolonial and leftist reads such as Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism and Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine as part of spring reading threads. (x.com).
A spring reading thread on X has turned into a running list of anticolonial and leftist books, with users naming Aimé Césaire and Naomi Klein alongside other staples of the canon. (x.com) The post linked in the prompt comes from the X account banglamarigold and recommends *Discourse on Colonialism* by Aimé Césaire. Replies and quote-posts in similar reading threads often add Frantz Fanon’s *The Wretched of the Earth*, Edward Said’s *Orientalism* and Naomi Klein’s *The Shock Doctrine*. (x.com) (groveatlantic.com) These are not new books. Césaire’s essay first appeared in French in 1955 and Monthly Review Press says its English edition was published on January 1, 2001; Fanon’s *The Wretched of the Earth* was first published in 1961, according to Grove Atlantic. (monthlyreview.org) (groveatlantic.com) Said’s *Orientalism* was first published in 1978, and Penguin Random House describes it as a critique of how the West historically portrayed and defined “the East.” Klein’s *The Shock Doctrine* was originally published in September 2007, according to the author’s site. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (naomiklein.org) The cluster makes sense as a reading list because the books attack related systems from different angles. Césaire writes about colonialism and empire, Fanon about colonial violence and liberation, Said about representation and knowledge, and Klein about how crises are used to push market restructuring. (monthlyreview.org) (groveatlantic.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) (naomiklein.org) The thread format also changes how these books circulate. A single post can mix a 102-page essay like Césaire’s *Discourse on Colonialism* with longer works such as Fanon’s 320-page sixtieth-anniversary edition from Grove Press, making the list usable for readers with different amounts of time. (monthlyreview.org) (groveatlantic.com/book/the-wretched-of-the-earth/) Publishers still market these works as living texts rather than archival ones. Monthly Review says Césaire’s book has sold more than 75,000 copies in English, while Grove Atlantic says Fanon’s book continues to influence movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization. (monthlyreview.org) (groveatlantic.com) What shows up in an X reading thread is also shaped by the platform itself. A March 2026 *Nature* paper found that seven weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted users’ political attitudes and account-following behavior in a more conservative direction, even though the paper did not test book recommendations specifically. (nature.com) That leaves these spring reading threads doing two jobs at once: recommending books and mapping a political vocabulary. In this case, readers are reaching for mid-century anticolonial writing and a 2007 critique of “disaster capitalism” to stock their 2026 lists. (monthlyreview.org) (naomiklein.org)
