What I Learned in Oklahoma: More Than Exotic

Brandon King is Oklahoma Today’s spring intern. Read his previous “What I Learned in Oklahoma” entries here:

The Essentials

Too Stubborn To Fail

Festival Season

This Ain’t Tatooine

Here we are, on whatever day of whatever week it is amid this pandemic. You could be reading this with your morning coffee or as an afternoon break from working on projects from home. The only two things I’m certain of is:

Sweatpants have become the new “business casual.”
Calendars mean nothing anymore.

But here’s another truth. I just learned a new word. If it applies to you, email me once you finish this blog to talk and collaborate. The word is tsundoku. Don’t look it up. I promise I’ll explain.

What does a bookcase full of unread books mean? You might be "tsundoku." Photo by Lori Duckworth.

Over the weekend, I got into a discussion with a friend. The topic turned to Netflix’s Tiger King, which is the docu-series that made Joe Exotic, his sideshow zoo, and Seth Wadley, into household names. Side note: not to make Oklahomans those hipsters, but Joe Exotic was our unsung lunatic well before he became the nation’s criminal animal-breeding obsession.

“As fun as it is, it makes me depressed to think that people who watch this will think that we’re all either Joe Exotics or supporters,” he says.

We hung up. Hours passed. Yet the thought lingered until I found myself standing in front of my bookshelves at one in the morning.

Almost in an instant, there was a tinge of guilt as I stared at a litany of books I’ve collected over the years. I’ve considered myself a prolific reader since I was being yelled at by elementary school librarians to “drop the book” and “play outside with the rest of the kids.” Yet, as I faced these shelves, I recognized perhaps half of them. Out of those half, I’ve read a quarter of them, tops. My book collection is the byproduct of services like the Metropolitan Library System of Oklahoma County’s annual book sale (which you should never miss!) and, in turn, the rise of the word mentioned above: tsundoku. It’s the Japanese word to describe amassing a collection of books without reading them. No shame, just empathy. I read when I can, but most of my time has been snagged either by school, work, family, or societal obligations.

Brandon King is searching for books that represent Oklahoma. Send your ideas to brandon.king@travelok.com. Photo by Lori Duckworth.

I was on a mission to search my collection for something, anything, I could point to that represents Oklahomans better than Joe Exotic. Unfortunately, the only books I had involving Oklahoma were John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Tom Lindley’s Out of the Dust, the biography of Gene Rainbolt, one Oklahoma’s finest people. I chose to rectify this immediately by tackling my tsundoku problem by researching Oklahoma historical biographies and Oklahoma novelists. Since then, I’ve made my fiancée thrilled by purchasing three Oklahoma novels and biographies.

Here’s what I learned this week: Public education never had the chance to teach real Oklahoma history the way it happened. Most of us never learned the lessons of the past or read some of the best words ever written by our fellow Oklahomans. If you’re going to be quarantined, you might as well learn something about your state. The first on my list is Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham. Our heritage is not only the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and Joe Exotic. Let’s learn more about it together.

If you have any Oklahoma book suggestions, send them to me at brandon.king@travelok.com.