The Librarians at the Library of Congress have miscategorized my book, which is quite the thing to have happen given my love note to librarians at the start of the reading list

They categorized it as biography.

It’s not.

Anyway, yes there was one effort to change it which went like this.

Sorry future historians who are looking for actual biographies https://twitter.com/ibjiyongi/status/1337411667488018433

I actually discuss in the introduction how the book will be categorized, simply because of how my identity necessarily shapes what goes in the book. When white scientists include personal stories, it’s considered popular science. When Black scientists do it ... it’s memoir.

Let this be a reminder that categorizations are an extremely social phenomenon, shaped by who and what we see as “the norm”

I can’t believe that a book that opens with 130 pages of particle physics, Spacetime, dark matter, gravitational lensing, and physics of melanin required push back before they’d put physics as a category and not list astrophysics last after “African American biography”

Anyway if anyone has Carla Hayden’s email address, I’d love to write to her, Black woman to Black woman, about epistemic marginalization of Black women

The first 90 pages of which are in a section called Just Physics! https://twitter.com/ibjiyongi/status/1337413987219234816

Brian Keating’s lovely Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor is a history of a specific scientific incident along with commentary and his book is identified as “Big Bang theory | cosmology science - methodology”

I’d like to ask @librarycongress what the difference is? Because I discuss how my experience with rape shapes getting science done and be discusses losing his father and how much he wanted a Nobel prize? Am I not ambitious enough in wishing the rape had never happened?

Or is it because Black books can’t be scientific methodology books? Whewww I have a whole ass essay in me about this right now

White supremacy is so intensely total and comprehensive that a memoir about seeking out the Nobel prize is labeled as cosmology and science methodology and a book that contains even more science and less personal history is labeled as African American biography

I guess this is the part where I remind people to buy the book!

If you’re in the Canada, order local or from one of the big stores.

If you’re in US, use this link: https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/chanda-prescod-weinstein/the-disordered-cosmos/9781541724709/

UK shoppers, use this one:
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/chanda-prescod-weinstein/the-disordered-cosmos/9781541724709/

On the US site you can see some of the advance praise the book has received. Here is some of it! Fellow Black theoretical physicist Clifford Johnson:

Fellow theoretical cosmologist, Katie Mack:

Fellow theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll:

Memoirist, editor, and columnist Nicole Chung:

Novelist and commentator Kaitlyn Greenidge:

Novelist and the man behind Son of Baldwin Robert Jones, Jr. called it “a science sermon”

Star Trek Next Generation actress, director, and professor Gates McFadden:

Afrofuturist and artist Ytasha L. Womack:

Kirkus in a starred review:

Historian and science studies theorist Ruha Benjamin:

Novelist, memoirist, and commentator Kiese Laymon:

Anyway, sounds like it’s just a biography to me

Here is the current info, after we sent corrections:

LCSH: Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda. | Astrophysics. | Cosmology. | Astrophysicists--United States--Biography. | African American physicists--United States--Biography.
Classification: LCC QB461.5 .P735 2021 | DDC 523.01--dc23

We asked for particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics and the removal of the biography subject headings.

Since they refuse, I have asked that these not be included on the copyright page.

Oh god, apparently I need to say out loud that I know what QB is, as, you know, someone with a bachelors in physics and astronomy, a masters in astronomy, and a phd in physics, who has, like, used a library before

I've been wondering about these questions for weeks. Who exactly did I write a biography of? I do discuss Elmer Imes and Caroline Herschel ... I GUESS https://twitter.com/DrAriaHalliday/status/1337460456269737988?s=20

Because I've now had this conversation a couple of times: I understand the difference between the classifications and the subject headers. First of all, astrophysics as classification is questionable. Read the book to find out why. There's a discussion. But second of all

White men include tidbits about themselves and their lives and their thoughts about their science all the goddamn time and as I noted above, their books subject headered as "methodology" and "science" but not bio.

Third of all,

we had to do two rounds to get astro listed first and cosmology at all

And these folks know this gets printed in my book. The one I wrote. Alongside my words.

This reminds me of the time that a bookstore had Thomas King's "A Short History of Indians" (a short story collection) in the Indigenous studies section and I told them that it was a fiction book and they just shrugged at me

I taught from PJE Peeble's Cosmology's Century this semester and this book is basically a history of cosmology alongside the science, where he cites his own significant contributions A LOT, and ...

it has the sole subject header "cosmology" according to the UNH library listing