I noticed something very exciting going through upcoming releases: there are a bunch of really interesting looking books coming out in January that are written by women (or at least people with lady-seeming names) AND that are not drawing room biographies or memoirs.
Freaking. Exciting.
So, I thought to make a list. Here's the list of things that I thought looked legit. It is not comprehensive. But it is interesting.
Margaret Laurence Writes Africa and Canada by Laura Davis
The Hundred-Year Walk: an Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid Mackeen
The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During WWII by Jan Jarboe Russell
The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol'nik Park to Chicago's South Side by Kate Baldwin
Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital by Joan Quigley
Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Native Archive and the Circulation of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico by Amber E Brian
Practicing the City: Early Modern London on Stage by Nina S. Levine
The Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space by Alexis Wick
We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays by Shirley Hazzard, edited by Brigitta Olubas
Lyric Orientation: Holderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community by Hannah Vandegrifte Eldridge
Form and Instability: Eastern Europe, Literature, Postimperial Difference by Anita Starosta
Armed Ambiguity: Women Warriors in German Literature and Culture in the Age of Goethe by Julie Koser
The Dead Sea and the Jordan River by Barbara Kreiger
And there you have it! This list, of course, does not include all those initial'd souls who, for one nomenclature or another, do not wish to list a first name. (letters are not gendered, it is an awesome power.)
Remember to support your local library and independent bookstore (the big A will only drain your economy dry like a quick-acting mummy solution)
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Friday, August 14, 2015
Creeping Left Bank Books
Look out! We'll getcha!
Last week we got a letter in the mail saying that our BlackLivesMatter yard signs were causing racial disharmony and that we'd lost a customer to Amazon. (I have more to say about how bassackwards that is, but for now, you can refer to this if you want.) (Mind, this is not the first person to claim that taking an anti-racist position is harmful. On Christmas Eve, a customer came in and spoke at our manager for upwards of ten minutes (on CHRISTMAS DAMN EVE) about how he didn't want to bring his children to the store anymore because he didn't feel that the message of BlackLivesMatter was appropriate for them. For his children. le sigh. But, there aren't that many people who have such terrible manners.)
One of the co-owners of the store decided to address the unsigned letter we received with a blog post that is thoughtful and personal and ends with a link to Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, because yes.
The DailyKos wrote up an article and someone in the comments made a GRAPHIC thing!?!
KMOX did a piece also - which is kind of awesome, for real.
The post landed at HuffPost. ?!?!?
(So you know to avoid the comments, right? I mean, you could read the ones at The DailyKos, because they are kind of fantastic and the ones on the Facebook page are mostly alright, too, but, you know, be careful.)
The Post wrote that we sold out of BlackLivesMatter signs. We're also selling a ton of Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book. Which is freaking fantastic. Not that I've bought it yet. Or anything. *coughs*
What you won't see in these links or articles is that a different kind of conversation is happening in the store. The conversation about realizing how real it is that the default setting for white people is racist. As someone who works not to be, it is still startling when I am approached by white people who use coded language or arguments that are steeped in an unquestioned racism. It is so shocking, not because I am shocked that people are racist, but because the assumption is that as a white person I am actively engaged in my racism and approve of it.
Um. No.
It took having it pointed out for me to learn that as a person who grew up with white privilege in this country, I am inherently racist. It was a twitchy moment, because I'm special, so of course I'm not racist. *cough* Yep.
It was an awkward moment when I realized that there is nothing about not being racist that makes my words unracist. Nothing at all.
Not my lack of intent. Not my less-privileged-than-you upbringing. Not my feminism.
Whatever my beliefs, my privilege (something I may not choose, but must not deny) is built from a system of oppression and subjugation predicated on the belief that white skinned people are better. It is not the job of POC to educate me about racism. It is not the job of WOC to teach me to be an intersectional feminist. It is my job to do the work and to have the conversations.
Sometimes it is necessary to preach to the choir, a thing that can get dicey when you work at a place where people are fairly certain you always agree with them no matter what. The illusion of a cultural monolith is not limited to any political party. Oh no.
Another Left Bank conversation that is compelling is that one that tracks the progress of understanding. The one where we compare notes about when we articulated our many and varied problems with the privileged and obtuse notion of colorblindness. The one where none of us had to articulate or defend our use of #BlackLivesMatter specifically, along with #TransLivesMatter and #NativeLivesMatter and #AllBlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName - because it was apparent that the specificity was necessary, because every life does not matter in practice. The one where we all wonder what else we need to learn. The one where the books on our shelves speak clearly.
It creeps, this burden of responsibility. It creeps into conversation. It creeps into buying habits. It creeps into the search for acceptable pop culture. It creeps into relationships. It takes over.
We have muscles. We must use them. History weighs heavily. The work of carrying its burden should fall on all of us.
Last week we got a letter in the mail saying that our BlackLivesMatter yard signs were causing racial disharmony and that we'd lost a customer to Amazon. (I have more to say about how bassackwards that is, but for now, you can refer to this if you want.) (Mind, this is not the first person to claim that taking an anti-racist position is harmful. On Christmas Eve, a customer came in and spoke at our manager for upwards of ten minutes (on CHRISTMAS DAMN EVE) about how he didn't want to bring his children to the store anymore because he didn't feel that the message of BlackLivesMatter was appropriate for them. For his children. le sigh. But, there aren't that many people who have such terrible manners.)
One of the co-owners of the store decided to address the unsigned letter we received with a blog post that is thoughtful and personal and ends with a link to Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, because yes.
The DailyKos wrote up an article and someone in the comments made a GRAPHIC thing!?!
KMOX did a piece also - which is kind of awesome, for real.
The post landed at HuffPost. ?!?!?
(So you know to avoid the comments, right? I mean, you could read the ones at The DailyKos, because they are kind of fantastic and the ones on the Facebook page are mostly alright, too, but, you know, be careful.)
The Post wrote that we sold out of BlackLivesMatter signs. We're also selling a ton of Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book. Which is freaking fantastic. Not that I've bought it yet. Or anything. *coughs*
What you won't see in these links or articles is that a different kind of conversation is happening in the store. The conversation about realizing how real it is that the default setting for white people is racist. As someone who works not to be, it is still startling when I am approached by white people who use coded language or arguments that are steeped in an unquestioned racism. It is so shocking, not because I am shocked that people are racist, but because the assumption is that as a white person I am actively engaged in my racism and approve of it.
Um. No.
It took having it pointed out for me to learn that as a person who grew up with white privilege in this country, I am inherently racist. It was a twitchy moment, because I'm special, so of course I'm not racist. *cough* Yep.
It was an awkward moment when I realized that there is nothing about not being racist that makes my words unracist. Nothing at all.
Not my lack of intent. Not my less-privileged-than-you upbringing. Not my feminism.
Whatever my beliefs, my privilege (something I may not choose, but must not deny) is built from a system of oppression and subjugation predicated on the belief that white skinned people are better. It is not the job of POC to educate me about racism. It is not the job of WOC to teach me to be an intersectional feminist. It is my job to do the work and to have the conversations.
Sometimes it is necessary to preach to the choir, a thing that can get dicey when you work at a place where people are fairly certain you always agree with them no matter what. The illusion of a cultural monolith is not limited to any political party. Oh no.
Another Left Bank conversation that is compelling is that one that tracks the progress of understanding. The one where we compare notes about when we articulated our many and varied problems with the privileged and obtuse notion of colorblindness. The one where none of us had to articulate or defend our use of #BlackLivesMatter specifically, along with #TransLivesMatter and #NativeLivesMatter and #AllBlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName - because it was apparent that the specificity was necessary, because every life does not matter in practice. The one where we all wonder what else we need to learn. The one where the books on our shelves speak clearly.
It creeps, this burden of responsibility. It creeps into conversation. It creeps into buying habits. It creeps into the search for acceptable pop culture. It creeps into relationships. It takes over.
We have muscles. We must use them. History weighs heavily. The work of carrying its burden should fall on all of us.
No, but really, take care of yourselves
August is literally the worst month ever.
Except for the part where some people got born, and they (well, one of them specifically) are amazing and loved and loving, of course.
Because mostly this is a shit month. Lots of people die. Lots of them. Some of the violently at the hands of the police. I don't know of any police that are held accountable for killing people. Neither does most anyone else. In some places, lots of people have come together to protest this. To protest systematic racism and utterly inequitable education, housing and economic opportunities. To protest the casual and constant racist rhetoric that accompanies the inequality. And now they are targets. Targets of micro and macro aggression. Targets of police, of twitter trolls, of violent racists whose words could very well mask no intent, but whose intent is as much to silence as it is to destroy.
People are suffering, and it is hard work. The reminders to do self-care, to do community-wide self-care are real and they are correct. Find a place to be, a place where you can be at rest for a little while and be there. Drink water. Eat. Sleep. Cry. Hug. Laugh. Watch a movie or a TV show. Play. Draw. Sing. Drink water. Take your meds.
And love.
This year, more than any before, I feel the strain of my appendectomy. Time to cry has been needed. Time to remember what it was to be in a hospital bed surrounded by people I never expected to be there. Time to consider how tremendous it is to be loved.
Self care as health insurance would have saved my body from the damage of the burst appendix. Self care as believing that my friends loved me and would care for me would have gotten me to the hospital sooner. Once I was released from the hospital self care as love challenged me to build a life founded on being as lovable as I was loved. Now self care is silence. Sometimes it is tearful awareness. It is patience. It is an absence of guilt. It is reading groups and making mistakes and riding my bike and appreciating that I live in a world where unaccompanied women of all kinds move about as if in no fear of attack. It is recognizing the racism in my privilege. It is taking deep breaths and learning to stop apologizing and start believing. It is choosing my pop culture.
There are no steps necessary between recognizing that I deserved better medical care and recognizing that everyone deserves better medical care. Except the part about understanding that medical care is not something that you earn, it is something to which you have the right. Only we live in a world where good health is a zero sum game, and only those who are worthy can achieve it, even after something as lovely as the Affordable Care Act. There is still the question of the co-pay. The time to see the doctor. The limits of plans and networks and previous health histories.
Self care is not something that has a limit. It is not bounded. It is built. It is based in love and it can help to save us from ourselves.
We are all small. We are none of us insignificant.
Drink water.
Eat fresh food when you can.
Love.
Be loved.
Let us build something new out of the rubble of what divides us.
Except for the part where some people got born, and they (well, one of them specifically) are amazing and loved and loving, of course.
Because mostly this is a shit month. Lots of people die. Lots of them. Some of the violently at the hands of the police. I don't know of any police that are held accountable for killing people. Neither does most anyone else. In some places, lots of people have come together to protest this. To protest systematic racism and utterly inequitable education, housing and economic opportunities. To protest the casual and constant racist rhetoric that accompanies the inequality. And now they are targets. Targets of micro and macro aggression. Targets of police, of twitter trolls, of violent racists whose words could very well mask no intent, but whose intent is as much to silence as it is to destroy.
People are suffering, and it is hard work. The reminders to do self-care, to do community-wide self-care are real and they are correct. Find a place to be, a place where you can be at rest for a little while and be there. Drink water. Eat. Sleep. Cry. Hug. Laugh. Watch a movie or a TV show. Play. Draw. Sing. Drink water. Take your meds.
And love.
This year, more than any before, I feel the strain of my appendectomy. Time to cry has been needed. Time to remember what it was to be in a hospital bed surrounded by people I never expected to be there. Time to consider how tremendous it is to be loved.
Self care as health insurance would have saved my body from the damage of the burst appendix. Self care as believing that my friends loved me and would care for me would have gotten me to the hospital sooner. Once I was released from the hospital self care as love challenged me to build a life founded on being as lovable as I was loved. Now self care is silence. Sometimes it is tearful awareness. It is patience. It is an absence of guilt. It is reading groups and making mistakes and riding my bike and appreciating that I live in a world where unaccompanied women of all kinds move about as if in no fear of attack. It is recognizing the racism in my privilege. It is taking deep breaths and learning to stop apologizing and start believing. It is choosing my pop culture.
There are no steps necessary between recognizing that I deserved better medical care and recognizing that everyone deserves better medical care. Except the part about understanding that medical care is not something that you earn, it is something to which you have the right. Only we live in a world where good health is a zero sum game, and only those who are worthy can achieve it, even after something as lovely as the Affordable Care Act. There is still the question of the co-pay. The time to see the doctor. The limits of plans and networks and previous health histories.
Self care is not something that has a limit. It is not bounded. It is built. It is based in love and it can help to save us from ourselves.
We are all small. We are none of us insignificant.
Drink water.
Eat fresh food when you can.
Love.
Be loved.
Let us build something new out of the rubble of what divides us.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Things that can Die in a Fire
This is a list. A list of things that can Die in a Fire.
It is not comprehensive. It may not even be explanatory.
Chivalry. Chivalry can die in a fire with its counterpart Street Harassment.
White ladies who use the word 'nice' to mean White and 'dangerous' to mean Black.
People touching other people's hair without their consent, perhaps without their knowledge. For real. Just that just needs to DIE IN A FIRE.
It is #BlackLivesMatter for a reason. Figure that reason out and just shut the fuck up with your AllLives and WhiteLives garbage.
"But it's my First Amendment Right." Fuck off. No, it isn't.
Bossy. Sassy. Note: these are 2 words that we thought maybe could just be put to bed so that we can all forget about how ill used they are now, but no, no. They must also die in a fire.
Meninism. Like. What. Even. Is. The. Thing. Here.
If you don't like to pay full price, don't throw the Amazon threat at the service person. Just throw your money at the giant cancerous blood-sucking void that is that online monstrosity, own it and shut up with your indignation. The schools you want to parent your children and the librarians you don't want to pay and the roads you want to be eternally in good repair lose money every time you value convenience over cost. You vote with your dollars. It is not the fault of the service person. It is your fault.
Anybody else have a thing they'd like to add?
Shoddy and harmful medical care. Believe me when I tell you a thing. This is not television and you are not mother-crapping House.
"Political correctness!" Look. Your words need to show respect. That is all. You not using racial epithets isn't a mark of weakness or collusion, it's how you show respect for another human being. Not telling jokes that glorify acts of violence and diminish the power of consent does not make you less funny. It makes you better at not being a lazy fucker who relies on infantile responses to gratify. You make it easier to dismiss you by speaking dismissively of others.
Suggesting that social media is somehow meaningless or ephemeral or fake ... How? How do you even not see the depth of communication that is possible across every geographic boundary that Mercator could have imagined? How do you pretend that violence in the ether is someone less? How do you willfully misinterpret the power of the Internet and its various forms of interpersonal interaction as empty and frivolous? Where is it not made plain that the connections forged on social media are what make the world less likely to stay shitty? Or is it just convenient to dismiss what's keeping social justice warriors in touch with each other and on the lookout for fuckups by you because otherwise you might have to change. Grow up. You will fight change. You always have.
It is not comprehensive. It may not even be explanatory.
Chivalry. Chivalry can die in a fire with its counterpart Street Harassment.
White ladies who use the word 'nice' to mean White and 'dangerous' to mean Black.
People touching other people's hair without their consent, perhaps without their knowledge. For real. Just that just needs to DIE IN A FIRE.
It is #BlackLivesMatter for a reason. Figure that reason out and just shut the fuck up with your AllLives and WhiteLives garbage.
"But it's my First Amendment Right." Fuck off. No, it isn't.
Bossy. Sassy. Note: these are 2 words that we thought maybe could just be put to bed so that we can all forget about how ill used they are now, but no, no. They must also die in a fire.
Meninism. Like. What. Even. Is. The. Thing. Here.
If you don't like to pay full price, don't throw the Amazon threat at the service person. Just throw your money at the giant cancerous blood-sucking void that is that online monstrosity, own it and shut up with your indignation. The schools you want to parent your children and the librarians you don't want to pay and the roads you want to be eternally in good repair lose money every time you value convenience over cost. You vote with your dollars. It is not the fault of the service person. It is your fault.
Anybody else have a thing they'd like to add?
Shoddy and harmful medical care. Believe me when I tell you a thing. This is not television and you are not mother-crapping House.
"Political correctness!" Look. Your words need to show respect. That is all. You not using racial epithets isn't a mark of weakness or collusion, it's how you show respect for another human being. Not telling jokes that glorify acts of violence and diminish the power of consent does not make you less funny. It makes you better at not being a lazy fucker who relies on infantile responses to gratify. You make it easier to dismiss you by speaking dismissively of others.
Suggesting that social media is somehow meaningless or ephemeral or fake ... How? How do you even not see the depth of communication that is possible across every geographic boundary that Mercator could have imagined? How do you pretend that violence in the ether is someone less? How do you willfully misinterpret the power of the Internet and its various forms of interpersonal interaction as empty and frivolous? Where is it not made plain that the connections forged on social media are what make the world less likely to stay shitty? Or is it just convenient to dismiss what's keeping social justice warriors in touch with each other and on the lookout for fuckups by you because otherwise you might have to change. Grow up. You will fight change. You always have.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Conversation in long form
Okay. I may have been drinking a little bit and watching Sense8 with a good best friend. Which means words. So. Many. Words.
If you haven't seen Sense8 and don't really want to, there is likely nothing here that is problematic. If you haven't seen Sense8 and would like to, then you may want to wait until you've seen 2 or 3 episodes before reading this. It's not about spoilers, it's about structure.
We take a long time to watch movies. The remote sits on the coffee table and whenever there is a need, the pause button gets pushed and we talk, we listen because what was said was relevant and thick with possibility. Because these are the people hanging out around our coffee tables.
Our conversations, like our relationships, are built on moments that add up over a very long time. We learn, discover and grow together. We share this context over time, sometimes over miles, definitely over space in shapes we could never otherwise imagine. We mourn the loss of love for beloved public figures and movies. We struggle. We demand, especially in the last year, more from ourselves and in consequence we celebrate the more we get from each other.
Doing better.
It takes corporations a very long time to get a fucking clue. Netflix's development department seems to be getting it better than others.
Series television shows, with no commercial breaks, released as entire seasons all at once, are in many ways a hearkening back to ways of storytelling that don't give a shit about commerce and stock prices. Humans have always been confusing to corporations; we are individual and we learn. The consequences of social constructs designed to inhibit our learning and cultural controls manufactured to limit our individuality are made, they are not inherent.
Of late, there is no room for this bullshit in my entertainment choices. I am not shy about my unending love for Magic Mike XXL, a thoroughly fluffy movie that triggers nothing and leaves me breathless and telling stories about what the guys are up to now and how the next film could go. The whole movie happens as a kind of delighted riff on what it is to live well after throwing off the weight of the patriarchy, unafraid of work, unafraid of fucking up, unafraid of cleaning up the messes you make on your own.
It is a movie for grown women. Because being fully alive and aware and not at all freaked out at the possibility of real is some grown woman shit.
Sense8 is a show for grown people. It is utterly unique in my experience of television, although not in my experience of storytelling.
When I say that this show is for grown people, I am not joking. It is less flippant than anything I've seen about humans and their lives and their experiences. Every bit of spectacle serves the narrative. And there is no shortage of spectacle.
Amazing Roommate did some researching while we recovered from the first episode and found that the Wachowskis are gamers. I am not. There is someone in my life who is. She tells me stories. She tells me the stories of the video games that she plays. I have hours of memories set to the soundtrack of her storytelling. That one piece of information clicked and suddenly a show that was bonkers and compelling became a kind of worm hole scented with paper dust and lemon.
Eight people in eight different places communicating without being in each other's immediate presence; their lives under threat from some acknowledged but unknown enemy; skill sets that are partly predefined and partly redefined by the experience of connection; a leveling up of understanding. This is an incredible beginning for any story.
Happily, it also has sense of compassion, humor and something that I hadn't expected at all. Nothing in this show glorifies the patriarchy. Nothing allows people to control other people without cost. It is an investment to be into this show - not of money outside of the subscription - an investment of emotion that is never given the satisfaction of being corrupted. I feel TV love for every one of the sensates at the end of the season. All of them. Equally, though differently as they are all completely different people. Grown people who have to live in a world imperfectly suited to them.
Complications ensue. I cannot pretend to know if this show is perfect. I think that there are more things to think about and dig through and refer to, etc.
At least, I certainly hope so. I got a lot of friends, and we really like to talk about things.
If you haven't seen Sense8 and don't really want to, there is likely nothing here that is problematic. If you haven't seen Sense8 and would like to, then you may want to wait until you've seen 2 or 3 episodes before reading this. It's not about spoilers, it's about structure.
 |
| Miguel Angel Silvestre's twitter |
Our conversations, like our relationships, are built on moments that add up over a very long time. We learn, discover and grow together. We share this context over time, sometimes over miles, definitely over space in shapes we could never otherwise imagine. We mourn the loss of love for beloved public figures and movies. We struggle. We demand, especially in the last year, more from ourselves and in consequence we celebrate the more we get from each other.
Doing better.
It takes corporations a very long time to get a fucking clue. Netflix's development department seems to be getting it better than others.
Series television shows, with no commercial breaks, released as entire seasons all at once, are in many ways a hearkening back to ways of storytelling that don't give a shit about commerce and stock prices. Humans have always been confusing to corporations; we are individual and we learn. The consequences of social constructs designed to inhibit our learning and cultural controls manufactured to limit our individuality are made, they are not inherent.
Of late, there is no room for this bullshit in my entertainment choices. I am not shy about my unending love for Magic Mike XXL, a thoroughly fluffy movie that triggers nothing and leaves me breathless and telling stories about what the guys are up to now and how the next film could go. The whole movie happens as a kind of delighted riff on what it is to live well after throwing off the weight of the patriarchy, unafraid of work, unafraid of fucking up, unafraid of cleaning up the messes you make on your own.
It is a movie for grown women. Because being fully alive and aware and not at all freaked out at the possibility of real is some grown woman shit.
 |
| from Creative Loafing |
When I say that this show is for grown people, I am not joking. It is less flippant than anything I've seen about humans and their lives and their experiences. Every bit of spectacle serves the narrative. And there is no shortage of spectacle.
Amazing Roommate did some researching while we recovered from the first episode and found that the Wachowskis are gamers. I am not. There is someone in my life who is. She tells me stories. She tells me the stories of the video games that she plays. I have hours of memories set to the soundtrack of her storytelling. That one piece of information clicked and suddenly a show that was bonkers and compelling became a kind of worm hole scented with paper dust and lemon.
Eight people in eight different places communicating without being in each other's immediate presence; their lives under threat from some acknowledged but unknown enemy; skill sets that are partly predefined and partly redefined by the experience of connection; a leveling up of understanding. This is an incredible beginning for any story.
Happily, it also has sense of compassion, humor and something that I hadn't expected at all. Nothing in this show glorifies the patriarchy. Nothing allows people to control other people without cost. It is an investment to be into this show - not of money outside of the subscription - an investment of emotion that is never given the satisfaction of being corrupted. I feel TV love for every one of the sensates at the end of the season. All of them. Equally, though differently as they are all completely different people. Grown people who have to live in a world imperfectly suited to them.
Complications ensue. I cannot pretend to know if this show is perfect. I think that there are more things to think about and dig through and refer to, etc.
At least, I certainly hope so. I got a lot of friends, and we really like to talk about things.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Blog of Love for the Blue Moon
I have a thing for the moon. Bad poems level of a thing. You understand.
It is a day off and there are books to read, cauliflower fritters to make and podcasts to catch up on instead of binge-watching Sense8 like I really in my heart places want to but that would be crazy awful because Amazing Roommate and I are binge-ish-watching it and it is so fun to overreact together. She is pretty fucking great. So, instead of that and instead of blerging a bunch of words in an order that cannot possibly be meaningful right now, have this list of amazing and beautiful.
It's been a while since this happened. They used to be a pretty regular feature of my life. I hope I remember how to do it. with added #FF feature.
Another Round is clearly a problem for me on account of I do not have a job at Buzzfeed. Where friendships are cultivated through the clever application of alcohol and technology that did not sound right at all but it's not leaving the sentence oh well. (Are y'all watching Whine About It. Because, bro, just bro.) @Anotherround
Sense8. Here's an interview that is very important that you can watch that will tell you nothing but will perhaps inspire you to want to watch the show maybe. I kind of don't want to link to anything about the show even though I have no other pitch than it is good. 85% fewer angsty white men than usual. The part where I'm actually not lying just now occurred to me. @Sense8
Everyday Feminism. Everyday Feminism. Cannot stress enough how important this website is. Intersectional feminism. Intersectional feminism. @EvrydayFeminism
Angel Sanchez. This guy who dances with other guys in New York. This guy. @bboyrebels
Roxane Gay got real important to me this year. Bad Feminist. Tumblr. Other Important Reasons. I feel that this year, she could get real important to you, too. @rgay
GoodMuslimBadMuslim another podcast I know because podcasts are the best ever in the history of all of the things. Zahra and Taz are my new imaginary best friends except for the part where they are real and amazing have way other things to do than to be my new best friends (which is totally fine because the best friends who are in my life are beyond the best. (The precedent is set though in case either one needs, like a whole new set of extra amazing besties like for emergencies or life-hacking or role-playing Sense8 on occasion (but not that occasion (you totally know what occasion I mean)))). @ZahraNoo @TazzyStar
Rabih Alameddine shared a poem for a Friday. @rabihalameddine
Rain Towards Morning by Elizabeth Bishop
My thoughts have been straining for sunsets in the Sandhills. It's a Nebraska thing. It doesn't leave.
It is a day off and there are books to read, cauliflower fritters to make and podcasts to catch up on instead of binge-watching Sense8 like I really in my heart places want to but that would be crazy awful because Amazing Roommate and I are binge-ish-watching it and it is so fun to overreact together. She is pretty fucking great. So, instead of that and instead of blerging a bunch of words in an order that cannot possibly be meaningful right now, have this list of amazing and beautiful.
It's been a while since this happened. They used to be a pretty regular feature of my life. I hope I remember how to do it. with added #FF feature.
Another Round is clearly a problem for me on account of I do not have a job at Buzzfeed. Where friendships are cultivated through the clever application of alcohol and technology that did not sound right at all but it's not leaving the sentence oh well. (Are y'all watching Whine About It. Because, bro, just bro.) @Anotherround
Sense8. Here's an interview that is very important that you can watch that will tell you nothing but will perhaps inspire you to want to watch the show maybe. I kind of don't want to link to anything about the show even though I have no other pitch than it is good. 85% fewer angsty white men than usual. The part where I'm actually not lying just now occurred to me. @Sense8
Angel Sanchez. This guy who dances with other guys in New York. This guy. @bboyrebels
Roxane Gay got real important to me this year. Bad Feminist. Tumblr. Other Important Reasons. I feel that this year, she could get real important to you, too. @rgay
GoodMuslimBadMuslim another podcast I know because podcasts are the best ever in the history of all of the things. Zahra and Taz are my new imaginary best friends except for the part where they are real and amazing have way other things to do than to be my new best friends (which is totally fine because the best friends who are in my life are beyond the best. (The precedent is set though in case either one needs, like a whole new set of extra amazing besties like for emergencies or life-hacking or role-playing Sense8 on occasion (but not that occasion (you totally know what occasion I mean)))). @ZahraNoo @TazzyStar
Rabih Alameddine shared a poem for a Friday. @rabihalameddine
Rain Towards Morning by Elizabeth Bishop
 |
| www.stephen-weaver.com |
My thoughts have been straining for sunsets in the Sandhills. It's a Nebraska thing. It doesn't leave.
Love and respect to all.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Safe Spaces considered 1*
this is a contemplation that begins in the middle
I was listening to an episode of Another Round, one where the words "safe space" were spoken and I smiled and it was lovely to consider how to listen differently while listening to someone else's safe space and then something happened and the women began to laugh. They laughed like I laugh. I could not see them. I imagine that they laughed with full open mouths and mirth and the sound was joyfilled and overwhelming and something landed on my heart and I understood something I had only known.
Safe Space.
Two spaces immediately suggest themselves.
One is a reading group that was begun by a good friend of mine. We call it Feminists in Love because she found herself surrounded, almost cocooned, but lightly, by conversations about how feminists can experience loving relationships. What does that look like in friendship? What does that look like in romance? Is it different in a same-sex relationship than in a hetero-normative-seeming one?
The big question that I notice right in the middle like some radioactive nucleus is: how do you learn to love? What the hell happened that this has to be sought out and learned?
The patriarchy: that sex-negative, racist, sexist, imperialistic, economically parasitic system that we have is not sustained by full and complicated and varied relationships. It needs a power structure that is based on control of others. Others can only be controlled at the expense of compassion, respect, honor and flexibility. We score people based on how many lives they control. You get more points the more the people under your control are there unwillingly.
Not the best place for love, for celebration, for friendship. And yet. We find each other. We have always found each other. At the kitchen tables, around camp fires, on the way to the bathroom, in the breaths between giggles at socially accepted ladies' gatherings. We always find each other. Together we learn to carve out time for speaking out of code; for speaking honest and terrible thoughts about the lives we've been living and how we are not loved. We speak in sentences as heavy as weights, that we must practice carrying from hour to hour and day to day until we can meet again and share again and learn to carry more awareness until it is nothing to recognize the need to shift, to move, to understand. We teach each other to be resilient and we learn to learn from those whose burden includes us.
Last weekend, The Movement For Black Lives convened for the first time. They spent three days together in Cleveland Ohio and shared empowering, community building, healing and vital time with each other. Time that is sorely needed in communities that are tested and tried every day with news of another murder by police hands, another suspicious church fire, another hanging. This Safe Space is necessary and strengthening. This Safe Space is sacred.
They met, at the end, police with pepper spray trying to arrest a teenaged boy waiting at a bus stop. People came together and prevented the arrest. the young man was reunited with his family. Safe Space engenders compassion, respect and strength in action. Safe Spaces are places to learn and to discover how to grow. They heal and help the people involved in them.
When I was a girl, I did not participate in the things that brought me into women's spaces. Nothing in those spaces made room for the girl I was. I spent years crafting room for my friendships out of scraps of time and park benches and obsessive focus. I did not understand how to be safe in a room full of my peers. They did not understand how to be safe with me. It is different now.
I learn to listen.
*This blog post is numbered because I have latched onto an idea, and it will take more than a few paragraphs to explore it.
I was listening to an episode of Another Round, one where the words "safe space" were spoken and I smiled and it was lovely to consider how to listen differently while listening to someone else's safe space and then something happened and the women began to laugh. They laughed like I laugh. I could not see them. I imagine that they laughed with full open mouths and mirth and the sound was joyfilled and overwhelming and something landed on my heart and I understood something I had only known.
Safe Space.
Two spaces immediately suggest themselves.
One is a reading group that was begun by a good friend of mine. We call it Feminists in Love because she found herself surrounded, almost cocooned, but lightly, by conversations about how feminists can experience loving relationships. What does that look like in friendship? What does that look like in romance? Is it different in a same-sex relationship than in a hetero-normative-seeming one?
The big question that I notice right in the middle like some radioactive nucleus is: how do you learn to love? What the hell happened that this has to be sought out and learned?
The patriarchy: that sex-negative, racist, sexist, imperialistic, economically parasitic system that we have is not sustained by full and complicated and varied relationships. It needs a power structure that is based on control of others. Others can only be controlled at the expense of compassion, respect, honor and flexibility. We score people based on how many lives they control. You get more points the more the people under your control are there unwillingly.
Not the best place for love, for celebration, for friendship. And yet. We find each other. We have always found each other. At the kitchen tables, around camp fires, on the way to the bathroom, in the breaths between giggles at socially accepted ladies' gatherings. We always find each other. Together we learn to carve out time for speaking out of code; for speaking honest and terrible thoughts about the lives we've been living and how we are not loved. We speak in sentences as heavy as weights, that we must practice carrying from hour to hour and day to day until we can meet again and share again and learn to carry more awareness until it is nothing to recognize the need to shift, to move, to understand. We teach each other to be resilient and we learn to learn from those whose burden includes us.
Last weekend, The Movement For Black Lives convened for the first time. They spent three days together in Cleveland Ohio and shared empowering, community building, healing and vital time with each other. Time that is sorely needed in communities that are tested and tried every day with news of another murder by police hands, another suspicious church fire, another hanging. This Safe Space is necessary and strengthening. This Safe Space is sacred.
They met, at the end, police with pepper spray trying to arrest a teenaged boy waiting at a bus stop. People came together and prevented the arrest. the young man was reunited with his family. Safe Space engenders compassion, respect and strength in action. Safe Spaces are places to learn and to discover how to grow. They heal and help the people involved in them.
When I was a girl, I did not participate in the things that brought me into women's spaces. Nothing in those spaces made room for the girl I was. I spent years crafting room for my friendships out of scraps of time and park benches and obsessive focus. I did not understand how to be safe in a room full of my peers. They did not understand how to be safe with me. It is different now.
I learn to listen.
*This blog post is numbered because I have latched onto an idea, and it will take more than a few paragraphs to explore it.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Perspective and privilege
I've been watching Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Netflix. Carl Sagan's show was captivating to me and this one is no less so. In the first episode, Tyson describes Sagan as a science communicator, a phrase that I love and find apt. Richard Feynman once remarked that if you can't explain something then you don't understand it. By that logic, these folks know what they are speaking of, and they speak of it well.
The experience of watching this new show has been much more settling than I'd anticipated. Well, settling and then unsettling and then settling and then unsettling and again and again. Observing the movements and patterns of nature is an extraordinary exercise. It shifts your gaze, fills your immediate thoughts with data and relationships and can impart a sense of awe at the world in which we find ourselves that seems to let us shake off the horror of personal hatred and shame. As we are reminded, we are all made of star stuff, and if you believe this, if you look into the stars and you see what made you and me and everyone around you, it is possible to imagine that it could weaken your notions of privilege and superiority.
There is privilege in education. There is privilege in being non-conformist (non-compliant, as well). There is privilege in creativity and curiosity. There is privilege in quiet, in conversation, in leisure time, in the practice of watching art and observing nature and reading and writing. There is privilege that allows for the development of skills of critical analysis. There is privilege that surrounds the safe spaces where intellectual stimulation and complication and frustration and clarification can happen.
Shows like this keep trying to extend privileges, to further respect for intellectual pursuits, to encourage involvement and imagination. This one in particular, also reminds me how limited our access to lives not constantly running up against the walls of privilege really is. The universe is tremendous and weird and fascinating and fantastic.
(found on TEDtalk website) Full disclosure: I have a mad Feynman crush.
The experience of watching this new show has been much more settling than I'd anticipated. Well, settling and then unsettling and then settling and then unsettling and again and again. Observing the movements and patterns of nature is an extraordinary exercise. It shifts your gaze, fills your immediate thoughts with data and relationships and can impart a sense of awe at the world in which we find ourselves that seems to let us shake off the horror of personal hatred and shame. As we are reminded, we are all made of star stuff, and if you believe this, if you look into the stars and you see what made you and me and everyone around you, it is possible to imagine that it could weaken your notions of privilege and superiority.
 |
| from youdopia.tumblr.com |
There is a breath, a sigh that comes with a re-focused gaze. Partly because I get So Over searching around my own little life from time to time and partly because there is joy in learning and understanding that cannot be measured.
There is another breath, another sigh that happens when I think of all the ways in which critical analysis, observation and experiment, the building of systems of understanding and questioning, the communities of thought that offer foundations to young scientists and new projects, how all of those are constantly under attack. At the heart of science, at the heart of art, lies the fundamental need to keep asking questions of the answers that life provides. That is a habit that dangerously undermines the stability of a controlling interest; an authoritarian state that relies on ignorance and compliance to perpetuate; an economic system built on separation and hierarchy; a myth of tradition that prizes anti-intellectualism and rigid social roles.
There is privilege in education. There is privilege in being non-conformist (non-compliant, as well). There is privilege in creativity and curiosity. There is privilege in quiet, in conversation, in leisure time, in the practice of watching art and observing nature and reading and writing. There is privilege that allows for the development of skills of critical analysis. There is privilege that surrounds the safe spaces where intellectual stimulation and complication and frustration and clarification can happen.
Shows like this keep trying to extend privileges, to further respect for intellectual pursuits, to encourage involvement and imagination. This one in particular, also reminds me how limited our access to lives not constantly running up against the walls of privilege really is. The universe is tremendous and weird and fascinating and fantastic.
 |
| from patheos.com |
Thursday, July 16, 2015
The Voyage to Necessity
The request to sit in on a store reading group could not have landed at a better time of week. The book: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, a book I'd been handsold by a customer.
An Unnecessary Woman is the story of a few weeks in the life of Aaliya, a 72 year old former bookseller and divorced, childless woman living on her own in an apartment in Beirut. Her relationships are scattered and mostly in the past. Her family has spent the last 50 years trying to get her to move out of her apartment. The novel opens with Aaliya a bit tipsy on red wine realizing that she's dyed her hair blue.
Aaliya is a reader. She's the kind of reader who understands that the life of a book is limited to the access readers have to it. Every year (sometimes every other depending on the year before) she translates a book from English & French into Arabic. She chooses carefully in an inner monologue that I recognize from hours spent lingering over the spines of books waiting to give shape to some future meditations. And she has become almost agoraphobic over the years. A person not much given to outgoing behavior with no good friend anymore and no job to force her into interaction, she finds the proximity of her neighbors (almost all women) physically difficult to bear.
I legit love this book.
The day before we were to meet to discuss the book, one of my co-workers asked me how I feel about books where 'nothing happens.' I asked him to define 'nothing' in a narrative sense because I quite like reading huge hunks of writing that are not filled with Action!, Intensity!, and Plot! He agreed and we chatted in a work appropriate and disjointed (on account of work) way for the rest of the afternoon about the nature of narrative and building situation, etc.
I take this as the Goddess reading over my shoulder, on account of this is a book in which very little happens for a very long time. At least not in the sense of Action. From my perspective as a reader, everything is happening. I am engrossed, engaged and reaching out to Aaliya as she is retreating into her world, her apartment, her memories and her confusions.
Rereading the book was astounding. I had remembered Beirut as the framework of her life, but I had not remembered how alive and astonishing her relationship to the city is. Her physical experience of walking around it with memories living in an on every block and sidewalk section is overwhelming, to the point that my physical discomfort began to mimic hers. Happily, my experience of being moved by this book is one that was shared by the members of the book group.
They echoed the idea that even with nothing happening, there is so much going on that they really had a hard time putting the book down. We talked about her mother, about Hannah, about her loneliness and the books. We talked about the power of memory. We talked about how much we all loved Aaliya. We talked about how much we loved this book.
And then this happened: Every one of them. Every. Single. One. of Them. shared how surprised they were to learn that this book was written by a man. I got to the end of the book before I knew. I was not the only one. The astonishment we felt is not new. More to the point, the disappointment that is on the surface of how not well most men write women was gone, and that was new. It is disturbing to feel relief at a woman written as a whole character, a recognizable person, by a man.
That Aaliya faced other people's expectations of her with no intent to fulfill them. That she continued to live and to feel love for so very few. That she lived through five decades of verbal abuse from her family at her front door. That she remained essentially her own person, self aware and humorous in the face of life offering her the one narrative gift she thought she could well do without (worth it). All of these specific personality traits are generally not found in the person of one woman when that woman is written by men. So it is always strange and almost unrecognizable when it does happen.
If, as Virginia Woolf asserts "the fact that some of the most famous heroines even of the nineteenth-century fiction represent what men desire in women, but not necessarily what women are in themselves" is true even in the twenty-first century, and I believe that it is, then the women in this novel are more than necessary - they may be a signal.
Aaliya is a reader. She's the kind of reader who understands that the life of a book is limited to the access readers have to it. Every year (sometimes every other depending on the year before) she translates a book from English & French into Arabic. She chooses carefully in an inner monologue that I recognize from hours spent lingering over the spines of books waiting to give shape to some future meditations. And she has become almost agoraphobic over the years. A person not much given to outgoing behavior with no good friend anymore and no job to force her into interaction, she finds the proximity of her neighbors (almost all women) physically difficult to bear.
I legit love this book.
The day before we were to meet to discuss the book, one of my co-workers asked me how I feel about books where 'nothing happens.' I asked him to define 'nothing' in a narrative sense because I quite like reading huge hunks of writing that are not filled with Action!, Intensity!, and Plot! He agreed and we chatted in a work appropriate and disjointed (on account of work) way for the rest of the afternoon about the nature of narrative and building situation, etc.
I take this as the Goddess reading over my shoulder, on account of this is a book in which very little happens for a very long time. At least not in the sense of Action. From my perspective as a reader, everything is happening. I am engrossed, engaged and reaching out to Aaliya as she is retreating into her world, her apartment, her memories and her confusions.
Rereading the book was astounding. I had remembered Beirut as the framework of her life, but I had not remembered how alive and astonishing her relationship to the city is. Her physical experience of walking around it with memories living in an on every block and sidewalk section is overwhelming, to the point that my physical discomfort began to mimic hers. Happily, my experience of being moved by this book is one that was shared by the members of the book group.
They echoed the idea that even with nothing happening, there is so much going on that they really had a hard time putting the book down. We talked about her mother, about Hannah, about her loneliness and the books. We talked about the power of memory. We talked about how much we all loved Aaliya. We talked about how much we loved this book.
And then this happened: Every one of them. Every. Single. One. of Them. shared how surprised they were to learn that this book was written by a man. I got to the end of the book before I knew. I was not the only one. The astonishment we felt is not new. More to the point, the disappointment that is on the surface of how not well most men write women was gone, and that was new. It is disturbing to feel relief at a woman written as a whole character, a recognizable person, by a man.
That Aaliya faced other people's expectations of her with no intent to fulfill them. That she continued to live and to feel love for so very few. That she lived through five decades of verbal abuse from her family at her front door. That she remained essentially her own person, self aware and humorous in the face of life offering her the one narrative gift she thought she could well do without (worth it). All of these specific personality traits are generally not found in the person of one woman when that woman is written by men. So it is always strange and almost unrecognizable when it does happen.
If, as Virginia Woolf asserts "the fact that some of the most famous heroines even of the nineteenth-century fiction represent what men desire in women, but not necessarily what women are in themselves" is true even in the twenty-first century, and I believe that it is, then the women in this novel are more than necessary - they may be a signal.
 |
| Ida B. Wells |
Under the protective layers
This is the time to face the work.
The deep breaths of inevitability
build to something like a meditation.
Time to dig in to the muck of laundry
and dusting and boxes piled without purpose.
Time to redefine the boundaries of possibility
according to my wingspan.
Naturally, I am sitting with a computer and writing words. Making marks of something like intention as I move muscles again and stretch behind closed eyes to the rhythms of a sound long mouthed, rarely spoken.
No, but for real. My room is a damn mess.
The deep breaths of inevitability
build to something like a meditation.
Time to dig in to the muck of laundry
and dusting and boxes piled without purpose.
Time to redefine the boundaries of possibility
according to my wingspan.
Naturally, I am sitting with a computer and writing words. Making marks of something like intention as I move muscles again and stretch behind closed eyes to the rhythms of a sound long mouthed, rarely spoken.
No, but for real. My room is a damn mess.
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