But first, books:
Firekeeper’s Daughter (Angeline Boulley) - “When someone dies, everything about them becomes past tense. Except for the grief. Grief stays in the present. It’s even worse when you’re angry at the person. Not just for dying. But for how.”
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Olga Tokarczuk ) - “But why should we have to be useful and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse?”
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw) - “There’s an old saying: mothers raise their daughters and love their sons.”
I think I’m going to love: The Portrait of a Mirror (A. Natasha Joukovsky), Fake Accounts (Lauren Oyler), Friends from Home (Lauryn Chamberlain)
Recs of Recs (Books I am reading because of You): Butter Honey Pig Bread (Francesca Ekwuyasi), Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner), Skye Papers (Jamika Ajalon)
(book drop low low - I just finished moving and trying to catch up on reading. However, I have a ton of like new hardcover YA to drop THIS WEEKEND!!! Come grab them)
I wrote a short story ( a version went out in my first newsletter), and this version is the charizard to the original’s charmander. Here is where you can read it! Thanks to Our Name is Amplify for publishing it. I recommend checking them out. They’re an emerging magazine with a lot of heart and some debut talent. Here’s to even more creative fiction in the future!
I moved! - physically! Homes! I meant to write an essay about my thoughts around moving for this newsletter, but I am admitting to myself that my bandwidth isn’t there this month at all. I am drawing a hard boundary on overstretching myself, so I will tell you all about it soon. Here are some scenes from the move for now:
Soft Spots
Decolonize Palestine, a Reading List
Speaking of decolonizing, I have been holding this article KEY in my conceptualization
No idea how credible this is, but I have learned SO MUCH about food hygiene
RE: this poem - I’m not crying, you are.
Um, this cartoon just called me a geriatric millennial. I am changing my hair part as we speak, and I only have catto, no doggo.
Here is how we can all talk to each other again.
This chart I can’t stop thinking about. I flit between chaotic good at work and lawful evil at home:
I leave you with the greatest love story ever told: