Things I Read That I Love #24: Vice Bust

HELLO and welcome to the 24th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about tornadoes and the psychology of fraud!

This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are. The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

I feel like I was really into “figuring out America” this week, or something.

Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things (May 2012) by Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel for NPR – “In general, when we think about bad behavior, we think about it being tied to character: Bad people do bad things. But that model, researchers say, is profoundly inadequate.”

Writing in the Dark (May 2012), by Kathryn Shulz for New York Magazine – On writing and living better when everybody else is asleep.

Pocketful of Dough – Tips on Tipping (October 2000) by Bruce Feiler for Gourmet – This is funny because it was written in 2000, when everyone was feeling really flush and nobody talked about ‘class warfare,’ and I think if somebody wrote this article in 2012, I would want to hit them over the head with a really expensive bottle of Cabarnet. It’s like a relic from a time when we weren’t all so mad at everybody else’s money all the time. That being said, Gourmet isn’t exactly the bastion of middle-class ethos, then or now.

The Call of the Future (April 2012) by Tom Vanderbilt for The Wilson Quarterly – So it turns out that it’s not just me, nobody is talking on the phone anymore! NO BUT REALLY THIS IS FASCINATING. Nerds will like this article.

9/11: The View From the Midwest (November 2011) by David Foster Wallace for Rolling Stone – One of the nice things about not having already read everything by David Foster Wallace before he died means I can keep reading his things forever and ever, almost as if he was still here.

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door (May 2011) – by Amy Fine Collins for Vanity Fair – Trigger warning — this article describes horrifying and unspeakable sexual violence against young women. Like the worst. Jesus fucking christ.

Vice Bust: Kicking the Jackass of the Magazine World (November 2002) , by Joy Press for San Francisco Weekly – “When it comes to actual content, Vice turns to the old standbys: Sex (only if it’s freaky, mean, or icky) and Drugs (lots of Polaroids of kids tweaking and tripping, catatonic or puking) and Rock’n’Roll (actually more like a scattershot mixture of hip-hop, techno, and that fast-fading fave of the style press, electroclash). Feed in some gonzo Tom Green-style self-abasement, and you have a perfect composite of all that’s sensationalistic and vacantly au courant.”

Why Americans Won’t Do Dirty Jobs (November 2011) by Elizabeth Dwoskin for BusinessWeek – “At a moment when the country is relentless focused on unemployment, there are still jobs that often go unfilled. These are difficult, dirty, exhausting jobs that, for previous generations, were the first rickety step on the ladder to prosperity. They still are—just not for Americans.”

Joplin! (September 2011), by Luke Dittrich for Esquire – Another one of the dudes to win a National Magazine Award this year, it’s a gripping account of about 24 strangers who sought refuge in a local gas station’s beer cooler when a three-quarter-mile-wide tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri and killed 160 people.

Mitt Romney, American Parisite (April 2012), by Pete Kotz for The Village Voice – “His years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism.”

In Which We Remember Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak, best known as the writer and illustrator of the beloved classic Where the Wild Things Are, passed away today at the age of 83. Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963, but its fantastical vision of the world and its profound understanding of how the world really looks to a child means that it (and the rest of Sendak’s work) has stayed incredibly relevant for decades, and inspired a 2009 film created by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers that proved the themes of the children’s book were still more than complex enough to be meaningful to adults. Sendak’s works were staples in millions of households; from The Night Kitchen to Outside, Over There Sendak’s words and illustrations were cherished by children everywhere, as well as the dozens more books he illustrated. He wrote and/or illustrated over 100 books, and over the course of his career received a National Book Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s book illustration, and the National Medal of Arts.

Sendak’s gift as a writer and a person was turning away from the sentimentality and preciousness that we usually expect from children’s authors; in his books and in life he saw a world that was tough and sometimes scary but also beautiful. He refused to compromise in any aspect of his life; he was openly gay, and insisted on respect for children when others wanted to patronize them. In interviews, he proved endearingly grumpy and unfailingly honest, calling Salman Rushdie a “flaccid fuckhead” and candidly explaining his influences and motivations, like the fact that his work on his last book, Bumble-ardy, happened when he was “intensely aware of death” because of caring for his partner Eugene as he died of lung cancer. Now that Sendak has also passed on, we remember how grateful we are for his life and his work; he brought us to the unknown land full of wild and scary things, but he also brought us back from it safely.

Carolyn

I don’t know when I read Where the Wild Things Are, but I remember feeling like it was a grown up book, because the illustrations were darker and better and not fluffy and primary coloured and light. So I was probably in kindergarten. I also remember only understanding that it was supposed to be scary when I read it to someone else while babysitting (they were probably six and I was probably eleven, with very trusting parents) and it made them hide under the blankets for hours.

Carmen

I lost my copy of Where the Wild Things Are after I bought it at the AU student store. My friends saw the movie without me because it was a dark time in my life and I hated it.

“I said anything I wanted because I don’t believe in children I don’t believe in childhood. I don’t believe that there’s a demarcation. ‘Oh you mustn’t tell them that. You mustn’t tell them that.’ You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it’s true. If it’s true you tell them.”

Laneia

I think I loved him precisely because he was crotchety. I remember thinking that only a total asshole could write Where the Wild Things Are because it was TERRIFYING and also proof that kids are assholes, too, and so it just made sense, and I really appreciated that about him — the fact that he knew I could be a jerk. A terrified jerk.

Rachel

When I was little I read literally everything anyone put in front of me, from cereal boxes to romance novels to 400-page scifi epics. I tended to be fairly disdainful of actual “children’s literature,” because duh, I was practically a grownup, and little kid stuff was dumb. Except for when the little kid stuff was Maurice Sendak’s; it was so smart and weird and beautiful and eerie and sometimes scary and I loved it. Those books didn’t talk down to me, and I didn’t feel like I was being presented with an alternate, sugarcoated fantasy version of the world so much as a layer of the world that maybe really existed, something secret and magical and unsettling. Which is something every child needs to believe in, I think, in order to make it through the weird secret terrible parts of childhood. Also, while I like to keep my Dave Eggers feelings separate from my Maurice Sendak feelings, I also cried like a giant, weepy baby at the Where the Wild Things Are movie.

Terry Gross: Can you share some of your favorite comments from readers that you’ve gotten over the years?

Maurice Sendak: Oh, there’s so many. Can I give you just one that I really like? It was from a little boy. He sent me a charming card with a little drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim, I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

— from interview on Fresh Air, December 2011

Lemon

Maurice Sendak was one of the few people that didn’t lie to me when I was a child. When everyone else was like, “There’s no such thing as monsters, kid” Sendak was all, “You’re damn right there’s monsters in your bedroom, so you best not give them a reason to eat you.” I feel like when I was young I appreciated the fact that there was at least one person who wasn’t telling me I was wrong about the world.

“I’m totally crazy, I know that. I don’t say that to be a smartass, but I know that that’s the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that’s fine. I don’t do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can’t not do it.”

— from an interview with the Guardian, October 2011

Lizz

In retrospect, my parents were potentially trying to start a Maurice Sendak library. We had not just the books Sendak wrote, but also plenty he illustrated. As a result, Sendak’s drawings have a permanent home in my brain. I can still vividly picture Little Bear wearing his cardboard space helmet preparing to go to the moon, the mustached man selling baby elephants in What Do You Say, Dear?, and the little boy dressed as an Indian on the cover about to be lassoed (who I always assumed was my old brother). I could stand up this minute and recite the entire January poem from Chicken Soup With Rice. This is probably only because I could easily draw you a rendition of the poem’s illustration. The little boy slipping on the sliding on the ice while he sips once (and sips twice) his bowl of chicken soup with rice. Of course, the Sendak drawings I remember best were in The Night Kitchen. I’d like to say this is because of the magical imagery or maybe because of the Nazi bakers. It is instead, of course, because the little boy’s penis is showing. I was scandalized.

Laura

I never read Where the Wild Things Are when I was little, but I did get high with my best friend and go watch the movie and then call my mom and cry.

Sendak shakes his head beneath the low-beamed ceiling, in this room full of art and old rugs. “I can’t believe I’ve turned into a typical old man. I can’t believe it.” He smiles and his face transforms. “I was young just minutes ago.”

Things I Read That I Love #23: A Very Famous Jersey Number

HELLO and welcome to the 23rd installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about pregnancy tests and mirrors!

This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are. The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

Six Pregnancy Tests in One Week (February 2011), by Cienna Madrid for The Stranger – “I visited Christian pregnancy centers that lure women in with false promises of medical care. Here’s what they told me about abortions, breast cancer, shame, and death.”

My Father’s Fashion Tips (July 2007), by Tom Junod for GQ – I can’t believe I even read an entire article about men’s style and father/son relationships, but you know, I did, so you better believe that it’s good.

The Mirror-Slave Dialectic (June 2011), by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano for The New Inquiry – “I’ve had a couple of friends tell me they’re surprised to find I think as intensely as I do about beauty. Their confusion is understandable: My physical beauty labor is pretty minimal. But my emotional beauty labor is another story.”

Drive-By Truckers (April 2012), by Ginger Strand for This Land – This is about serial killers who are also truck drivers and about the culture of trucking. I liked it, but it was difficult in parts because my grandfather was a truck driver for about eight years, and I kept thinking that this article would’ve really upset him, because you know, he was not a serial killer, and the picture painted of trucking here is really dismal.

Why Not the Worst? (December 2011), by Gene Weingarten for The Washington Post – “Take a small town, remove any trace of history, character, or charm. Allow nothing with any redeeming qualities within city limits — this includes food, motel beds, service personnel. Then place this pathetic assemblage of ghastly buildings and nasty people on a freeway in the midst of a harsh, uninviting wilderness, far enough from the nearest city to be inconvenient, but not so far for it to develop a character of its own. You now have created Battle Mountain, Nevada.”

The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter (August 1998), by Gene Weingarten for The Washington Post – As you can tell, I’m really into this writer right now. This was the story of the guy who wrote all the Hardy Boys books through a system we now call ‘book packaging’ (which’s how Gossip Girl books are written, for example).

Girls, Uninterrupted (August 2010), by Jan Hoffman for The New York Times – “The two dozen 14-year-olds forming an imperfect circle in a large hall on this humid morning in the Berkshires hail from every tier of their adolescent caste system, from the anointed to the laughingstocks. In this next exercise, they must break one of their most sacred rules. They have to act like complete dorks.”

Is An ESPN Columnist Scamming People On the Internet? (May 2012), by John Koblin for Deadspin – I glanced at this story and two hours later was still glued to this story. Obviously the draw is the idea of how people lie online and make themselves into different people, and also how easy it is to be manipulated by these people. Having been there, I’m always looking for stories of others who’ve been there, looking for patterns. Anyhow, there’s also this follow up.

Interview: Lorrie Moore (October 2005), by Angela Pneuman for The Believer – – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet today, but Lorrie Moore is one of my Top Three Favorite Writers of All Time (along with Mary Gaitskill and Stephen Dunn), and this is a great interview with her from an old issue of The Believer, filled with tidbits of complete and total wisdom that may very well change your life forever.

Honey, I Got A Year’s Worth of Tuna Fish (May 2012), by Amanda Fortini for The New York Times – An entire article about couponing, which you’re probably really interested in if you’ve ever had the chance to view the excellent television program Extreme Couponing.

American Writing Special – Cough Syrup For the Mind by Heidi Julvits for The New Statesman – On the evolution of The Believer.

Mini Interview: Andrea Askowitz and “My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy”

Today at Camp, we are reading Andrea Askowitz’s My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, which is about her experiences in competitive juggling. Just kidding, it’s about being miserable, lonely, a lesbian, and pregnant. But it’s also about growing up.

In honour of Read a F*cking Book Club, I emailed Andrea five questions about her book. Here’s what she said:

Who is the ideal reader for My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy?

The ideal reader for My Mis turned out to be progressive, straight women of child-bearing age. These women seem to love me. Not all of them love me of course, because the Andrea that I was when I wrote this book was a big-crybaby. But if someone can tolerate a little self-pity, then she’ll probably think the book is really funny. I think these women identified with the pregnancy-sucks aspect of the book.

Queer memoir often faces different challenges than non-queer memoir. Can you talk about your book a little as a queer memoir in addition to as a pregnancy memoir?

The challenge queer memoir faces, which I experienced directly, is that not everybody is open to reading queer memoir. I was standing at the Miami Book Fair, one of the biggest fairs in the country, next to a pile of my books for sale. I didn’t say I was the author, just kept pointing to the book and saying, “That book is hilarious.” I can’t tell you how many people picked it up and then said, “Oh, no thanks, I’m not a lesbian.”

The challenge with queer memoir is there aren’t enough queer readers. And the sad truth is that beyond the progressive centers in our country, lesbian in the title of a book just doesn’t sell. People in Miami don’t want to be caught reading a lesbian book. Imagine what people in Ohio don’t want to be caught reading.

Is it a queer memoir and/or a pregnancy memoir? Neither. My Mis is a story about growing up. It’s about friendship and love. The situation is that there’s this single, lesbian having a bad time being pregnant. But that’s not what the book is about. In retrospect, I would have titled it something else. But when I titled it, I thought it was such a funny title. And it’s true to the voice of Andrea at that time.

Obviously, the book is really personal, both on a talking-about-emotions level and on a talking-about-vaginas level. What was the hardest part of writing it?

I think the hardest part about writing a book is the physical part. Actually sitting down and writing and then editing and then figuring out what stories to tell and where they go is the hard part. I have been asked, “How can you write such personal stuff and what about your family and blah, blah?” My dad, who I think I defamed pretty ruthlessly said, “That’s your story. I have mine.” I love my dad.

Do you have a favourite author or book?

My favorite book is The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. It’s a book of stories narrated by a guy who served in Vietnam. I can’t stand war. But this book took me into the heart of the soldiers. I love this book. I’m using it as a model for my next book. Well, I’m trying to model my book after The Things They Carried.

What have you been doing since My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy was published (in 2008)? What are you working on next?

I’m now writing a book of stories about my current life. I have 22 stories so far. I’m almost done. The working title is Crazy Normal. It’s about a woman (me) who grew up thinking she’d amount to something extraordinary, but turns out she’s just a regular, suburban mom. She even drives a mommy-van. Wait, that makes the book sound really boring. It’s about love and intrigue and bi-cultural and inter-faith marriage. So like what do you do when you’re Roman Catholic mother-in-law will crucify you if you don’t baptize your son, but your own Jewish mother will cut you out of her will if you do?

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What about you? Have you read this book? Did you have thoughts about it? What are they? Inquiring minds want to know.

This post goes hand-in-hand with A-Camp’s Read a F*cking Book Club with Carolyn, Lizz, and Jamie.

Make Sweet Poetry With Us

Hello! Did you know that right now, someone, somewhere is making poetry? That person could be you! Why don’t we make poems, or write poems, or I guess create poetry and then share it with one another? Okay.

Blackout Poetry

by Carmen Rios

When I was younger and did things I don’t do anymore, there came a night where I was sufficiently fucked up and having a lot of feelings and I just sort of did blackout poetry on an issue of the NY Times. It was absurd, really. I sat on my mattress making all of these poems about “being ———–2 ——— — —- — together —.” To be honest, I did great. Writing blackout poetry is a very different process – I capture all of my feelings by challenging myself to find them. Finding poetry inside of something else is completely different than writing it. It’s like the difference between creating something or uncovering something – they’re both different ways to learn something.

I began doing blackout poetry in portable versions, then, because I got so into it that carrying around a newspaper to do it would certainly have made me look insane and not artistic. I began taking cards from my university library – the scrap paper cards that used to be the card catalog. Thank God for technology, right?

My friend Rebecca and I got into it and made this fail of a Tumblr:

To do blackout poetry, you need only two physical things: a permanent marker, and something you own with words printed on it. Magazine articles, newspaper articles, printed-on note cards, books – seriously, anything. I’m currently blacking out my university’s admissions book, an anthology of Ronald Reagan memorial speeches from Congress, and a bunch of these cards.

Then, there are two rules: first, you can’t write anything. You can only blackout existing letters, phrases, and words in order to create new words, phrases, and statements. (You can make the decision on whether or not you allow word-making from random letters or if poems can be confined to pages and paragraphs.)

The second rule is to never overthink, to always be intuitive, and to keep looking for it. It’s in there. Poetry. It’s everywhere!

Slam Poetry

by Whitney Pow

How do you write slam poetry? You start writing — it starts with words. Don’t think too hard about it. Don’t wonder if your words are poetic or rhythmic enough, because they are perfect just the way they are. Ground rule one: Just write. Have a recent heartbreak? Write about that. Frustrated about racism? Write about that. Anxious about A-Camp? Write the shit out of that. You don’t even need line breaks. Just get it onto a page.

When you’ve written all you think you can write, take a break. Drink a cup of chocolate milk. Go for a walk. Play a video game. Just take your mind off of it for a bit so you can get some brain space. When you’re ready for step two, stand up. Get on your feet. Then read your writing out loud. Try to feel what you’ve written as if you’re telling it to somebody in the room. Maybe there is somebody in the room. Tell your poem to them. Slam poetry is poetry that’s meant to be communicated — physically communicated. Start talking your poem. If you talk with your hands, talk with your hands while you read your poem out loud. If you raise your eyebrows and flail a bit when you talk, do that, too. Do what comes naturally when you talk. Your poem is you.

Step three: Revision. You might want to take some time between step two and step three; you might just want to jump right into it. Go at your own pace. Read your poem out loud and then find the rhythm of your poem. How does it feel? Do the syllables roll over one another in a way that sounds and reads well to you? Get a feel for whether your poem could use an extra word or syllable here and there, and get rid of words or syllables that feel out of place. There is no right or wrong answer. Do what feels right.

Slam poetry comes from the gut. It’s about feeling something incredibly clearly and sharply and putting it into rhythms and stanzas and words. You’re taking your anxiety or love or anger and turning it into music — the rhythm of your syllables, the sometimes-rhymes, the sometimes-slant-rhymes, the musicality of the words themselves, the movement of your body as you speak creating a performed, lived experience. It’s about writing thoughts and talking thoughts.

One of my favorite slam poets is Ishle Yi Park. Her poem, “Sai-I-Gu,” was written about the 1992 Los Angeles race riots and the poem is filled with a poignant sense of fear and frustration. Here’s an excerpt (and you can read the whole poem here):

koreans mark disaster

with numbers — 4-29 — Sa-I-Gu.

no police. no help.

fire. if I touch

the screen my fingers

will singe or sing.

raw hands rip nikes

out of boxes, break glass

into white cobwebs.

my mother presses her hand

to her ruined lips.

*

we see grainy reels of a black

fish flopping on concrete

arched, kicked, nightsticked,

flopping not fish but black man—

here I rub my own tender

wrists, ask unanswerable questions—

why are the cops doing this?

my mother will answer simply,

wisely, because they are bad.

of the looters, because they are mad.

and why hurt us ­ she chokes

because we are close enough.

I moan, slip under the fold

of her arm. she strokes my hair

and keeps me protected

as I must one day protect her.

Try talking “Sai-I-Gu.” When the words come out of your throat, you start to feel the arches and angles of the sounds themselves: The hissing “S” of the “singeing” and “singing” of the fires of the riot. The pointed “K” of “kicked, nightsticked” — you start to feel punctuated physical attacks with your voice. Slam poetry isn’t just an emotional experience. It’s a physical one.

In In the Fray magazine, Park writes about the experience of performing “Sai-I-Gu”:

Since I’ve written Sai-I-Gu, I’ve performed it in New York, California, and Minnesota. Reading it is always a visceral experience for me — I try to relive the emotions I felt while writing it, so rage, grief, and hope rise to the surface while performing it. It contains fragments of our story — my story — the story that has been ignored or denied by the media. The point of it is to communicate this experience, so people of all backgrounds feel it, with their minds and hearts.

Now watch Park perform “Sai-I-Gu” — the performance is pretty breathtaking.

It’s this passing on of feelings through performance that makes slam poetry. If you have emotions (and I’m pretty sure you do), you can slam. You can slam about race riots. You can slam about love. You can slam about toast. You can slam about A-Camp. You can slam about anything.

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Tell us your favorite type of poetry!

This post goes hand-in-hand with A-Camp’s Slam Poetry with Whitney, Carmen and Gabby.

Things I Read That I Love: Writers Writing About Writing

This weekend at A-Camp I’m doing a lot of things that relate to my #2 favorite activity (after “eating french fries”), writing! Although I personally have a great deal of wisdom to impart to the grasshoppers, I’m a grasshopper myself and have been influenced along the way by a lot of people who wrote about writing.

In the spirit of “Things I Read That I Love,” I wanted to share some of my favorite things I’ve read on the internet about writing — not just literary writing, but about journalism and writing for the web too. Aside from the Lorrie Moore piece, these are all things I indeed discovered and inhaled via world wide web. I hope you like them like I like them!

How to Be A Writer, by Lorrie Moore (1985)- This is a classic, this is the thing you need to read. “First, try to be something, anything else.”

Dear Sugar: Write Like a Motherfucker, by Sugar for The Rumpus (August 2010)- “But the best possible thing you can do is get your ass down onto the floor. Write so blazingly good that you can’t be framed. Nobody is going to give you permission to write about your vagina, hon. Nobody is going to give you a thing. You have to give it yourself. You have to tell us what you have to say.”

Exposed, by Emily Gould for The New York Times Magazine (May 2008) – One of my favorite things I’ve ever read online, and also surprisingly one of The Times’ most controversial essays ever published — many patrons didn’t think Emily’s honest and perceptive personal story was cover-worthy. Well, I loved it.

The Accidental Plagarist, by Erik Campbell for The Virginia Quarterly Review (2007) –  The best part of this is that he talks about accidentally plagiarizing Stephen Dunn, which I think happens to me sometimes too.

Look At Me!, by Moe Tkacik for The Columbia Journalism Review (May 2010) – It’s called “the writer’s search for journalism in the age of branding” and that’s what it’s about. Moe was one of Jezebel’s founders, but she wrote a lot before that, and after that, and has some pretty compelling things to say about all of it.

Why I Write, by George Orwell – “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.”

Engaging Television: An Interview With Writer Jacob Clifton, by Sarah Todd for Girls Like Giants (March 2012) – An interview with one of the best television recappers in the world (he writes for Television Without Pity) — really really interesting stuff, to me.

Writers, Visible and Invisible, by Cynthia Ozick for Standpoint Magazine (September 2008): “Thespians, celebrities and politicians, whose appetite for bottomless draughts of public acclaim, much of it manufactured, is beyond any normal measure, may feed hotly on Fame – but Fame is always a product of the present culture: topical and variable, hence ephemeral. Writers are made otherwise. What writers prize is simpler, quieter and more enduring than clamorous Fame: it is recognition.”

Why I Blog, by Andrew Sullivan for The Atlantic (November 2008) – “…as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.”

This post goes hand-in-hand with A-Camp’s Writing Workshop with Riese and Rachel.

Read A F*cking Book: “Beyond Binary” Is Genderqueering Speculative Fiction

Beyond Binary is exactly the type of anthology that I have always, always wished existed and that I am so so glad finally does. Here is what it is: 17 stories of really excellent speculative (read: sci fi and fantasy, but also both/neither) fiction about people with all sorts of genders and sexual identities.

As with any anthology, I loved some of the stories much harder than others. Kelley Eskridge’s “Eye of the Storm,” in which the main character, who has a fairly undefined gender, develops a link between fighting and sex, was my absolute favourite, but I also really enjoyed Tansy Rayner Roberts’ “Prosperine When it Sizzles” and Keffy RM Kehrli’s “Bonehouse.” Others, such as Katherine Sparrow’s “Pirate Solutions,” about drinking and coding, were less up my alley, but they almost certainly might be up yours.

I love speculative fiction, and genre fiction generally, and I’ve noticed I love it even harder when stories break out of the completely heteronormative mould that so much genre fiction tends to fall into. In Beyond Binary, nearly every story has a different perspective on gender and sexuality, and while I am certainly biased, I appreciated them all the more for it. This isn’t just an anthology of really excellent speculative fiction or of really excellent queer fiction — it’s both, and really strong because of it.

Editor Brit Mandelo is also really awesome. She has excellent taste, has recently been named a fiction editor at Strange Horizons, and says this is her first Real Interview.

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Beyond Binary is your first edited anthology. What was the selection process like? What are you hoping to explore with it?

With Beyond Binary, which is a reprint anthology, I wanted most of all to collect and present various great stories about genderqueer people and folks with fluid sexual identities, and to do so in one place — to take a sort of snapshot of at least a small portion of the tapestry of non-binary identities being represented in fiction. I love nonfiction that deals with genderqueer identities, but there’s power in fiction, and power in speaking narratives about ourselves and our lives. I wish I could do ten more books to encompass further identities, stories, and voices — this is certainly not a complete picture of what it means to identify outside binaries, though I was very concerned with including a diverse spectrum of voices.

“I love nonfiction that deals with genderqueer identities, but there’s power in fiction, and power in speaking narratives about ourselves and our lives.”

To that end, the selection process for this book was an amalgamation of things: I solicited submissions from friends and colleagues who write about or are themselves non-binary folks, I picked up stacks of anthologies and back-issues of magazines to search for stories, and I hosted open submissions as well. I didn’t want to take the chance of missing a story that would be perfect for the book, and I was especially aware of the ease with which I could miss something. Half of the motivation for this project was the knowledge that there were a lot of folks writing genderqueer stories out there, but that these stories were hard to find — that they weren’t being gathered together. I’m glad I chose to try all of those approaches, because every avenue was fruitful; I found stories all over the place.

Who is your ideal reader for Beyond Binary?

In a way, my ideal reader — the person that I thought about most while editing the book — was my younger self, when I was a teen looking for words and narratives to explain my own feelings about gender and sexuality. It would have been such an immense relief to that younger me to have a book like this, a book that was concerned with slipping and subverting gender and sexual binaries, to show me that these were options. So, by extension, I was thinking a lot about the issue of being visible — in fiction, in public spaces, in public speech — while working on Beyond Binary. The ideal reader in that sense is pretty ambitious: anyone who needs to see this book on a shelf, who needs to have a collection of stories like this, and who it might empower in some way to be able to see themselves represented. I want to give back to the communities that have supported me — queer, speculative — by helping gather these voices together, and by making them easier to find.

What is your favourite story in the anthology?

Oh, hell – what a question. I’m not certain that I could say I have a favorite, because each of the stories in the book is doing something quite different, and I love them all for those different things! For example: Kelley Eskridge’s “Eye of the Storm” has a fabulous use of pronouns, nontraditional sex, and queer/poly dynamics in a coming-of-age adventure story, while Ellen Kushner’s “‘A Wild and a Wicked Youth'” is a totally different sort of coming-of-age tale that explores a young man’s discovery of his fluid sexual identity as he learns the art of the sword. I think these stories all have something to say, and occupy different points on — or entirely off of — a spectrum of identities.

Or, to think of it another way: these stories are all the favorites I chose out of what I read.

What draws you to speculative fiction in general, and queer speculative fiction specifically?

I think the thing I love most about speculative fiction, the thing that’s drawn me to it since I was young, is the sheer range of possibilities that it represents: anything you can imagine, you can also make real. The constraints of daily life are erased, or reinterpreted. The potential for social criticism, for pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of being, is built into the very machinery of speculative fiction.

That’s also part and parcel, I think, with why there’s so much queer SF and feminist SF. Joanna Russ, a lesbian-feminist SF critic, once argued in an essay called “What Can a Heroine Do?” that “science fiction […] provides myths for dealing with the kind of experiences we are actually having now, instead of the literary myths we have inherited, which only tell us about the kinds of experiences we think we ought to be having.” In her view, traditional fictional structures are so imbued with heterosexist, patriarchal assumptions that it is difficult, if not impossible, for women and queer folks to appropriate them for use. Instead, being able to write stories where we use our own voices to represent our own worlds and lives — that was the ticket. And speculative fiction is a major way to do that, because you can totally rewrite the rules of the world that we live in right now. I definitely think that’s true of the stories that I chose for Beyond Binary; they’re all deeply involved with issues of self-definition and — often explicitly though also implicitly — social criticism.

You recently became a fiction editor at Strange Horizons. What drew you to working with the magazine and what do you hope to accomplish during your time there?

“The thing I love most about speculative fiction […] is the sheer range of possibilities it represents: anything you can imagine, you can also make real.”

I’ve been a reader of Strange Horizons for years, because they’ve always been explicitly concerned with promoting diversity—and they publish great writing. Two of the stories collected in Beyond Binary were originally published in Strange Horizons. I had very much enjoyed the process of editing an anthology, and found myself eager to do more editorial work after finishing. So, when I was offered the position at Strange Horizons, I was overjoyed.

I hope to continue with the editorial philosophy that made the magazine one of my favorites to begin with: publishing high-quality fiction that promotes diverse voices, new writers, and inclusivity. I think those are awesome goals to strive for, and I hope to do them justice.

Do you have a favourite author or book?

I have too many favorite authors and books to count (doesn’t everyone?), but I’ll try to narrow it down a little. So, over the past year, I’ve read the entirety of Joanna Russ’s body of work, and I can’t recommend her enough. Her writing is amazingly incisive, harsh where it needs to be, and terribly funny. (I’ve also written about her work quite a bit after doing all that reading. We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-telling, a nonfiction book [by me], was just released by Aqueduct Press, there’s a column series about my more personal engagements with her books at Tor.com, and Stone Telling Magazine has recently published a two-part article on her early-career poetry.) As for more recent things that I’ve loved: Jo Walton’s Among Others, Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl, Tristan Taormino’s collections Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica and The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Roleplay, and the Erotic Edge, and Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder books (three delightfully queer and gender-fluid science fiction novels).

At the moment, I’m reading Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? and Julie Phillips’s James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon.

What are you working on next?

Let’s see — I have a couple of short stories forthcoming over the next few months, in Apex Magazine and Tor.com, respectively. I’m currently working on several other short pieces, and doing research for a potential novel project. And, of course, continuing editorial work at Strange Horizons!

Otherwise, I’ll also be attending WisCon 36 in Madison WI, May 25-28th, where we’ll be having a book party for Beyond Binary.

Reading on Catalan Valentine’s Day

Feliç Diada de Sant Jordi! If I could be anywhere in the world today, I’d definitely pick Barcelona. Today the city’s shutting down to make time for everyone to buy books and roses for the people they love.

The rose half of the tradition goes back hundreds of years and commemorates St. Jordi, a Catholic saint who slew a dragon, saved a princess and was killed by the Romans. If that’s all a little too Disney for you, wait until you hear what happened next. In 1616, two guys who knew how to write stories that hadn’t already been played out — Cervantes and Shakespeare–died on the same day: April 23rd. Fast-forward three hundred years to 1926: the first year Book Day took place in Catalunya. After holding the festival in October for three years, someone suggested that they move it to April 23rd to celebrate the deaths of two great authors. Since the 23rd also happens to be St. Jordi’s day, the two holidays merged to create something much bigger than the two ever were on their own.

Today over 800,000 books and 4 million roses will be sold and exchanged in Catalunya. Remember how excited you got for book fair in elementary school? It’s like that, only bigger and with love and dragons.

We can’t all be lucky enough to be in Catalunya today, but don’t let where you are stop you from celebrating! Give — or better yet, read — a book to someone you love. That person can be your best friend, your dad or even yourself. I’ve been eyeing Making It ever since Laneia told me about it a month ago and I’m feeling like today just might be the day I pop over to the library to check it out. But enough about me, what about you? What’s on your reading list?

 

Things I Read That I Love #22: A Nice Day For a Daydream

HELLO and welcome to the 22nd installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about being a lady-writer in New York, couch-surfing and The War Against Youth!

This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

You’re Welcome: Couch-Surfing the Globe (April 2012), by Patricia Marx for The New Yorker – A writer not particularly naturally inclined towards spending long hours with strangers embarks upon a journey via Couchsurfing.com and says a lot of interesting things along the way.

Six Degrees of Aggregation (April 2012), by Michael Shapiro for The Columbia Journalism Review – The degree to which The Huffington Post owes its success to mastery of Search Engine Optimizaton is profoundly depressing.

When S’Mores Aren’t Enough: The New Economics of Summer Camp (July 2011), by Natasha Singer for The New York Times – Relevant to my present interests.

What it Cost Eight Women Writers to Make it in New York (April 2012), by Brent Cox for The Awl  – “Our intent here was simply to pick a writer or two from enough different eras to give a sense of what’s been involved in moving to the Big Apple to make it (or otherwise) over the past century.”

Innocence Lost (October 2010), by Pamela Colloff for Texas Monthly – The sheer volume of stories about people not rich or powerful or privileged enough to get a good lawyer or otherwise evade injustice who are therefore at the mercy of courts imprisoning them for crimes they did not commit (and for which there’s no evidence linking them to the crimes) is stunning and heartbreaking. This is another one of these stories.

How Do You Explain a Man Like Gene Weingarten? (December 2011), by Tom Bartlett for The Washingtonian –  Remember that story about kids who died after parents forgot that they’d left these kids in their car (which was in TIRTL way back when) and the story about Joshua Bell playing in a DC Metro station for ignorant passerbys (which wasn’t in TIRTL but I feel like everybody has read it anyhow)? This article is about the guy who wrote those stories, who is apparently a total weirdo. I love articles about the people who write the things that we read here every week like a family. –> “All good stories, Weingarten had come to believe, are about the meaning of life.”

Obviously after reading that story I had to read the story about The Great Zucchini (January 2006, by Gene Weingarten for The Washington Post) that was mentioned in the article and it’s good and you should read that one too.

Misadventures in the Republic of Letters (February 2011), by Alissa Nutting for Seven – Confessions of a literary magazine editor. Reminds me of interning at the lit agency.

Mr.X (1969), by Carl Sagan for Marihuana Reconsidered – On the benefits of cannabis –> “There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day.”

The War Against Youth (April 2012), by Stephen Marche for Esquire – We’re fucked, I think, which is why it’s so important that we all support each other! But this is good stuff, you should read it. Compelling numbers in there too.

28 Books About Gay Geography That’ll Take You On Journeys Through Time and Place

Real-life LGBTQ communities formed under bizarre, secretive and often dangerous conditions and evolved under a tight knot of social and political factors. Writing the history of a community that formerly did its best to stay hidden is a tough job, but through recording oral histories and conducting years of research, many authors have done just that, birthing irreplaceable reference materials into our tender hands.

I’ve not read all of these myself, but I know there are heaps of gender studies majors and otherwise nerdy LGBTQ history people in this community, so if you’ve read any of these, comment and let everybody know what you think! We know a lot of stuff you guys. Let’s tell each other everything we know.

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1. Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians, by Stuart Timmons and Lillian Faderman

I liked this one so much that I bought my own copy after reading the whole thing out of the library. I reference it all the time. Back in the day, it was really difficult for women to be financially independent from men and it was pretty much impossible to become legitimately wealthy without a man — unless, of course, you were an actress in Hollywood, where it wasn’t unusual for a single woman to have her own estate. Obviously the book was about a lot more than that, but I am VERY interested in Power Lesbian History, so. Lillian Faderman is also the author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, which, while imperfect in many ways, is what got me interested in lesbian history in the first place.

2. Queer Twin Cities, by the Twin Cities GLBT Oral History Project (2010)

So much queer history is focused on either coast, but The Twin Cities GLBT Oral History project — “a collective organization of students, scholars and activists devoted to documenting and interpreting the lives of GLBT people in Minneapolis and St.Paul” wants to change that. “The notion that San Francisco and L.A. have functioned as cities of gay salvation while the Midwest is a place of gay suicidal despair should sit uneasy with a Minnesota audience,” writes Jennifer L. Pierce in the introduction to this essay collection. “The Twin cities, after all, have a history of gay radical activism as long and deep as that found in coastal cities.”

3. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis (1993)

Described as “the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community,” this book centered on Buffalo, in upstate New York, took its authors fourteen years of research to put together. They draw on the oral histories of 45 women to present “poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nevertheless became powerful agents of historical change.” Far too often the only histories that survive are those of the white upper classes, but this book goes far and wide to provide a different story, with a special attention paid to butch/femme dynamics in history. You can read more about this book in “Six Ways that 1950s Butches and Femmes F*cked with Society, Were Badass.”

4. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit, by Marlon M. Bailey (2013)

So this isn’t about lesbian history, and I haven’t actually read it, BUT I wanted to include it because it sounds so cool and because it’s about Detroit, which has a special place in my heart forever. Stories about ball culture are often limited to New York, but the scene was so much more expansive than that. Here you go: “Butch Queens Up in Pumps examines Ballroom culture, in which inner-city LGBT individuals dress, dance, and vogue to compete for prizes and trophies. Participants are affiliated with a house, an alternative family structure typically named after haute couture designers and providing support to this diverse community. Marlon M. Bailey’s rich first-person performance ethnography of the Ballroom scene in Detroit examines Ballroom as a queer cultural formation that upsets dominant notions of gender, sexuality, kinship, and community.”

5. There Goes the Gayborhood?, by Amin Ghaziani (2014)

I drew on this book a lot in order to write Where Do Lesbians Live? — as the title suggests, this book traces the evolution of gay neighoborhoods in the US throughout history and asks why so many gayborhoods have priced so many members of the LGBTQ community out. The author, Amin Ghaziani, is a gay man of color who lives in Chicago and he conducted extensive interviews with members of the LGBTQ community in Chicago to accurately depict the radical and unfortunate transformation taking place in these legendarily “safe spaces.”

6. Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, Nan Alamilla Boyd (2005)

The pathway by which San Francisco became a haven for sexual “deviants” is a long and fascinating one, which Nan Alamilla Boyd dives clam-first into in this extensive history of the area. From the book description: “Wide-Open Town traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco’s tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history. Bringing to life the striking personalities and vibrant milieu that fueled this era, Nan Alamilla Boyd examines the culture that developed around the bar scene and homophile activism. She argues that the communities forged inside bars and taverns functioned politically and, ultimately, offered practical and ideological responses to the policing of San Francisco’s queer and transgender communities. Using police and court records, oral histories, tourist literature, and manuscript collections from local and state archives, Nan Alamilla Boyd explains the phenomenal growth of San Francisco as a “wide-open town”—a town where anything goes.”

7. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, by Christina Hanhardt (2013)

This takes a different angle that isn’t about the specific historical evolution of a certain town, but how the local LGBTQ activist energy around street violence in various towns with significant gay populations inadvertently led to some “broader public safety initiatives that have sought solutions in policing and privatization and have had devastating effects along race and class lines.” It won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies in 2014.

8. Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora), by A.B. Christa Schwarz (2003)

Schwarz aims to fill the void in scholarship where the accomplishments of women, bisexuals and homosexuals have been sidelined when chronicling this enormously influential era in American cultural history, centered, as it was, around one specific neighborhood in New York. The Gay & Lesbian Review writes that Schwarz “comes up with fascinating nuggets of information not found in other sources.” Although the focus is on men, specifically Counte Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Richard Bruce Nugent, there’s still lots of fantastic nuggets to be had.

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Here are 19 more books I wish I had time to read, with descriptions from the book themselves:

9. Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town, by Esther Newton (1993) – “Based on interviews with 46 former and current residents, the author chronicles the colony’s development from an isolated few cabins to a thriving, commercial, publicized community with Mafia-run discos and occasional police raids.”

10. Lonely Hunters: An Oral History Of Lesbian And Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968, by James Sears (1997) – “In Lonely Hunters, James Sears, noted gay writer, academic, and media commentator, has compiled the real stories of gay men and lesbians who were raised in the social hierarchy of the South and who recall their coming of age when the status quo of American society as a whole was on the cusp of great upheaval.”

11. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972, by Mark Stein (2000) – “In this pathbreaking history, Marc Stein takes an in-depth look at Philadelphia from the 1940s to the 1970s. What he finds is a city of vibrant gay and lesbian households, neighborhoods, commercial establishments, public cultures, and political groups.”

12. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, edited by Ruth Vanita (2001) “The essays focus on pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial gay and lesbian life in India to provide a comprehensive look at a much neglected topic. The topics are wide-ranging, considering film, literature, popular culture, historical and religious texts, law and other aspects of life in India.”

13. In A Queer Country: Gay & Lesbian Studies in the Canadian Context, edited by Terry Goldie (2002) “In a Queer Country confronts queer culture from various perspectives relevant to international audiences. Topics range from the politics of the family and spousal rights to queer black identity, from pride parade fashions to lesbian park rangers.”

14. Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort (American History and Culture), by Karen Krahulik (2007) – “How did a sleepy New England fishing village become a gay mecca? In this dynamic history, Karen Christel Krahulik explains why Provincetown, Massachusetts—alternately known as “Land’s End,” “Cape-tip,” “Cape-end,” and, to some, “Queersville, U.S.A”—has meant many things to many people.”

15. A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500, by Rebecca Jennings (2007) – “Covering landmark moments and well-known personalities (such as Radclyffe Hall and the publication and banning of her lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness), but also examining the lives and experiences of ordinary women, it brings both variety and nuance to their shared history. In doing so, it also explores cultural representations of, and changing attitudes to, female same-sex desire in Britain.”

16. Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City’s Gay Community, edited by Tracy Baim (2008) – “Out and Proud in Chicago takes readers through the long and rich history of the city’s LGBT community. Lavishly illustrated with color and black-and white-photographs, the book draws on a wealth of scholarly, historical, and journalistic sources. Individual sections cover the early days of the 1800s to World War II, the challenging community-building years from World War II to the 1960s, the era of gay liberation and AIDS from the 1970s to the 1990s, and on to the city’s vital, post-liberation present.”

17. Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (Cultural Studies of the Americas), by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (2009) – “Exploring cultural expressions of Puerto Rican queer migration from the Caribbean to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes analyzes how artists have portrayed their lives and the discrimination they have faced in both Puerto Rico and the United States.”

18. Changing Times: Almanac and Digest of Kansas City’s Gay and Lesbian History, by David W Jackson (2011) – “The ‘gay liberation’ movement launched in Kansas City in February 1966, when the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations (NPCHO) was established to form a national coalition of gay and lesbian leaders. This first-ever, truly national coalition of ‘LGBT’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) leaders decided to meet at the State Hotel (northeast corner of 12th & Wyandotte; since demolished) in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. In 2011, we recognize the 45th anniversary of this historic local event with national impact with the introduction of this almanac and digest to begin chronicling Kansas City’s LGBT past.”

19. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, by James F. Wilson (2011) – “Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies shines the spotlight on historically neglected plays and performances that challenged early twentieth-century notions of the stratification of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.

20. Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past, by Peter Boag (2011) – “Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities.”

21. Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics, by Naisargi Dave (2012)  – “In Queer Activism in India, Naisargi N. Dave examines the formation of lesbian communities in India from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Based on ethnographic research conducted with activist organizations in Delhi, a body of letters written by lesbian women, and research with lesbian communities and queer activist groups across the country, Dave studies the everyday practices that constitute queer activism in India.”

22. Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall, by St. Sukie de la Croix (2012) – “Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city’s beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s. Journalist St. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago’s LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked.”

23. Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota, by Stewart Van Cleve (2012) – “Land of 10,000 Loves blends oral history, archival narrative, newspaper accounts, and fascinating illustrations to paint a remarkable picture of Minnesota’s queer history.”

24. The End of San Francisco, by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (2013) – “Using an unrestrained associative style to move kaleidoscopically between past, present, and future, Sycamore conjures the untidy push and pull of memory, exposing the tensions between idealism and critical engagement, trauma and self-actualization, inspiration and loss. Part memoir, part social history, and part elegy, The End of San Franciscoexplores and explodes the dream of a radical queer community and the mythical city that was supposed to nurture it.”

25. Tomboys and bachelor girls: A lesbian history of post-war Britain 1945-71, by Rebecca Jennings (2013) – “Using a rich array of oral histories and archival sources, Tomboys and bachelor girls provides the first detailed academic study of lesbian identity and culture in post-war Britain.”

26. The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, by Sarah Schulman (2013) – “Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.”

27. Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, by Robert Beachy (2014) – “From Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a German activist described by some as the first openly gay man, to the world of Berlin’s vast homosexual subcultures, to a major sex scandal that enraptured the daily newspapers and shook the court of Emperor William II—and on through some of the very first sex reassignment surgeries—Robert Beachy uncovers the long-forgotten events and characters that continue to shape and influence the way we think of sexuality today.”

28. Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers, by Anne Balay  (2014)- In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population. She presents powerful stories of the intersections of work, class, gender, and sexual identity in the dangerous industrial setting of the steel mill.”

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So have you read any of these books? Let us know!

Things I Read That I Love #21: Eat, Sleep, Read

HELLO and welcome to the 20th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Wild Things and teenage hockey message board jailbait!

This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

However, I’ve decided to start including author names here to sort of “check myself” and make sure I don’t only publish shit by dudes, in light of this. I’m not going to pick something or not pick something based on the gender of the writer (as this is the only column on this site where that’s not a consideration), but I just wanna be more conscious of it.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

The Loading Dock Manifesto (April 2011), by John Hyduk for Esquire: “This is my stage: Cinder-block walls and a concrete floor under a corrugated roof maybe forty feet overhead. Wooden pallets of product are stacked nearly to the ceiling — six-packs, twelve-packs, twenty-four-packs, thirty-twos. Two-liter bottles rest in trays of eight, twenty-ounce bottles wait in plastic shells. There is juice squeezed from every fruit you can imagine and a few I think someone’s made up. A sea of soda.”

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Usually Do (April 2012), by Colin Nissan for McSweeny’s Internet Tendency – “A writer’s brain is full of little gifts, like a piñata at a birthday party. It’s also full of demons, like a piñata at a birthday party in a mental hospital.”

Suzanne Collins’ War Stories For Teenagers (April 2011), by Susan Dominis for The New York Times – A rare interview with Suzanne Collins from last year about how she brought her whole life to bear upon the pages of The Hunger Games. If you’ve not yet read books two or three, this article contains MAJOR SPOILERS.

I Was Teenage Hockey Message Board Jailbait (January 2011), by Katie Baker for Deadspin: “I lapped up the attention and adored the indulgence. I felt so understood. I was a top student in high school, a tri-varsity athlete with plenty of friends, but I’d always been faintly off-kilter, a little bizarre. My friends were mildly weirded-out by my obsession with sports… but they really couldn’t quite wrap their minds around my strange online past. “So, you went in chat rooms?” they’d ask, their expressions polite but their voices edged with alarm. “You mean, like, AOL?”

Art for Everybody (October 2011), by Susan Orlean for The New Yorker – About the rise and success of Thomas Kinkade, who had those weird art galleries in the mall and has now passed away.

Envy (June 2003), by Kathryn Chetkovich for The Guardian UK- I remember reading this article when I still lived in New York, I read it on a cell phone while waiting for a haircut. Brandy Howard had sent me the link. I think you’ll find it interesting. (“She is an unknown struggling writer. Her boyfriend is Jonathan Franzen.”)

A Daughter’s Revenge (April 2012), by Robert Kolker for New York Magazine –  “Brigitte Harris cut off her father’s penis, accidentally killing him in the process, because, she says, he sexually abused her for years. In 2009, she was convicted of second-degree manslaughter, and sentenced to five to fifteen years. This week she’ll have her first parole hearing.”

Call of the Wild (March 2010), by Elizabeth Gumport for This Recording – This is about Wild Things, the movie I saw the same day I lost my virginity.

The Quaid Conspiracy (January 2011), by Nancy Jo Sales for Vanity Fair – This is interesting to me because an old roommate of mine had been cast in the Broadway musical Lone Star Love starring Randy Quaid, and said roommate had shipped out west to Seattle for two months of rehearsals and previews, and then he returned to New York with news that the show would not, actually, go on. It was gonna be my roommate’s first Broadway show, so it was such a gigantic letdown. He explained how the show getting cancelled all came back to Randy Quaid and his wife being crazy, and I thought, holy shit, that’s totally crazy! Apparently, shit only got worse from there.

My So-Called Ex-Gay Life (April 2012), by Gabriel Arana for The American Prospect – This story does a good job of tackling all the levels on which gay reparation therapy functions — his personal story, the medical community’s story, the political story, and the recovery/acceptance story. Great read.

By the Book: David Sedaris (April 2012), The New York Times – This is David Sedaris answering questions.

15 Women’s Magazines That Don’t Suck, Are Awesome

When lamenting the lack of females honored by this year’s major National Magazine Awards, we got into a conversation about the dearth of quality women’s (print) magazines out there. As a Professor of Magazineology, I thought it’d be worth everybody’s time to discuss which women’s magazines are actually worth your time!

Considering that I’m gay, have no interest in celebrity interviews (unless they’re gay) and “fashion” is a thing other people give me advice on but never something I feel confident approaching on my own, you’d think I have little need for lady mags. You would be wrong. Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time in college, I was studying for my Hebrew final with a “pre-veterinarian” friend (studying for his Orgo final) in Barnes & Noble when I mourned my inability to get anything done at Barnes & Noble due to the café’s proximity to the magazine racks. I’d constantly get up and “borrow” new magazines and read them instead of studying. I could do this for hours and hours. “Is that weird?” I asked my friend.

“No,” my animal-loving friend responded. “It would be like if I was trying to study at a pet store surrounded by puppies.”

You follow? I bet you do. Let’s begin! Share your favorites in the comments!

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15 Good magazines for women

[in no particular order, except for #1, which is #1 because it’s #1]

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15. make/shift

“feminism in motion”

[website]

 independently owned

editors: Jessica Hoffman & Daria Yudacufski

single issue: $6.95 US, $8.95 Canada
subscribe: $25 US, $30 Canada // four issues

The Los Angeles based feminist magazine is constructed by “an editorial collective committed to anarchist, transnational, and queer perspectives” which “embrace the multiple shifting identities of feminist communities.” With journalism, analysis, art and essays by progressive writers and thinkers like Jack Halberstam and Jessica Hoffman, make/Shift is on the cutting edge of intersectional issues and radical grassroots activism with a distinctly literary voice.

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14. Curve

“the best-selling lesbian magazine”

[website]
owned by Avalon Media

editor-in-chief – Merryn Johns

single issue: $4.95
subscribe: $39.95 // 10 issues

A few years back, when Curve was still running a seemingly endless series of L Word related covers and then put Pam Grier on the cover without actually interviewing or photographing her, I felt my enthusiasm for the magazine waning. But the magazine got infinitely better when The L Word ended, and is now effortlessly snagging major cover stars like Uh Huh Her, Tegan & Sara, Glenn Close, Jane Lynch , Ruby Rose, Shay Mitchell and Chely Wright. The slim magazine tries to do it all for lesbians — it’s amped up its fashion coverage by doing more original shoots as well as doing monthly bits on women’s health, wedding planning, travel, politics and profiles of up-and-coming activists and entrepreneurs.

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13. MSLEXIA (UK)

“for women who write”

[website]

independently owned

editorial director: Debbie Taylor

single issue: £8.95
subscribe: £20.75 // four issues

I’ve been reading writer-focused magazines like Poets & Writers and Writer’s Digest since I was a teenager, but never did I dream that somebody out there across the pond was creating a writer-focused magazine that did all the things those magazines do, but specifically for women!

Since 1999, British magazine mslexia has been honoring “women who write” with a “unique mix of debate and analysis, advice and inspiration; news, reviews, interviews; competitions, events, courses, grants. All served up with a challenging selection of new poetry and prose.”

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12. GO

“The cultural road map for city girls everywhere.”

[website]

independently owned

editor-in-chief: Amy M. Lesser // exec editor: Kat Long

single issue: free [where to find go]

GO Magazine has been the #1 source for lesbian nightlife and entertainment in the New York City area for about a decade, and is now distributed nation-wide. Fanatics may notice that with the exception of Barack Obama and trans icon Topher Gross, almost every GO! cover star is a queer lady and more often than not, the cover is plastered with photos of people like you and me: like the adorable lesbians of the annual Captivating Couples feature and the yearly “Red Hot Entrepreneurs” making an impact in the lesbian community. It’s at once glossy and local, with heaps of travel stuff and a serious repository of event photographs. It’s also the only place where I’d show up on the same list of “Women We Love” as Ellen DeGeneres.

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11. Lula (UK)

“girl of my dreams”

[website]

editor: Leith Clark

single issue: $15.99 US
subscription: £27 UK // 2 issues

“When you open a Lula everyone’s a girl and everyone likes each other. I felt that fashion magazines are about women looking at women, but there seems to be this imaginary man in the room. It’s so sexualized. I don’t fully get that. I made a magazine of women looking at women, without that competitiveness and that hard edge that we think we need as we get older.”

– editor Leigh Clark

Lula is a gigantic super-heavy epically expensive (in the US) British magazine that comes out a few times a year and is (justifiably) worshipped by its followers. The photography is gorgeous, the design is engaging, the style is innovative and it lives up to its descriptor as “gentle, whimsical and ethereal in tone, mixing high fashion to fall in love with and interviews that feel like late night chats with people you wish you knew.”

It’s sort of like We Heart It meets Rookie meets Nylon meets BOMB. Sometimes you’ll find stretches of pages filled with original drawings and collages, sometimes you’ll find Carrie Brownstein interviewing Miranda July, and you’ll always find tons of wispy girls with dramatic faces wearing expensive clothing. Definitely not for everybody, but its cost is somewhat justified by the fact that it’s basically an art/fashion book — one does not recycle Lula, one keeps it forever.

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10. women’s health

“it’s good to be you.”

[website]

owned by Rodale, Inc.

editor-in-chief: Michele Promaulayko

single issue: $4.99
subscribe: $15.99 // 10 issues

If you’ve just gotta read a mainstream women’s fitness magazine, try Women’s Health. Though its quality has degenerated somewhat since its release (seriously for the first year or so, I was stunned by how consistently GOOD this magazine was), in general Women’s Health is surprisingly non-terrible, despite the excessively airbrushed cover models, occasionally transparent product-pushing and traditional obsession with “slimming down,” getting “flat abs” and having better sex tonight.

Its smartly-toned features are often topical and relatable and its fitness and nutrition advice occasionally more fresh and relevant than its newsstand buddies. Although it’s not readily apparent from studying cover archives; unlike Shape and Fitness, which got repetitive after a year or two, Women’s Health usually manages to find new stories to tackle. That being said, it’s been a while since I’ve read it regularly, and recent covers have disappointed me. Still, I’d prefer it over other women’s health/fitness magazines — anddddd….

Speaking of other women’s fitness magazines, here’s how I feel about them:

Shape has gotten way slick/shiny, and hella repetitive, with non-athletic cover girls who seem to work out exclusively at the beach and in shimmery ponds.

Fitness seems focused on women with children who live in houses with cars and have real jobs, which is to say — not me.

Self is okay, but there’s way too much self-help crap in there, pages upon pages of babble about how to be happier in 8 steps or something or sleep stress-free in five minutes a night. Just tell me how to get hot inner thigh muscles, mmk?

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8. tom-tom magazine

“a magazine for female drummers”

[website]

independently owned

single issue: $6
subscribe: $29 // four issues

Admittedly I’ve never read this one myself — although I am apparently female, I’m not musically inclined and therefore not particularly interested in female drummers. HOWEVER, if you ARE interested in female drummers then this magazine will make your life 100 times better than it already is. (Also, it’s my life goal to see Alex Vega on the cover by next year.) Autostraddle writer M.J. wrote enthusiastically about the magazine in late 2010, saying “Tom Tom Magazine is all about female drummers! So if you like drums, girls, or girls who drum, check it out. It’s gorgeously designed and full of thoughtful interviews with both big names and up-and-comers that you want to know about: Heather Hall and Janet Weiss, for example. Tom Tom also throws awesome parties in NYC, offers reviews of music, art, and fashion, and is super positive about the queer community.”

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7. DIVA (UK)

[website]

owned by gay & lesbian media company Millivres Prowler LTD

editor-in-chief: Jane Czyzselska

single issue: £3.65 UK/$6.99 US
subscribe: £36 UK

The first issue of DIVA was published in 1994, if you can believe it, and it remains the only monthly glossy newsstand magazine for lesbians in the UK (possibly in the world, now that I think about it). A bit edgier than its stateside counterparts, DIVA is one of those magazines that makes being a lesbian seem super-cool and sexy — from its annual “Naked Issue” to its annual “Sex Issue” to cover stars like Jane Lynch, Heather Peace, the Coronation Street girls and Leisha Hailey.

Recent issues feature stories about trans writer & publisher Paris Lees, “Lesbians Who Love Musicals,” smashing the “Lesbian Glass Ceiling,” Lesbian Misogynists, Sheffield’s gay scene, Glasgow’s Queercore night, Margaret Cho, Bisexuality for Beginners, Judy Chicago and naked lesbians.

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6. BUST

“For women with something to get off their chests.”

[website]

independently owned

editor-in-chief: Debbie Stoller

single issue: $4.99
subscribe: $19.95 // six issues

BUST’s focus on DIY and independent musicians/writers/artists has made a major impact on girl culture and the lady-mag world. Straight out of the gate, BUST was all about the crafting and other nerdy pursuits (feature articles are often about things like HISTORY!) and hosts super-fun BUST Craftaculars (I went to one in Brooklyn, it was awesome). BUST readers are smart, independent, pro-active women who like celebrities, makeup and clothing as well as political activism and books.

The almost-monthly magazine chooses its cover models/interviewees carefully, sticking to women who have something to say, like Beth Ditto, Mindy Kahling, Amy Poehler, Diablo Cody, Amy Sedaris, Eve and Portia De Rossi. The recent “Earth Issue” offered 51 Ways to Go Green Without Growing Broke, a feature on “how ladies are leading the eco-revolution” and “Urban Farming Made Easy.”

Its “BUST DIY Guide to Life” and “BUST Guide to the New Girl Order” stand proudly on my bookshelf. Also — bonus! — BUST consistently includes not-skinny models in its palatable fashion spreads.

It’d be slightly better if they hired me to write a column for them about queer issues though, just saying.

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5. the gentlewoman (UK)

“fabulous women’s magazine”

[website]

single issue: £5.00 UK, $10.95 US
subscribe: £16 UK, $33 US // 2 issues

So this one time (last week) I was at fitforafemme‘s house and I saw this magazine on a coffee table and I thought “what is this lovely lovely thing?!” Well, it’s Gentlewoman Magazine. It feels so nice on the outside, like a real book, and the inside is pretty bangin’, too – full of “ambitious journalism and photography of the highest quality.” Recent issues have included pieces on or by Adele, Yoko Ono, The Magnetic Fields, Jenny Holzer and Tilda Swinton. It’s classy without being stuffy and approaches fashion with an “intelligent perspective” that is “focused on personal style – the way women actually look, think and dress.”

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4. Shameless (CA)

“your regular dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth.”

[website]

independently owned by Shameless Media

editor: Sheila Sampath

single issue: $6.99
subscribe: $15 CA, $25 US // three issues

This Canadian magazine advertises itself as “an independent Canadian voice for smart, strong, sassy young women and trans youth.” If you like this website, I think you’d like this magazine — it takes the reader seriously, approaches media and mass culture with a fun yet critical eye, and (intentionally or not) aims to cultivate the reader’s desire to engage in political, social justice and anti-oppression activism. Honestly it’s so good I can’t believe it even exists. Also, it’s rad that they decided to expand their target audience to explicitly include trans youth as well. If you have a daughter over the age of 12, you should get her a subscription to this magazine ASAP, and maybe one for yourself too.

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3. Frankie (AU)

“art * music * fashion * craft * life”

[website]

owned by “unique and progressive” Australian magazine publishing company Morrison Media

editor: Jo Walker

single issue: $9.50 AU
subscription: $57 AU or $115 US // six issues

When my friend Crystal visits The States from Australia I ask her to bring me Australian magazines and two years back she brought me Frankie. I was surprised by how sophisticated, fun and cool-looking it was.

Frankie started when friends Louise Bannister and Lara Burke decided that nothing on the newsstand suited their fancy and they thought they could do it better themselves, molding a mag that “spoke directly to the reader, contained great affordable fashion, sweet art, interesting reads and pretty photography.”

That being said, the relentlessly skinny models and twee aesthetic can be a bit 0ff-putting in the same way more mainstream women’s magazines are. But I’d prefer it to any similar American magazines. It reminds me of when I liked NYLON.

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2. Ms.

“more than a magazine – a movement”

[website]

independently owned by non-profit organization Feminist Majority Foundation

editor: Katherine Spillar

single issue: $5.95
subscribe: $25 // 4 issues

Ms. changed the world. When the Gloria Steinem-led magazine debuted in the early 70’s, it became a point of contact and a conversation launcher for an emerging wave of feminists committed to political progress in a rapidly-shifting cultural climate. Its first issue sold out its 300,000 print run in eight days. That’s how hungry American women were for something that spoke about real life issues, like wage inequity, sexual harassment, second shifting and abortion; rather than another glossy of makeup advice.

Ms. has had quite a few bumps in the road and has been subject to a lot of dissent, particularly for its initial focus on middle-class white-lady problems. But it continues to grow/change and plugs on (despite its failure to put us on their blogroll after like 56 requests!), featuring work by writers like Amy Bloom, Alice Walker, Angela Davis and Barbara Ehrenreich.

New York Magazine, which initially published Ms. as an insert into its magazine, recently ran an Oral History of Ms. You should read it.

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1. Bitch

“feminist response to pop culture.”

[website]

independently owned by Bitch Media, a 501(c)3 non-profit

editorial director: Andi Zeisler

single issue: $5.95
subscribe: $24.95
become a bee-hive member: $5/month

Portland-based feminist magazine Bitch is absolutely my favorite lady-focused magazine of all time.  It’s smart, dorky, funny, educational and somehow also friendly. Consistently inventive and always-evolving, this non-profit publication is in fact partially responsible for my ability to write critically about pop culture through a queer and/or feminist lens — an ability which helped me build this here website. It’s the next-best thing to double majoring in Women’s Studies and Sociology.

Every issue has a theme which dominates its long-form pieces — like Labor & Love, Insider/Oustider, Confidential, Make-Believe, Style & Substance and Puberty. For example, the “WIRED” issue included articles on bunk science reporting, racism and sexism in Second Life and “the evolution of the artificial woman.” Front-of-book bits include Love It/Shove It (pieces for or against a specific show/website/campaign/concept/musician/movie/genre/trend) and columns which tackle questions like “Who made Taylor Swift the sex police?” and “What’s missing in the rhetoric of political cartoons?”

Bitch’s online presence is pretty rad too, with amazing guest columnists including at least one queer-centric thematic column per month (this month it’s Carrie Nelson talking about Bi Invisibility).

Also, paying for membership in the “b club” — which includes subscriptions as a member benefit — is tax-deductable ’cause it’s a non-profit. I think last year I accidentally joined twice, so. So what’s your excuse now, weirdo?

[indie-mag lover? check out Buy Olympia for many of the publications listed here]

Sinclair Sexsmith on “Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica”: The Autostraddle Interview

Kinky queer butch top Sinclair Sexsmith‘s new anthology, Say Please, offers a close look at lesbian BDSM.

Contributors include Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sossity Chiricuzio, Kiki Delovely, Dusty Horn, Sassafras Lowrey, Miriam Zoila Pérez, and Xan West, along with other well-known and debut writers. In Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “A Slap in the Face,” a femme wants her girlfriend to slap her in a crowded bar. In Dilo Keith‘s “Coming of Age,” an almost-butch top delivers a birthday spanking. In D.L. King‘s “A Public Spectacle,” a couple plays, surrounded by unseen watchers.

Many of the stories feature psychological elements, or show what it’s like to enter a headspace, as in Gigi Frost‘s “Housewife”:

“‘Hi, honey.’ She takes the drink, cups my face with her other hand for a kiss. ‘How’s my beautiful wife?’

‘I, um. Why don’t I take your bag and you can have your drink in the living room while I finish dinner?’

‘It’s not ready?’ Her face is taking on a dark expression, clouding over the jovial-husband act. But underneath all that is a wisp of a smile. I have to be careful not to laugh. The whole thing is so scripted, so trite. But these tired lines are a key to our desire, another path to having each other in exactly the way we need.”

While others take a different approach, as in Dusty Horn‘s “Spanking Booth”:

“I will spank anyone who wants a spanking from me. But it takes the right kind of ass for me to enjoy myself, to awaken the sadist in me.

Tonight’s my lucky night.”

This is editor Sinclair Sexsmith’s first solo collection (Sinclair edited Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 with Kathleen Warnock). You might be familiar with Sinclair Sexsmith from Sugarbutch, where Sinclair has written about “the sex, gender, and relationship adventures of a kinky queer butch top” for the past six years, or from contributions to anthologies like Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, Visible: A Femmethology Volume II, Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica 2011, 2009, 2007, and 2006, and in SexIs Magazine.

I emailed with Sinclair while they were away at a conference in San Francisco last weekend and answering questions via iPad.

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Say Please is the first erotica anthology you’ve been the sole editor on. What was that like? What was the selection process like? How did it compare to working on Best Lesbian Erotica 2012?

Being a guest editor for Best Lesbian Erotica meant that I selected the stories from the finalists that Kathleen Warnock, the series editor, sent me, and I wrote the introduction. I was thrilled to do that since I’ve been a BLE reader since 1997 and have been submitting stories since 2005, and regardless of my participation or not, I always look forward to the release of this year’s edition, I think the series often holds some of the newcomers to writing lesbian erotica and it’s a thrill to get to know what’s new in that world. Say Please was completely different — I worked the concept out with Cleis Press, came up with a description, read tons of erotica to try to figure out what types of stories I was looking for, and then read the 100+ submissions that came across my desk. It was quite thrilling to do the selection process, actually — I thought it would be tedious but I enjoyed it so much. Even if the story didn’t fit for this anthology, I liked reading each one and considering how to construct a narrative through an anthology with multiple voices about the same subject, in this case the incredibly broad topic of “lesbian BDSM erotica.” The questions quickly became, what is BDSM? And what is lesbian? I’m not sure I know the answer in general, but I figured out a context for this anthology to be born into, some parameters about kinks and fetishes and gender.

I noticed that a really high proportion of the stories involve a butch top and femme bottom dynamic, that all but three stories use the word “cock,” and that there’s some stories where the characters identify as daddies as part of a power dynamic, all of which you often write about on your website. To what extent does the selection reflect your own tastes?

The stories in Say Please definitely reflect my own tastes, and they also reflect the tastes of the folks who submitted to the anthology, which were frequently readers of my website. I’m pretty heavily involved in the BDSM and leather communities, as a BDSM sex educator and participating on the board of the Lesbian Sex Mafia in New York City, as well as traveling frequently to conferences and gatherings, so I’m also familiar with all of those things you mentioned — butch/femme dynamics, queer gender dynamics in general, strap-on technology, and power dynamics — as major components of the larger communities as well.

That said, though, I didn’t want the book to be exclusively about my personal tastes, and I made sure to include a wide variety of gender partnerships in various configurations of power, and lots of examples of fetishes and kink outside of just strap-ons. The thing about erotica anthologies is that my favorite story and my publisher’s favorite story and your favorite story are probably at least three different stories, and depending on the day it might be five different stories. Tastes in jerk off material vary widely. I was basing my decisions on the success of my own work and on what I know in the larger communities, and I hope very much that there will be a little something kinky for everyone.

Who is your ideal reader for Say Please?

Queers who are interested in women, gender dynamics, power dynamics, and explorations of sexuality will hopefully all find some ideas, inspirations, and simulations in this collection. People who are familiar with my work will certainly recognize many of the themes that I tend to pull on in my own erotica, but folks new and interested in bdsm or who have never read my work before will also get a wide variety of experiences to start thinking about as examples for their own explorations.

What draws you to BDSM erotica? (Or, what does BDSM mean for you?) Is it informed by a queer sensibility?

My BDSM practices are definitely informed by my queer sensibilities — I am ever aware of the heteronormativity and cissexism in the BDSM worlds, and I think queers are doing amazing things to call attention to, work on, and transform what it means to explore gender, or explore power dynamics. I love sex, don’t get me wrong, but I crave a dynamic that complicates the pure body aspects of sex and brings in a psychological connection of power and play that BDSM provides. I think there’s still a ton of room for more queer theory to leap into the BDSM worlds and to continue to evolve BDSM practices.

Say Please includes some of your own writing, which also appears on Sugarbutch as well as in several other anthologies. How and why did you become a writer?

I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, storytelling and journalling since I was very young. But I wasn’t really “out” as a writer until I started getting involved in the spoken word scene in Seattle, mostly by taking classes at the Bent writing institute for queers, which, at the time, was focused on classes for folks who didn’t quite have their writers “sea legs” yet, still feeling unsure of our place in the world as a writer. That grew my writing practice immensely, and enabled me to seek an undergraduate degree in creative writing, which I’m not certain I would’ve done without the support and guidance at Bent. It remains true that I believe I learned more at Bent in five years than I did getting a BA at the University of Washington.

You’ve also written explicitly about your current and past relationships, as well as other parts of your life, on Sugarbutch. What is the most challenging part of writing about your sex life for you? Are there ever any places that you’re not willing to go, or are you able to get a lot of it out?

Sugarbutch has evolved constantly since I started it in 2006 — it’ll turn 6 years old in April. It used to be a place that I used to work out my evolving identities, like being kinky and being a butch, dating femmes and seeking a fulfilling relationship. As those things are much more stable than they used to be, it’s become a place where I attempt to converse with the queer readers that read my archives and are in their own stages of identity development, too, as well as a place where I continue to evolve my theories on butch and femme, kink, domination, relationships, and all sorts of things. There is still a component of it being a place where I work out new things, but as my readership has grown I’ve spent more time on themes and less time revealing the new and hard subjects that I’m working through in my life. For example, I’m just starting to write about opening up my relationship with my girlfriend Kristen. even though we’ve been working on that process for almost six months, I put off writing about it because it was so new and fragile that I didn’t want to open myself up to the vulnerabilities of putting it onto the Internet for general public scrutiny.

The most challenging part about writing about my sex life is that I often don’t get to choose who I reveal things to — much like being a visible queer who doesn’t get to choose when to come out, the readers chose me. There are lots of things I don’t write about, yeah, but I try to model my honest evolutions trying to live a kinky queer life, and while it’s rarely (never) perfect, it’s always the best I can do to explain myself and my situation at the time. I feel very lucky that any of it is useful to other people in their own evolutions, and I frequently invite folks to just take what they can, to adapt what works for them, and leave the rest behind. I’m only talking about what’s been best for me at the time, and it’s all subject to change.

One challenge for a lot of writers is just sitting down to write. What is your current working situation like? How do you get stuff done?

I write every day. I frequently write on deadlines and frequently have monthly or quarterly or yearly goals for Sugarbutch, so that helps me accomplish things and keep pushing myself forward. I live with my girlfriend and she has a day job, so I usually get up with her in the morning and work all day. I often meet up with friends who also work from home to have writing dates, and I try to set aside a certain amount of time daily for exploratory journalling or more creative pursuits, since it’s ever easy to get wrapped up in event promotion, marketing, pitches, emails, social media, and the rest of the business that is involved with being a writer. Some days that works better than others.

What are you reading right now?

Right now I’m reading Tristan Taormino’s new book The Ultimate Guide to Kink that just came out from Cleis Press, and Diana Cage’s new book Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman’s Guide, both of which I’m enjoying. I also just finished Kate Bornstein’s newest book, Queer & Pleasant Danger, which floored me and I highly recommend it.

What would you like to work on next?

I’m excited to edit more erotic anthologies, I have lots of visions for topics that are still lacking in the kinky queer world, and I think there’s still tons of potential for exploring what it means to be involved with power dynamics, kinky sex, leather as a community and heritage, and gender fetishes. I’m excited to see how the younger queer erotica writers will continue to articulate our own desires and put forth new ideas for exploring to us all.

Where do you want to be more than anywhere?

Well, I’ve been on the road for the last five days, and returning home tonight, and I really miss my girlfriend, so if I could be anywhere physically I’d be at home in bed with her for at least a few hours on this lovely afternoon. Professionally, I’d like to be in a place where I could pause the hustle of the business side of my job for a few months and really focus on some deeper writing, maybe some longer works or maybe just delving much more into ideas that I have been kicking around but haven’t been able to sit down and get out on paper. That’d be such a luxury.

Photos courtesy of mrsexsmith.com.

Things I Read That I Love #20: Happy Birds

HELLO and welcome to the 20th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Angry Birds and teaching film in prison!

This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

However, I’ve decided to start including author names here to sort of “check myself” and make sure I don’t only publish shit by dudes, in light of this. I’m not going to pick something or not pick something based on the gender of the writer (as this is the only column on this site where that’s not a consideration), but I just wanna be more conscious of it.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

A Sea of Words (March 2011), by Jessica Crispin for The Smart Set – Bookslut on all the books and all the writers and all the people teaching writers to be writers.

Angry Birds, Farmville, and Other Stupid Games (April 2012), by Sam Anderson for The New York Times Magazine – Oh nothing, just my favorite writer Sam Anderson writing about something relevant to your interests again. I read about video games, you guys. I never do that.

Sick note: Faking illness online – (February 2011), by Jenny Kleeman for The Guardian UK – It’s true, this happens –> “Why would someone fake a serious illness online? Jenny Kleeman on the strange world of Münchausen by internet.”

Risky Writing: The Story I Always Tell And Never Tell (November 2010), by Gina Frangello for The Nervous Breakdown –  “I can promise all the young, wild people out there that living a life of intensity does not end when you stop going home with strange men, stop snorting coke in the bathroom of the club, stop starving or cutting yourself, stop sleeping on the floor of the overnight train or ferry on which nobody speaks English, stop living in the squat, stop letting somebody tie you up who probably shouldn’t be trusted to drive a golf cart. I promsie that self-destruction or partying or adventure is but the surface of risk, and that bigger risks happen later, when you have more than your own body on the line and still dare not to numb out and cloister yourself inward to maintain the illusion of safety.”

Dangerous Worlds: Teaching Film in Prison (Summer 2011), by Ann Snitow for Dissent – I just got lost in this thing and then kept reading it and then it was over and I’d read it.

Guys Who Like Fat Chicks (May 2011), by Camille Dodero for The Village Voice – How did I not know about this when it came out last year

California Girls (August 2011) by Zan Romanoff for The Paris Review: “Joan Didion is the patron saint of girls like me, and it was not until I was gone that I learned that I was not some lone misfit but one of her tribe: girls who grew up bookish and uncomfortable, who left home only to find themselves drawn back to it. I had no idea that I was a California girl until I left and found myself, finally, somewhere else. It turned out to be pretty nice but it will never be home.” (yes, didion/nyc/california is a recurring theme for me, I just can’t get enough of it!) (someone made a similar point to what this author makes in another TIRTL thing I put out there recently, I think)

The Chilling Story of Genius in a Land of Chronic Unemployment (May 2011), by Sarah Lacey for Techcrunch, – How a talented computer kid in Silicon Valley and a talented computer kid in Nigeria go down very different paths — a look at the world of the “419 letter” / email scams in a land of chronic unemployment.

My So-Called Blog (January 2004), by Emily Nussbaum for The New York Times: Oh, 2004! Have you heard of this web site called Livejournal?! Or Xanga?! Teenagers have blogs!

My Father Is an African Immigrant and My Mother Is a White Girl from Kansas and I Am Not the President of the United States (July 2011), by Ahamefule J. Oluo for The Stranger – I have always been the overachiever in my family—the one who NOT ONLY got his GED, but also finished an ENTIRE YEAR of college. “He has his very own basement apartment!” my grandma proudly explains to her neighbor. “And he’s never stabbed anyone.”

Looking into Writers’ Bedrooms, Personal Style, Lives

Carolyn’s Team Pick:

Peeking into writers’ offices feels like getting a look in their brains. Peeking into writers’ bedrooms feels like getting a look in their souls.

Apartment Therapy has a look at the insides of 15 writers’ bedrooms, including Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, Sylvia Plath, Mary Roach, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau. If, like I do, you spend a great deal of your procrastination time on the internet looking at the insides of other people’s apartments to avoid looking at the inside of your own, you will really like this gallery. Look, here’s Hemingway:

Let’s talk about this! Sylvia Plath’s looks exactly how you expected it to, agree/disagree.

Things I Read That I Love #19: Are You Experienced?

HELLO and welcome to the 19th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Dartmouth, Barnes & Noble, Trayvon Martin and The Daily Mail. This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are. The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

As I’ve said in the past, I like to publish this on Fridays, but last week I was late so it wasn’t published ’til Monday! So now you probably feel really overwhelmed, but don’t. Okay? Good!

White Before Proven Black: Imagining Race in the Hunger Games (March 2012), The New Yorker – The story behind the tumblr that collected and posted racist tweets about The Hunger Games and the association of whiteness with innocence. (Which we talked about here earlier this week, too.)

Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy (March 2012), Rolling Stone – A profile of the guy who dared to call out his school for its hypocrisy when he wrote an Op-Ed taking down the Greek system for its culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” as well as an “‘intoxicating nihilism’ that dominates campus social life,” and subsequently became a scourge on campus.

Loving Them To Death (October 1995), Outside – Jon Krakauer takes on the strange and even deadly/abusive world of “wilderness camps” for troubled teens.

Eulogy For Barnes & Noble #2628: A Personal History (March 2012), The Rumpus– A fun, interesting personal essay about writing and working in bookstores and patronizing bookstores. As a person obsessed with bookstores, I was particularly entertained because the author spends time living in Oakland (where I live) and Ann Arbor (where I lived for 14 years and then 4 more years, under different circumstances).

Consider This (March 2012), The Nervous Breakdown  – A beautiful, sad story about being a teeenager, being pregnant, wanting other people to hurt, and losing the baby.

The Making of a Blockbuster (March 2012), Salon.com -“With the right title, a kid’s publisher can deploy something the world of adult publishing can only dream about: a large, well-oiled and highly networked group of professional and semi-professional taste makers who can make that book a hit even before it’s published.”

(Daily) Mail Supremacy: The newspaper that rules Britain. (April 2012), The New Yorker – Well, this scared the shit out of me.

Men “Experiment” Women “Experience” (March 2012), Salon.com – An excellent interview with lesbian writer Jeanette Winterson about her new book, growing up in an evangelical household, novel vs. memoir, writing routines, poetry, Occupy, being an introvert, the internet, the importance of literary language (in relation to story) and more.

Shattered Safety Within Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford (March 2012), Tampa Bay Times – “For a month — ever since her son heard someone screaming for help and her daughter called 911 and everyone heard the loud snap of a gunshot — Brown’s children have been afraid to go outside. • Her youngest daughter, who is 9, won’t even look out the window. She keeps seeing the dead teen’s body. • “That could have so easily been my son,” said Brown. “He wears hoodies all the time.”

The Non Profit One Percent (March 2012), The Village Voice – Another article that will make you mad about how easy the government makes it for rich people to stay rich and poor people to stay poor.

The Days Of Yore: Writers and Artists Before “Making It”

When you decide to become a writer, it’s imperative that you begin to see your life as part of an ongoing narrative with a happy ending in which you are the protagonist. If you judge your life using traditional methods, such as “assessing the quality of the present” or “checking your bank account balance,” you can get very depressed, very quickly.

I find “stories of what famous writers did before they were famous writers” to be a primary source of validation in this regard. I can see my present in their past, which means their future must also be my future. Right? Totally.

That’s why I love Days of Yore, a website which interviews different artists — writers, performance artists, comedians, etc — about what it was like when they were just starting out. And in between the stories of cramped apartments, rejection letters, Kraft Dinner and odd jobs; the interviewees have plenty of pearls of wisdom to share about their craft in general.

It currently features great interviews with many of my favorite writers, like Kathryn Harrison (The Kiss, Exposure), Mary Karr (The Liar’s Club, Cherry), Jennifer Egan (Look at Me), Sarah Ruhl (Euridyce), Julia Alvarez (How the  García Girls Lost Their Accents) and Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief). Here are just some of my favorite quotes — go read the whole website now and get smarter!

“When I was younger, I usually found that I wanted to cut out what I should have been writing, because it actually showed who I was more vividly, and it was embarrassing to me. I find this often with students. They have a self they want to be—we all have a sense of how we want to be perceived. And usually you defend that, unconsciously.”

-Mary Karr

“Perseverance is everything. People become experts of the obstacles in front of them. “I’m not tall enough to play football,” “I’m not smart enough to write a novel”…whatever it is. And school, school shows you exactly where the minefields are and is supposed to give you a map so you go around them. What about if stepping on a mine is part of it? You have to live the life you claim you want to have. No one will prevent you, if you only want to live your life. I think we dance around the issue of doing exactly what we want. One of the reasons we don’t talk about doing exactly what we want is to cushion the blow—“Oh I didn’t want it anyway, so it’s OK that I didn’t get it,” etc. No. Apply for the jobs that you really want, and if you don’t get them, it should hurt.”

-Thomas Roma

“The paradox is that I am most myself and least burdened by self when I’m writing. Hours can vanish. Sometimes hours spent on one sentence, which is not so good, but I do love it. I didn’t begin by loving it. I began in the Flannery O’Connor camp of “I love to have written.” I never thought it was fun. I was always in a crisis of anxiety. There were a couple of people at Iowa who said they loved writing, and I thought, “Wow, really? That’s weird.” I’ve come to love it. But I’ve also become far more addicted to it. It really is this thing that I have to do.”

– Kathryn Harrison

 daysofyore.com

Adrienne Rich is Dead

Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore in 1929. Rich’s father was a pathologist who cultivated his daughter’s early affections for literature and her mother was a concert pianist who’d given up her career in favor of marriage and child-rearing.

Adrienne Rich would eventually go on to study at Radcliffe (Harvard’s college for women at the time), where all of her teachers were men and one of them was W.H. Auden. Auden praised the poems in 21-year-old Rich’s first volume of poetry, A Change of World (1951), as “neatly and modestly dressed, speak quietly but do not mumble, respect their elders but are not cowed by them.”

Adrienne Rich remained, as she grew up, neat and modestly dressed. But she ceased speaking quietly, instead becoming one of the most influential poets and thinkers of the 20th century, known for her radical feminist politics, anti-war activism, literary prowess and contributions to lesbian scholarship and discourse. During a time when women’s liberation seemed focused solely on the needs of white middle-class straight women, Rich was uniquely outspoken on the importance of issues facing lesbians and women of color.

All of us — especially all of us here, the queers and the women — are indebted to Adrienne Rich and all the words she wrote and spoke during her 82 years on earth. Yesterday, March 27, 2012, was the last day of those 82 years.

She died + a famous woman+ denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds + came + from the same source as her power

– from “Power” (The Dream of a Common Language)

In The New York Times Book Review, Carol Muske wrote of Rich that she began as a “polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She has progressed in life (and in her poems …) from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist leader…and doyenne of a newly-defined female literature.

**

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”

**

Before sitting down to write this, I decided to do a quick scan of my personal library to see what Adrienne Rich writings I had on hand to pull from and I realized that I didn’t know where to start looking. See, Adrienne Rich is just so awesomely and uniquely prolific. My books are arranged by genre and Rich could be anywhere on those shelves — Poetry, Feminism, Queer Theory, About Writing, Essay Anthologies. She just did so many things. I’ve read Adrienne Rich’s work in at least three entirely unrelated college courses and like Rich, I’m a Jewish feminist lesbian writer who cares about literature and also about social justice. So she comes up a lot.

The first thing I found was a copy of The Dream of a Common Language (Poems 1974-1977). My friend Meg gave it to me twelve or so years ago, when I was living in Michigan and she was still living in New York. My copy is an early printing (1978, I think), bound and covered in tan cardstock with the title and other relevant information printed in large, understated red and black letters.

Meg stuck a post-it note on page 23 for me, and it’s still there:

“I thought you might like these ’21 Love Poems.’ I like some of these other ones too. I hope you do. Hope you don’t mind used edition, but obviously cheaper. There’s a good used bookstore on 12th street right next to where I work…. dangerous. xo meg”

I did like the 21 love poems and many of the other ones, too.

Rain on the West Side Highway,
red light at Riverside:
the more I live the more I think
two people together is a miracle.

– from Love Poem XVIII (The Dream of a Common Language)

Then mostly I just found things here and there — like her 1984 essay “Notes Toward a Politics of Location,” included in The Essential Feminist Reader. The intro describes the essay like so: “In this essay, Rich acknowledged her own ‘politics of location’ as a North American, white, jewish lesbian, and she criticized ‘the faceless raceless classless category of all women as a creation of white, western, self-centered women.”

**

Adrienne Rich got married in 1953 to a Harvard economics professor named Alfred, and consequentially birthed three sons. Rich was gifted grant after grant after award after grant after Guggenheim Fellowship. She published her second volume of poetry, The Diamond Cutters, in 1955, but she hates that book now.

She felt weird about her life back then, like how she’d gotten married and had babies and yet lacked all the accompanying feelings society had promised her went along with marriage and babies.

**

“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.”

– Adrienne Rich’s journal, 1960

**

In 1966, the family moved to New York City. By this point Rich was becoming increasingly politically and socially conscious, both as a woman and simply as a citizen, and while teaching at Columbia University she got heavily entrenched in the New Left activity happening at the time. In addition to publishing in feminist journals, she participated in various political actions and threw fundraising parties for The Black Panthers and anti-Vietnam protestors. Her husband was okay with her political passion at first and then less okay with it. He told his friends that Adrienne was losing her mind and was “becoming a very pronounced, very militant feminist.” They divorced. Shortly thereafter, Alfred drove into the woods with a gun and committed suicide. Rich and her children were devastated.

**

“in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:

Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved

Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved

Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it badly, too well, and not enough

Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us

Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable.

Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.”

― “Tattered Kaddish”

**

The Guardian in 2002 wrote of what happened next: “For many, the revelation that [Rich] was a lesbian came as a shock. Observant readers of Rich’s work, however, would have noted that, as early as A Change of World , a poem called “Stepping Backward” had dealt with breaking off a close female relationship.”

She kept on publishing: Necessities of Life in 1966, Leaflets in 1969. 1973’s Diving into the Wreck, which won the National Book Award in 1974, is perhaps her most celebrated volume of poetry.

**

The only real love I have ever felt
was for children and other women
everything else was lust, pity,
self-hatred, pity, lust

– from “The Phenomenology of Anger” (Diving into the Wreck)

**

Rich and Allen Ginsberg shared the National Book Award that year, but Rich refused to accept her award individually, and instead brought up fellow nominees Alice Walker and Audre Lorde with her to accept “on behalf of all women.”

In 1976, Rich met Michelle Cliff, a Jamaican-born novelist and editor who would remain Rich’s partner for life. Rich by then was churning out some world-changing shit, like Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, a pioneering work that focused on “how and why women’s choice of women as passionate comrades, life partners, co-workers, lovers, community, has been crushed, invalidated, forced into hiding.”

 **

“[Responsibility to yourself] means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives.”

-Adrienne Rich, “Claiming an Education“

**

She published the controversial and widely influential Of Women Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution in 1976. There, she described her lesbianism as both political and personal, writing of her sexual evolution: “the suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.”

She wrote more books of poetry, like Twenty-One Love Poems, which was more like a “pamphlet” and ultimately was folded into the book I have, The Dream of a Common Language. In 1979 she published On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978.

**

Men have been expected to tell the truth about facts, not about feelings. They have not been expected to talk about feelings at all.

Yet even about facts they have continually lied.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie…

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

– “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”

**

I had that book — On Lies, Secrets and Silence — but I can’t find it today. I must have lent it to somebody. I remember transcribing big chunks of it for the straight girl I was sleeping with, using Rich’s words to make some kind of passive-aggressive point. I wish I still had it.

**

Cliff and Rich eventually relocated to Santa Cruz, where the couple took over the editorship of lesbian journal Sinister Wisdom. Then more teaching, and more writing: six years at Cornell, three volumes of poetry, more prizes, more grants.

She started Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends in 1990 and became active on the advisory boards of  the Boston Woman’s Fund, National Writers Union and Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa.

**

“We [poets] may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.”

**

In 1994 she received the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and in 1997, Rich was awarded The National Medal for the Arts but famously turned it down in protest against the House of Representative’s vote to end the National Endowment for the Arts. She has said of that choice: “I am not against government in general, but I am against a government where so much power is concentrated in so few hands.”

She told President Clinton, in a letter: “The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.”

Rich continued publishing poetry and essays, like 1981’s A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far and 2001’s The Fact of a Doorframe. She continued participating in anti-war efforts, and became a chancellor of the board of the Academy of American Poets.

I could write about her all day. I’ve already written 1964 words, this is already too long, and all I’ve done so far is lay out the facts. I’ve not yet gotten into the feelings. She was such a good woman, so uncompromising in her politics, so dedicated to her work. But this is already too long, and I’ve only just gotten started.

**

At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

– From “Love Poem III”

**

Watch Rachel Maddow on Letterman, Listen to Her on Fresh Air, Then Win a Copy of “Drift!”

Have you thought about Rachel Maddow in the last 24 hours? There’s a pretty good chance you have. After all, she was on Letterman last night, and he called her “probably the smartest person in all of journalism.” It would be hard to disagree, even if you wanted to.

And if that’s not enough Maddow for you, you’re in luck: she’s also on NPR’s Fresh Air today! The 45-minute interview (which you can listen to online) covers topics like the process of making the show, Maddow’s years as a student, and why she thinks humor is important:

“I think that humor has underappreciated explanatory value. If you are trying to explain something to a broad audience, using humor is sometimes a way to help people either make a leap in logic with you or shorthand to what’s important about something. Usually when I use humor on the show, it’s in the form of absurdity. I’ve pointed out something that somebody says is normal that I think is not normal, or something that should be seen as very serious that I don’t think deserves seriousness. You can explain that away or you can poke fun at it, but sometimes it’s not only shorter to poke fun at it, but also more effective at moving the argument along.”

And also, of course, American military policy, national intelligence, and public disconnect from America’s wars abroad. Because Maddow’s new book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, comes out today, and it’s an incisive look at the way “we’ve drifted away from America’s original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails.” (Also, in case you were worried, it’s also been described as “scathingly funny.” Obviously.)

This is excellent news! What’s even better news is that you have the chance to win a signed copy. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling us one question you’d want to ask Rachel Maddow if you got to have lunch with her — about her book or otherwise. As of midnight EST on Thursday, the comments will be tallied and a randomized winner will be chosen! Good luck, because she looks really dreamy on the back of this book jacket, and you’re going to want to have this on your coffee table (bedside table?) for sure.

Things I Read That I Love #18: So I Can Vote

HELLO and welcome to the 18th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Xanax and dystopian young adult fiction! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are. The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

Sidenote — if you’re looking for up-to-the-minute news about the Trayvon Martin case, I highly recommend this page on Mother Jones.

A Thin Line Between Mother and Daughter (November 1997), Salon.com – By novelist Jennifer Egan (she wrote Like Me, among others) “A former anorexic ponders the family origins of eating disorders.”

A Place Where We Are Everything (March 2012), The Rumpus  – “When Trayvon Martin was killed, he was wearing a hoodie and somehow, this hoodie has become one of the focal points of the growing and necessary conversation about this young man’s death, the justice he deserves, and the racial climate in this country that makes a grown man with a gun perceive a 17 year old holding Skittles as a threat because of his skin color.”

This American Lie (March 2007), The New Republic – What’s weird about this article is that I left it feeling “dude, it’s just David Sedaris, we don’t have much invested in these stories, chill!” Like he can lie about his sister’s job, it’s not working conditions in an Apple factory in China or anything.

Fresh Hell (June 2010), The New Yorker – About dystopian fiction for young adults, its proliferation at this certain time, the difference between dystopian fiction for young people and dystopian fiction for grown-ups, and the appeal of a special new series called The Hunger Games.

The White Savior Industrial Complex (March 2012), The Atlantic – Rachel tipped me off to this one and then I saw it linked a lot over the weekend. If you’ve not yet read it, you need to fix that immediately.  – “If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.”

Listening to Xanax (March 2012), New York Magazine – “Three and a half years of chronic economic wobbliness, the ever-pinging of the new-e-mail alert, the insistent voices of prophet-pundits who cry that nuclear, environmental, political, or terrorist-generated disaster is certain have together turned a depressed nation into a perennially anxious one. The editors at the New York Times are running a weekly column on anxiety in their opinion section with this inarguable rationale: “We worry.”

Also this rang especially true: “Anti-anxiety drugs are the salvation of those for whom opting out of the to-do list isn’t an option.”

The Jimmy McNulty Gambit (March 2012), The New Inquiry – “But the main thing is why, and how: the fiction comes into existence because an immovable object has been met with a force that can’t accept that it is stoppable. Within the normal course of the system, Marlo can’t be moved, because the system is not built to move him. But because McNulty can’t imagine his own failure, he imagines that failure out of existence. He tells the story he needs to be true.“

Rewrite (May 2011), 5280 – Trying to start over when you were the driver in a car accident that kills four of your friends, and you survived. Starting over involves laying low and then moving to New York City.

In Which We Don’t Do Coke in the Bathroom of the Restaurant (March 2012), This Recording – Oh did this musing on waitressing EVER ring true! Especially worth mentioning how one of the most jarring/frustrating things about going from waitressing to an office is that offices have office politics. In restaurants, there’s no passive-aggression — if somebody wants something from you or is upset at you, it’s very direct. You always know where you stand, and you’re always on your feet, and they always need you.

The Killer and Mrs. Johnson (March 1998), Westword – A teenager named Jacob Ind and his friend ambush and murder the teenager’s parents in the middle of the night. It’s alleged that the parents had been physically/mentally/sexually abusing Jacob and his brother, but the case presented in court wasn’t convincing and Jacob was sentenced to life without possibility of parole.

It’s Different For Girls (March 2012), New York Magazine – A review and profile of the new HBO show Girls, described as “FUBU” = “for us by us.” As in a show about girls, written by girls. What a novel concept!!