Autostraddle Book Club #5: The Hunger Games (Plus Movie Feelings OPEN THREAD)
Tonight at midnight, the Hunger Games movie will open in the US, and be the most important cinematic event since Harry Potter, or Twilight, or ever, depending on how you feel about the books/Jennifer Lawrence. The Hunger Games phenomenon — the books, the movie, the combination book/movie hysteria — and commentary on it are sweeping the internet, and for good reason. I don’t know a single person who’s read The Hunger Games without finishing the whole trilogy in a feverish series of all-nighters and loved it. And a lot of smart people have a lot of smart things to say about both the books and the movie!
The Hunger Games’ heroine, Katniss, is being hailed as “a hard-ass hunter with a talent for butchery who becomes a revolutionary folk hero” who doesn’t need to rely on male characters to solve her problems. Salon says it rejects “chrysalis moments” and Cinderella stories by making it clear that Katniss’s pretty dresses and transformation into a “beauty” are a performance, not her authentic self. Also, possibly it’s also going to solve climate change. So there’s that.
Between the movie and the book and THE MOVIE, we all have a lot of feelings. Perhaps you will have feelings about our feelings, even! Mostly we just all really like Katniss. I mean, number one feeling, you know?
Laneia
I read The Hunger Games right after I finished Breaking Dawn in 2008, so it’s possible that my expectations had been beaten mercilessly into the ground, but I couldn’t get over how brilliant this book was. It has all the things I want a book to have: imperfect-but-badass female protagonist, personal sacrifice, yelling, crying, suspense, a train, archery and Appalachia. More importantly, it doesn’t have any of the shit I can’t stand: batting eyelashes, helpless females, obsessive emotional dependencies, girl-on-girl hate, diets, shopping, and terminal illnesses. And ok, it’s not like I’m proud to admit this, but I actually kind of liked all the violence? It was fascinating to imagine these children viciously killing each other just to stay alive, and you want Katniss to win obviously, but then that means wanting the other kids to DIE these horrible deaths which is just such a mindfuck!
So excited for the movie that I’m obviously on the verge of a hysterical coma. All Rue all the time.
Crystal
As I write these words there are approximately four hours until I get to watch the Hunger Games movie. I’m super excited but also crazy nervous because I don’t want to be disappointed, if this movie adaptation is shit then it might just break my heart. Anyway. My favorite thing about the Hunger Games is Katniss. Such a tiger.
Liz
As of Wednesday at 10pm I’m only about a third of the way through the second book. By Thursday at 10pm I fully expect to be a third of the way through the third book.
So first off, I feel like it’s impossible not to project yourself in to Katniss’s role. I have to admit, I can’t help but want to be a selfless, brave girl with dozens of admirers. It’s easy to imagine myself gallivanting about the woods; hunting, running, surviving, pointing out dangerous herbs. I mean, if you set aside the fact that I’m completely clumsy and lack any sense of direction. But that aside, who wouldn’t immediately want to be Katniss? I have a sneaking suspicion that brought to life on screen, Katniss’s agility, cunning and skill will be all the more apparent. Plus, Jennifer Lawrence is totally hot.
Still, I’m nervous to see The Hunger Games on screen. Here’s the thing about the first Hunger Games book: there is just a ton of gory violence. I’m really curious to see how they handle that in the movie. On the one hand, the The Game scenes are undeniably exciting. On the other hand, Suzanne Collins does a good job of making the violence seem abhorrent and gross. I see her message as directly linked to the abhorrence of war. I’m worried that in the movie the violence will be too glamorized and the point will be lost. Plus, if the Games aren’t horrific then the whole book doesn’t really make any sense.
Also, Cinna is totally gay, right?
Brittani
Right now books are particularly hard to come by because at any given moment I may be lacking money, identification, or a mailing address so when I was home over Christmas and discovered my sister owned the Hunger Games trilogy, I had no choice but to read all of them in the next three days in a Harry Potterian fashion. Rue is my favorite character for the same reason Obama is my favorite president…because they both love music. Like any good queer starving for representation, I had to ship Katniss and a female character. I chose Madge so obviously I am full of rage that she won’t be in the movie. I’m so legitimately upset that I’m in no rush to see the film because seriously, what the fuck. Her name is almost vadge. No amount of Lenny Kravitz could make up for this grave oversight.
Carolyn
First of all, I found the Hunger Games awesome and still can’t believe it took me as long to start reading them as it did (post-Mockingjay). Second, what makes The Hunger Games so compelling for me is what a reluctant hero Katniss is. She’s such a badass, but she’s not actually interested in being a badass — she just wants to survive, and have enough to eat, and take care of herself and her sister and mother. It’s everyone around her — particularly the people watching at home, who so obviously desperately need any symbol of hope whatsoever — who make her into something else. (Even later in the series, which I am about to be purposefully vague about, she is left out of people’s plans because they recognize that the thing that they’re trying to do is not her thing in and of itself). In fact, Katniss is really just out to survive, which means that she would be hugely unsympathetic if her actions weren’t for Prim (who, especially later on, seems to function as a symbol of her humanity).
But, in her attempts to survive, she becomes a strong independent female hero — not one who functions like an innately good action hero figure, but one that is more complex, and much more interesting.
Laura
T-minus 11 hours until I get to see The Hunger Games. I’m really excited for the movie but I have a small list of concerns because I want it to do justice to the book. The number one thing I’m worried about is how terrifying the movie will be. See, I need it to be really, really dark so that everything makes sense. If the dogs at the cornucopia don’t feel threatening or if President Snow don’t ooze evil, how am I supposed to believe in the characters I loved? Books are something that you read alone, but movies are something you get to experience in a room full of a hundred other people. I want to love it and I want everyone there with me to love it too.
The second thing is Taylor Swift and her feelings. One of the main reasons The Hunger Games was such a good book was that it totally flaunted the expectation that a teenage girl have nothing but boys on her mind. It wasn’t just that Katniss was too preoccupied with feeding her family to care about romance, she actively made the decision to keep people at an arm’s length as a tiny act of rebellion against the Capitol. I guess I’m just hoping that the fact that Taylor Swift has a song featured in the movie doesn’t mean that the whole faux relationship with Peeta gets turned into a bunch of sentimental Twilight nonsense.
My last concern is about how meta this whole thing is. To be honest, it’s really more about me/society more than about the movie itself. So we’ve got this girl who’s being thrust into this horrific voyeuristic “game” where sponsors pay to help the contestants and viewers cheer on their favorites, right? And now we’re making a movie — with all the swag and advertising that comes with it — about it. I know Panem isn’t real, but I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable when I went to the store yesterday and saw “Hunger Games Capitol Colors” nail polish for sale. Isn’t capitalism weird?
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I just wanted to say that Rue was my favorite character and that I can’t wait to see Cinna’s designs!
Discussion questions for you, dear readers. Both book and movie feelings are welcome here, as well as feelings about the book being a movie.
+ Number one feeling?
+ Number one character?
+ Number one wishful thinking gay character/relationship?
+ What does Katniss’s popularity mean in a post-Bella world?
+ Is there a commentary on violence that we’re supposed to specifically understand?
+ How do you feel about how heterosexual relationships (or the performance of them) are figured?
+ Are you worried about the book-to-movie conversion at all?
+ Why do you think this appeals to so many people? Were you skeptical about liking it before you picked it up?
+ How are you going to make Jennifer Lawrence your girlfriend?
Lambda Literary Awards 2012: New Books to Love
The 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalists have been announced! I want to read everything.
The Lambda Awards started in 1988 with a mission to celebrate and preserve LGBT literature. Nominated books deal with queer subject matter, are written by queer authors, or both. 2012 had a record number of nominations, with over 600 titles from about 250 publishers. This year’s winners will be announced on June 4 at the CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.
This year, the awards re-opened to all authors, regardless of sexual orientation. The change marks a return to the beginning of the awards, which did not always require the winners to be LGBT-identified (In 2009, the Lambda Literary Foundation controversially changed its policy to reflect the fact that the awards would go to LGBT-identified writers.).
The Lambda Awards have also struggled with representation — separate categories for transgender fiction and non-fiction only appeared last year, and separate categories for bisexuality appeared the year before that. In 1992, an anthology on bisexuality competed and lost in the Lesbian Anthology category. In 2004, a transphobic book made the lists of finalists in the Transgender category until protests and petitions got it removed. Last year, authors started to debate the place of personal queer identity in queer literature in their own acceptance speeches. This year, the three new (sponsored) awards meant to recognize queer authors can go to “one gay man and one lesbian” and “one male-identified and one female-identified author,” which excludes bisexual and trans* people.
In sum: the Lambda Awards are not perfect, though they have been slowly improving and will hopefully continue to do so. But they do recognize queer literature, and having as much recognition of queer art as possible is something to get behind. The following books are the 2012 finalists I’m most excited about, not in order, and the ones I am most obsessively adding to my “to read” pile.
What are you looking forward to reading? What do you have in a pile next to your bed right now? Let us know!
Lesbian General Fiction
The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, by Shannon Cain
This collection offers a wide look at sexual desire an identity and includes stories about a polyamory utopia, a zoo for homosexual animals, a steam room, and others. According to its review in the Rumpus:
“The hip, quirky scenarios of Cain’s debut collection, which won the 2011 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, partly explain why her work stands out among debut short fiction, but they don’t explain why these stories are so good. The satisfaction they offer has less to do with Cain’s (wonderfully bewildered) characters or (satisfyingly non-gimmicky) plot developments, I think, than it has to do with her dead-accurate sardonic tone. And given how delicious that tone is, I’m surprised Necessity didn’t attract more attention last year. In these stories, the characters and the narrator both speak in ‘the flat tones of their urban language,’ as one story names it, with an effect of subtle but satisfying irony.”
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Small Fires, by Julie Marie Wade
Small Fires is a self-reflexive book about childhood and being a daughter. From the publisher:
“There are floating tea lights in the bath, coddled blossoms in the garden, and a mother straddling her teenage daughter’s back, astringent in hand, to better scrub her not-quite-presentable pores. And throughout, Wade traces this lost world with the same devotion as her mother among her award-winning roses. Small Fires is essay as elegy, but it is also essay as parsing, reconciliation, and celebration, all in the attempt to answer the question — what have you given up in order to become who you are?”
Transgender Fiction
The Butterfly and the Flame, by Dana De Young
I love dystopias! (I mean. To read about.) In a dystopic 2404, being gay is a capital offence, capital punishment is back, women are not allowed to work, and forced marriages are everywhere. Fifteen-year-old Emily La Rouche is being forced to marry her landlord’s son. If she refuses, her family will suffer, and if she agrees, the world will discover that she was born a boy, and so she flees across post-apocalyptic America in search of a new home. From the Bibrary review:
“Emily’s story is an emotional one, a tragic tale that contains just enough hope to make the heartache and the sorrow palatable. She’s a wonderfully well-rounded character, but one who is plagued by the dual angst of being a teenager and being transgender. Only a transgender author could so accurately portray the depths of Emily’s emotion, whether it’s her suicidal despair as she fashions her own noose, or her blissfully innocent joy as she is gifted with her first dress. Throw an arranged marriage into the mix, with the intended’s family wholly ignorant of Emily’s secret, and you have the makings for a complex take of human relationships.”
Transgender Nonfiction
Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond
Tango is a novella-length childhood memoir from Justin Vivian Bond, a transgender actor, performance artist, and singer-songwriter, that I read because Autostraddle told me to. In his review on Autostraddle with Annika, Sebastian says this:
“Before I go on about how great this book is, I want to be honest: the first time I read it, I didn’t like it that much. I think I went into it hoping that as a memoir from Justin Vivian Bond, someone who has navigated the world ‘between’ genders with grace and poise, and even glamour, that Tango would offer some real insight into gender and gender identity. One friend who read the first half or so said it seemed like ‘a lot of regurgitation without reflection.’ And that’s how I initially felt – I wanted V to tell us what it all meant, damnit! Plus I had a hard time wading through the stories of sexual rendezvous between teenage boys.
But then I read it again. And I realized my expectations of the book were all wrong. It’s not a memoir of Mx. Bond’s life or career or a study of how V bends gender – it’s a memoir of V’s childhood. It’s not supposed to be some insightful reflection or an educational piece.
It’s a story (well lots of stories) about a kid who is still trying to figure shit out… without the luxury of normality.”
Bisexual Fiction
The Correspondence Artist, by Barbara Browning
The Correspondence Artist is a largely epistolary novel (read: told in letters, or in this case emails) about Vivian and her love affair with an artist. According to the Bookslut review:
“The Correspondence Artist is a mysterious romance we only get to see in the rarified aether of online communication, and she capably relays the sensation of that perilously ambiguous world. Addressing the audience directly in the beginning, her narrator Vivian explains that what follows is a one-sided history of her ailing romance with a nameless ‘paramour,’ an internationally renowned artistic figure. Since this person places a very high premium on privacy, she’s decided to create not one but four separate fictional lovers behind whom she can disguise the real details of the affair. But these different characters also allow her to try and explain various parts of her lover’s real inconsistencies and endearing flaws.”
Bisexual Nonfiction
Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature, edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti
Sovereign Erotics is a finalist in both Bisexual Nonfiction and LGBT Anthology, which is pretty awesome. It’s also the only book published since 1988 that focusses on the writing and art of Indigenous two-spirit and queer people. From Amazon:
“This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of identities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the work of established writers and talented new voices, this anthology spans genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essay) and themes (memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship, family, love, and loss) and represents a watershed moment in Native American and Indigenous literatures, Queer studies, and the intersections between the two.
Collaboratively, the pieces in Sovereign Erotics demonstrate not only the radical diversity among the voices of today’s Indigenous GLBTQ2 writers but also the beauty, strength, and resilience of Indigenous GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century.”
LGBT Anthology
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman
This book is the best. Contributors include Bevin Branlandingham, Rae Spoon, Zoe Whittall, S. Bear Bergman, Anna Camilleri, Leah Lakshmi, Amber Dawn, Karleen Pendleton Jiménz, and other awesome people. In her review on Autostraddle, Marni writes:
“The words butch and femme are pretty loaded for some people — which is good! The book is as much of a reclamation as it is an explosion of our understanding of and experiences with butch and femme identities. It includes essays that cherish and celebrate butch and femme as well as seek to critique, expand, and redefine these categories. Most importantly, it offers playful and unique insights into the complexities of our fierce (and fiercely-vulnerable) messy-perfect queer lives. This is The Way That We Live for real.”
LGBT Young Adult
Huntress, by Malinda Lo
Huntress is set in the same world as Ash (Lo’s first novel, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella), but centuries earlier, and incorporates elements of the I Ching. Like Ash, it avoids stereotyping gay characters and falling into the traditional plotlines of gay YA. On her website, Lo writes:
“I knew that I wanted certain things in the story: A girl having an adventure. A romance with sexual tension. A world on the verge of dying (I’m a big fan of dystopians). Powerful, creepy fairies. Weapons. And I wanted it to be a hero’s quest. As I noted in my writing journal back in October 2008 when I was figuring out what would happen, ‘The point of the quest is to bring order and harmony back to the mortal world.’ Putting all those things together, the book that came out was Huntress.”
LGBT SF/F/H
Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft
Lesbians and steampunk are together at last in this collection of fifteen short stories, edited JoSelle Vanderhooft. Contributors include Sara Harvey, Mike Allen, NK Jemisin, Shira Lipkin, Meredith Holmes. Matthew Kressel, Beth Wodzinski, Georgina Bruce, JosSelle Vanderhooft, and Aml El-Mohtar. According to Goodreads,
“The 15 tantalizing, thrilling, and ingenious tales in ‘Steam-Powered’ put a new spin on steampunk by putting women where they belong — in the captain’s chair, the laboratory, and one another’s arms. The women push steampunk to its limits and beyond.”
Things I Read That I Love #17: Robo-Readers
HAYLO and welcome to the 17th 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 Angie Xtravaganza and law school! 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.
Firstly, let’s talk about how the This American Life episode about the Foxconn Apple factory, which I once TIRTL’ed, has now been “redacted.” YUP:
The 38-minute monologue was an excerpt of a one-man show by Mike Daisey, in which he describes his experience visiting a Foxconn Technology Group factory that produces Apple iPhones and iPads in Shenzen, China.
In the monologue, Daisey details harsh working conditions and dramatic encounters with workers at the factory, some of which did not actually take place, the show said today.
Also if you’ve not yet read Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs, then you probably should, everybody keeps talking about it. Anyhow, onwards and upwards!
The Case(s) Against Law School (March 2012), New York Magazine – So o, some lawyers are suing law schools who overstate the possibilities of their graduates getting jobs, which could end up being a very very very big deal.
Housed (March 2012), Guernica – A real estate story by a writer who married a poet and tried to find a home in the Bay Area because it was her Mom’s one true dream –> “Is homeownership, despite three presidents’ best efforts, out of reach for the sinking middle-class? Good riddance, says one former homeowner.”
No Earthly Trace: The Vanishing of Justin Gaines (March 2012), Atlanta – Is this the 500th article I’ve read about parents who lost a child, like had their child disappear? I feel like it is.
The Slap of Love (1995), Open City – “This is the story of Angel Segarra, a Puerto Rican kid from the South Bronx who became Angie Xtravaganza, doyenne of the drag world made briefly famous by Jennie Livingston’s acclaimed 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning.“
Honor Thy Father (June 1998), Texas Monthly – What strikes me about this one is how hands-off the community seems to have been despite the fact that the Dad in this story was clearly a complete fucking lunatic abusing his children.
On The Market (March 2012), n+ 1– “A classmate from college set me up at Sotheby’s, a company I knew little about. In my interview, I told my future boss that I had never been able to imagine an idea that could be best expressed by painting it. “But,” I added, making exaggerated eye contact, “appreciating art doesn’t mean you can send effective emails. I can write. I can make your job easier for you.” This is the best thing to say in an interview if you are young and unqualified to do anything other than maintain a personal blog. I started three weeks later. “
Bizarro World (August 2007), Boston – “That’s what my wife and I entered when we drove up to an arcade in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, where she would attempt to break an official world record in the classic video game Tetris.”
Those Fabulous Confabs (February 2012), New York Magazine – “Smart talk has never been such a valuable commodity. It’s spawned conferences like TED, Davos, and now a slew of upstart competitors. It has made the eighteen‑minute TED lecture a viral online phenomenon. But are we running out of things to say?”
The Difference Between Public and Private Morality (March 2012), robertreich.com – “Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state. But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality.”
For Anyone Who Likes Sex, Feelings, Love Letters, Books, All Of The Above
Carmen’s Team Pick:
This is a Melissa Gira Grant appreciation post.
See, the thing is, Melissa Gira Grant does really amazing things and I feel like you’d like her. I like her first and foremost because ever since I met her in 2009 working on THE LINE I was overwhelmed with how cool she was. She self-describes herself as a “freelance writer,” but really she does it all: from talking on various issues of sex and sexuality on campuses and at conferences and writing and publishing creative and issue-based writing for various outlets to working in the arenas of human sexuality and sex work, queer people doing cool things, and feminism.
I think she’s the best.
photo by nikola tamindzic
One year ago she changed my life and published this anthology of Internet-authored stories about love and sex and relationships, “Coming and Crying,” in which I read these little pieces of people printed out on paper and then cried, true to form.
And then she gave me the gift of this bag, only about a month ago, which a girl fell out of her seat on a WMATA Metrobus trying to read when I got to my stop. (Please buy one because you feel so good with one.) (Also because the other one says “I like books and have feelings.”)
But just last week, I got this email in my inbox from Glass Houses Press, which Melissa started after the not-so-surprising success of her Kickstarter campaign to publish “Coming and Crying,” in which her newest product was announced. I decided instantly that I wanted it, mostly because it’s essentially a love letter delivery service – only the writing isn’t fiction and the letters aren’t to you.
For 25 dollars, you can sign up for “What Price Love?” online — a project labeled “performance” but that sounds like “perfection” to me. Once you’ve signed up, you have access to the actual, real-life correspondence (read: love letters) shared between two people from March to November of last year. But you won’t be receiving the letters as a thick packet or an e-book or a PDF once you’ve hit “purchase.” You’ll receive them as emails, the method in which they were actually delivered to the two people who were sending and receiving them, and at the exact same times on the exact same dates they were sent just 12 months before:
What Price Love? is an email love letter subscription, lasting nine months. Subscribers will receive the exact email I sent in 2011 in their inbox now in 2012 (e.g., what I wrote on the morning of March 8th before I went to work, you’ll get that, too, and at the same time). It’s like I am writing to you.
How often will they come? The letters will ebb and flow: that first burst of getting to know one another, the rush of obsession, the pace slowing, and then, that’s it. They stop.
You’ll enter into the correspondence at the time you subscribe, and get to/have to wait between love letters the same way their object did.
I’ll get to go back through the letters with you.
The end of the description posted online reads, “together we’ll decide what love letters are worth.”
I’m so excited to figure that out.
How about you?
Eileen Myles Still Has It: The Autostraddle Review of “Snowflake / different streets”
There comes a time in every girl’s life when she needs to learn something the hard way. She packs up her bag and she runs away, when she gets back, it happens: the thing that suddenly makes the loneliness a little less palpable and everything a little less grey. Something good comes. Or, in my case, two good things. It was a brown envelope from Wave Books and inside was Eileen Myles’ name – twice. There were two little books, stuck together forever in the poet’s new tandem book Snowflake / different streets. Two books wearing the same little white sweater. I breathed in. Eileen Myles still has it. Eileen Myles will always have it. It was February 2012 then. I felt more certain then than ever that I was going to be okay.
Myles brings forth her first collection of poetry since 2007 in Snowflake / different streets, divided neatly between the “new” and “newer” pieces. (Which is so very Eileen that it makes you smile.) The book will be available come April in its softcover edition as well as a digital edition.
I had to wait a month to really sit down and read the tandem book – I’d picked at it piece by piece throughout February, but until Spring Break I kept thinking, “what are the themes?” and I’d just end up starting all over at square one again on buses and trains. Then the day came where I read it, cover to flipside cover, in order and in a couple of hours with only one break in between. Suddenly I saw every theme, every line, and understood every word. Suddenly it all became very clear to me what made the two books different, what brought them together, and what let them stand alone. And suddenly I was crying.
Snowflake
Snowflake is dedicated to Jean Larkin.
I started off this half of the collection wondering what exactly Myles meant by “snowflake.” What does that word even stand for? In poetry everything stands for something, right? What unfolds in the over 100 pages of poems are stories of these singular moments in time, a series of singular moments. Within the volume exist these irreplaceable, completely unique, one hundred percent-without-chance-of ever-being-duplicated pieces of a life.
I’m not even a boat / I’m where a boat / crashed. / I put my impossible / body in your hands / is this a pen
– “Computer”
Myles is on a journey in Snowflake. She is saying goodbye and also hello a lot – she goes “home,” she travels from San Diego to Los Angeles, she steals pens in New York City, and she loses people and animals she loves along the way. But she is absolutely going somewhere. The poems all form, in the end, this long voyage towards something you don’t know about yet, but she does. Reading it is like the feeling that you are on the road to your manifest destiny but you have no idea what it looks like, just that it exists.
I imagine you / flying around like / ancient art / all gold / don’t be scared / when I call / I’ll be new
– from “Transportation”
It becomes clear, then, that a snowflake is a lot of things. It’s this tiny, unpredictable, unstoppable, one-of-a-kind thing that ends by fading out or lumping together with a bunch of other unique things. It’s a moment that can’t be repeated or replayed, and that you experience once, a million times. A snowflake is a photograph you lose when you move to a new city or an entry in a journal that, no matter how detailed, still lacks the smell and the touch and the feeling of what it was like to live in that person in that time. A snowflake is kind of like a life.
I locked it up / and took the key / and lived / for that moment / snowflake / I wasn’t there
– from “Snowflake”
different streets
The new poems / are poems of / healing. / But first I’ll / be funny.
– Untitled
different streets is dedicated to Leopoldine Core. It’s kind of like that Robert Frost poem: “two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” only in this instance Myles is not the only person walking. Most, if not all, of the poems in this part of the book emanate with passion for this woman Myles loves very deeply, and in them she reconciles their differences.
…You can’t even see / us. Cause we’re everything / else. And it’s ours. And I / love you in the blind spot / our changing ages.
-from “glowing stick”
Myles is distant in age from Core, and in different streets she explores how those differences affect not only her life, but theirs, and the lives they’re living parallel while they lay so connected. But there’s also a disconnect with age that isn’t about your younger lady, but more about your younger you, and the vast sea of time that separates a 59-year-old woman from who she was when she was in her 20s, or 30s. In the end what triumphs is love: the kind of love you feel for someone so deep it connects islands years apart, and the kind for your own self and your own soul.
you’ve made me monstrous / and I love it / I knew a man / who laughed at himself / for being this way / stinking of love
– from “hi”
different streets is the firsthand account of how “two roads in a yellow wood” might become one – if they so choose. It’s a story about two very different lives becoming one beautiful thing, and how even then the paths must diverge. A street doesn’t always have a turn outlet, or directions and lights, or markers, or signs. Kind of like a life.
Eileen Myles Still Has It
What shines through in Snowflake / different streets is the singularity of a life. The incredible isolation and loneliness of having only your own life to live and nobody else to understand exactly what that’s like (since they are so busy living their own), but also the rare and wonder-filled kind of companionship that reminds you that there can always be something we all understand. There are no two snowflakes that look or fall or taste or feel the same, and what Myles recognizes is that neither are two roads – even when they lead to the same place. Somehow the smallest snowflake will survive and make its way to the ground to stick, and every road, no matter how often travelled, will still stand marked.
Kind of like a life.
the world is flooded with you. / That / good.
– from “Girlfriend”
by monika merva
Things I Read That I Love #16: Enjoy The Silence
HELLO and welcome to the 16th 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 asexuality and phone booths! 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.
Women’s Novels (by Margaret Atwood) (May 1993), Harper’s – “I like to read novels in which the heroine has a costume rustling discreetly over her breasts, or discreet breasts rustling under her costume; in any case, there must be a costume, some breasts, some rustling, and, over all, discretion.”
Lawrence V. Texas: How Laws Against Sodomy Became Unconstitutional (March 2012), The New Yorker – Really fascinating look at the legendary gay rights case — I actually had no idea who these people were until I read this.
Letter From Louisiana: Shelter and the Storm (November 2005), The New Yorker – Katrina refugees in Bayou Black, looking for the best path for starting over.
This Chart is a Lonely Hunter: The Narrative Eros of the Infographic (February 2012), The Millons – The history of infographics. Really cool stuff! Also has stuff about Nicholas Fenton, who our Design Director Alex really likes a lot. This isn’t a good one for Instapaper though ’cause you need to be able to see the pictures to understand it, so read it online.
The Grey Box: An Investigative Look at Solitary Confinement (January 2012), Dart Society Reports – I feel like I’ve been reading a lot about prison conditions and incarceration rates and stuff lately, it’s really horrifying. I can’t fathom Solitary Confinement. This country has issues.
Man-on-Man: The New Gay Romance Written By and For Straight Women (December 2009), LA Weekly – “As for why a straight woman writes gay romance, Penley suggests, it has to do with body politics. Women’s bodies are a political and social battleground. Women are told how to behave, and whether or not they can abort fetuses. They are held to impossibly high standards of beauty. Maybe they write with men’s bodies, she theorizes, because those bodies aren’t as problematic as their own. Maybe men’s bodies are just easier.”
How We Lost to the White Man (May 2008), The Atlantic – “From Birmingham to Cleveland and Baltimore, at churches and colleges, Cosby has been telling thousands of black Americans that racism in America is omnipresent but that it can’t be an excuse to stop striving. As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities.”
Enjoy the Silence (January 2012), The Morning News – Did you know people actually talk on their cell-phones in libraries now and nobody does anything about it? What’s happening to this world!?!!
Among the Asexuals (February 2012), The Guardian – “Annette has spent her life feeling misunderstood while simultaneously failing to comprehend what motivates those around her. When she wants to talk about politics, her colleagues want to talk about their “crappy husbands.”
Takeout Story: Behind Bulletproof Glass and Out on a Bike for a Chinese Restaurant in Mott Haven (October 2011), Capital New York – Honestly I thought the author unnecessarily inserted himself into the story for this one and sometimes sounded patronizing, but it was still really interesting. It also reminded me of Deliveryman’s Uprising (“For $1.75 an hour, they put up with abusive employers, muggers, rain, snow, potholes, car accidents, six-day weeks, and lousy tips. Not anymore.”), from New York Magazine in 2007.
Why the Super-Rich Love the UK (February 2012), The Guardian – “The capital of the UK has one of the world’s largest concentrations of the super-rich, and the reason for that is that we have chosen to have them here, as a matter of deliberate government policy.”
Things I Read That I Love #15: Better Late Than Never
HELLO and welcome to the fifteenth 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 brainstorming, sorority girls and Southwest airlines!
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.
For the record, the idea is that I publish a new TIRTL (or “turtle” as my girlfriend pronounces it when asking me WHERE IS THE TURTLE?) every Friday, but because on Thursday and Friday I spent 17 hours in transit to/from San Francisco to Chicago and 22 hours in Chicago, I wasn’t able to get to it. But boy did I have time to read some shit and love it!
Luv and War at 30,000 Feet (March 2012), Texas Monthly – This is about why Southwest Airlines has survived while everyone else fails! Let me just say that the free bag-check thing and the fact that there are no penalties for changing your reservation are like the most magical things an airline has ever done since Virgin America put power outlets in their seats for your laptop.
Brainstorming Doesn’t Really Work (January 2012), The New Yorker – Actually the most interesting part of this wasn’t the first few bits about brainstorming not working but the stuff about how the success of group collaborations varies based on factors like building architecture and how well the collaborators know each other.
Suburban Madness (November 2002), Texas Monthly – There was a woman who ran her husband over four times.
The Decline and Fall of Parental Authority (February 2012), Alternet – “In a tightening economy, with overcrowded feeder-schools and an uncertain future ahead, it’s easy to understand why kids aren’t enthusiastic about school. College is so exorbitantly expensive that students frequently drop out, unable to pay the tab. And if they do manage to graduate, young adults still face high unemployment and skyrocketing living expenses, which often drive them back home, still owing thousands of dollars in student loans…when I inquire about their hopes for the future, I often hear them earnestly voice expectations that a single YouTube gone viral or a cell-phone app or a reality TV part will instantly “explode” them into a life of bling.”
America’s Confessor (January 2012), The Prospect – About the guy who made PostSecret.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave (February 2012), Mother Jones – I kept thinking about Foxconn while reading this, and I felt troubled by this article on a few unexpected levels that might take many paragraphs to explain. I think ultimately capitalism is just fucked and unfair, and we keep wanting to make it fair but we can’t, because it’s unfair by design.
Brain Gain: The Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs (April 2009), The New Yorker – “Chatterjee worries about cosmetic neurology, but he thinks that it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery has; in fact, with neuroenhancement it’s harder to argue that it’s frivolous.”
Same-as-That (March 2012), Harper’s – This is such a lovely story, about things like love, and Andy Warhol, and love in a time of AIDS, and coming out, and opera, and letters, and time and fate and signs and sex.
Sister Act: Deep Inside The Secret Lives of Sorority Girls at Ohio State University (October 1999), Rolling Stone – Oh, the memories.
A Very Queer Edition of “Things I Read That I Love”
[feature image by Mark Wahweotten]
HELLO and welcome to a very special 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 all kinds of things!
Generally this is the part of the column where I tell you that this “column” is “less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site” but today I’m doing an all-queer edition of some of my favorite #longreads I read before I started doing Things I Read That I Love and also haven’t already written about elsewhere on the website. The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love. To look at 100 gay magazine covers from all of herstory, check this out.
Straight Girls’ Seduction (November 2004), The Village Voice – “These encounters slip out, not as hushed sorority secrets, but as casual exclamations, like my friend who told me how she was invited to a wedding where she’s kissed both the bride and the groom. But sometimes I’m still surprised…”
Lesbian Chic: The Bold, Brave New World of Gay Women (May 1993), New York Magazine – This is a classic. Cannon.
Portrait of an HIV Positive Lesbian Centerfold (September 1994), The Advocate – “At 16 she declared that she wanted to be [a Playboy model], and only later did she realize that she “wanted them” as much as she wanted to be like them.”
The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School: Love and the Ambisexual, Heteroflexible Teen (January 2008), New York Magazine – Holy shit when this article came out it was SUCH A THING, everyone was talking about it. I think Haviland and I even started using the phrase “cuddle puddle” in our everyday vernacular. Of course I worked in publishing in New York City then and was writing about sexuality, so maybe it just seemed that way.
Second Nature (March 2008), 5280 – “The story of a local family raising a little girl born in the wrong body.”
Why I Am A Lesbian (March 2001), Ebony Magazine – This is just kinda sweet.
Gay in Rhea (June 2004), The Stranger – “When a county in rural Tennessee made national news by attempting to make homosexuality illegal, a local lesbian decided to host the Rhea County’s first gay pride celebra- tion. She wound up paying a high price.”
The Other Mother (July 2004), The New York Times – You think lesbian custody disagreements are complicated now, take a brief trip back in time and read this article.
Showtime’s L Word: Not Your Mother’s Lesbians (January 2004), New York Magazine – “Is the new lesbian image, as put forth by The L Word, too metrosexualized? Inevitably, there will be those who argue that it is, and just as many who will argue that it’s been a long time coming. We’re argumentative—it’s part of our lesbodramatic legacy. But after years of living down our dumpy reputation, perhaps it behooves us to put our best, most madeup faces forward, for a change.”
Art Attack! Read A F*cking Book: ‘The Last Nude’
Art Attack Month:
0. 1/28/2012 – Art Attack Call for Submissions, by Riese
1. 2/1/2012 – Art Attack Gallery: 100 Queer Woman Artists In Your Face, by The Team
2. 2/3/2012 – Judy Chicago, by Lindsay
3. 2/7/2012 – Gran Fury, by Rachel
4. 2/7/2012 – Diane Arbus, by MJ
5. 2/8/2012 – Laurel Nakadate, by Lemon
6. 2/9/2012 – 10 Websites For Looking At Pictures All Day, by Riese
7. 2/10/2012 – LTTR, by Jessica G.
8. 2/13/2012 – Hide/Seek, by Danielle
9. 2/15/2012 – Spotlight: Simone Meltesen, by Laneia
10. 2/15/2012 – Ivana, by Crystal
11. 2/15/2012 – Gluck, by Jennifer Thompson
12. 2/16/2012 – Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Gabrielle
13. 2/20/2012 – Yoko Ono, by Carmen
14. 2/20/2012 – Zanele Muholi, by Jamie
15. 2/20/2012 – The Malaya Project, by Whitney
16. 2/21/2012 – Feminist Fan Tees, by Ani Iti
17. 2/22/2012 – 12 Great Movies About Art, by Riese
18. 2/22/2012 – Kara Walker, by Liz
19. 2/22/2012 – Dese’Rae L. Stage, by Laneia
20. 2/22/2012 – Maya Deren, by Celia David
21. 2/22/2012 – Spotlight: Bex Freund, by Rachel
22. 2/24/2012 – All the Cunning Stunts, by Krista Burton
23. 2/26/2012 – An Introductory Guide to Comics for Ladygays, by Ash
24. 2/27/2012 – Jenny Holzer, by Kolleen
25. 2/27/2012 – Tamara de Lempicka by Amanda Catharine
25. 2/27/2012 – 10 Contemporary Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About, by Lemon/Carrie/Riese
26. 2/27/2012 – Read a F*cking Book: ‘The Last Nude,’ by Amanda Catharine
How do you write a novel about a real person? How do you decide what to keep or dismiss, embellish or invent? The challenge is compounded when there are still people alive to remember the subject — when those who were there, or whose parents were there, are in a position to maintain the official story or offer their own inevitable fictions? After all, unlike the biographer, the novelist doesn’t need to parse the legend created by her subject. In fact, she’s at liberty to pick and choose the most interesting, titillating, or salacious aspects and expand on them at will, all under the safe umbrella of fiction. Ellis Avery approaches such a legend in her book The Last Nude, which centers on the painter Tamara de Lempicka, perhaps best known for iconic, frequently reproduced paintings: “Auto Portrait” and “La Belle Rafaela.” (Read Art Attack!: Tamara de Lempicka Didn’t Care Who Knew)
I’m always hesitant to read historical fiction about real people because, while I love the genre, I can’t help but wonder if what I’m reading is true. I’m distracted by the intersection of fact and fiction and, if I’m perfectly honest, I usually wind up reading a biography after the novel. Avery elegantly avoids this problem – for I suspect there are a lot of would-be detectives like me! – by structuring her narrative in two parts. The first, comprising the bulk of the book, recounts the events of just under a year in the life of Rafaela, the model for de Lempicka’s famous painting. In giving Rafaela a surname, Fano, and a voice, Avery brings to life the woman who has so long be known only by a face on a canvas that has enthralled, seduced; been studied and psychoanalyzed. Rafaela’s narration is vibrant and believable as a seventeen-year-old American making her way in Paris without, of course, the permission of her parents. Avery strikes the right balance between youthful naïveté and hardened woman of the world, which surviving in Paris has made her. Rafaela entertains dreams of becoming a designer in between entertaining the men whose money and gifts pay for her apartment until her association with de Lempicka affords her a paycheck and independence.
Throughout Rafaela’s portion we meet several of the Parisian literati of the time, including Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who cameo as Rafaela’s helpful lesbian godmothers. The minor characters flit around Rafaela and Tamara in varying degrees of complexity, and some prior knowledge of the characters – Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, etc. – is helpful, but not necessary. They stand alone as characters, but those interested in early 20th century LGBT culture will appreciate seeing them brought to life.
Rafaela’s idea of romance, tarnished by a string of boyfriends who certainly weren’t there for love, is rekindled when she meets a beautifully appointed woman perched on a car at the Bois de Boulogne. The woman is Tamara de Lempicka, and for this first part of the book, we see Tamara through Rafaela’s eyes, colored as they are by admiration, seduction, and a tragic inability to see Tamara’s betrayal until it blindsides her. Tamara is at first an apparition of elegance and aristocratic manner, but as the story progresses, the reader readily perceives cracks in the façade: where Rafaela falls in love with Tamara, it’s apparent from the first page that Tamara is more in love with the idea of Rafaela than she could ever be with the girl herself. Nevertheless, Tamara takes Rafaela home to her apartment to model, and ultimately to her bed. Their love affair is masterfully woven with the story of Tamara’s painting, the sweetness and passion of it all rendered with a literary echo of the sensual brushstrokes and vibrant color that characterizes the real “Belle Rafaela.”
There’s likely a temptation to fictionalize real people into characters who bear but a passing resemblance to their models so as to tell a better story, to make them more saintly or more horrific according to the plot. Tamara de Lempicka, to be sure, led a life that didn’t require much embellishment to seduce and enthrall the reader. If anything, Avery needed to humanize her, to dissociate her however minutely from the wealth, the jet-setting, the marriages, the fabulous parties and scandalous affairs, to turn her into a person worth caring about – which is not the same thing as caring about or respecting her artwork. Rafaela – who is wholly fictional, since not much is known about the model – is drawn to Tamara first by her accoutrements, before she knows anything about her: by her fancy car, her exclusive address, exotic profession, even the crispness of her gloves.
The last sixty pages are narrated in Tamara’s voice as an old woman. The device makes for a poetic but rushed ending as Avery must use Tamara to make up the time between the end of Rafaela’s story and Tamara’s old age. Avery is a writer of great subtlety, and it is particularly evident in the last few pages as Tamara considers the Rafaela she first painted and the ones she has worked on since, using artwork, appropriately, as a lens to examine aging. But it’s a one-sided and ultimately unsatisfying ending that is full of lovely phrases but unfulfilling in terms of the plot.
The Last Nude, like Avery’s first novel, The Teahouse Fire, is a deliciously ambiguous novel in its assessment of the characters, appropriate for a book that deals with real people who can’t be neatly pigeonholed for an ending. Rafaela may be the one betrayed, but she’s far from an innocent angel, and while Tamara is ruthless in her pursuit of art, money, and patronage, she’s ultimately not an unconscionable manipulator. It’s a story about the confluence of love and art, of sensual romance and pure eroticism, but also about the realities of life, particularly one lived at a time when one’s opportunities were limited by gender, money, and language – not so different, then, from our own.
And in the end, it’s a measured consideration of what kind of people might have provided the context in which to create art: the interpersonal relationships that foster the creativity behind it, the city that grounds it, the exchange of money and services that facilitate it, and what the people involved in its creation are obligated to sacrifice for its sake. The Last Nude provides a compellingly written backstory for a woman whose arresting, penetrating stare has captivated art aficionados for years. Ultimately, it’s still fiction peppered with appearances from well-known figures – but I rather like thinking of Rafaela as more than a footnote to the title of a painting.
Read a F*cking Book: Sylvia Traymore Morrison’s ‘Almost There, Almost’
If your social circle is anything like mine, you have a funny friend. In fact, if your life is actually like mine, all of your friends are hilarious / clever / witty – but I digress.
Sylvia Traymore Morrison is funny. But she’s more than that. Sylvia Traymore Morrison is arguably the only famous African-American woman impressionist in the United States. She made history as the first black woman asked to be an Associate Writer for Saturday Night Live. She toured with the late Whitney Houston, the Four Tops, and the Temptations. And she recently self-published a book about her life called Almost There, Almost that I think you should read:
The book, written over a period of eighteen years, follows the ups and downs of Sylvia’s career and life. She discusses her struggle, but balances it with all these great, lively and enthusiastic stories about her totally fabulous life as an up-and-comer. She knew Jerry Seinfeld back when he was just standing up. And she even dedicates two chapters to Whitney Houston:
Near the end of Whitney’s set, she sent security to look for me and motioned me to come on stage with her. I did not know what to expect. Had I done something wrong? Did she want me to see something? Was I in trouble? Did she want to make a special announcement? None of the above. What she did was, grabbed my hand, held it high in the air with hers, and I believe you could hear the roar of the audience for miles. While the audience was going nuts, Whitney looked at me and smiled. I knew she was pleased. We left the stage and before security could take either of us away from the stage, we gave each other a big hug. Whitney was the absolute biggest thing in the industry at that time, and she was delighted with having me on her tour. I went back to my dressing room, broke down and cried. Whitney Houston selflessly shared her stage with me. No one told her to do that.
Sylvia opens up about her own tribulations: bouts with domestic violence, a brush with HIV/AIDS during the peak of the crisis, and growing up 12 blocks from the White House (which is not glamorous, not one bit) in a way that is moving, involving, and honest. Her strength, courage, and ability to continue to laugh makes all of those stories even more poignant:
Tweety Bird, Regina’s little 3 year old daughter was outside playing by herself in the courtyard. There we were, in a huge apartment complex with no one outside in the courtyard but a 3 year old baby. I found that mighty strange considering it was around 8 in the morning. I stopped, spoke and asked where her mother was. She said her mother was “upstairs on the floor dead.” I looked at her concerned because that was a really strange answer coming from a 3 year old.
You’re going to want to read this book.
[BUY ME]
Ty Gray-EL writes in the Foreward:
It is my humbled opinion that Sylvia Traymore Morrison should be lauded as a national treasure and that her story become required reading for anyone who is in need of motivation. This story outlines some of the most outlandish, extraordinary and yet, triumphant experiences anyone could imagine. They serve as inspiration to us all. You simply cannot read Almost There, Almost without being inspired.
Almost There, Almost is an easy read for the most part. The tone is casual and relaxed – just like Sylvia’s demeanor in person. (Meeting Sylvia was possibly the most fun I’ve had all year.) This book promises you two things: it was written by a funny person and it was written by a great person. You can’t go wrong.
Plus, all orders for softcover copies of the book will now get you the first manuscript edition, with no edits and with all the original content. The book may go through revisions before its second publishing, so what you’ll get now is the original version of the story.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably looked around at your life once or twice and gone, “Hmm, where am I going? Who am I? What’s going on? Where are my keys? I lost my phone.” Sylvia’s right there with you, still. We’re all almost there. She’s just honest about it.
You can buy Almost There, Almost online on Amazon. You can also buy it for Kindle.
Things I Read That I Love #14: Your Lucky Day
HELLO and welcome to the 14th 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 that guy who kept all these exotic animals in his backyard and then killed them! 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 missed it last week ’cause I was buried in camp, so this one is particularly lengthy!
The Plagiarist’s Tale (February 2012), The New Yorker – This guy took plagiarism to a whole new level, constructing an entire novel out of pieces from so many other novels!
A Family Erased: The Chris Coleman Story (August 2011), St. Louis Magazine – “Could a father strangle his wife and young sons just to keep a high salary and a sexy mistress? And if not, who did?” Good question!
The Book of Jobs: The Great Debate (February 2012), Reuters – I tend to read whatever Maureen Tkacik (aka “Moe Tkacik” from Ye Olde Jezebel) writes, so I read this, and honestly I’ve not read much about Steve Jobs, and this was unlike the things I’ve already read.
And Then There’s Me (February 2012), The Pacific Northwest Inlander – One man’s story of growing up Mexican in a white family –> “People aggravate Shane because, he believes, they possess innately something he worries he will never find — the calm that comes from being perceived by the world the way you perceive yourself.”
Man or Beast (February 2012), Cincinnati Magazine – Crazy story of the man who let all his exotic animals loose in Ohio and then shot himself in the head!
Left Behind (Feb 2012), Los Angeles Magazine – “As an actress, she never rose out of B-grade obscurity, but when her mummified corpse was found last year, Yvette Vickers drew the international headlines she’d always yearned for.”
Not the Phil Donahue Show (Summer 1993), The Virginia Quarterly – Surprise! This is actually fiction. I didn’t realize that either when I started reading it, and it’s a story about a mother whose daughter comes out to her in the first scene, and then all of these other things I think you’d appreciate, I really do.
Forever Dies Hard (February 2012), BlogHer – Did you know that diamonds are not actually worth anything? Also me and the girl who wrote this article were in a calendar together once, weird.
She’s Here, She’s Queer, She’s Fired (July 2005), Texas Monthly – On the firing of a beloved basketball coach on account of her being a lesbian.
Boy Crazy (May 2001), Boston Magazine – This article is so weird! It’s about NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy-Love Association. I have no idea what is going on with the author of this piece or anything in it, I found the tone disorienting. Now you try it.
The Race That Is Not About Winning (March/April 2011), The Believer – A stunning ode to Michael Cera, of all people, and running, with lots of brilliant things in it like, “To the extent that running is about the self, it is the self nourished by solitude, not the self glorifying in narcissism.”
Listening to Books (February 2012), n+1 – My friend Caitlin used to make fun of me all the time for listening to so many audio books, but maybe she didn’t mean it.
The Angriest Man in Television (January 2008), The Atlantic – All about David Simon and The Wire.
feature image via its-becky.blogspot.com
J.K. Rowling Is Writing A New Book, Try Not To Pee Your Pants
Intern Grace’s Team Pick:
J.K Rowling, the writing goddess who bequeathed the Harry Potter series on mankind, is writing a new, not-Harry Potter book. Give yourself a moment to make sure you’re still breathing. Are you good? Ok.
Her people announced this morning that Rowling has a deal for new book that’s going to be for an adult audience, and that’s basically all anyone is saying. Her website is apparently under construction until spring, but it has been updated with little tiny crumbs of information, like “further details will be announced later in the year,” which will be like, December if the timing of the Pottermore release was any indication.
Also this picture was posted:
I hope this is the actual name.
So descriptive!
There’s also a note from the author, which mysteriously says, “While I have loved writing it just as much, my next book will be very different from the Harry Potter series,” which either means it’s a Hermione/Ginny fanfic or a murder mystery where the reader has to figure out what the book is about before their favorite author kills off more beloved characters.
OK TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS.
I Read “Trans/Love” And It Was Awesome
Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary, a recent collection from editor Morty Diamond, is intensely personal and sexy, but is about far more than sex — instead, it explores the many ways of navigating love and self across the gender spectrum.
With pieces from filmmaker Silas Howard, writer Max Valerio, author and performer Julia Serano, author Sassafras Lowery, activist Bryn Kelly, Sister Spit’s Cooper Lee Bombardier, and musician Shawna Virago, Trans/Love
“So many books are out there right now that focus either on one specific person’s transition and everything that encompasses that, which includes relationships and sex and all that stuff, but you get such a broader view of the community when you do an anthology,” says Diamond in an interview with Autostraddle.
The collection develops on Diamond’s earlier anthology, From the Inside Out, which featured coming-out stories from writers on the trans-male and masculine side of the gender spectrum.
“As I grew older and transitioned myself, and started to learn more about the trans community at large, I just realized wow, there’s so much to be said from the whole range of perspectives: trans women and trans men and everything in between. At least for this anthology, I decided yes, I definitely wanted to work with trans women, and I’m really glad that I did. Their voices deserve to be heard just as much as trans male and masculine-identified people,” says Diamond. “I guess as a trans man, I personally feel like there’s not enough co-mingling of the voices between trans men and trans women, and I would like to be a part of furthering that.”
Representing a variety of perspectives and paths was also important to Diamond on a personal level. In his contribution to the anthology, Diamond discusses how his own transition “did not follow a normal trajectory,” and that he has struggled with his gender identity.
“When you’re in the trans community, you really hesitate, and justly so, to ever ever make broad statements like, ‘Well, this is what all trans men think / This is what all trans women think.’ I can only say for myself that […] for me, I felt like I wanted to look male but I didn’t know if being on hormones was going to be the very best thing for me,” says Diamond. “I was on hormones for five or six years, and then I stopped and I realized, I really like that all the nuances of gender are in my brain but are not necessarily on my body. Because I look like a dude. I have a beard, I got chest surgery; I look like a dude and I’m very happy to look like a dude, but in my brain, all kinds of things exist in terms of gender and gender identity, they all co-mingle with each other, and thankfully I have a partner that understands this about me and fully accepts it and enjoys it, celebrates it. I’ve definitely found my own personal perspective on gender.”
Diamond recently started an online literary magazine called Bodies of Work, which focusses on trans and gender-variant art and literature. The featured artists and writers, which currently include Max Valerio (who contributed to Trans/Love), DJ Michelle Love, and the band Schmekel, will span all gender representations and art from music to performance art to literature and poetry.
“I realized what I like about doing anthologies is working with other people and seeing what their artistic output is,” says Diamond. “I’m excited that there will be this place for people, if they want to know about trans and gender-variant identified artists, they can come to this site and take a look and see what we do. I’m really super excited about it.”
Diamond has also applied for a grant from UC Berkeley, where he is finishing up his bachelor’s degree in sociology, to do an expansive oral history of trans people who transitioned over twenty years ago. He hopes to travel in order to film and archive their voices.
“It’s about the people in the community that transitioned and did all that stuff so long ago when things were really tough, and really finding out what that history was like. I think there’s little bits and pieces of it in books right now, but there’s no real compilation of voices, of oral histories, so that’s what I’m looking to do.”
Visit Bodies of Work, or get Trans/Love on Amazon. Several contributors also read from their collection pieces on YouTube.
In Which You May Avail Yourself of Free Advice On How and Why to Write
Rachel’s Team Pick:
This is not a new thing that I came across on the internet; it in fact dates all the way back to the days of yore, 2010, when we were still innocent of things like “Work It” and Michelle Bachmann on live national television. But it is a thing which brings me visceral delight every time I rediscover it, and perhaps you will feel the same way: This Recording, a publication which I feel a whole rainbow of positive feelings about, collected a massive compendium about the thoughts of many different writers on writing, and it’s truly a thing of beauty. A behemoth of an endeavor, it’s divided into four parts, and features everyone from Joyce Carol Oates to Thomas Pynchon to Gertrude Stein to Langston Hughes (and also my all-time favorite forever James Baldwin). If you care about writing or writers at all, you maybe want to set aside a chunk of your day for this. There are a lot of things in here that make me want to squeal and swoon and call my mom to tell her about, but in honor of the copy of Gravity’s Rainbow that is sitting unfinished at my bedside, here is a bit from Pynchon that I especially like. There are a lot of things we don’t know, but there are also some very smart and talented people who are just waiting to tell us new things, you know?
via jackandthewerewolf.tumblr.com
…This same free advice can also be applied to items of information. Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that the earlier stages of life we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person’s mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities therein for ruining a good story.
Things I Read That I Love #12
HELLO and welcome to the 12th 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 prison, sweatpants, 91-year-old fathers and Tao Lin! Also this week oddly sees marijuana as a recurring theme.
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.
The Caging of America: Why Are We Locking Up So Many People? (January 2012), The New Yorker – Our prison system is totally fucked, solitary confinement is fucked and crime rates are down but it’s not because we’re imprisoning everybody (because we are). This article is really thorough and gets into a lot of shit like the racism of the criminal justice system and the futility of marijuana laws, amongst other compelling topics.
The World of Charles Dickens, Complete With Pizza Hut (February 2012), The New York Times Magazine – My favorite writer-about-books, Sam Anderson, visits a derelict failed Dickens-themed amusement park in Chatham. This is basically everything I love about the world in one glorious article.
The Odd Couple: Romney vs. Gingrich (February 2012), Rolling Stone – If you, like me, are physically unable to watch the Republican debates because you might facepalm your face off, you’ll appreciate this hilarious and well-written take on the current state of affairs (the article is worth reading for the perfection of his descriptions of Romney and Gingrich alone).
The Truth Will Set You Free (December 2011), The Morning News – I did not even know that there was gonna be gay stuff in here but there was.
Sweatpants in Paradise: The Exciting World of Immersive Retail (September 2010), The Believer – “[Hollister] employees are selected for their insane good looks and friendliness, which creates the disorienting customer experience of receiving attention from people way out of your league over and over again.”
High Society (January 2012), The Washingtonian – Everyone in Washington DC is stoned, everyone is Nancy Botwin, etc.
Cheating, Incorporated (February 2011), Bloomberg BusinessWeek – On AshleyMadison.com, the website for men who want to cheat on their wives with other women and vice versa! Although really I wanted to bang my head against the wall when this guy kept complaining that facebook won’t take his ads and that it’s so hard to find investors for this kind of enterprise — he eventually did, of course, get the $20 million he needed — obviously we here at lesbian-ville have yet to achieve a similar feat.
Daddy Issues (March 2012), The Atlantic – “Even if, while howling like a banshee, I tore my 91-year-old father limb from limb with my own hands in the town square, I believe no jury of my peers would convict me. Indeed, if they knew all the facts, I believe any group of sensible, sane individuals would actually roll up their shirtsleeves and pitch in.”
Much Ado About Whatever (July 2011), The Morning News – About Tao Lin’s Muumuu House “web fiction factory” –> “The authors involved with Muumuu are young, relatively unknown to the larger literary world, and seem in their writing vaguely depressed. In their fiction and poetry, nothing much happens to their characters. And they all write like Tao Lin.”
Autostraddle Book Club #5: We’re Reading The Hunger Games!
Usually we take a slightly queer-er tack for Autostraddle Book Club; for instance, Dorothy Allison and Eileen Myles come to mind. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing particularly gay about The Hunger Games without doing some serious slashfiction work of your own. But the 2/3 of the editorial team who has read it is obsessed with it, and I feel like the only way I can justify taking the time to read it to myself is to make it about work, so here we are! Seriously though, I don’t think any of us will regret this. Remember how excited Laneia was about the trailer for the movie? I know, right?
Before there was a movie, however, there was a trilogy of books — The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay — which every single person I knew was reading but I still didn’t pay attention to because, I don’t know, a lot of people also like Rachael Ray’s show. But it would appear that they are very enjoyable books to read! And unlike a certain other popular book series that has since become a major motion picture, The Hunger Games features a strong female protagonist who, like, makes decisions and stuff. What decisions exactly? I DON’T KNOW. I HAVE TO READ THEM TO FIND OUT. I do not believe they are entirely centered around a dude, though, so that’s cool.
We’ll be reading all three books, which sounds like a lot but from what I hear you will have no problem finishing the whole trilogy over the course of a week. What’s that, you say? You didn’t get the trilogy for Christmahanakwanzakah and you’re not sure whether you want to buy three whole books, even though it seems like a foregone conclusion that you’ll love them? Well, you lucky dog, this is your day, because we are giving away one set of books to a randomly chosen commenter! I have yet to have anyone satisfactorily explain to me why the deadly competition in THG is called a “hunger game” specifically, but it always makes me want a sandwich when I think about it. So, to enter your name into the giveaway, leave a comment on this post explaining what delicious thing you plan on snacking on while reading for book club, and we’ll enter your name into a random drawing to win the trilogy for free! We’ll keep taking comments up until midnight EST on Wednesday (as in, the end of Wednesday and the beginning of Thursday) and announce the winner on Friday. My answer is Hyderabadi Hungama flavor Masala Munchies. What about you?
After we all have our books and have read them like the bright-eyed chipper little fans that we are, having been prepared for this opportunity by years of intense Harry Potter devotion, we will reconvene here in the last week of March to share our feelings. Does that sound good? Good! Go forth and comment, and then later read! May the odds be ever in your favor! I saw that on the Internet somewhere!
Things I Read That I Love #11
HELLO and welcome to the eleventh 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 crime in Baltimore and Dan Savage!
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.
The Rules of Misbehavior, Washington Monthly (March/April 2011) – This is basically the life story of Dan Savage. Near the end there’s some analysis regarding Savage’s emphasis on sexual satisfaction as essential to a successful relationship. It’s a really good article, I think.
Cases Crumble, Killers Go Free (September 2002), The Baltimore Sun – Jesus Fucking Christ. If you’ve seen The Wire, you’re somewhat prepared for this.
The Literary Pedigree of Downton Abbey (January 2012), The Millions – “In the end, this is the secret to Downton Abbey’s success, as well. The glamour of the earldom draws us in, but it’s the vividly realized characters who surround it — especially the servants below-stairs — that hold it in perspective, and so give it life.”
Leveling the Field: What I Learned From For-Profit Education (October 2011). Harper’s – Every wonder about Phoenix University — the one that’s always advertising everywhere? Like who goes there? Me too! That’s why I read this article.
Night Shifts (January 2012), The Rumpus – “Driving home is nothing like driving away, and night is nothing like the day. Life is different at night; we are different. Night tends to strip us of our titles, our worldly roles, our formal clothing and our credentials. Most of us retreat into our private lives and often we seek out secret forms of gratification. Our fear is sharpened, our loneliness honed.”
Shut the Fuck Up: Is Bill O’Reilly a Crazy Narcissist? (January 2012), Boston Magazine – The answer is yes, and the information in the post is ace.
The Devil in Greg Dark (February 2001), Esquire – The article’s about Greg Dark, an ex-pornographer who went on to direct music videos for stars like Britney Spears and Mandy Moore. But the part of the article that really got me is the part about the Leslie Carter music video he’s shooting during the time the Esquire reporter was shadowing him. Also, prepare yourself for misogyny.
The Admissions Whisperer, San Francisco Magazine (April 2008) – “Clarke, the most sought-after college coach in the Bay Area, is very particular about scissors and glue sticks — also calligraphy labels, accordion files, and color coding (yellow marker for anything positive, orange for negative, pink for not sure).”
Christmas in Baltimore City 2009 (May 2011), n+1 – “No one wants to accept this in a country based on individual mobility and the hope of individual distinction, but it is a fact: blackness still causes the distance to evaporate between who you are and what you have done and what the society has made you.”
Okay, so Longform.org, my favorite website in the universe, had this story up on its site this week, and obviously longform knows how to talk about trans folks although the 1995 story they link to does not:
So obviously I read it, and I didn’t know if I should include it here or not. See, my inclination to want to know your thoughts on it has nothing to do with the story it tells. It’s the way that it’s told. For starters you already know a lot of the story ’cause you saw Boys Don’t Cry and it made you cry.
Death of a Deceiver — I mean, the headline is already problematic, and so is the first sentence and most of the other sentences. I know it’s from Playboy, but they were known for serious quality feature story journalism once upon a time.
I’m not a very politically correct human IRL and it takes a lot to legitimately offend me personally (much less for me to write about something objectively being offensive), but WOW. I’d hope that the writer, Eric Konigsberg, would be embarrassed to know that this article has been republished online. I assume he’d write it differently today. He’s a really well-established and highly respected author with credits from The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Atlantic and so forth. Back then there was no GLAAD guide to writing about trans folks, now there is, and it’s also in the AP Style book.
If someone wrote this in 2012, I’d assume the author was transphobic or ignorant and engaging in some really nasty victim-blaming. But is this just a product of the times? The transphobia is just latent and insidious. It felt like maybe he thought he was simply telling a story “impartially” the way his readers would expect to hear it. Honestly, it’s likely I read this article in 1995 and didn’t think anything of it, but this time it burned my eyeballs. Thoughts/feelings?
“Cult Classic of Taiwanese Lesbian Literature” Now Excerpted In English, Available Online
Rachel’s Team Pick:
Qiu Miaojin was a Taiwanese novelist who Wikipedia describes as having had an “unapologetically lesbian sensibility;” her novel Notes of a Crocodile is described as a “cult classic of Taiwanese lesbian literature.” Now you can read an excerpt of her Chinese-language novel for the first time in English, translated by Bonnie Huie for The Brooklyn Rail. It is beautiful and I think you will enjoy it!
In the past, I believed that every man carried in him the innate prototype of a woman, and that he would love the woman who most resembled this prototype. Although I am a woman, I also share this prototype of a woman.
My prototype of a woman was the type who would appear in hallucinations at the last moments of your freezing to death at the top of an icy mountain, a mythical beauty who blurred the line between dreams and reality. For four years, that’s what I believed. And I wasted all of my university days–during which I had the most courage and honesty I would ever have towards life–because of it.
I don’t believe it anymore. It’s like the impromptu sketch of a street artist, a little drawing taped to my wall. When I finally learned to leave it behind, I gradually stopped believing it, and in doing so, sold an entire collection of priceless treasures for next to nothing. It was then that I realized I should leave behind some sort of record before the entire vial of my memories ran dry. I knew that these feelings would vanish one day, as if they had been only a dream, and that the list of what had been bought and sold–and at what price–would never be recovered.
feature image and in-post image both via captureddreams.tumblr.com
Things I Read That I Love #10
via facebook.com/pages/We-rule-the-world
HELLO and welcome to the tenth 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 Grey Gardens and illegal abortions!
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.
+ Victorian Tea Party Princess (February 2012), The Miami New-Times – I used to be big into old school Saturday Night Live and never really understood why this woman was on the show at all. Now she’s a completely insufferable Birther Tea Party Fox News Pundit Racist Homophobic Anti-Islam Weirdo Torpedo of CAHRAZY. Interesting article, obviously. Even better is that Jackson flipped out and wrote a response piece about how The Miami New Times is a socialist.
+ Pitchfork: 5.3 (January 2012), n+1 – On the rise of Pitchfork and its dangerous power over the music industry and influence on “indie rock.” It’s sort of a warning note, too, for websites prone to groupthink.
+ Interview with Mary Karr (January 2012), The Days of Yore – “I just sit down and write. I miss writing longhand, which I can’t do because I have a shoulder injury, but I edit longhand, which not everybody does. I just move around. I write in bed a lot. I’ll get in my bed with my laptop and write, but then I’ll kind of burn out, and I’ll have a cup of tea, and then I’ll come over here to the couch and write, and then I’ll go to that desk and write, then I’ll go to my desk upstairs, then I’ll get back in bed and write. Every time, I feel like I’m starting over.”
+ The Way it Was (Sep/Oct 2004), Mother Jones – Life before abortion was legal was a lot of things. One of those things was being sexually violated by abortion doctors — that’s what happened to the author of this piece.
+ LA Pedophile Bust Dismantles International Child Porn Ring (January 2012), LA Weekly — Um, I think the title is pretty descriptive.
+ The Throwaways (January 2012), The Rumpus – “I was pissed. I was virile. I was a clot of gamey teenager. I wanted to fight and draw and write and make messes and I was hoping maybe that I could go into an alley and get raped and then murdered and then maybe someone would rape my bones. That was the good type of mood I was in when I first picked up a copy of Leontiev’s Political Economy.”
+ Schoolhouse Rocked (March 2011), Texas Monthly – Basically this super rich private school in Texas, where The Bushes went and everything, had some problems with parents who didn’t understand why their kids were being taught to be tolerant of diversity and politically sensitive and nice to gay people.
+ The Secret of Grey Gardens (1972), New York Magazine – This was written before the movie, y’all! I can’t believe I’d never read it. Little Edie talks to the reporter just like in the movie and says the most amazing things in it! There’s new information in it, and like it fills in gaps from the movie. It’s just the best thing!
+ Counter-Terrorism is Getting Complicated (January 2012), Esquire – Actually moreso than finding the story itself interesting, I found the insight into the minds of the people who write crazy shit about gay people and liberals on the internet that I’d not had before. But also, it’s about how fucked our counter-terrorism situation is.
+ Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (February 2012), The Smithsonian – So in 1950, 4 million Americans lived alone which is slightly less than 10% of all the households. Now 32.7 million live alone, which is 28% of all American households. AND in Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Chicago, between 35%-45% of households are one person only. In Manhattan, it’s 1 out of every 2! I am one of those people, this guy is onto us.
Who Runs the Literary World? These Girls!
Rachel’s Team Pick:
Considering how much writing there is about writers, there’s precious little talk about women as literary greats. But you know what? We are. And moreover, when it comes to literary badasses, dykes and queers make a strong showing. For instance, in Flavorwire’s list of 10 Legendary Bad Girls of Literature, there’s Sappho, Collette, Alice Walker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Simone de Beauvoir, all of whom are notable not only for their incredible work but also for their love of the ladies.
ALICE WALKER
The authors of this list mention that they “could have made this list five times as long,” so who would you include? I vote for Eileen Myles, Dorothy Allison and Toni Morrison.