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A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Immersing Myself in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun

May 13, 2023 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

cover of black sun by rebecca roanhorseFantasy has never been my go-to genre. While I deeply respect the massive creativity that goes into building a strong fantasy world, my own brain doesn’t work that way and I often find fantastic novels hard to engage with—to surrender to. So when I say that I loved Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse with my whole heart, I mean this book leapt over all my fences, grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me (wonderfully) into a richly-imagined world I could not get enough of.

Fantastically American Mythology

In her end notes, Roanhorse describes her own love of fantasy and how there’s remarkably little of it written about the Americas. So she wrote the book she wanted to read. I wish I knew enough about the mythology and folklore of the pre-Columbian Americas to draw direct comparisons between the book and specific tribes, but also I know that Roanhorse took creative liberties in making her own world. The fragments I did recognize—the importance of the sun and crows—put me in mind of the shelves of kachina dolls my mom has in her home, gorgeous representations of immortal beings. So, for instance, when one character wears a cape fashioned from the feathers of a gigantic crow, I had a jumping off point. When Roanhorse describes the regalia and mask of the sun priest, I know enough to take my imagination farther than I normally would and try to soak up the details on the page so I can match the vision she has. An experience totally worth the effort. The various clans, religions, and locations in this book very much became real for me and I had so much trouble putting the book down (ask my kid).

Vivid Characters and a Compelling Plot

The opening scene of this book is visceral. Serapio’s mother is cutting her young son’s body and exposing his eyes to the sun to make him into a vessel for a god. As the mother of a young boy, it was a lot, but it was also richly described and layered enough to be fascinating. This was not gratuitous violence, this was the determined act of a woman trying to change the destiny of her people.

Other characters are equally interesting and nuanced. Naranpa, the sun priest, is a woman from “the wrong side of the tracks” grappling with some fascinating “palace intrigue” while trying to alter the relationship of the priesthood to the population entire. And Xiala, a drunk ship’s captain from a matriarchal culture that may or may not eat their lovers, is the hope on which Serapio’s plan hinges. There are also many side characters—including two nonbinary characters (it took me longer than it should have to get used to the “xe/xir” pronouns)—that complete and complicate this world, each with a story and a motivation interesting enough to earn them a place in the book.

Black Sun is a page turner in the best of ways as Roanhorse takes us from scene to scene in alternating locations from the point of view of alternating characters as the story weaves towards its conclusion. I had the pleasure of being stuck on a train with this book. It was thicker than I would usually carry downtown with me, but I couldn’t part with it. By the time I reached my destination I’d read more than 60 pages and I read another 40 on the way home. I also stayed up late reading because I wanted so badly to know what happens next.

Of course more happens than I can know at this minute because this is the first book of a trilogy. I’m holding off on buying the second book because the third won’t be out until next year and I want to pace myself. But you know if I’m planning my book buying for the next year around a series…it’s really fucking good.

For my friends and family who are fantasy readers and writers (hi Natasha, Roxana, and Nikki!) and interested in pre-Columbian history (hi Tosh and Dad!)—check out Black Sun, I really think you’ll love it as much as I did.

Filed Under: Books, Latin America

What I’m Reading When I Should Be Writing (And Why)

April 22, 2023 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

There are many different ways to avoid writing, even (sometimes especially) when the project is hot and there is nothing standing between you and the few luscious hours you could spend working on your book. I like to tell myself that I procrastinate in these times because I’m trying to stoke that fire even higher—make the writing irresistible so I can really dig in. The likelihood, though, is that I’m spending hours reading or on Twitter because I’m anxious that whoever I am on that day won’t live up to the work I need to do. Which is why I was really pleased to discover that the past few books I’ve read have actually been feeding my work—that even while I thought I was reading for pleasure there was some part of my brain that was actually preparing to get back down to work. Let me tell you about what I learned from Hunger Heart by Karen Fastrup, The Afflictions by Vikram Paralkar, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, and The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka and how I plan to apply these lessons to my current work in progress.

The Space of Autofiction in Hunger Heart

hunger heart cover imageI’m slow to adopt new ideas so when I started reading about autofiction (telling a story that is close to your real life using fictionalized details) I mashed it together with metafiction in my head and moved on because it just didn’t feel like where my creative energy was at. But reading Hunger Heart definitely opened my eyes to what autofiction can do. Fastrup uses a “fictional” character to delve into a period of her life when she was in and out of mental institutions with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. The book is interesting (not just because the Danish health system is so much more humane than the American one) and well written and I can see how allowing herself to tell what is essentially a memoir in a fictional way really freed her as a storyteller. She always had the option, of course, of telling the true details about her life in her book, but autofiction lets her streamline events and change the surrounding characters enough so that the book flows well and so that she’s putting the (interesting and sometimes uncomfortable) spotlight on herself rather than her then boyfriend or kids.

In my own book, Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard, I’m currently writing about what it was like to be a teenager in the town I grew up in. None of the characters are me but they aren’t not me either, and I’ve been wondering as I write just how fictional I have to get with the whole thing. There are many decisions to be made still, but I appreciated seeing this example of how well autofiction allowed Hunger Heart to get to the heart of the story even if the truth was a little fuzzy.

The Structure of The Afflictions

cover of The AfflictionsAll the blurbs on Vikram Paralkar’s The Afflictions reference Borges because, I think, the story takes place in a library where a librarian is introducing a visitor to a series of tomes on (imagined) afflictions. In truth, though, the book has a lot more in common with Calvino’s Invisible Cities in the way it anchors back to that conversation with the librarian at intervals while exploring lists of these afflictions in between as Invisible Cities returns again and again to the conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. This got me thinking about narrative structure because no one has upended my expectations about structure quite as much as Calvino.

I’ve wrestled with the structure for Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard a lot (sometimes drawing narrative maps as yet another procrastination tool—though a productive one). After a year and a half of writing and 32,000 words, the flow of the first section (of three) is pretty solid as one chapter explores the devolution of relationships over a year and then individual stories start to emerge. I have no idea how sections two and three will be structured, but I’m sure they’ll tell me eventually. It’s a very different book than Paralkar’s, but I’m grateful to him for reminding me that my structural obsession is a valid one.

Memory and Nostalgia in I Have Some Questions for You

cover of i have some questions for youI’d actually been saving back I Have Some Questions for You because I love Makkai’s work and I wanted to give myself time to really enjoy the book. But we went away to Whidbey Island last week and it was the most compelling read I could take with me (and I ate it all up). This book is what prompted this blog post, honestly, because there was a lot I learned from this book. Set just before and during the pandemic, the action also includes significant portions of memory as the narrator, Bodie, reflects on the murder of her roommate while they were at boarding school in the 1990s. Bodie is revisiting that school as a teacher and reconsidering what may have actually happened.

Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard is also set in the 1990s, a time that a lot of women my age are reconsidering in the wake of the #MeToo movement. At first Makkai’s references to that time were so spot-on that I got the “does my book even matter” blues. Her references continued to be spot-on but my anxious brain was soon immersed enough in the story that my creative brain could remember that there’s room for all kinds of books and that while I might miss this wave of 1990s nostalgia in the publishing world, that doesn’t mean my book won’t be relevant—whenever I’ve actually taken the time to finish it. There are many other interesting things in how Makkai handles the memories and misconceptions her characters carry that warrant a read of your own. My own approach (for the moment) is to have a gently retrospective voice with all of the action set in the past which allows me to retroactively re-frame some of the thinking even while the characters experience things as they were. Check out this video below for a little insight into what my generation is trying to process around #MeToo.

.@BrookeShields talks to Drew about the "Me Too" movement and being sexualized in Hollywood at a young age.

Watch #PrettyBaby: Brooke Shields now on @hulu. pic.twitter.com/F2Y9scpEnM

— The Drew Barrymore Show (@DrewBarrymoreTV) April 11, 2023

A Chorus of The Swimmers

cover of the swimmersI randomly picked The Swimmers from my to-read pile after I Have Some Questions for You because I’ve loved Otsuka’s other books. What I did not know was that she was working directly with something I’ve been experimenting with for this book (despite great fear)—the choral voice. The Swimmers explores the collective experience of a group of swimmers at a public pool from a “we” point of view.

“Most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind. Failed painters become elegant brushstrokers. Untenured professors slice, sharklike, through the water, with breathtaking speed. The newly divorced HR manager grabs a faded red Styrofoam board and kicks with impunity.” – The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka

I loved the specificity here and the way Otsuka overlaps multiple individuals in this chorus without losing the particularities of each. The characters recur and we get to know them, somewhat, as individuals, though what is most important (from what I have read so far) is this shared experience.

Makkai did something similar in I Have Some Questions for You where she used the specific details of crimes against women to create an experience of the multiplicity as one greater event.

“It doesn’t matter which story.

Let’s say it was the one where the young actresses said yes to a pool party and didn’t know.

Or no, let’s say it was the one where the rugby team covered up for the girl’s death and the school covered for the rugby team.

Actually it was the one where the therapist spent years grooming her. It was the one where the senator, then a promising teenager, shoved his dick in the girl’s face. She was also a promising teenager. It was the one where the billionaire pushed the woman into the phone booth, but no one believed her.” – Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You

This has the effect of reinforcing the terrible volume and banality that we’ve allowed these events to accrue. This agglomeration is an effect I am working with in my own book, Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard, albeit for different reasons.

“We’ve traveled far enough now, in distance (for those of us who could leave) and time (for all of us) that the memories of who we were and why are starting to fade from everything but our yearbooks, gathered dusty in shelves and dank basements. Red, black, and white covers full of pages of mostly black and white photos. All of these rural-beautiful faces, posed gauzy (those who could afford it) in the outfits they loved best. Each one a mother’s child longing to be loved, remembered. But that one raped our friend and that one ran someone over, that one was shot in the face by drug dealers out of state, that one shot by a man on her doorstep because she was nice to him. That one made it to Broadway and that one is a mom who never left town. That one joined the CIA, allegedly. One sold pharmaceuticals and another played pro ball. Astrophysicists, exchange students, another whose weird face forever condemned him to outsider. The special ed kids we never saw except in a hospital hallway thirty years later when our parents were dying. Missing from the “we made it together” photo of those who attended all twelve years was the kid who died of cancer, the one hounded out of school for being gay, the girl killed by a moose. Those who stayed versus those who left, a decision made for us based on the size of our parents’ worlds. Some came to the city. Some slipped into the hills, only to be seen again at their infant’s funeral. So many now untraceable, nicknames lost to obituaries of whole families who died young, despite their Scandinavian heritage. Most of these faces are lost to memory. All of us repeating archetypes who thought ourselves individual.” – Isla McKetta, Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard

What are you reading now? How is it feeding your writing? Tell me everything in the comments below.

Filed Under: Books, USA & Canada

Finding the Bones and Finding Myself in the New Now

March 25, 2023 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

cover of finding the bones by nikki kallioI firmly believe that art and artists have the power to save us—the power to see the future and contextualize the now in ways that help us to survive and even to live our best lives. Nikki Kallio is definitely blessed with this insight and reading her new book Finding the Bones shook something loose for me in the very best of ways. This collection of stories and a novella is both wildly creative and also carefully attuned to the dangers of now. It’s also downright spooky at times, in the best of ways.

Examining Our Not-So Distant Future

The first story of the collection, “Geography Lesson,” starts with a father looking for his daughter. It seems like something that could happen in any time, but Kallio includes hints like “at least they hadn’t left their human instincts behind,” to signal there is definitely more happening here. There is and what proceeds is a beautifully written exchange between that father and his daughter that could happen anywhere but gently reveals that they are in fact refugees from planet Earth. Kallio weaves in memories of the father of how he lucked onto this ship and geographic entries from a book the girl, Fiona, is reading that details places on a planet that used to be. If it sounds like sci-fi and cli-fi (climate fiction), it is. It’s also gentle and human and carefully observed. I was hooked on the book after this first story. What I didn’t know was how much the rest of the book was going to upend my expectations.

Playing with Darkness

The second story, “Shadow,” begins, “Patricia saw the bones poking through the snow before the dog did.” The entire story takes place in Patricia’s memories as she decides whether or not to approach those bones. The suspense is delicious as Kallio drops fears into our psyche and also recounts why Patricia, in particular, is afraid of those bones. The story is so masterful that I held my body tense as I read it and I was relieved when it ended. Well, relieved but also wanting to go back and read it again to see what I missed and experience the thrill of reading it all over again.

Each story in this collection is different, though bones are a recurring motif, but I guarantee you will never be bored as you traverse the multiple narratives and genres in these pages.

The Now and Later of a Global Catastrophe

The novella in this collection, The Fledgling begins in the midst of a global catastrophe where something is going wrong with the sun. We get glimpses of the horror that the world is descending into as Gin contemplates the demise of a relationship. It is very much not clear what is happening in this first chapter, but it is clear that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Chapter two then cuts to 25 years later when Elena, Gin’s daughter, is navigating the aftermath of “Malsol.” Kallio does a fantastic job of imagining what this after life is like and, to be honest, it was comforting to read about people who have survived apocalypse. The structure is similar in this way to Station Eleven, though Kallio’s story is very much her own as she imagines a world where people cannot go outside in sunlight, where many interactions take place online, and where whole swaths of the population have become “in-dwellers.”

You can imagine how this rang true to my own experience now, when my work day consists primarily of Zoom meetings and my only forays outside are to ferry my kiddo to school and back. Reading The Fledgling at this time was actually perfect for me because I’ve been getting ready to shake off my in-dwelling status and Gin’s life in the after is a good model for what I don’t want mine to be. The details, relationships, and implications are all well thought out and well written. It’s a story I hope I relate to less in years to come, but one that gave me the word “in-dwelling” which was a better place to spring into new life from than some of the other adjectives I’ve used to describe the last few years.

If you’ve enjoyed Appleseed, The Parable of the Sower, The Left Hand of Darkness, or California, I highly recommend Finding the Bones. It may not change your life as it did mine, but what if it does?

Filed Under: Books, USA & Canada

The Meaning of Life, Art, and the Sea with Anca Szilágyi and Dorthe Nors

December 31, 2022 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

It’s the time of year to reflect on existential questions and lay out splendid plans to enact the lives we dream of. This makes it the perfect time to talk about books, two of which have been guiding my own thinking these past days: Dreams Under Glass by Anca Szilágyi and A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors. These two very different books took me on a tour of the struggles to make a meaningful life and the complexities of arrival in the place you think you want to be.

Dreams Under Glass

dreams-under-glass-coverIn Szilágyi’s engrossing novel, twenty-something Binnie is grinding through her workdays as an underpaid paralegal at a law firm while living a second life planning Joseph Cornell-inspired artworks in her mind. She gives up a rent-controlled apartment to spend less time commuting to have more for her artwork, but she often struggles to make the commitments to the work itself that would allow her to finish a piece (and thus potentially capitalize on some connections that could turn her fortunes). It was sometimes painful to watch Binnie’s choices, mostly because I’ve been there and the hours we spend on things besides art (hello, Twitter) are easiest to quantify and lament from the outside.

“The hot floor would contain vats of steaming black coffee, a bitter stink of burnt grounds and toner fumes. Wallpapering this floor would be documents from tobacco companies, dizzying red text printed on pink paper. Perhaps here we’d have moaning figures, neckties draped over their shoulders, parched mouths panting at the vats of coffee, unable to drink.” – Anca Szilágyi, Dreams Under Glass

Szilágyi delves deep into Binnie’s ideas, which made the inside of Binnie’s mind the most fascinating part of this book as we experience the visceral details of artworks the world may never see. Binnie draws inspiration from her struggles in a dysfunctional, capitalist workplace and from a well of knowledge about Cornell. In fact, Cornell almost becomes a character in the book as Binnie draws upon his memory while planning how to arrange her squirreled objects and I learned a lot about the artist, despite having taken a lot of art history classes back when I thought visual art was my future.

I won’t reveal the major shift that happens toward the end of this book, only that there is one and that I’ll never think of the color turquoise quite the same way again.

One of the more touching aspects of Dreams Under Glass is Binnie’s relationship to her boyfriend, Gary. Although he seems clueless about her art, he very clearly cares deeply about her. What struck me most was a moment when, after Gary met Binnie’s parents, he gently prods her about her feelings for him and then says, “You make me feel alive.” It’s a tender thought and not one I think I would have appreciated quite the same way five or ten years ago. Maybe not even a year ago, because, like Binnie, I’ve spent a lot of time striving to find inspiration and time to make art. And in the struggle I’ve missed some of the best parts of what surround me every day, like the softness around my husband’s eyes when he brings me yet another cup of tea (when he could be working on his own art).

So while Binnie was finding her way toward art, I was finding my way into a quieter view of what makes a great life. I hope I can find compassion for the Binnie in me along the way.

A Line in the World

“I want to wake beneath a sky that is grey and miserable, but which creates a space of colossal dimensions in a second, when the light comes ashore. A horizon is what I want, and I want solitude. Healthy solitude, and I want intimacy, true intimacy. I no longer want to be anyone but myself.” – Dorthe Nors, A Line in the World

a-line-in-the-world-coverIn January 2020, my husband and I were starting a lot of big discussions about how to make the life we want. The theme was being intentional in our choices. Like everyone else, our choices were very quickly limited, but this discussion is once again rising to the surface in a practicable way. Sometimes this means picking the breakfast I want (rather than eating my oatmeal default) and chewing my toast slowly so I can experience and enjoy the last bite of special jam. Sometimes it means going to the beach, because one of the small (but huge) things that makes me feel whole is being near the ocean. This is why I was pretty sure I would love A Line in the World. What I didn’t know is my choice to curl up with this book during a week of sickness and recovery after Christmas would itself be healing.

“But a vacuum is always waiting to be filled with something. In the Wadden Sea, you bring the contents with you, and the contents of a supposedly authentic life can be terrifying.” – Dorthe Nors, A Line in the World

I’ve never read Nors’ fiction, but this collection of essays written during a year traveling the west coast of Denmark (or the east coast of the North Sea) was perfect. She resists a geographic order as these essay explore everything from family history to climate change to Danish surf culture (sometimes all together in a few pages). The writing, masterfully translated by Caroline Waight, seems effortless and I’m giving myself the gift of letting this book be the last I read in 2022. I know I will return to this book again and again but right now I want the feeling of having read it to stretch into a new year, and maybe a new life.

“Surely, to be great is to stand at the northernmost tip of the nation, right at the very top, with a foot in each sea. Can you feel the potential? This is your country, your language. Your limitations. In this moment under your jurisdiction, and only yours.” – Dorthe Nors, A Line in the World

So the struggle continues, in books and in life, and the glory, too, as we embrace the best of the lives we can make. What have you read this year that makes you see where you’ve come from, where you might want to go?

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe

Reading All About Love and Rabbits with Bell Hooks and Kate DiCamillo

June 25, 2022 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Sometimes the books we need find us. This week I had two of those little miracles in my life as I found All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks in my to-read shelf and managed to convince my son to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo instead of another edition of the I Survived series. Those books have had their uses lately, injecting hope as we navigate what feel like dark times (and my son loves them), but in this week of all weeks I needed something that wasn’t about an earthquake, tsunami, or hurricane. I needed to know how I am going to survive the much longer (and sometimes insidiously quieter) descent of my country into fascism.

Love as Nurture

all about love cover by bell hooksChild of the 1980s, I grew up with a very particular view of love. If you were worthy (which as a woman meant being both beautiful and not too powerful), you would be placed upon a pedestal and cared for and worshiped as an object of great value. You would also, of course, be looking for someone to worship on a pedestal of your making. Sometimes those objects of worship needed to be reminded how lucky they were that you worship them, so you brought them down a peg (I now know to call this abuse), but as long as everyone followed these rules it was fine.

“To truly love we must first learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” – bell hooks, All About Love

Fine and empty, unrealistic and inhumane. The first realization for me in All About Love was when hooks delineated the difference between love and cathexis (the “process of investment wherein a loved on becomes important to us”). Cathexis can look like love but it doesn’t preclude hurting or neglecting the object. She separates love from simply caring, insisting that love involves nurture and that “love and abuse cannot coexist.”

“When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.” – bell hooks, All About Love

The most shocking part to me about this reflection was how ingrained my acceptance of abuse as part of love was. Sometimes small abuses (remember when we thought “negging” was funny?) and sometimes large. I’m still grappling with this realization, because I can see in it how often I have not acted with love, even in the relationships that matter most to me. I can see how rarely my country (the government and citizens) acts with love toward our neighbors and compatriots. More on this later.

Patriarchy Doesn’t Work

“When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.” – bell hooks, All About Love

It took me more years than I’ll admit to see the patriarchal underpinnings of our culture. It was what I was born into and I didn’t question it (and when I did question it, my concerns were dismissed). All About Love helped me see some of the damage this system has done to me personally and to our society as a whole. When hooks references Harriet Lerner, saying “women are encouraged by sexist socialization to pretend and manipulate, to lie as a way to please… constant pretense and lying alienate women from their true feelings… [leading to] depression and lack of self awareness,” I can see the underpinnings of the quiet desperation suffered by so many women I know, even the strongest. When hooks writes “Patriarchal masculinity requires of boys and men not only that they see themselves as more powerful and superior to women but that they do whatever it takes to maintain their controlling position,” I see the hollowness of the structure on which it’s all built and why they are so desperate to keep us from questioning it.

I also see how difficult it is to build healthy relationships with anyone who is not questioning these frameworks. How can we love each other, in the way of nurturing, if we can’t even be who we are? Culture is a very strong force, but it is not immutable. We make culture every day with the decisions we make. We choose what we subject ourselves to and what we question. We choose how we let people treat us. We choose how we treat others.

“Individuals committed to advancing patriarchy are producing most of the images we see, they have an investment in providing us with representations that reflect their values in the social institutions they wish to uphold.” – bell hooks, All About Love

Again, the time I grew up in was rife with patriarchal imagery. There were glimmers of other possibilities, but they were too often extinguished. One of the choices I’m making for myself (and my kid) is about what media we’re exposed to. We can’t avoid all of it, in fact I don’t think we should, but we can make concerted choices and have the kinds of conversations that let us understand what we are really seeing and reading. Which brings me to Edward Tulane.

Love is Work

“In patriarchal culture, men are especially inclined to love as something they should receive without expending effort.” – bell hooks, All About Love

miraculous journey of edward tulane cover by kate dicamilloI had no idea what to expect when I opened The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I’d bought it because our (wild) backyard bunnies are one of the things that have sustained me through the pandemic. I did not know the book was about love. I did not know this was the exact right book to read with All About Love. Edward is a ceramic rabbit who is loved and doted on by a little girl. He receives this as his due until her grandmother tells them a story about someone who could not love and Edward is very quickly thereafter lost. Edward sees many kinds of love in his journey and eventually learns how privileged he was to have been loved and have had the opportunity to love at all. He grows and he changes, he suffers and he is redeemed.

I love my little boy deeply. Both his father and I are committed to nourishing his spirit until he becomes the wild free adult he will probably grow into. I am also committed to the work of undoing some of the programming he will get from our culture and this book was a part of that. Because I adore him and I dote on him but I also want him to grow into a person who knows the work of love—the energy put into seeing himself and the people around him for who they are and nurturing those he chooses to love. And to let them love and nurture him.

Hooks writes about “how little support men received when they chose to be disloyal to patriarchy” and I have seen how in generations before mine this knee-capped the men who may have wanted to change. I see more men in my generation trying to do things like be primary parents and treat women as equals and how hard our culture (including the people around us, intentionally or not) work against them. I see men still younger having some success with allyship and personal growth but I fear for how fragile that could be without a larger movement. So I’m trying to give my son the strength to be part of that next generation who maybe, I hope, can live in a world where equality across genders, races, orientations, ability, and anything else you can picture is normal. A world filled with love.

The Aftermath of the Dobbs Decision

Yesterday was not a good day in many ways. We knew the decision was coming, but I still felt disbelief and paralysis that my human rights were wiped away with one decision by an institution I’d been brought up to revere. This is abuse. This is not love. And I know this is not out of character for our country, but I want it to be.

“Changing our thinking so that we see ourselves as being like the one who does change rather than among [those] who refuse to change.” – bell hooks, All About Love

I do not have a lot of power in this world, but I can take responsibility for what I do have. Yesterday I made some choices. I sat with my feelings rather than trying to push them away. I reached out to a dear, loving friend for the community I needed. I invited someone I wanted to get to know better over to my home, again to build community. I spoke up when someone was treating me as less than equal (no matter how inadvertent the gesture). And I gave money, because I could.

I don’t know what happens next. I hope that this cannot stand. I see how far we’ve slipped toward fascism in the last decade. I see the people who have worked hard against it. I wish the Democratic Party made up more of that group. I see how much work there is yet to do, not to get back to where we were, but to get to where we could be if we choose to believe in the inherent value of others.

How I’m Moving Forward

“When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are.” – bell hooks, All About Love

I am trying to move forward in love.

I will continue to speak up for my rights and the rights of others. I will continue to listen to the stories of those others, including reading and rereading books about the radical power of love by bell hooks and Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

“While emotional needs are difficult, and often impossible to satisfy, material desires are easier to fulfill.” – bell hooks, All About Love

I will build community where I can. I will donate as much money directly to abortion funds as I can rather than spending it on useless items that do not actually salve my pain.

“The essence of true love is mutual recognition—two individuals seeing each other as they really are” – bell hooks, All About Love

I will try to know and love myself because I deserve it and so that I can love others better. And I will especially work to be a more loving parent and partner.

And you? How are you getting through? Are you ready to change the world through love?

Filed Under: Books, USA & Canada

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Polska, 1994

Polska 1994

Clear Out the Static in Your Attic

Clear Out the Static in Your Attic_cover

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Isla's bookshelf: currently-reading

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