culture consumed (July, 2024)

[hermionesviolin]

books

• read Abby 2 Muslim picturebooks & 1 Pride picturebook. read ~6 more picturebooks myself.
• A Short History of Trans Misogyny by Jules Gill-Peterson
• [climate change book club] The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson -- Clare (the facilitator) really liked this, and the rest of us were less big fans
• [DEI book club] Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha -- this was quite good

other

I read Abby Marley's Pride -- a new picturebook about a Black non-binary kid with sensory sensitivities (so they usually don't go to the annual Pride parade), whose non-binary grandparent is being honored at Pride this year.

It has a bunch of backmatter, including a bit about "gender identity."  I read it aloud and Abby was actively self-soothing -- saying out loud to herself, "It's a children's book, it's a children's book..."
I was like, "Gender Reveal has really ruined you on this, huh?"
She was like, "Gender Reveal, and also being trans."

The book says, "A person's gender identity is who they know themselves to be on the inside."
She said not everyone has that experience, and wouldn't see themselves there.  (She, for example, did not have that experience -- and that's part of why it took her so long to ID as trans.)
She said "gender is a social construct" and some people have an embodied sense of that, but not all.
She said, "I think I would replace it with the Philosophy Tube on Social Constructs."

So I watched it.  (It's only 24 minutes!)

theatr

• [Shakespeare on the Common] The Winter's Tale
  
  It was interesting watching this with people who had no familiarity with the story. I thought the "exit, pursued by a bear" stage direction was executed weirdly -- but I heard from someone later that the stage direction was included in the open captioning, which is nice.
  
  The dance party at the shearing festival was pretty great. And this staging did a strong job (as have most other productions I've seen) of using color etc. to really differentiate the vibes of Sicilia vs. Bohemia.
  
  I thought the Director's Note (you can read the whole digital program) was interesting -- though I wasn't entirely sold. (There's a lot that's really interesting about Winter's Tale, and I've developed a lot of fondness for it, but watching the show, I did not experience a lot of the things that Boice named.)
  

***

Currently reading:

How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church by Lamar Hardwick

I'm so close to the end of this book.  The author (Black, autistic, male, pastor) was a plenary speaker at the 2024 Institute on Theology and Disability, and I wanted this book to be better.

Reading next:

[Aug 25 feminist sff book club] The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington -- Abby DNFed this one, so I'm a little nervous ... mostly nervous that everyone will hate it and I'll feel bad about having suggested it. (A GR friend gave it a positive 4/5 star review, and it sounds up book club's alley: "Attempting to recount the plot doesn't do the novel justice. Suffice it to say, the story is about women, bodies/appearance, aging, patriarchal religion, the sacred feminine, legends/stories/fictions, the apocalypse, and much more.")

possibly Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman.  Abby's listening to this on audiobook (I had told her about it a while ago since it seemed like her jam -- queer Pakistani-American girl in 1980's NYC), so I got a hardcopy from the library to read it with her.

[August DEI book club, date TBD] Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex by Marita Golden (August doesn't have any specific heritage/pride months that we could find*, and we picked "colorism" as our topic for August.)

*Though today I learned about Black August [Wiki link].

Comments

[meat_and_breath]

Elizabeth in DMs (for context):

In my "culture consumed" post just now, I tell the story of reading you Marley's Pride that led to me watching the Philosophy Tube on Social Constructs, and I don't think I misrepresented you, but I didn't run it by you, so apologies if I did, and obviously you should tell me if I did.

I'm not sure that's quite the way I'd have said it, but I think it's reasonably accurate. As someone who has commonly not held a very strong sense of self-identity (what even does that mean?), I often get frustrated with framings of difference in gender or sexuality as, "Who you know you are inside." Like, who I know I am inside is meat sack, filled with breath and a little lightning storm; that is not very helpful in picking pronouns.

I haven't thought hard about a better framing for children's books, so I guess this I okay. But it's definitely the way people like me go half their lives knowing about the existence of trans people but not actually concluding they're trans. So it would be nice if something better comes along that is still appropriately framed for children.

[meat_and_breath]

Also, new gender just dropped:

Like, who I know I am inside is meat sack, filled with breath and a little lightning storm; that is not very helpful in picking pronouns.