culture consumed (November, 2023)

books

• The Witch King & The Fae Keeper by H. E. Edgmon -- YA fantasy duology with a trans masc protagonist
• [feminist sff book club] The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei (Translated from the Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich), originally published in 1995.  Speculative sci-fi written by a queer Taiwanese author.
  
• Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole by Julia Watts Belser
  
• The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes (YA)
  
• Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend by Dawn Quigley & illustrated by Tara Audibert
  
  Yesterday's "Our Queerest Shelves" BookRiot email included a link to a Mombian post 20+ of 2023’s LGBTQ-Inclusive Early Readers, Chapter Books, and Early Middle Grade Titles, which I appreciated, since 7yo nibling M is voraciously reading on her own, and I'm really unprepared for non-picturebook recs.
  
  Just the other day, the American Indians in Children's Literature blog had posted their Year In Review for 2023, which reminded me about the Jo Jo Makoons early reader series.
  
  So I requested a whole bunch of books from the library to check out and potentially recommend to my SIL.  (I'm already going to mention Saadia Faruqi's Yasmin books, which I got one of for 5yo ~nibling J earlier this year.)

theatre

• [ArtsEmerson/DNAWORKS] The Real James Bond…Was Dominican ~with Bridget from church (she had already bought her ticket and didn't have an extra, and I didn't think to coordinate with her when I then bought mine, but we ate dinner together before the show and then went to the same show, we just didn't sit together at the show)

• [ASP] How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel with Abby and Cate

  The Content Advisory on this play said, "The subject matter of this production includes mature themes, such as sexual abuse, grooming, and coarse language. Recommended for audience members 17+, but parental discretion may vary."  I was not expecting just how much those themes take up the play. It's very well-done, I just wasn't expecting it.
  

  I don't think I had heard of Paula Vogel before ASP's announcement of this season, but she's apparently kind of a big deal -- and married to Anne Fausto-Sterling?!  This play won a Pulitzer in 1998.

movies

• The Marvels with Abby

***

Currently reading: 

I have technically started Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing for local library queer library book club (Dec 14), but sequential art continues to not be the best medium for me to absorb (especially with the persistent headcold I've had for a week and a half now), so I'd put that on pause.

Reading next: ???

As noted above, I have a bunch of early readers coming to me.

Abby has started reading Nghi Vo's Singing Hills Cycle, and I've only read the first 2, so I'll pick that back up when she gets to book 3. (She also recently read When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar [who I forgot had written the Partition episode of Ms. Marvel], but I'm not sure I wanna read that rn.)

insert Anthony Bourdain quote here

While we're all celebrating Kissinger's death, the Kissinger Death Tontine website (shoutout to pearwaldorf for being how I heard about that) has a list of organizations you can donate to to help undo some of the damage of US imperialism:
☞ Cambodian Children's Fund
☞ Desafío Levantemos Chile (I struggled with this donation portal, so if anyone has recommendations for other relevant orgs in Chile...)
☞ East Timor and Indonesia Action Network
☞ Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Project
☞ The Halo Trust (Angola)
☞ Yemen Relief Project (this website seems outdated, and I think maybe it is now the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, which at least exists on Charity Navigator; I'm open to suggestions if anyone knows anything about Yemeni orgs)