burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

culture consumed (March, 2026)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:53:05 GMT

books

[Mar 3 MPL Rainbow Book Group] Looking for Lorraine: the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry (2019) -- I did not know that she was besties with James Baldwin and Nina Simone!
Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo (2024) -- book by the professor that Bad Bunny consulted with for his latest album (DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS)
[Mar 25 Arlington library Queer Book Group (QBG)] Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns (2024) -- in book club discussion we reminded ourselves that this is a satire, which perhaps explains some of the parts that felt somewhat unrealistic/underdeveloped
[March 29 OOYL book club] Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself by Chloe Angyal (2023) -- this was interesting and engaging even as someone who is not a ballet
[April 7 MPL Rainbow Book Group] How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica -- son of Mexican American immigrants goes away to college and wrestles with love and loss

theatr

[NTL] The Importance of Being Earnest -- this was streaming on YouTube for about a week
It's the one with Ncuti Gatwa (the 15th Doctor) and was very queer. An excellent first-time experience of this play.
[SHS] Lost Girl [virtual program] -- Catherine M. at church mentioned that she and her husband have been going to the local high school's theater performances. I now live a 15-minute walk from the high school, and I liked the idea of seeing local youth theatre again (something I haven't done since I was also a youth).
Long after returning from Neverland, Wendy decides that she must find Peter in order to reclaim her kiss and move on with her life. Along the way, she meets other girls who went to Neverland and learns she is not alone. A coming-of-age exploration of first love and lasting loss, Lost Girl continues the story of J.M. Barrie’s beloved character – the girl who had to grow up. Recommended for ages 12+
Overall, I think this play does a really good job of feeling like it inhabits the world of Peter Pan. There were some bits that I felt didn't work as well -- but it's also a little hard to tell how much that's the play itself versus the high school production. I was hoping for more of her interacting with the other girls who went to Neverland than we got. I also never got a distinct sense of most of the individual Lost Boys -- in part because we get so little of them as individuals.

Wendy is very focused on her experience with Peter, so the play comes across very heteronormative, with its sweeping statements about boys and girls (which again, feel in keeping with the world of the original), which I didn't love, but I remind myself that Wendy is wrestling with her particular experience, which is shared by many (I was reminded later of "Innocence" in Season 2 of Buffy).
[Ufot #7] Lifted w/ Abby [virtual program]

This was a weirdly scheduled production where it was in 3 different venues over 2 separate weeks (Tues/Thurs/Sat one week and then Tues-Sun 2 weeks later). The email announcing the production said:
See the creative process in action as Wellesely Repertory Theatre offers unique 'text-in-hand' presentations of Lifted, Udofia's 7th play of the Ufot Family Cycle.
Lifted centers on Abasiama’s daughter Toyoyima, a high-ranking academic whose career is rocked by a plagiarism accusation. When the scandal comes to a head, Toyoyima travels to Nigeria, a journey that both unleashes her history and heals.
Based on things I had previously heard, I was pretty sure that "text-in-hand" meant the playwright was/had recently been still writing this play. (Correct.)

When I booked tickets, the confirmation email said:
( Read more... )
Abby and I were unsure what the play was gonna be like being a "text-in-hand" production, but it was actually quite good. The play is, in fact, unfinished, and we would be interested -- which it sounds like won't be for at least 2-3 years (in the talkback, Udofia said she needs to grow as a playwright in order to do the work this play demands of her).

film

[bad movie night] Zootopia 2

***

Currently Reading:

The Backwater Sermons by Jay Hulme (2021) -- poetry by a Christian trans man (one of the authors suggested to me in comments on my FB post about trans poetry)

[April 13 SPL Queer Book Club] Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly (2023) -- genderqueer artist in 2003 NYC

Reading Next:

I've been struggling to find books I like for Nibling M's 10th birthday the end of June and recently ILLed a bunch more options, so I have skim-reading those in my future.

Other April book club books:

[April OOYL book club] Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyễn (2025) -- satire about trans women in sports (this sport being indoor volleyball, though I always forget what sport it is)
I appreciate that Frankie initially typoed this as "hot girls HAVE balls"
This has been on my maybe TBR since before it came out, so I'm interested to finally read it. It's satire, which is not always my thing. Bethany (of The Transfeminine Review) hated it*, but it's gotten lots of positive reviews, so it'll be interesting to see what I/book club think of it.
*Edit: I went to pull up the Bluesky thread of her live-read, and technically she says, "I wish I could say I unambiguously hated it, but there's a good book in here, buried under one of the worst cases of social media irony poisoning I've read it literature recently." (I'm waiting to read her Patreon review until after I've read the book myself.)

[April DEI book club] We have not yet picked a book, but currently winning (after 3 people voted) is Zahra's Paradise by Amir Soltani and Khalil (~2011), so I think we'll probably do that.

April is Arab American History Month, and I suggested Iran might be a timely theme. People agreed, though it was a struggle to get people to suggest books. I posted: "I found this list from 2020, but it's literally 100 books 😂 (I did find the introduction to the list interesting and worth reading.) https://aaww.org/100-essential-books-by-iranian-writers-an-introduction-nonfiction/"

graphic novel reader R. suggested:

Zahra's Paradise by Amir Soltani and Khalil (272 pages)
-Historical fiction story of the search for Mehdi, a protestor who vanished after Iran's fraudulent 2009 elections

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (341 pages)
-Memoir of Marjane Satrapi growing up during the Islamic Revolution
A.D. suggested:

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (343 pages)
-Memoir of Nafisi as an English university professor during the Islamic Revolution

My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad (512 pages)
-Satirical coming of age novel set in Iran post WW2

Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur (136 pages)
-Novella follows five women outside of Tehran

comments

#TransPoetryMonth2026

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:19:10 GMT

me, on Facebook:

I, who have been struggling to read recently, but whose brain loves Project Ideas: "What if for April (National Poetry Month) this year I read a poem by a trans poet each day?

"Self, you know that is highly unlikely to be a viable project.

multiple FB friends: "I recommend trans poet so-and-so."

As if the problem was gonna be finding trans poets rather than, yanno, READING.

Just thinking of trans poetry I literally own, off the top of my head: I have so many Joy Ladin collections, I have a Kai Cheng Thom collection I read some years ago, I have a Stephanie Burt collection (not the one I was briefly co-reading with my ex), I have Trish Salah (initially imagined I would co-read with my now-ex).

The Transfeminine Review has done Reader's Choice Awards the last 2 years, including poetry collection and (last year) Individual Poem -- and she posts the shortlists for the poetry collections [2024, 2025], plus she posts a GoogleDoc of everything that gets nominated each year. The Lammys have had a Transgender Poetry category since 2016 (though I have since learned that most of the winners are not available in my local library network). I can Google things like "trans poets."

But fine, I have now ILLed (interlibrary loaned) a whole bunch of poetry collections and we'll see.

[I mean, it's also very me that while technically what I said was "read a poem by a trans poet each day," what I had in mind was posting one each day -- which likely requires reading more than one many days, and involves Googling and/or typing up poems. Do we think I can discipline myself to literally just read 1 poem/day and not also Generate Content about it? 😂]

comments

culture consumed (February, 2026)

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:36:37 GMT

theatre

[CST] The Moderate w/ Abby M [mobile program]
Estranged from his wife and son during the pandemic lockdown, Frank accepts a job as a content moderator for the world’s largest social media company. As he evaluates a never-ending stream of questionable content, the work takes an emotional and psychological toll. However, everything changes when Frank sees an opportunity to help a stranger and save himself in the process. Drama Desk Award-winning playwright Ken Urban (A Guide for the Homesick), and two-time Obie Award Winner director Jared Mezzocchi create a haunting, enveloping technological mindscape that explores the essence of human connection.
I would not have gone to see this if I hadn't already paid for season tickets, but I wasn't so opposed to seeing it that I wanted to just skip it and eat the cost.

I knew from the blurb it was gonna be dark, but I had not realized just how much. I was reminded of my experience with the short story "The V*mpire" by P H Lee where I was like, "Oh, those content warnings were really serious."
The Moderate explores the lives of content moderators who witness the darker side of social media. The play contains mature themes including images, video, and audio depictions of violence, nudity, and racism.
For more details of the sensory experiences and themes audiences will experience in advance of attending The Moderate, please read our Content Transparency Statement. If you have any additional questions about content, age-appropriateness, or stage effects that might have a bearing on guest comfort, please utilize our Guest Experience Team at [email address].
It's somewhat immersive staging, where content the moderator is reviewing is projected up for the audience to see/hear. Content includes a kid talking about their father beating them (including showing their bruises), Islamist terrorists killing people, etc.

The Content Transparency Statement listed above states:
All photos and videos for The Moderate were sourced from publicly available internet content, private collections with express permission, or filmed by the creative team in a safe, controlled environment with professionally trained actors and, when applicable, a combat/violence choreographer.
I had definitely wondered if they had just pulled stuff off of Facebook or something.

Characters kept saying "child porn" and I kept thinking, "You mean 'CSAM'. That's what people who actually do this content moderation work would call it." [See this post from RAINN, for example.] (To be clear, no simulated CSAM is projected -- but characters talk about seeing CSAM, etc.)
As one Reddit poster said:
I don't know where it originated, but CSAM stands for "Child Sexual Abuse Material" and it is the preferred term for child porn in law enforcement/prosecution circles. This is because "porn" as a more general category of media is not, itself, a criminal or immoral thing and referring to "child porn" gives it a certain amount of legitimacy, as if it it's just this one type of porn that we've arbitrarily made illegal just because the topic is a little distasteful. No, these are photos and videos of someone sexually abusing an actual child victim. It is not porn; it's evidence of brutal crimes against children.
I think the question in the play of how you handle witnessing terrible things that you don't have the power to do anything about is an interesting one, and I appreciated that the play articulated the point of, "Hey, if you call the police to intervene in a domestic violence situation and they aren't able to actually permanently remove someone from that situation, the abuser will likely escalate their violence." I felt like the ending was somewhat too pat.
[ASP] Little Women with ~~Abby and Cate~~ ~~Abby~~ Cate (Cate had to reschedule to a different date than what we'd originally booked all three of us together, and it didn't make sense for us to try to coordinate with her; but then the weekend Abby and I were gonna go the shows were canceled due to an illness in the cast, and one of the only remaining dates that worked for me was when Cate had moved her ticket to. Alas, Abby was out of town the remainder of the run.)
Join the March family around the hearth as ASP explores one of the most beloved texts in American literature, in a bold new adaptation by Kate Hamill (Emma, The Odyssey, Pride & Prejudice).
In the Victorian-era idylls of Concord, Jo March is anything but your classic Victorian heroine. Ambitious and headstrong, her dreams of being a novelist press against the starchy boundaries of societal expectations. But while her country comes of age as the Civil War rages, Jo and her sisters must also come of age – negotiating gender roles, politics, and romance as they define womanhood on their own terms.
Filled with laughter, love, heaps of New England charm, and sharp social commentary, Hamill’s adaptation celebrates the novel’s spirit while boldly reclaiming it for today’s world. This clever and empowering production of Little Women is perfect for all ages.
This adaptation played up Jo's boyishness/gender-nonconformity, and I thought of the Twitter thread about Louisa May Alcott maybe having been a trans man. A quick Google didn't get me the Twitter thread, but did get me a bunch of other stuff, including an LGBTQ Nation piece which seems pretty solid/thorough.
I noticed in the program later that Jo was played by a they/them actor.
There's also a bit where Laurie mirror's Jo's concerns with gender roles and talks about wishing to be a woman. Jo smartly points out some of the constraints/demands placed on women that he's not thinking of -- and Cate pointed out that Laurie is also wealthy, which situates him differently than the March family.

This adaptation made the racial tensions of the Civil War timeframe somewhat more present than I think of it as being in the book. This production chose to cast Black actors as Amy and Jo.
[Emerson] The Great God Pan with Bridget [digital program]
The play explores the impact of a possible childhood trauma on a man’s life, relationships and sense of self. Jamie, a journalist, is confronted with the possibility that he was abused as a chid, forcing him to confront his past and questions the reliability of his memories and relationships. The play delves into the themes of memory, trauma and the lasting effects of past experiences.
This was a student production, and I thought quite good.

I knew from the blurb that this would be heavy, but honestly it wasn't as heavy an experience as The Moderate.

In a 2012 Playwrights Horizon piece, playwright Amy Herzog says, "I don't like to say that The Great God Pan is a play about sexual abuse. [...] I say it's a play about memory and loss. [...] Like all my plays, Pan is also about well-meaning people failing each other and living with that failure." That feels accurate to me.

books

[middle-grade] The Ink Witch by Steph Cherrywell (2025) -- 12-year-old trans girl finds out she's a witch
[Feb 11 SPL Books and Brews book club] The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo (2024) -- already on my radar as a possible FSFBC book, since it was a finalist for World Fantasy Award Best Novel 2025
[Feb 22 FSFBC book club] The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa (2024) -- Kuwaiti author, translated into English from Arabic
I'm the one who suggested this for book club, and I had regrets, as it wasn't what I had hoped for -- but we did have a good conversation, even though only 3 of us could make it to that book club meeting.
[Feb 28 OOYL book club] Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes by Christine Yu (2023) -- yay, I finished a non-fiction book for this book club! Except I put the date wrong on my calendar, so I didn't actually get to go live, sigh.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024) -- I didn't like this as much as Braiding Sweetgrass
[Feb 25 DEI book club -- Black History Month] March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell -- 3-volume graphic novel memoir (2013, 128pgs and 2015, 192pgs and 2016, 256 pages)

other

the Bad Bunny halftime show!

(Olympics) figure-skating

Alysa Liu's FABULOUS gold medal-winning free skate | Winter Olympics 2026 | NBC Sports
Kaori Sakamoto's Matrix free skate [not from the Olympics; from the 2020 Japanese Nationals] {via}
started watching Exhibition Gala - Figure Skating | Milano Cortina 2026 {via} (You only need an email address to sign up to watch the streams.)
French pairs Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud doing a routine that includes "Blue" by Eiffel 65 -- from the 2026 Rhythm Dance; I forgot the theme was 1990s and now want to watch much more, but also my energy for watching skating is often not

movies

Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025) -- fannish bad movie night, 3rd in a franchise
From the title, I was thinking Catch Me If You Can. but it's actually stage magicians (still a heist movie, though).
We agreed that the first half dragged but the second half was fun.

***

Currently Reading:

Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo (2024) -- book by the professor that Bad Bunny consulted with for his latest album (DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS)

[Mar 3 MPL Rainbow Book Group] Looking for Lorraine: the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry (2019)

Reading Next:

I'm continuing to try out new book clubs and may have over-committed myself for March (I'm already behind, as Looking for Lorraine is much shorter than last month's Girl Woman Other but reads less quickly).

[Mar 11 SPL Books & Brews] You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue (2024) -- "a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan"

[Mar 25 Arlington library Queer Book Group (QBG)] Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns (2024) -- I had suggested this for Medford library queer book group at one point and it didn't get selected, so it seemed a good opportunity

[March OOYL] Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself by Chloe Angyal (2023)

[March 19 DEI book club] Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (2023, 296 pages)

People were interested in a resistance literature theme for March.

A.D. suggested:

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (2020, 128 pages)

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance edited by Angela Y. Davis (2016, 288 pages)

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown (2019, 464 pages)

How Tyrants Fall: How Nations Survive by Marcel Dirsus (2025, 304 pages)

Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (2023, 296 pages)
R suggested:

Save it for Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest by Nate Powell (the artist of March haha) (2022, 160pgs) -- "collection of graphic nonfiction essays that examines how ordinary people navigate extraordinary political times"

For Justice: The Serge & Beate Klarsfeld Story by Pascal Bresson and Sylvain Dorange (2021, 208pgs) -- "The remarkable true story of a mild-mannered French husband and wife who become the world's most revered pair of Nazi hunters."

After 3 people voted, we had a tie between Pleasure Activism and Let This Radicalize You. I finally voted and Let This Radicalize You won (I am not an adrienne maree brown stan).

comments

culture consumed (January, 2026)

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:20:45 GMT

books

[Jan 6 MPL Rainbow book group] My Brother's Husband v.1 by Gengoroh Tagame; translated from the Japanese by Anne Ishii -- and Volume 2; we were only reading volume 1 for book club, but I'm a completionist (and it reads quickly)
[Jan 14 DEI book club -- Muslim American Heritage Month] Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America by Aymann Ismail (2025) -- memoir, son of Egyptian American parents
He Who Drowned the World by Shelly Parker-Chan (2023) -- the sequel to January's FSFBC book
(skim-)read assorted children's books from Betsy Bird's "31 Days, 31 Lists"
highlights this round:
- Worm Makes a Sandwich written & illustrated by Brianne Farley -- about composting, narrated by a worm, so delightful! [2025 Blueberry Award Contenders (Celebrating the Environment)]
- Families of a Feather: A Celebration of Family Diversity by Fern Wexler, ill. Kelsey Buzzell [2025 Blueberry Award Contenders (Celebrating the Environment)] -- the subtitular family diversity includes families with single dads, single moms, two dads, two moms, and (in acorn woodpeckers) polyamory/extended family
- A Natural History of Bums: The Story of Evolution from Beginning to End written by Crab Museum & illustrated by Inga Ziemele [not from Betsy Bird]
- I Eat Poop.: A Dung Beetle Story by Mark Pett [I clicked through to the website for the above-mentioned Blueberry Award, and this is from 2021]
[Jan 25 OOYL book club] A Sharp Endless Need by Mac (Marisa) Crane (2025) -- it's YA -- a 17-year-old protagonist and women's basketball -- but
99% Chance of Magic: Stories of Strength and Hope for Transgender Kids edited by Amy Eleanor Heart & Abbey Darling (2019) -- more specifically, "the world's first literary collection for transgender children, all written & illustrated by trans women and (C)AMAB non-binary creatives"
[Heartspark Press closed in 2021, so I think you can only get the book on Amazon now -- here's a Trans Family Alliance link. To be clear, I am not recommending you buy it.]
[middle-grade] One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (2010) -- three young colored (their word) girls from Brooklyn go to visit their mother in Oakland in the 1960s, meet up with the Black Panthers
[Feb 3 Rainbow Book Group] Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (2019); British Nigerian author, 12 main characters -- this book is LONG (like 450 pages), but read surprisingly quickly

I guess the only culture I consumed this month was books?

***

Currently Reading:

Um?

I'm intermittently making my way through Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan for Rewilding Every City on Earth by Steve Mushin (2025) -- from Betsy Bird's 31 Days, 31 Lists: 2025 Gross Books for Kids

I am also intermittently reading Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies by Andrea Ritchie (2023) -- which is due back at the library tomorrow, and I probably won't try to get it again any time soon.

Reading Next:

I have some trans anthologies on my TBR pile, inspired by being not taken with 99% Chance of Magic, but unclear if I'll actually read them -- or the other library books I have out.

I still have picturebooks to read -- and am also trying to find books to gift Nibling M for her 10th(!) birthday this June.

So, as usual, let's list book club books.

[DEI book club -- Black History Month] March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell -- 3-volume graphic novel memoir (2013, 128pgs and 2015, 192pgs and 2016, 256 pages)

3 of the 6 nominated books I had already read (the Toni Morrison and the Octavia Butler); I was glad the winning titled ended up being something I hadn't read.

nominated by me:
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016, 305 pages) -- historical fiction, Ghana and the USA

nominated by AD:
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2019, 224 pages) -- historical fiction/literary fiction, US reform schools
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987, 324 pages) -- historical fiction, US reconstruction era
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler (1993, 299 pages) -- speculative fiction, climate change, post apocalyptic

nominated by R:
Kindred by Octavia E Butler (1979, 288pgs) -- historical fiction, science fiction, time travel
March: Book One and Book Two and Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (2013, 128pgs and 2015, 192pgs and 2016, 256 pages) -- graphic novel, nonfiction, memoir [R listed the first 2 volumes and I asked if that was intentional or if he just hadn't realized it was a 3-volume series, and it was the latter]

[Feb 22 OOYL book club] Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes by Christine Yu (2023) -- I have yet to actually finish reading a nonfiction book for OOYL book club, so my expectations for myself about this are low

[Feb 22 FSFBC book club] The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa (Kuwaiti author, translated into English from Arabic; 2024, 272 pages)

comments

getting to know my neighbors

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:23:54 GMT

I've been extra bad at writing up anything, even culture consumed, but here, have an update story.

***

Late October, I moved into a 7-bedroom (2nd and 3rd floor of a duplex).

Halloween night I hung out on the porch in the hopes of seeing trick-or-treaters (downstairs had put some candy out on the porch, so I knew no one was gonna ring the doorbell) and met 2 of the 3 downstairs neighbors briefly.

Shortly before Winter Break I chatted with one of those downstairs neighbors and suggested we exchange numbers, but then her taxi arrived, so we didn't do it right then. After the Winter Break, I put a note in her mailbox with my contact info, suggesting we could maybe make a group chat for the whole house.

Sat Jan 17 I bumped into her again and she thanked me for my note and apologized for not having gotten back to me yet. They had a new roommate move in in early January, and life had been hectic.

I still haven't gotten contact info from her, but Fri Jan 16 I put notes in the mailboxes/mailslots of many* of the neighbors on my half* of my street.

*(A bunch of houses I didn't see mailboxes or even a mail slot in an exterior door -- though later that day I saw a mail carrier open what I would have assumed was a locked wooden exterior door at one house, so I guess some people have mail delivery in entryways I wouldn't have thought were publicly accessible.)

**(My street goes up and down a hill, with a cross street at the approximate middle, so "my half of my street" is a really natural way to think of what constitutes my immediate neighborhood.)

I kind of regretted never intentionally getting to know my neighbors when I moved back in 2013. And I know that the town I'm now living in, neighborhood email lists are common -- and surely not a thing my transient housemates are plugged into. And the state of the world increasing feels like community connection is a good thing to do.

So I was very brave and vulnerable and wrote this note -- and printed multiple copies in Word at work; I was def not writing multiple handwritten notes.

Dear neighbor,

I recently moved to [town] after years of living in [neighboring town], and with the rise of authoritarianism and the dismantling of the federal government, I'm trying to make an effort to get to know my community.

I don't know if there's a neighborhood email list I could join or other hyper-local community stuff.

I'm also happy to get to know people one-on-one. I have a 9-5 job but am often free on weekends, and sometimes free on weeknight evenings.

Topics I'm passionate about include: queer stuff, prison abolition, and children's literature.

[my name, pronouns, address/contact info]

One person texted me that afternoon, inviting me to hang out with him and his family at a local brewery that evening (which I did).

He mentioned the neighborhood email list and said he'd add me to it. That Tuesday, someone else emailed me and did get me connected to the email list.

Today (Fri Jan 30) someone emailed me, in part:

We loved your note so much and would love to say hi in the real world sometime. Come borrow some sugar! Or let's have a coffee/tea some weekend afternoon. We love our neighborhood. You probably know already but the winter farmer's market on Saturday morning is pretty awesome, unless you hate crowds.

I've been thinking recently about just hosting a few open houses on some Sundays for neighbors to come by and say hi. We're all very friendly and helpful on the internet when called on, but this feels like a moment to try to know each others faces and names and practice sharing ideas and asking for help. Your note in our mailbox made me begin to think of this again.

I was particularly happy about this because I'd been thinking about how to initiate more face-to-face getting-to-know neighbors since last Sunday when our Queer Pastoral Resident named that the biggest piece of advice she got from folks in Minneapolis (she was one of the hundreds of faith leaders who went to Minneapolis last weekend with MARCH) was to get to know your neighbors. Someone else doing some of this work for me! My brave and vulnerable act inspiring someone else to do more community connection!

(I have also inspired my ex and her new partner to do the neighbor notes thing in each of their neighborhoods.)

comments

culture consumed (November, 2025)

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:03:13 GMT

books

[Nov 4 Rainbow Book Group] Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwšeblu LaPointe (2025) -- Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes -- she gets really into riot grrl and punk but also realizes just how white it is, and figures out how to integrate her Indigenous identity
[Nov 12 climate change book club] Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Wray (2022) -- I know it was largely because I was tired, but I definitely wished this book was shorter
[Nov 19 DEI book club -- November is Native American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month] Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology ed. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (2023)
Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (2022) -- near the end of Thunder Song (p.194) she says, talking about her relationship with her ex-husband, "It ended. We both played our roles in that. I wrote a book about it." Many of us at book club were interested to learn more about the life that isn't talked about in Thunder Song -- and wondered if it might be a more linear narrative (it's not particularly).
[Dec 2 Rainbow Book Group] Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (2021) -- baby lesbian in 1950s SF Chinatown
[Dec 10 climate change book club] Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (2023, fiction) -- this read really quickly (good because it's almost 500 pages!), which was nice after having struggled a lot with reading recently. I had forgotten that skygiants' reiew talked about it being a Ride that was not well-served by the Serious Business cover art it got.
Summer at Squee by Andrea Wang (2024) -- middle-grade novel about a Chinese American kid at Chinese cultural summer camp -- gets into issues of different kinds of Chinese American identity/experience -- seen on the shelves of a local independent bookstore
The School for Invisible Boys by Shaun David Hutchinson (2024) -- another middle-grade novel (seen on the Most Anticipated Queer Middle Grade: January-June 2024)
& its sequel: A Home for Unusual Monsters (2025)
Dragon Bike: Fantastical Stories of Bicycling, Feminism, & Dragons ed. Elly Blue (2020) -- volume 6 of the "Bikes in Space" series -- trying for light reading when I was struggling to read, and also trying to read down some of the stuff on my shelves
[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022) -- finally, we finished! Our near-term plan is to pivot to lectionary preview Bible study now that bff is preaching regularly.
The Transition by Logan-Ashley Kisner (2025) -- trans-masc werewolf YA horror

I first heard about this from Book Riot, Our Queerest Shelves, "12 New Queer Books Out in September 2025" (Sep 2, 2025) and was intrigued by a GR review that said: "We've all heard about werewolf analogies when in comes to transition and largely that idea has been reclaimed by the trans community as empowering, but Kisner takes it in a different direction, instead emphasizing how becoming a werewolf goes against bodily autonomy in the way that transition doesn't."

theater

[CST] Summer, 1976 with ~~my mom (who graduated high school in 1977)~~ Abby M from church (my mom was sick) [online program]
1976. An Ohio college town. The second wave of feminism is cresting. Two very different women are thrown together through a faculty babysitting co-op and an unlikely friendship forms between Diana, a fiercely iconoclastic artist, and Alice, a free-spirited yet naive young housewife. Summer, 1976 is written by Pulitzer winner David Auburn (Proof) with Paula Plum, recipient of the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence making her CST directorial debut. She is joined by Elliot Norton Award-winning actors Lee Mikeska Gardner and Laura Latreille as Diana and Alice. In the course of 90 minutes, we are brought directly into their memories and the small moments that change the course of their lives in this funny and poignant play The New York Times praises as “sharply observant…subtly, insistently feminist.”
This play was sadder than I had expected. When I went back to the blurb afterward, to see what it had actually said versus my expectations, I realized it says almost nothing about the actual play -- about half of the blurb is just the credentials of the people involved.

Googling, some sites use the phrase "motherhood, ambition and intimacy," which feels like a pretty accurate summary of the themes of the play. In Googling I also came across a WBUR review of this production.

When the season was initially announced, Abby noticed that almost none of the plays were written by women (Silent Sky was the only one of the five). I didn't get "written by a man" vibes watching this play, but it is interesting that the Artistic Director writes in the program for this play (talking about the plays they selected for this season), "We doubled down on our mission - the feminine perspective and science wrapped within our social justice values," when only one play is actually written by a female perspective. (Yes, obviously women shouldn't be the only people writing women. And also.)

***

Currently Reading:

Nothing, apparently.

Reading Next:

It's hard for me to tell what I'll want to read next. I've been having bouts of wanting light reading and going through my TBR and requesting a bunch of books from the library and then when they arrive finding I'm not interested in a bunch of them atm. And I don't really like reading ebooks, so I have a ton of stuff I've bought in bundles on itch that idk when I'll ever read. (Not helped by the fact that browsing on itch I have to click into a specific title to get any details on it, which does not help my "browse for something I'm in the mood for," especially when I'm tired.)

Oh, I was recently reminded of Betsy Bird's "31 Days, 31 Lists" every December, so I'll be ILLing some amount of kidlit.

I've already read my December book club books, so I guess I can list my January book club books:

[Jan 6 MPL Rainbow book group] My Brother's Husband v.1 by Gengoroh Tagame; translated from the Japanese by Anne Ishii -- I will maybe also read Volume 2, depending on how I feel about Volume 1.

[Jan 11 feminist sff book club] She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan (2021) -- which is long (and the first book in a duology), so we decided to push that meeting out into January
I'm also planning to read the 2023 sequel, He Who Drowned the World, so am planning to get an early start on these long books. Though, I mean, I'm traveling for Christmas, so I may honestly just leave this as my plane ride books.

[Jan 25? OOYL book club] A Sharp Endless Need by Mac (Marisa) Crane (2025)

In an OOYL Discord chat, Frankie said:

I love this discussion tho bc we have talked about how as sports fans, it’s hard to enjoy a sports romance without sports. But then when is it too much sport? Where is the balance?
Has anyone in here read Mac Crane’s A Sharp Endless Need? What did you think of that balance? Maybe we can do that another time—a sports romance that literally opens in scene during a game

I feel a little bit like a faker since I am not in fact a sports fan, but here I am.

Work DEI book club is taking December off. We went ahead with Muslim American Heritage Month for January. We haven't picked a book (or a date) yet, but below is the list of books under consideration; O suggested the first book on this list, and A.D. suggested the other 5:

Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America by Aymann Ismail -- nonfiction (2025, 272 pages) -- memoir, son of Egyptian American parents
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat -- fiction (2021, 272 pages) -- Palestinian American author/protagonist, "Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East—from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine"
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine -- fiction (2022, 284 pages) -- Lebanese male author, "novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island"
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad -- fiction (2024, 336 pages) -- "Set in the Arab immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan"
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley -- nonfiction (1987, 496 pages)
This is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar -- nonfiction (2021, 288 pages) -- Somali American immigrant

comments

culture consumed (October, 2025)

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 19:55:46 GMT

theater

[ASP] Macbeth w/ Cate & Abby
Daggers in men’s smiles. Scorpions in king’s minds. Serpents under flowers. Scotland is infested with paranoia and conspiracy in this high-octane rendition from ASP Artistic Director Christopher V. Edwards.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Macbeths will stop at nothing to grasp their rightful throne — be it assassinating rivals, harnessing psychological warfare, even fracturing reality itself. With classic ASP verve and artistry, this new spin on one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written blurs the lines between free will and control, as the despotic tyrants slowly learn who is really pulling the strings.

With ambition and political intrigue at center stage, ASP is delighted to kick off our 22nd Season with one of the Bard’s most celebrated tragedies.
Before the show, projected on the stage is home-video style footage of the actors playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with a small child (implicitly their child). I had recently seen a Tumblr post about a production that opened with a child's funeral. (Which apparently isn't as unusual as the post suggests? I Googled "Macbeth funeral production" on my phone at the show, and the AI overview started with "Modern stage and film productions of Macbeth sometimes include a funeral scene, particularly for a child, as an artistic interpretation to provide a motive for the couple's ambition. In the original Shakespeare play, this funeral does not exist, but Lady Macbeth references having a child in the past, a detail that leaves room for interpretation by directors." and listed a bunch of productions. I have not fact-checked, but notes on the Tumblr post align with the idea that there have been other productions that have opened with a funeral.)

The show proper did in fact ~start with a funeral. There were 2 adult women characters, so I was initially somewhat confused as to which one was Lady Macbeth. There's a woman who turns out to be sort of the Handler for the witches/their counterparts in the Macbeth household (the playbill lists her as "H.E.C.A.T.E."), and at first I was had assumed she was Lady Macbeth because, like, she's a woman who shows up at the beginning and seems to be a big deal.

We didn't particularly get Cold War-specific vibes, though there's definitely a bunch about people being drugged, tortured, etc.

And there are some nice conceits of like Macbeth's letters being projected up on to the screen as Lady Macbeth reads them, but we see parts of them have been redacted.

The Director's Note says:
Quite often, productions of Macbeth lean on the supernatural: a swirl of witches, omens, and fate pressing down on mortals. I am struck by something more terrifying. The horror of Macbeth is not locked in the occult, but in the human capacity for cruelty when power is within reach.

Strip away the cauldron and spells, and what remains is people choosing—sometimes willingly, sometimes under pressure—to commit atrocities. For me that is more unnerving than supernatural prophecies.

Our version—MK-Beth, as we lovingly nickname it—begins with that premise: what if the Weird Sisters weren't sorceresses after all, but the architects of state-sponsored psychological manipulation? Set in a covert Cold War, the play unfolds through the lends of mind-control experiments, drug trials, and clandestine operations (à la MK-Ultra). The Weird Sisters become scientists and handlers, not fortune tellers. Macbeth and his wife are test subjects as much as they are conspirators. Their choices blur between autonomy and programming, desire and design.

As the Macbeths rise, we watch not only the corrosion of their morality but also the unsettling possibility that government-sanctioned manipulation is guiding their every step. Have they been stripped of their free will — or simply given a push that allowed their darkest impulses to bloom?

By reimagining Shakespeare's tragedy in this way, MK-Beth asks us to reconsider ambition, conspiracy, and complicity in an era where truth itself could be weaponized. It becomes a story not only of vaulting ambition, but of the fragility of the human mind when caught in the machinery of unchecked power.
We weren't entirely sold on it being no supernatural at all -- because no one has ever been able to drug people to do exactly as the drug-administer-er wants (or even to have wholly predictable effects).

We stayed after the show for a conversation with the director. He talked about how in Shakespeare's plays, the Clown character is anachronistic -- speaks to the present moment (the present of the audience). Which helps explain his choice to have the porter scene include a whole diatribe about AI and stuff, but I still did not like it. It's right after the death of the king, and I was like, "Ah, yes, this is the humorous interlude after some heavy drama," but no, it was a whole diatribe -- complete with a rewrite of the 7 ages of man speech from As You Like It.

Evan (the ASP staff member ~interviewing the director) mentioned a Malcom-focused sequel (I think from approximately Shakespeare's time?), which I have not been able to find from Internet searches. I guess I could email him?
[ArtsEmerson] The 4th Witch w/ Abby & Cate
Manual Cinema returns to Boston with their signature stage-magic to conjure Macbeth from a brand new perspective.

The 4th Witch is a fantastic new tale, inspired by elements of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which a girl escapes war and flees into a dark forest. Orphaned and exiled, she is rescued by a witch, who adopts her as an apprentice. As she becomes more skilled in witchcraft, her grief and rage draw her into a nightmarish quest for vengeance against the warlord who killed her parents: Macbeth.

Using inventive practical effects executed in plain sight, the troupe brilliantly employs shadow puppetry, live music and actors in silhouette, to create an entire new world in The 4th Witch. Manual Cinema has built a devoted fanbase in Boston over the course of their thrilling past productions at ArtsEmerson including Ada/Ava and Frankenstein. Do not miss its triumphant return this fall!
Sept 10 we got tickets to opening night (Oct 30). Oct 9, Abby forwarded me an email from ArtsEmerson and said, "Okay, I watched the video in this email and I'm super excited to see this, now. Also, no dialogue. 😮"

[digital program]

It's set in France, with World War vibes (Macbeth's army has tanks and bombs and gas masks), which I had not expected.

There is technically no dialogue, though there are sometimes projected intertitles ("when shall we three meet again?" type lines from Macbeth), and displays of stuff like newspaper headlines sometimes help indicate what's going on.

It starts out pretty slow, which surprised me since it was billed as a 65-minute show.

I'm a little hesitant around "the power of this person's grief etc. gives them huge powers" because, like, she surely wasn't the only person who lost her parents to Macbeth. But the 4th witch's development is generally well-done. I didn't love the reveal of what was going on with the witches -- though because it's the girl's story, not theirs, we understandably don't get much insight about what they were thinking.

The combination of shadow puppetry and live actors in profile was really impressive -- and meant we were often torn between watching the staging and watching the projection.

film -- NewFest 2025

As I mentioned NewFest (a NYC LGBTQ+ film fest) had a lot of its programming available for streaming (Oct 9-21) and you could stream the films "from anywhere in the United States & US Territories" (you didn't have to be in NY).

I was packing, so didn't watch as much as I might have otherwise (especially the second weekend), but I did get through everything I had put on my watch list. I had expected that shorts programs would make good "breaking up the packing," but honestly I tended to watch the shorts programs full-through and pause the feature-lengths.

Lesbian Space Princess (2025, Australia)
With silly humor full of in-community jokes, the Teddy Award-winning LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS is an animated sci-fi adventure for any queer person who has ever feared they weren’t cool enough.

BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER meets Adult Swim in this hilarious and heartfelt romp that won the prestigious Teddy Award at this year’s Berlinale. Hailing from the land of Clitopolis, awkward princess Saira yearns for the approval of her moms and their kingdom. It’s not her fault she prefers table magic to partying! But when her emotionally unavailable bounty hunter ex-girlfriend is kidnapped by Straight White Maliens, Saira sees an opportunity to win back her love and prove she’s just as cool and gay as the rest of her planet.

With a silly sense of humor full of in-community jokes, LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS is an animated sci-fi musical adventure for any queer person who has ever been afraid to be their authentic self — even if that self is a big gay loser.
In the intro to this, one of the filmmakers (Emma) said, "And we just wanna say to all the queer people and people of color watching this movie, for the next 87 minutes, you rule the gay-laxy."

I think that really elides how much discomfort and sadness there is throughout much of the film as Saira struggles.

I will also note this is very cis-normative. Like, jokes about the clit being hard to find were fine, but stuff like the penis guarding the Straight White Malien planet I did not love, as someone who loves a trans woman.

[In the Q&A afterward, one of the filmmakers (Leela) named, "we need to protect trans rights" -- talking about the scary state of the world and the importance of standing up for what's right -- which I appreciated.]

I also learned from that Q&A that Leela does/did musical comedy -- was in a musical comedy band with the voice actress for Saira.
SHORTS: QUEER TEEN POWER
An affirming shorts program for LGBTQ+ teens and allies, featuring diverse stories of resilience, magic, and joy—presented with the NYC Department of Education for the eighth year.

Now in its eighth year, NewFest is thrilled to collaborate with NYC’s Department of Education and GLAAD on this uplifting shorts program curated for LGBTQ+ teens. These upbeat, affirming films — from intergenerational bonds to magical drag foxes — give queer youth the chance to see themselves on screen and feel inspired to tell their own stories.
The intro said, "an affirming program, centering LGBTQ+ teens and featuring stories of resilience, magic, and joy"

I definitely somehow misunderstood and though these films were made by queer youth (in "collaborat[ion] with NYC’s Department of Education and GLAAD"), so I was confused when the first one was set in Pittsburgh, the second one had Stephen Fry...

( Queer Teen Power shorts playlist )
SHORTS: THE QUEER REBELLION
From ACT UP to Black trans joy, these shorts showcase queer resistance in all its forms—activism, euphoria, and radical imagination.

From ACT UP’s historic protests to today’s Black trans leadership, these shorts spotlight queer defiance across decades and identities. Whether through street activism, Black trans euphoria, or experimental visions of liberation, THE QUEER REBELLION celebrates community power, radical imagination, and the refusal to be erased.

( The Queer Rebellion shorts playlist )
Niñxs
Fifteen-year-old Karla, growing up trans in rural Mexico, shares her story with filmmaker Kani Lapuerta, together creating a tender, intergenerational portrait of adolescence filled with courage, humor, and authenticity.

Fifteen-year-old Karla navigates the turbulence of adolescence while making the life-changing decision to legally transition. Supported by her parents and community yet confronting the prejudices of her rural Mexican town, Karla tells her own story alongside trans filmmaker Kani Lapuerta, who has documented her since childhood.

Together, they craft a vivid portrait of what it means to grow up proudly trans in a world mediated by the ever-present lens of a front-facing camera. NIÑXS is a nuanced and intergenerational coming-of-age story that reimagines small-town life—and a whimsical reminder that no one escapes the painful, awkward, and beautiful parts of adolescence.
( discussion of gendered language in Spanish )
Night in West Texas -- feature-length documentary (USA, 2025)
In 1981, James Reyos, a gay Apache man, was wrongly convicted of murdering a priest. Peabody-winning journalist Deborah S. Esquenazi’s searing documentary follows the decades-long fight to clear his name.

In 1981, James Reyos, a young gay Apache man from Odessa, Texas, was pressured into confessing to the murder of a Catholic priest and sentenced to 38 years in prison. Nearly four decades later, armed with new evidence, justice-driven lawyers from The Innocence Project of Texas fight to clear his name.

With NIGHT IN WEST TEXAS, Peabody-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated documentarian Deborah S. Esquenazi transcends the tropes of true crime to expose decades of systemic injustice stacked against marginalized communities. The result is a powerful and deeply moving portrait of a man seeking redemption and a legal system reckoning with its failures.
“In this nuanced deconstruction of the true crime genre, director Deborah S. Esquenazi continues her biting exploration of the ways the judicial system is stacked against minority groups, and how the damage it creates cannot be undone with a simple overturning.” – Jorge Molina, Industry Manager & Programmer
I don't know who writes these blurbs. Reyos was not pressured into confessing. Like, he confesses due to his unhealthy emotional processing of a traumatic event, so one could pedantically argue he was "pressured" into confessing -- but it's not like cops found him and pressured him into confessing.
SHORTS: ALL ABOUT THE T
A trans-led program of bold, unfiltered shorts—original, smart, and brilliantly made. Rooted in resistance and care, these films embody the strength and spirit of trans lives. No T, no future.

A trans-led, nonconforming program of bold, unfiltered short films — original, smart, and brilliantly made. Rooted in community, resistance, and care, these radical works center self-determination beyond mere survival. Dissident bodies come together to claim space, embrace each other, and create futures. ALL ABOUT THE T means no compromise.
From the intro: "uplifting and unfiltered shorts. original, smart, and brilliantly made. rooted in resistance, and care, these films embody the strength and spirit of trans lives and those who love them."

( All About the T shorts playlist )
She's the He
When high-schooler Alex convinces his best friend Ethan to pretend to be trans to get girls, Ethan discovers she isn’t pretending. Chaos, comedy, and self-discovery collide in this sweetly subversive queer teen romp.
When high-schooler Alex convinces his best friend Ethan they should pretend to be trans to hook up with girls, Ethan makes a startling discovery: She isn’t pretending. Blending farce with genuine emotion, this subversive comedy takes rightwing locker-room panic to its funniest and most poignant conclusion. With a fresh spin on the coming-out narrative, debut director Siobhan McCarthy pays homage to iconic high school comedies like SHE’S THE MAN and BRING IT ON while adding a distinctly queer twist. Led by Misha Osherovich and Nico Carney, an ensemble of trans actors deliver both irreverence and heart–cementing this as a new teen comedy classic.
“On paper, SHE’S THE HE sounds like it could go totally off the rails — but Siobhan McCarthy and the hilarious ensemble pull it off with skill and wild charm. Bold, irreverent, and unexpectedly sweet, it’s the queer teen comedy we didn’t know we needed until now.” – David Hatkoff, Executive Director
Here Come the Dolls shorts program w/ Abby

This was maybe the weirdest shorts program of the season?

In the intro, one of the programmers said, "a set of genre-defying shorts where trans women reign. From ritual and revenge to sisterhood and catharsis. Bold, visionary, and unmissable, the dolls are here to stay."
Genre-defying shorts where trans women reign—from ritual and revenge to sisterhood and catharsis. Bold, visionary, and unmissable: the Dolls are here to stay.

An audacious shorts program celebrating the vision and brilliance of trans women and those who love them. From vengeful resurrections to satanic rituals, shoplifters waging war on capitalism to secret cults, shadow selves to harrowing births, these genre-defying films crown the Dolls as auteurs, protagonists, dreamers, and disruptors.

( Here Come the Dolls shorts playlist )

watched the first episode of Dead End: Paranormal Park on Netflix (prompted by the right-wing furor about it)

books

[Sept 10 climate change book club] What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) -- I ended up having a conflict for the meeting, but did end up starting to read the book and was into it more than I was expecting ... though I have also had a lot else going on, so it took me a while to finish it
[Oct 29 DEI book club -- October is both Filipino American History Month & LGBT History Month] Horse Barbie: A Memoir of Reclamation by Geena Rocero (2024, 336 pages) -- memoir by a trans woman who moves from Manila to the U.S., having been a trans pageant queen in the Philippines
[Nov 2 feminist sff book] The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older (2023) -- Hugo nominee, novella, “a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter”

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022)

[Nov 4 Rainbow Book Group] Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwšeblu LaPointe (2025) -- Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes

[Nov 19 DEI book club] Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology ed. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (2023) -- short story collection

November is Native American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month.

O. suggested a horror novel. I suggested the book we didn't get to do for climate change book club this March. No one else suggested anything, so I went back to last year and saw that A. (who started the book club) and A.D. (who often has plenty of book suggestions) had suggested books, so I picked 1 from each and made this proposed list:

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (2020, 305 pages) -- horror novel [suggested by O. this year]
The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015, 368 pages) -- nonfiction [suggested by me this year]
This Place: 150 Years Retold (2019, 287 pages) -- graphic novel anthology [suggested by A. last year]
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology ed. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (2023, 400 pages) -- short story collection [suggested by A.D. last year]

[Nov 12 climate change] Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Wray (2022)

Reading Next:

I mean, I have a lot that I'm reading right now. I guess December book club books after these?

[Dec 2 Rainbow book group] Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (2021) -- I've heard good things about this since like before it came out, so am glad for the excuse to read it; a little surprised we're doing a YA book, but

[Dec 10 climate change book club] Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (2023, fiction) -- I feel like I've seen largely negative reviews of this, but maybe I'm confusing it with one of the many other Arthur books that have come across my dash? skygiants seems to have liked it -- though fuck, I forgot this book is like 500 pages

Work DEI book club is taking December off. January topic still TBD. January doesn't have much in the way of heritage/identity months, so we're mostly on our own for a theme -- though I learned that apparently it's Muslim American Heritage Month in Illinois, so that's one option.

Feminist sff book club is next doing She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan (2021) -- which is long (and the first book in a duology), so we decided to push that meeting out into January (and literally no one has replied to the Doodle poll, so who can say when we're meeting).

comments

Read the Rainbow Book Group: 2025-2026

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 15:49:09 GMT

Last week, I still only knew the Rainbow book club books through November of this year, but at the meeting last night, the facilitator had a full list for the program year (parenthetical notes are hers from her handout list; notes below that are mine):

September 1, 2025
Blackouts by Justin Torres
(2023, fiction: gay men, storytelling, queer fiction)

October 7, 2025
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
(1998, fiction: contemporary classic, influence of Virginia Woolf, domestic fiction, psychological fiction)

November 4, 2025
Thunder Song: essays by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
(2024, nonfiction: Coast Salish Indians, Salishan women, punk culture)

December 2, 2025
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
(2021, fiction: teen lesbians, Chinese American teenagers, identity in adolescence, race relations, families, Chinatown [San Francisco, California], Cold War)
-- I've heard good things about this book since probably before it even came out, so I'm glad for an excuse to read it (though I'm somewhat surprised we're doing a YA book)

January 6, 2026
My Brother's Husband v.1 by Gengoroh Tagame; translated from the Japanese by Anne Ishii
(2017, graphic novel: gay men/Japan, fathers & daughters, families)

February 3, 2026
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
(2019, fiction: Black women/Great Britain - social life & customs)
-- I've been interested in this book for a while but also, it's LONG (like 450 pages)

March 3, 2026
Looking for Lorraine: the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry
(2018, nonfiction - biography: Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965; dramatists, American/20th Century; African American dramatists; African American civil rights workers)

April 7, 2026
How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica
(2024, fiction: gay men, male college students, Mexican Americans, coming of age, New York)

May 5, 2026
The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén
(2025, fiction: best friends, Shakespearean actors/actresses, gay men, lavender marriage)

June 2, 2026
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
(2023, fiction: artists, widows, secretary, grief, lesbians, alternative histories)

July 7, 2026
Blue-Skinned Gods by S.J. Sindu
(2021, fiction: avatars [religion], Hindu gods, families, India - religious life and customs, queer coming of age, shortlisted for the 2022 Lammy award in bisexual fiction)
-- I had suggested this author ("a Sri Lankan American queer, genderqueer writer")

August 4, 2026
The Lilac People by Milo Todd
(2025, fiction: Holocaust survivors/Germany; transgender men; World War, 1939-145/Germany, historical fiction)
-- I would not have picked a Holocaust book for a summer read, but okay

comments

NewFest 2025

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:25:34 GMT

I've kept the "reading next" part of Reading Wednesday that I turned into a monthly "culture consumed"* report, but I haven't included other upcoming media stuff. Barely anyone reads this DW, and fewer still are local, so flagging e.g. upcoming theater mostly doesn't feel particularly useful.

But I did want to flag an upcoming queer film fest.

NewFest (a NYC LGBTQ+ film fest) has a lot of its programming available for streaming (Oct 9-21, $14.50/program or $95 pass for all 26 -- so you need to watch 7 to come out financially ahead with the pass, but I'll probably just buy it for ease and throwing the fest some dollars) -- about half shorts programs, half feature-length (fiction and documentary).

You can stream the films "from anywhere in the United States & US Territories" -- you don't have to be in NY. (In contrast to WickedQueer, Boston's queer film festival, whose streaming windows have been locked to Massachusetts. I assume NewFest has more money to spend on more expansive licensing deals.)

[Edit: Obviously if you're actually in NYC you can potentially go to stuff in-person and thus have access to the full program -- not everything is available streaming.]

*which I should maybe rename? I've been seeing stuff recently about moving away from language of "consumer" to move away from/push back against the capitalist framing, of the idea that art/media is just a product to be consumed, etc.

comments

culture consumed (September, 2025)

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 13:42:30 GMT

Combination of trying to distract myself from being upset during Abby visiting her LDR the beginning of September, and me getting sick near the end of September, I ended up watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of low-key books.

***

books

[picturebook] Glenn Burke, Game Changer: The Man Who Invented the High Five written by Phil Bildner & illustrated by Daniel J. O'Brien (from the Lammys this year).
This was darker than I was expecting, which makes sense given the facts of Burke's life (which I didn't know until reading this book)
[Sept 28 OOYL book club] One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller (2025) -- trans-fem high school football player, YA
This was, as advertised, quite good (I have not-yet-very-articulated thoughts about how this book and Emily St. James' Woodworking, also a 2025 release, feel like Trans 201 books).
Frankie moved to Beehiiv around in time for me to upgrade to a paid subscription and register for the book club -- which the author was present for, and it was mostly Frankie asking the author questions (which was fine, to be clear, just not exactly what I had expected).
A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell (2024) -- Victorian romance with a cis woman and a trans man
I enjoyed this.
Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky (2025) -- graphic novel
Mattie's work continues to not particularly be for me.
[September 29 online local-ish sff book club] Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis (2024)
I enjoyed this.
The Prospects by K.T. Hoffman (2024) -- baseball romance: gay trans man/cis man; the first/previous fiction book Out Of Your League book club did (June 2025)
I also enjoyed this, though ugh, romances stress me out sometimes
& then I listened to the Gender Reveal bonus episode
[September 24 DEI book club -- Hispanic Heritage Month] Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez (2023, 304 pages) --graphic novel memoir about the author's childhood in Cuba under Castro and his family leaving as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980
This was heavier than I expected. I also had not realized it would include contemporary stuff about the rise of authoritarianism in the USA with Trump (the author being disturbed by how much the USA was coming to resemble the Cuba he had left).

films

Superman (2025)
KPop Demon Hunters (2025, Netflix) -- which I enjoyed, though I did not love it as much as some of the Internet
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) -- a Marvel movie I hadn't gotten around to watching before, which I enjoyed; alas that Xiran Jay Xhao's Twitter thread of Chinese culture references is no longer accessible
Thunderbolts* (2025) -- a recent Marvel movie

live theatre

[CST] Silent Sky w/ Cate [mobile program]
1900. Cambridge. Enthralled by the night sky, Henrietta Leavitt joins the Harvard Computers, a sisterhood of scientists who chronicle the stars. Despite dismissal from her male supervisors, she records her own observations of Cepheid stars and changes the way we look at the universe forever. Sarah Shin (The Chinese Lady) returns to direct what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “sheer magic,” by the author of past favorites The Half-Life of Marie Curie and Emilie La Marquise du Chatalet Defends Her Life Tonight, Lauren Gunderson.
We enjoyed it -- though in looking up more about Henrietta after the play, we were disappointed by how much the playwright made up for dramatic effect.
[Ufot #6] The Ceremony w/ Cate ~~and Sarah J+Sam~~
When Abasiama and Disciple’s only son, Ekong asks Lumanthi Rathi to be his wife, they accept that their dream wedding might have to go on without either of their fathers present. But when Lumanti’s dad has a sudden change of heart, Ekong dares to attempt a reconciliation with his long-estranged father in order to make the ritual of their wedding ceremony truly whole.

A moving, multigenerational story that intertwines Nigerian and Nepali cultural traditions, The Ceremony is a joyous, tender reckoning of love and the rituals that bind us, brought to life by CHUANG Stage, in partnership with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and Boston University School of Theatre, catalyzed by the Huntington.
I was recovering from being sick, but the whole run was sold out (though there was a waitlist, with moderately good odds, for future performances) so I masked and Cate was able to drive me, and I'm glad I was able to make it.
It was opening weekend, and we stayed for a conversation with the creatives afterward, and apparently not only was this a world premiere, but the playwright was making edits up until 2 days before opening night.
[Emerson] Confederates w/ Bridget -- student actors, faculty director, I think (we were having dinner that night already, and Bridget invited me to join her for the show)
By Dominique Morisseau
Directed by Kimille Howard
Confederates is a funny, smart and moving satire about the struggles and triumphs of two brilliant Black American women – an enslaved rebel and a professor at a contemporary university – having parallel experiences of institutional racism, though they live over a century apart.
“CONFEDERATES” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.
This was really good.

other

After watching The Ceremony, I finally started listening to the runboyrun podcast (Ufot #3, but while the 2-night live reading was in March of this year, the podcast wasn't actually up until June-July of this year). There are 3 episodes, each of which has an accompanying bonus episode that's an interview with involved/affilliated people. I have so far listened to the first 2 regular+bonus episodes.

It was kind of serendipitous timing to listen to this right after The Ceremony, because Disciple is increasingly absent in the cycle but re-emerges in The Ceremony (and is the center of runboyrun).

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022) -- a couple weeks in September we didn't get to the week's chapter because we were catching up on other stuff (though then one week we read 2 chapters because they were quite short and thematically connected), and we'll miss a couple weeks in October while ze is on honeymoon, but we have only about 10 "chapters" left, so the end is arguably in sight? (It's a long book, and most of the chapters are quite short, so it has kind of felt like we'd be reading it low-key forever.)

[Sept 10 climate change book club] What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) -- I ended up having a conflict for the meeting, but did end up starting to read the book and was into it more than I was expecting ... though I have also had a lot else going on, and it's a long book, so I'm currently less than halfway through

[Oct 8 climate change book club] Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins (2015) -- as predicted, I was not super into this; I got about 1/4 of the way through and have put it aside with expectation to DNF, though possibly bookclub discussion will convince me to try it again.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders (2025) -- I had gotten this from the library as part of my "lighter reading" and it is not quite.
I sometimes wonder if it's trying to do too much -- though I increasingly see how these various threads are weaving together (I'm about 60% of the way through rn).

Reading Next:

As usual, my predictions are primarily book club books, and also I don't expect to read all all of my October book club books.

October book club book overview:

[Oct 7 Read the Rainbow] The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1998) -- I read this in college (in a Tellings and Retellings class along with Mrs. Dalloway) and am not that interested in reading it again, though I did get both books out from the library.

[Oct 18 Indian Food, Indian Fiction] Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan (2020) -- mystery set in Bombay on the eve of 1950, with a female detective
I have never actually made it to this MeetUp book club, but I sometimes read the book (only sometimes, since Indian novels tend to be hella long); amusingly, the last book I read for this book club was also a mystery: A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao (2023), set in colonial Fiji in 1914 (for July 2024).

[Oct 29 DEI book club] Horse Barbie: A Memoir of Reclamation by Geena Rocero (2024)

October is both Filipino American History Month & LGBT History Month, and getting people to pick a theme for October's book club was challenging.

There aren't a lot of LGBT Filipino American books (especially ones that are actually available at local libraries), but I did find some options:

Flamer by Mike Curato (2020, 366 pages) -- YA graphic novel, fiction but based on the gay Filipino-American author's own experiences
Horse Barbie: A Memoir of Reclamation by Geena Rocero (2024, 336 pages) -- memoir by a trans woman who moves from Manila to the U.S.
Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan (2020, 310 pages) -- Filipina trans woman with albinism who immigrates to the U.S. as a teenager
America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo (2018, 408 pages) -- novel by Filipino-American writer, one character is queer, "Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they're building in America. [...] Illuminating the violent political history of the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s and the insular immigrant communities that spring up in the suburban United States"

After I had posted a StrawPoll of LGBT Filipino American books I dug up myself because no one had expressed a preference between the two themes or nominated any books themselves, A. (who started the book club) posted in the Slack: "thank you for being the foundation of this group haha"

Then we had a tie between the first 2 books -- but someone did cast a tie-breaking vote. And I've been thinking about reading Horse Barbie for a while (I suggested it for Read the Rainbow book club this year -- though I always have a whole list of suggestions, so I dunno if the facilitator will end up including this book on this year's list; right now we only have books scheduled through November).

[Oct 31 work book club] Strange Houses by Uketsu
This book got picked at the Sept 26 meeting (which I skipped); I put in a library hold about as soon as I got the invite, and was 17/17 on the hold list. So who knows if I'll even get a copy. (Though I'm already down to 11/13 on the hold list, so it seems to be moving fairly quickly.) It's a horror mystery thriller something for Halloween, and idk if I'll even wanna read it, but.

[Edit: Oct 22 this book was In Transit to me. I swear I had looked a day or maybe two before and I was "5 of 17." It came in for me on Oct 24, but I was moving the next day and didn't pick it up until Oct 27. It was a 2-week loan, which helps explain why a copy came in for me so quickly. I was reading other stuff for early November book clubs and had limited brain for reading (I had just moved *and* just broken up), so did not read it. I considered going to the book club meeting anyway, but was very tired that day and skipped.]

comments

culture consumed (August, 2025)

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 16:20:53 GMT

live theatre

[Shakespeare on the Common] As You Like It w/ Cate & Allie
After her father’s kingdom is seized by his power-hungry brother, Rosalind and her cousin Celia flee in disguise, seeking refuge in the Forest of Arden. There, they find new freedom and wisdom about love, family, community, and acceptance. Shakespeare’s lush romantic comedy As You Like It celebrates the joys and follies of human nature and the beauty of creating one’s own sanctuary, even in the face of great tyranny.

books

[Aug 10 feminist sff book club] Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (2023)
Accidental Demons by Clare Edge (2024) -- middle-grade urban fantasy novel about a blood witch who keeps accidentally summoning demons when she pricks her finger to test her blood sugar (she was recently diagnosed with diabetes)
[Aug 22 work book club] Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2025)
[August 27 "July" DEI book club -- Disability Pride Month] Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life by Alice Wong (2022)
We did a graphic novel for July, and people liked not having a full-length text work, so we talked about doing a collection of poetry/essays/short stories for the next month. No one made any suggestions, so I dropped a list:
- Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare (1999, 147 pages) -- essay collection by a white, disabled, genderqueer poet
- The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love With Me by Keah Brown (2019, 256 pages) -- essay collection by a Black disabled woman
- Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century (2020, 309 pages) or Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire (2024, 384 pages) -- both anthologies edited by Alice Wong (a disabled Asian American woman)
- Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life by Alice Wong (2022, 376 pages) -- "a genre-bending memoir in essays" (that apparently also includes recipes, interviews, etc.)
We then had a 3-way tie between Exile and Pride, Disability Visibility, and Year of the Tiger, and I had to do a runoff poll
[picturebook] Like That Eleanor: The Amazing Power of Being an Ally written by Lee Wind & illustrated by Kelly Mangan -- I was kinda meh on this
[Sept 14 feminist sff book club] Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by M.E. O'Brien & Eman Abdelhadi (2022) -- which I did not enjoy as much as I had hoped; it is in fact what it says on the tin, but I did not actually love oral history as a format for this

films

Lisa Frankenstein (on Peacock) -- which I had heard was not great, but I wanted distraction. It reminded me some of Heathers.

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022) -- the chapters are generally short, and the book is long, so we'll be reading this low-key forever.

Books that GR thinks I am Currently Reading but which are kind of on hiatus:

Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships by Jessica Fern, with David Cooley (2023)

[August 31 OOYL book club] The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters (2024) -- a Lambda Literary finalist for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction

Reading Next:

September book club books I expect to read:

[Sept OOYL book club] One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller (2025)
(Frankie at OOYL said: "One of the Boys is our second fiction venture, just in time for football season. Most of the trans sports books I’ve read have transmasc protagonists and women’s sports teams, so I love this book about a trans girl trying to figure out if she still wants to play football with the boys after her transition.")
Bethany at TFR recently read and really liked this.
Her live-read thread ends "Okay yeah y'all were right, that was one of the best books of the year. Goddamn. Talk about slam dunk YA."
And her post of her review on Patreon adds: "Probably my second favorite book of the year so far behind Autumnal Conductor."

September book club books I will maybe read:

[September 24? DEI book club -- Hispanic Heritage Month]

I made a book suggestion thread for Latine books for September, and A.D. pretty immediately suggested 6 books -- none of which I had previously heard of (except the first one, which I had already read). I pulled links and ~summaries from Bookshop, but only 1 person has voted so far, so unclear what we'll read. I don't feel strongly about much of any of them.

The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes (YA novel, queer Mexican American teen girl protagonist; 2023, 416 pages)
Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva (novel about 3 generations of women, set partly in the Boston area; 2023, 320 pages)
The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez (novel about the construction of the Panama Canal; 2025, 336 pages)
A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens by Raul Palma ("genre-bending" novel; 2024, 288 pages)
Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez (graphic novel memoir about the author's childhood in Cuba under Castro and his family leaving as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980; 2023, 304 pages)
Violeta by Isabel Allende (novel following a woman who lives from 1920-2020, in Chile?; 2023, 368 pages)

[September 29 online ~local sff book club] Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis (2024) -- I'm on the mailing list for this book club and have attended occasionally. I happen to currently be free for this month's meeting, and the book sounds potentially interesting.

September book club books I do not expect to read:

[Sept 2 Read the Rainbow library book group] Blackouts by Justin Torres (2023)

The move from second Thursday to first Tuesday meant less time to read this, and I wasn't super grabbed by the idea of the book, and church "Biblical Weirdos" Zoom got pushed out a week so the last session was gonna overlap with this, so I don't think I'll attend the book club meeting and also don't think I'll read the book.

This sure is a book. The GR blurb:

From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective.
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?

Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.

(Lol, Pedro Páramo was a book I low-key vetoed for DEI book club.)

[Sept 10 climate change book club] What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) -- I expect to go to this book club meeting, but haven't had the time/energy/interest to read the book.

comments

culture consumed (July, 2025)

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 16:41:16 GMT

books

Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology edited by Ryan Vale and Ocean Riley (2023) -- a trans-masc and non-binary anthology, though apparently Extraterrestrials, the trans-fem and non-binary anthology they worked on next, is in fact in progress (I reached out to Ryan the weekend I started reading it, and he said, "We are currently in the editing stages and are hoping to publish by the end of 2025.")
Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore (2024) -- bisexual Jewish trans boy who can see ghosts
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock (2014) [reread] & Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me by Janet Mock (2017)
Late June I read Beneath Strange Lights by Vivian Valentine (2023), and July I read the next 2 books in the Amelia Temple series -- Against Fearful Lies by Vivian Moira Valentine (2024) and Along Torturous Paths by Vivian Moira Valentine (2025).
[Aug 14 local library LGBTQ+ book group] The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy -- my suggestion (and The Transfeminine Review 2024 Reader's Choice Award winner for Outstanding Fantasy -- and shortlisted for TFR’s Best Transfeminine Fiction of 2024 Award)
Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology edited by Crystal M. Huff (2022)
[July 30 "June" DEI book club -- Pride Month] The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020) -- YA fiction, graphic novel, gay son of Vietnamese immigrants

[Apparently all the books I finished reading in July, minus the last 2, were trans-authored. Okay, technically idk if Shelly Jay Shore identifies as trans, but she is a she/they.]

film

Sinners

Ironheart episodes 3-6 with Abby
I decided I wanted us to watch the second half of the miniseries together (because the developments were stressing me out), so we watched the remainder when we visited my family in St. Louis.
visiting the niblings, I saw:
- the first episode of Mermicorno: Starfall -- which reminded me a bit of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- a bunch of SpongeBob SquarePants -- which I learned does not bring me joy
- some of The Gilded Age with my SiL
- T.O.T.S. -- taking literally the idea that storks bring babies? It does eventually have an episode about adoption(?) -- about how love is what makes a family and babies don't have to be the same species as their parents. I don't know if it ever has explicitly same-sex parents (I think the ~adoption episode included single-parent families -- I was only partially watching by that point because I was really done with the show being on).
  I'm clearly not intended to think too hard about any of it. There's an episode where they note that baby bunnies come in large batches -- but then each bunny goes to a different family*, and the big conflict to be resolved in the episode is that they get the babies mixed up and need to figure out which one goes to which family ... because one of the families is like, "Nope, that's not our baby." Which, given that the babies literally get delivered by bird like a package delivery service, raises a lot of questions about how babies work in this world -- questions which I am sure we're not supposed to think too hard about.
  *I'm pretty sure there was a previous episode where they have a bunch of ducklings to deliver to one family. But I guess since many animals have large batches of babies they can't really hew close to accuracy within the conceit of the show. Though it still felt weird to me to nod to the fact that bunnies are known for having large batches of babies and then not have the bunnies have big families.
  There's also an episode with a baby skunk who's too stinky to play with. And, like, that's not how skunks work. It feels like they took one piece of info a child might know ("bunnies have lots of babies," "skunks are stinky," "whales are big" -- omg, it literally only just occurred to me that they have a blue whale baby just hanging out not in water) and decided to build an episode around it.
We Are Lady Parts Season 1, episodes 1-2, with Abby -- glossed in my notes as "all-female Muslim punk band" (it's a British show, so the seasons are short; it's on Peacock)

art

Saint Louis Art Museum
My brother and sister-in-law took the kids to Family Sunday—Animals in Art, and Abby and I came with (the museum is free).

The special exhibit was Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939 -- many of which are words relevant to Abby's interests. So I bought us tickets. It's timed entry, and the soonest entry available was 2:45pm. It was about 2:05pm, so we went down one level to Islamic Art & Textiles (er, 2 separate exhibits -- though much of the textiles was, in fact, Islamic), since hanging out with the niblings while they cut out felt to make animals was not super of interest to us.
We entered the timed-entry exhibit a little early and finished it about 4 pm?

***

Currently Reading:

[Aug 10 feminist sff book club] Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (2023)

[Aug 22 work book club] Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2025)

Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships by Jessica Fern, with David Cooley (2023) -- which is about transitions, hahahacrolol (Abby has a new LDR, and I have experienced lots of jealousy and insecurity and stress and grief about that change in our relationship; and then by the time I gave Abby a copy of this book for her birthday, we had mutually decided to intentionally scale back/restructure our relationship, at least on a trial basis, in the hopes that that will enable us to preserve the good things about this relationship while easing some of what's been stressing this relationship)

Reading Next:

I'm already reading/done with most of my few August book club books, see above. DEI book club is gonna do a disability book for August (we skipped July, which is Disability Pride Month, and August doesn't have much in the way of identity/heritage months) but we haven't listed nominations yet.

New program year book club lists haven't come out for my library book clubs, but I checked the events calendar, and Read the Rainbow (Sept 2) is Blackouts by Justin Torres (2023), and climate change book club facilitator thought September was gonna be What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) when I asked her before our summer break.

August Out of Your League [OOYL] book club is The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters (2024) -- shout-out to being a Lambda Literary finalist!
Book club is only for paid subscribers, and I don't wanna give more money to Substack** [I do currently give money to Erin Reed, to support her trans journalism], so I'm holding out for their promised shift to Beehiiv, and am hoping that happens before this [Aug 31] book club.

**Substack continues to have a Nazi problem. Literally on Tuesday of this week I saw a post on my Bluesky feed about someone getting a hate speech push notification from Substack.

And then on Wednesday I saw a link to a Patreon post about assorted recent hate speech push notifications from Substack (content warning: there's a swastika image right at the top of this post, which I did not appreciate), and how the algorithmic recommendations mean that people will get suggested white supremacists blogs on "rising" lists, etc.

The Patreon article talks a little about how many users stay on Substack because there aren't better alternatives, but Leave Substack Dot Com asserts that there are viable alternatives. (Lol that their section on Ghost includes "A Bluesky thread from a user who moved from Substack to Ghost." That's Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. I have heard of no one in their "Who Else Has Migrated Away? Notable examples include" list, but I have very much heard of her.)

comments

2024 Lammy finalists came out yesterday

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:08:24 GMT

My tl;dr is that (1) I'm surprised I don't recognize more titles & (2) I'm glad picturebooks, middle-grade, and young adult all get their own categories this year -- but (2a) I am meh on this picturebook slate (although I have not read any of them -- yet ... I have put in library hold requests to at least skim-read them for completeness).

Bethany (of The Transfeminine Review) posted almost immediately. She also RTed a post from June Martin, and I was like, "Where can I find the images that have the book cover images?" (Because sometimes I won't recognize a title from the name, but will recognize the cover from buzzy articles). Rude that the answer is fucking Instagram.

Below the cut, the Lambda Literary list. I linked each heading to the IG image and linked each title to a Bookshop or publisher's webpage (which, wow, was so much more work than I expected; though it did mean I learned more about many of the titles; I also don't understand why subtitles were only erratically included in their list? I did add in some subtitles below).

( Read more... )

comments

culture consumed (June, 2025)

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 02:05:20 GMT

The last few months (March, April, May) I keep just posting a draft private-locked because I get overwhelmed trying to write up something or other from the month. But I think I managed a publishable June one.

film

As mentioned [in the private-locked May entry], I got a virtual pass for NewFest Pride (May 29 - June 2).

Heightened Scrutiny
A riveting documentary that sees ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, veteran journalists, and unwavering activists show strength and resistance in the face of an actively unfolding story around anti-trans legislation

From the intrepid filmmakers behind the groundbreaking DISCOLURE, this riveting documentary traces the arc of an epic legal battle alongside a revealing breakdown of anti-trans mainstream media bias. Follow Queens-based ACLU attorney, father, and cat lover Chase Strangio – the first out trans person to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court – as he strategizes to fight a 2023 Tennessee state law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, with a consequential decision expected in June 2025.

Resistance and logic are key as veteran journalists and activists – along with Strangio – lucidly dismantle distorted, panic-inducing rhetoric and collectively respond to the shocking complicity hard-won trans rights being rolled back. HEIGHTENED SCRUTINY compelling captures the timely fight against anti-trans legislation all the way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and provides a powerful call to action for bodily autonomy, civil rights, and truth.
I'm glad I managed to see this film before the Skrmetti decision dropped, because I think it would have felt a lot harder to watch it afterward.
I was bummed that Enigma didn't show up as available for me in the virtual pass, even though it was originally listed as included in that pass. I know the film fest indicated that due to licensing agreements, virtual screenings could also "sell out," so it's possible that happened? But I would have thought it would say that -- rather than just not showing up at all. I guess I could have tried to reach out at someone at the festival about it, but apparently I was not that invested.

books

skim-read 4? picturebooks
After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti by Edwidge Danticat (2002)
[June 11 climate change book club] The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (2022, speculative fiction)
read Abby 7 picturebooks -- many of which we were disappointed by
- We both really liked Abolition is Love (written by Syrus Marcus Ware and illustrated by Alannah Fricker, 2023), though.
[June 12 local library LGBTQ+ Book Group] Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: a memoir by Curtis Chin (2023)
Otherworldly by F.T. Lukens (2024) -- YA urban fantasy (from the "Most Anticipated Queer Young Adult Fiction: January-June 2024")
[zine] Being Trans in Philosophy Issue #0
Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline (2025)
On Community by Casey Plett (2023)
Beneath Strange Lights by Vivian Valentine (2023)
K.J. Charles' review says, in part: "Our Nancy Drew team, battling 1950s America as well as the SSOO and the tentacles, is made up of a young Black woman, a white lesbian, and a part-Lovecraftian-horror trans girl, which is what I call diversity."
Turns out there are 2 more books in the series so far (and the author says, "Don't worry, there will be a new book next year!"). So near the end of reading Book 1, I ordered Books 2 and 3 on Bookshop.org.
The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis (2023) -- black trans woman memoir

live music

Kinsey Scales Pride Concert 2025! at my local library with Abby
🏳️‍🌈 Come join us at the Medford Public Library for our free annual Pride Concert! 🏳️‍🌈

Saturday, June 21st, at 4:30pm

The theme of this year's concert is POWER! We will be performing a cappella arrangements of music from artists like Rage Against the Machine, Diana Ross, and many more, centered around reclaiming power and celebrating strength in community.
- Masking is strongly encouraged
- Be advised that some songs may not be appropriate for small children
See you there! 🌈🎶
Yes, they legit did an a cappella arrangement of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name." (It was the last song before the intermission, and they warned people that they might wanna take their kids out to intermission early.)

A bunch of the songs are conversations, and I thought the acting was particularly good in "The Wedding Song" from Hadestown (though generally good overall).

Ironheart episodes 1-3 with Abby

It's the new Marvel mini-series -- starring the black woman MIT student who has a part in the second Black Panther movie. The first 3 episodes dropped last Tuesday, and we watched them over the weekend. The next 3 episodes drop tomorrow night, and we'll probably watch them separately (Abby left town tonight for some travel, and we won't see each other for over 2 weeks -- and we'll first see each other while visiting my family for a few days).

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022)

Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology edited by Ryan Vale and Ocean Riley (2023) -- a trans-masc and non-binary anthology, though apparently Extraterrestrials, the trans-fem and non-binary anthology they worked on next, is in fact in progress (I reached out to Ryan over the weekend, and he said, "We are currently in the editing stages and are hoping to publish by the end of 2025.")

Reading Next:

As mentioned above, potentially more of the Amelia Temple books (the Beneath Strange Lights sequels).

This month I definitely leaned into some less brain-heavy reading, and I think that will continue. I got a bunch of queer YA and some trans memoirs from the library, since that was the closest I could figure out to what my brain was wanting.

I'm gonna be traveling for most of July and don't have much book club reading for that month. Though I also have a week until I travel, so I can't actually save all my library books for my travel -- plus I'm not in transit that much, so I shouldn't over-expect how much reading I'll get done in transit.

my one book club book for July:

[July 30 "June" DEI book club -- Pride Month] The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020) -- YA fiction, graphic novel, gay son of Vietnamese immigrants

and for August:

[Aug 10 feminist sff book club] Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (2023)

[Aug 14 local library rainbow book group] The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (2024) -- my suggestion! (and The Transfeminine Review 2024 Reader's Choice Award winner for Outstanding Fantasy -- and shortlisted for TFR’s Best Transfeminine Fiction of 2024 Award)

[Aug 22 work book club] Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2025)

[edit: I have not actually asked if we wanna do DEI book club in August. June's meeting got pushed to late July because of people's vacation plans, so I'm imagining we'll punt August and just do September. It doesn't feel like it makes sense to try to discuss August plans when people's being-around overlaps so little, since it would then be a very long asynchronous conversation process.]

So I will definitely potentially try to do some book club reading during my travels since my August is front-loaded with book clubs (and the first two August book club books are both kinda long).

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UCC General Synod - Banned Books

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:15:09 GMT

I am skeptical about the utility of the Synod service project this year -- like, how effective is it necessarily to build a Banned Books Library in a church? (Last year's project -- putting together packs of menstrual hygiene products -- felt to me much more like we were doing something actually helpful.)

But am I gonna seed this service project by donating some banned books written by trans people? Probably.

(Speaking of supporting trans authors: The Transfeminine Review's Pride Month mutual aid drive)

There was a webinar this afternoon:

Join us to learn more about our General Synod service project this year focusing on creating Banned Book libraries in Kansas City and across our wider Church! We'll dive deeper into why banned book libraries matter, how to participate in this year's service project and how to create a banned book library in your congregation.

Synod this year is in Kansas City -- co-hosted by the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference and the Missouri Mid-South Conference (Missouri; Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee) -- and one of the panelists on the webinar (who's on the staff of the Missouri Mid-South Conference) said that Missouri is the #3 state in the country for the most banned books. I'm not sure where that stat comes from -- and if it means number of books banned or number of book bans (so, like, if Book A gets banned 10 times, does that count as 1 or 10), and if this is a cumulative total or for the last year or what -- but it does help suggest why this issue is so big for the Synod organizers. [Interestingly, I had just been on this banned book list from the project's toolkit, and Kansas is not on it at all. In fairness, it's a September 2023 article that says, "Reproduced here, the PEN list covers books that were banned or challenged during the first half of the 2022 school year—the most recent data available." So it's not the most comprehensive list. But still.]

On the subject of, "how effective is doing a Banned Book Library in your church?" excerpts from the chat during the webinar: ( Read more... )

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I'm such a nerd.

Wed, 14 May 2025 21:53:59 GMT

I read 1 poem+essay in a book at lunch today and then did a bunch of Internet research to get my facts so I could send the below message to 2 people:

Joy Ladin and Stephanie Burt are very different. Despite both being middle-aged Jewish trans women who came out later in life (at age 46, in fact -- Joy in 2007, just after getting tenure; Stephanie in 2017, having gotten tenure back in 2010) and are poets and scholars of poetry, and are each married to a woman.

I had gotten from the library a copy of Stephanie's edited volume Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Perks after Stonewall after Abby told me about finding it in a bookstore.

It's non-renewably due back in a couple days and I hadn't really opened it, but at lunch today I read the last poem in the volume ("So Your GF Wants to Come Out as Bi and Polyamorous to Her Very Conservative Family'") and then I started reading the commentary after it, and Stephanie casually notes that the poet (The Cyborg Jillian Weise) uses she/her and cy/cy pronouns, and this was so different from the Joy Ladin essays that Ari and I had read recently. I think my brain, knowing it was reading commentary on queer poems, had at some level been sort of expecting Joy Ladin.

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good things in dark times

Sat, 10 May 2025 00:49:55 GMT

I saw 2 Bluesky threads today liveblogging Rümeysa Öztürk's court hearing today [Joshua J. Friedman and Adam Klasfeld], but I didn't entirely believe ICE would actually honor the court order to release her.

But someone posted in a local Discord tonight "Rumeysa is OUTSIDE of the CAGE" with a link to this Reddit post (which shows a screenshot of CNN showing Rümeysa Öztürk exiting a building, walking in the open air, chyron says "Breaking News: Now: Ozturk released from detention facility") and apparently feeling my feelings meant I low-key cried.

(Someone else later posted this NBC article, which has video.)

[idk how much anyone has followed this particular case -- there are SO MANY horrors -- but Öztürk lives one town over from me.]

***

In less "pushing back against the apocalypse" good news, my 20-year college reunion is next weekend, and I believe I have achieved on-campus housing!

( background you maybe don't care about )

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[DEI book club] Palestine books

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:28:32 GMT

mid-March, O. asked, "could we read something by a Palestinian author, or about Palestine, at some point?" Conveniently, April is Arab American Heritage Month.

A.D. came through as usual. I've copied their posts in the Slack, adding in Bookshop links, publication dates, info about the authors, etc. Love to have 10 books to rank choice vote on 😂 Feel free to weigh in if you have any thoughts.

Here are some suggestions for books about Palestine/written by Palestinians:
Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh [fiction; first published in 1976 -- author was born in Nablus in 1941; she divides her time between Amman, Jordan and Nablus, Palestine]
The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary by Atef Abu Saif [nonfiction, 2016; war diary of Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza -- author was born in Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip in 1973]
Evil Eye by Etaf Rum [fiction, 2024 -- author was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by Palestinian immigrants]
On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé [nonfiction, 2015 -- Chomsky was born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician]
I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti [memoir, 2003 -- author was born in the West Bank in 1944]
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis [nonfiction, 2016 -- author is African American, not Palestinian]
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa [fiction, 2021 -- author is a Palestinian-American writer and political activist]
I read ten books Palestinian books last year, so here are a few that I really enjoyed/would recommend as well:
The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan [fiction, 2022 -- author is Palestinian-American]
In My Mother's Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home by Mona Hajjar Halaby [memoir, 2021]
A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar [fiction, 2009 -- author was born in Chicago in 1978. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved back to the U.S. at thirteen.]

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I am maybe in too many book clubs? 😂

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 20:31:53 GMT

Last Friday, Ari pointed out that we could keep doing bff book club even after finishing our initial book. So we have 2 pieces left in Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender by Joy Ladin (2024) and then are gonna have 8(?) essays in Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom (2019). (We opted to continue doing anthologies, 1 piece/week.)

Two days ago, I finished The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara (2018) for local library LGBTQ+ book group tonight.

I didn't read All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson (2020) for climate change book club yesterday, but I would like to read it.

Today I finished reading Kyle Lukoff's new middle-grade novel A World Worth Saving -- which was due back at the library today and I thought wouldn't renew because I had been on a waitlist for it, but apparently there is no longer a waitlist.

I have not yet read Andrew Joseph White's 2022 YA novel Hell Followed With Us, which is in the same vein as A World Worth Saving and Camp Damascus. [A World Worth Saving and Hell Followed With Us are not book club books -- but speak to the struggle to fit in anything that isn't a book club book.]

Today I started reading Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (2015) by Laura Jane Grace for 24 March (Women's History Month) DEI book club.

I have not yet started reading The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste (2018) for March 30 feminist sff book club -- though it looks on the shorter side.

Queer sports journalist Frankie de la Cretaz does Out Of Your League Book Club, and the April book is Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates by Katie Barnes (2023), which I would like to do (though book club is only for paid subscribers and ugh, I don't wanna give more money to Substack because Nazis).

Also in April is:

[April 9 climate change book club] Hum by Helen Phillips -- speculative fiction

[April 17 LGBTQ+ library book group] Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

[April (Arab American Heritage Month) DEI book club] prob something Palestinian

And on and on it goes.

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every little bit helps

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:22:15 GMT

I've referenced this a few times recently, so am posting it here to help me find it.

I saw a Bluesky post recently that I liked that said:

When it comes to boycotting, just a thought. It’s okay if you can’t quit a company cold turkey. In Master Gardeners, when we encourage people to switch to native plants, the goal is 70% native, not 100%. If you were shopping at a store 80% of the time and cut it back to 60%, that 20% still hurts.

And that 20% that you’re taking elsewhere is definitely going to help smaller businesses that were struggling to compete with the corporate giants.

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culture consumed (January & February, 2025)

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 19:23:06 GMT

Okay, I did not get January written up, so here, have 2 months.

January, 2025

books

[Jan 9 MPL LGBTQ+ Book Group] Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle (2023)
"A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down." -from the blurb
Not how I would have thought to describe it, but also not wrong.

In January, I was hearing about Kyle Lukoff's upcoming middle-grade novel A World Worth Saving (Feb 4). From the blurb: "A discovers that SOSAD doesn’t just feel soul-sucking . . . it’s run by an actual demon who feeds off the pain and misery of kids like him." Which echoed Camp Damascus in a bunch of ways.

It also reminded me of Andrew Joseph White's 2022 YA novel Hell Followed With Us ("Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population."), so I got that from the library. Am I gonna read it in my busy February? Who can say.
[middle-grade] Paige Not Found by Jen Wilde (2024) -- autistic queer protagonist [which the Chuck Tingle book is as well]
read Abby approx 6 picturebooks -- still making my way through Betsy Bird's 31 Days 31 Lists
[Jan 29 DEI book club] The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Colombian descent) - memoir (2022). I enjoyed this a lot.
[Jan 31 work book club] Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (2019)

The blurb says, "Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with."

It starts with the McConville case and then pulls back and introduces us to various other characters (Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, etc.). This all becomes relevant later, but I definitely struggled at times with trying to keep track of the various characters and time/plotlines (especially since I had very little background knowledge to start with).

live music

Catie Curtis with my ~~mom+~~Abby and Bridget+Jo

Bridget invited us, and my mom likes Catie Curtis, so I invited her as an early birthday gift. There were only 2 seats in Bridget+Jo's preferred section, so they bought tickets without us, but we all got dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant beforehand. Well, not my mom, because she was sick. But I remembered about the livestream, so my mom watched that way.

The first song Catie Curtis played was "Patience" -- which Abby knew from the "that place can be where you are" themed music mix I made her ~2 months into Not Dating, so that was nice.

She played "Radical," which is arguably Catie Curtis in a nutshell -- "I'm a lesbian, but an assimilationist not a radical; love is love." (This is my summary, to be clear; not her actual words.)

I had a big Catie Curtis phase in college -- thanks largely to my first-year roommate -- but I haven't kept up with her stuff much. But in addition to various songs I didn't recognize, she played a bunch of songs I knew (in addition to the 2 above): "Saint Lucy" (from Dreaming In Romance Languages, 2004), "Kiss That Counted" (from My Shirt Looks Good On You, 2001 -- as was "Patience"), "People Look Around" (from Long Night Moon, 2006), "World Don't Owe Me" (from A Crash Course in Roses, 1999), "Troubled Mind" (from Truth from Lies, 1996 -- as was "Radical"), possibly others I'm forgetting.

(I had us listen to "Elizabeth" -- also from My Shirt Looks Good On You -- on the drive home. Catie has since split from that partner, so I wasn't expecting her to play it, but I have a fondness for this love song directed at someone with my name, and I also think it's a genuinely well-crafted song.)

She had Sam Robbins with her some. (As well as Jamie Edwards -- keyboardist to Aimee Mann and other big deals; we quite liked him.) White dude from New Hampshire, who lived in Nashville for 5 years. He played a song "So Much I Still Don't See" (from his new album of the same name) -- which I liked more than Abby did, though I thought it would have been stronger with more specific stories. Abby and I both thought of Crys Matthews, and indeed he knows her. He also played "What a Little Love Can Do" -- written after a shooting in Nashville -- which I was a little eyeroll about.

theatr

[CST] S P A C E with Abby, Allie, Mark, Sarah V., and Bitsy+Matt
The thing about space is, you have to contend with earth.
At the dawn of two different Space Races, aviators traverse time, generations, Newtonian physics, governments, political bodies -- and human bodies -- to reach beyond our star system for a radical re-start.
S P A C E intertwines imagined scenes with Congressional transcripts and feats of endurance with the historical record, to illuminate the story of the Mercury 13 female pilots and their ancestors - Bessie Coleman, Hazel Ying Lee - and descendants - Mae Jemison, Sally Ride – over the course of a national Civil Rights Space Race that has spanned our past century.
S P A C E asks: How do you forge a future for everyone?
I felt like the first half (the historical part) was stronger than the second half about an imagined future. I also hadn't realized how much the first half was going to be just about the Women in Space program at the beginning of the Space Race -- given the inclusion of other people (shout-out to Bessie Coleman and Mae Jemison, who I know from picturebooks). There was also a bunch of cross-casting, which sometimes made it difficult to keep up with who was who (especially in the second half).

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender by Joy Ladin (2024)

I really liked Ladin's 2018 book The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, but this book is intended for a cis audience in ways that make it not a great fit for us.

[Feb 23 feminist sff book club] The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty -- I'm enjoying this. It's like 500 pages, but it reads quickly. We thought it would be nice to have a more light/fun book for the December/January stretch, and that has felt accurate.

Reading Next:

Well, I have a bunch of upcoming book club books I'm probably not gonna read.

[Feb 12 climate change book club] Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler -- fucking everyone is reading this book these days (I got the email on Jan 22 and the listing in my library network for the hardcopy said "66 copies, 78 people are on the waitlist. 1 copy on order."), so I am unlikely to get a copy to read before book club. I read it back in March of 2017, so I'm mostly just gonna coast on vibes. I did get the graphic novel adaptation from the library to maybe refresh myself some.

After the facilitator was sick for a while, we have a slate of books for the next few months:

[fiction] February 12, 2025 - Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
[nonfiction] March 12, 2025 - The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015) -- this is by an Inuk woman and is probably the one I'm most excited about
[fiction] April 9. 2025 - Hum by Helen Phillips (2024) -- sff
[nonfiction] May 14, 2025 - Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future by Oliver Franklin Wallis (2023)

[Feb 13 MPL LGBTQ+ Book Group] Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst (2023)

The blurb says, "debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and pens a searing manifesto about racism in the industry."

It's gotten a lot of low reviews on GR, and I'm not feeling particularly enthused to read it -- but I also feel a sense of obligation since I'm 1 of only 2 regular attendees (plus the facilitator). [Ed. note: I ended up going to the book club meeting, not having read the book, which was fine -- and there was even a new attendee.]

[Feb 19 DEI book club] A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959)

I read this in like 7th? 9th? grade and am not super-excited to revisit it. But someone in book club said we should also watch the Sidney Poitier (1961) film, so maybe I'll just do that? There are rumors of a watch party, but idk if planning for that will actually pan out (or will work with my schedule).

February is Black History Month, and idk if "history" made people think classics or what, but the books that got nommed were:

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
All About Love: New Visions by bell books (1999)
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom (2019)

[Feb 28 work book club] The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley -- This is a book we're considering for feminist sff book club, but there's also a big waitlist for it at the local library networks.

People at work book club wanted something lighter (as noted above, we had just read Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe), and I was like, "Is this light, though?"

Skimming the GR reviews wasn't super-helpful -- though I did note it's an agent of the British Empire from 1845 brought to the "present."

I only later thought to pull up the FSFBC ideas doc, where I had noted:

One review says, “it's a book by a British-Cambodian writer in which a British-Cambodian woman explores themes of colonialism/postcolonialism. [...] Time travel and government drama are the backdrop here to some truly marvellous characters. Imagine what you would get if you put a near-future British-Cambodian woman and a man who was raised at the height of empire together in a house. [...] It is primarily an introspective novel and slow-burn romance, at least until the last 25% or so, but the scenes are driven by dialogue so the pacing doesn't lag. Bradley explores themes of colonialism, slavery, language, being mixed-race, being white passing, exoticization of other cultures, and inherited trauma. The MC carries the inherited trauma of the Cambodian genocide with her and it sneaks into her everyday life and thoughts in unexpected ways.”

So, yeah, not necessarily light.

February, 2025

other

JOHANNE SACREBLU "el musical" un homenaje a EMILIA PEREZ -- thanks to this skeet, and with English subtitles on this Tumblr post

live theatr

[ASP] August Wilson's The Piano Lesson with Abby and Mark (Cate had covid risk, alas)
Actors’ Shakespeare Project is thrilled to continue and deepen our dedication to August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with one of his most celebrated titles: The Piano Lesson.
Tensions are crackling under the floorboards of Doaker Charles’ household when his fast-talking nephew Boy Willie blows in from Mississippi with a scheme to set their descendants up for generations. The plan: sell the family’s ornate antique piano carved by an enslaved ancestor and use it to buy the land where his ancestors were enslaved. But half of the piano also belongs to Berniece, who refuses to let her brother pawn off the heirloom. As the siblings dig in their heels, they will search deeper into their lineage and uncover shocking revelations that will change them both forever.
Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a 1990 Tony Award Nominee for Best Play, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is an explosive and incisive inquiry into the struggle between what we owe to our past and how we build our future.
This one is set in the 1930s -- so earlier than the ones we'd seen at ASP so far (Seven Guitars and King Hedley II are set in the 1940s and 1980s, respectively). It's very much reckoning with the aftermath of enslavement.
There's more explicit supernatural elements than in those plays. (Ghosts/hauntings and dreams are recurrent themes in the plays in the cycle.)
( vague-ish spoilers for the ending )

books

[Feb 19 DEI book club] A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959) -- we didn't end up doing a film screening, but I did read the book (Modern Library edition, 1995). It was less depressing than I was expecting giving the emotional tinge of my memories of having read it in school.
[Feb 23 feminist sff book club] The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (first in a series but totally stands alone -- also, it's the only one in the series yet published, 2023, ) -- I enjoyed this. It's like 500 pages, but it reads quickly. We thought it would be nice to have a more light/fun book for the December/January stretch, and that felt accurate. It's the first in a series (the only one published so far) and definitely sets up for continuing adventures but also really works as a stand-alone book.
read Abby 1 picturebook
[Feb 28 work book club] The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley -- this was lighter than I had expected (see commentary above) though the end is kinda rough (er, emotionally, I mean)

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender by Joy Ladin (2024) -- which continues to not be for us. But we have read+discussed 8 of the 11 essays, so we're almost through.

I did just last night start reading Kyle Lukoff's new MG novel A World Worth Saving -- 14yo Jewish trans boy during mid-covid times; it feels weird to say "supernatural" elements when it's literally stuff from Judaism, but, like, the book blurb references "demons."
I continue to really enjoy Lukoff's work.

Reading Next:

Once again, who knows how many book club books I'll read?

[March 12 climate change book club] I was excited for The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015), but it turned out the library system didn't have enough copies (amateur mistake, not checking in advance; there are 5 copies in the system). So instead we're doing All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson (2020).

[March 13 local library LGBTQ+ book club] The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara (2018) -- I've heard this is Paris Is Burning fanfic (1980s NYC, House of Xtravaganza), and I'm not super-interested. (One of the main characters is a trans woman but the author is a cis man -- who I assume is gay?)

[March work DEI book club] I think Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (2015) by Laura Jane Grace -- which was my top vote, though we haven't finalized anything, including a date (this is partly because the main organizer missed our February meeting and then was on vacation this week, and partly because I have a medical procedure around when we would normally meet -- colonoscopy, because my mom had polyps at her recent one).

March is Women's History Month, and one option we had previously floated was a memoir by an Indigenous woman (our book for Native American Heritage Month was a very dense, academic history), but then it was late January and we'd picked our February book so I was looking ahead to March, and trans people were very under attack, so I suggested we could do a book by a trans woman. We ended up deciding to include both in the poll [as discussed here] -- except by February's meeting we had 5 trans woman books suggested [A.D. had suggested the additional trans women books] and I suggested that was enough to vote on (it's about how many books we usually have to vote on) and the (lol) 2 other people at the meeting agreed with me, so I put together a poll:

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Third Edition, 2024) by Julia Serano
Detransition, Baby (2021) by Torrey Peters [fiction]
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality (2018) by Sarah McBride
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (2015) by Laura Jane Grace

[Mar 30 feminist sff book club] The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste (2018)
I have in my head that Abby's the one who suggested this, but she has no memory of this.

I said in my email to book club: "more horror/paranormal than much of our usual fare (but also very urban -- Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980; a steel-based economy area in economic collapse)."

***

Reminder that the #TransRightsReadathon is coming up Mar 21-31.

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on calling both DC and local offices

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 23:49:25 GMT

I ended up on some local Indivisible list and saw a post from last month that asserts there's value in calling your federal congressionals' DC and local office, because they don't cross-reference the call lists across offices and "Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics."

(This post also reiterates the advice I have seen elsewhere to only talk about 1 issue per call -- I think because of the way calls get tallied.)

I had been thinking of phonecalls as like, "Okay, I told my elected what I thought on this issue and now they know that and I shouldn't call again on future days unless it's REALLY important," but this is motivating me to call more often about stuff.

A longer excerpt of the post is behind the cut. (I also cross-posted this to thisfinecrew.) ( Read more... )

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[JFB] in which I am kind of a bitch about trans lit (and/or cis people, or something)

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:42:24 GMT

So, last May or so, someone we'll call A. started a DEI bookclub at my work.

It has recently dwindled down to a Core Four of us showing up for discussion meetings (though there's about a dozen people in the Slack channel). But about a week after the inauguration, A. posted a notice in the social channel on work Slack about our February (Black History Month) book and invited folks to come to the meeting, join the low-pressure Slack channel, whatever, if interested (since it felt like people might have more appetite for this sort of thing in This Current Climate).

2 people joined the Slack channel, including someone we'll call O.

Two days later, Jan 31, I posted in the bookclub channel:

It's very me that now that we've picked what we're doing for February I'm thinking ahead to what we're gonna do for March. Back in December [when I had posted about month themes through June] I had said:
March: Women's History Month -- we could overlap this with letting [R.] nominate a slate of graphic novels, or with picking an Indigenous memoir (something [A]. would like at some point)
Do people have preferences?
Another option (given recent aggressive attacks on trans people) is to do a book by a trans woman (could be fiction or non-fiction) in March.

Based on the ensuing responses, on Feb 5, A. posted a poll:

What type of text/author do we want to focus on in March?
Memoior written by an indigenous woman
Text written by a trans woman
Include both options in the reading selection/ poll

Feb 11 (today), A. posted in the bookclub channel:

Okay, based on the poll, I'll include options representing both types of texts/ authors! Does anyone have any recommendations for books by a trans woman?

O replied:

I have two: either She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boyle or Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
I have read the first one and found it very poignant

My partner then got a flurry of messages from me as I spent time on Goodreads:

I have now learned that JFB also wrote a book called Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs and honestly I would be more interested to read that [than her famous transition memoir] and I don't even like dogs. (Ob Jupiter Ascending caveat applies, obvs.)

Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.
I had not realized she was such a prolific author.

From her GR bio:
> Her 2008 memoir, I'm Looking Through You, is about growing up in a haunted house. While trans issues form part of the exposition of the book, the primary focus of I'm Looking Through You is on what it means to be "haunted," and how we all seek to find peace with our various ghosts, both the supernatural and the all-too-human.

Again, ALSO MORE INTERESTING!

I also have opinions about how JFB's famous memoir is from 2003 -- so it's over 20 years old at this point. (The haunting book is 2008, as noted above, and the dog one is 2020.) There is value in classics, to be sure, but given how much Discourse has changed over the years, I would overall prefer to read more recent works. I am also just not interested in a standard Transition Memoir. (Not to be confused with what Casey Plett calls Gender Novels.) I recognize I am not a typical cis audience in this way. I'm on gender Tumblr way less than my genderqueer best friend is, and I get all my Gender Reveal podcast filtered through my trans partner, and yet -- I feel like I should make some sort of riff on the xkcd "average familiarity" comic here or something, but I am running out of steam for thinking/writing.

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[local politics] legislative agenda time

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 23:29:31 GMT

This afternoon, Families for Justice as Healing emailed about their Free Her Policy Platform.

Someone in a local Discord dropped a link to a recent JP Progressives email, which included Mass NOW's Menstrual Equity Legislative Agenda.

And then I got an email from Progressive Mass with their 2025-2026 Legislative Agenda.

'Tis the season, apparently.

I knew Progressive Mass was gonna send a legislative agenda eventually -- they keep sending me emails inviting me to sign up for Zooms to get hyped up and I'm like, "Just tell me what bills you support and some talking points for why and I will email my legislators" -- but I was not expecting everyone to drop their legislative agendas at the same time 😂 I think I had in my head that legislation developed organically over the session? Now I'm like, "Okay, can we just pass all these bills and move on?" In part because the MA Legislature is fucking terrible at passing bills, so there are bills I have emailed my electeds about for fucking years because they keep getting re-filed year after year.

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Wed, 29 Jan 2025 03:39:01 GMT

Dunno if it was the accumulation of everything, but the under-19 trans care ban tonight hit me harder than I was expecting.

I appreciate Chris Geidner on this:

There will be challenges, and Law Dork will have coverage of them. It is, however, a failure of humanity, governing, advocacy, and journalism that we have gotten to this point.

Those who were insistently “just asking questions” and unceasingly pushing the needle further right — in addition to those who encouraged and then exploited that for their explicitly discriminatory or hateful aims — all bear a measure of responsibility for this, for making trans teens — and, with them, trans adults — fear for their lives tonight.

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