Random Reads from My Chaos Brain
There's still time for you to vote on what book I should read next! Also: Paris Is Burning (1990), how language impacts personality, cringe attacks, art theft, and more.
New here? Welcome! Consult my first post to see what amateur bibliotherapy means. If I link to a paywalled article that you can’t access, reply to this email and I’l hook you up. Finally, complete this Google form or reply to this email any time to let me know what you’re reading. I may include your recommendation in a future edition.
Hello there. What a week.
In a moment of levity on Wednesday, my choir held a virtual ~summer soiree~ that included ice cream and wine and speeches and sweetness. It concluded with a lovely little award ceremony, and I was honored to receive the below relevant accolade:
I’m thrilled with the power of my own branding. And I’m thrilled to be part of such a wonderful choir! Grateful for this little ray of sunshine.
This Week in Activism, Fundraising & More
Here’s a document of fundraisers, petitions, and local official contacts related to the unjust shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (via Kenosha Activism)
Support Black land ownership by contributing to this GoFundMe in support of two criminal justice advocates in Louisville, Mississippi who want to start a community land trust and teach agricultural skills to Black youth on Black-owned land. (via Scalawag)
Consult this map of sundown towns in the US to learn about the racist, exclusionary, and anti-Black laws still on the books that codify racial segregation.
The Articles
The Pale Shade of Drag, The Baffler (~11 min). This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the iconic 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, an “enduring site of critical fascination and theoretical production on 1980s Harlem’s African American and Latinx queer communities and the culture of drag balls.” This article revisits the documentary with contemporary context:
The liminal position of trans women of color and the exigency of monitoring—and halting—hate crimes against them is a reality that is a far cry from the celebratory image of LGBTQ people in pop culture corpora. Certainly, in television and film there has been progress in moving away from the pathological self-loathing image of queerness toward one that is more positive and self-asserting. At the same time, though, blunting the edge of queer narratives significantly compromises viewers’ understanding of the lived experience of many queers for whom “Opulence! You own everything!” was always more of an aspiration than a material fact.
How the Language You Speak Influences Your Mental Frameworks, The Profile (~5 min). Polina Marinova describes her experience flitting between the mental and linguistic frameworks of Bulgarian and English, and the ways that languages shape the way you narrate your own life. “Research shows that the language we speak can influence our thinking, giving us wildly different perspectives of the world,” she explains. “As the Roman Emperor Charlemagne once said: ‘To have another language is to possess a second soul.’”
It pairs well with this Nikkei Asian Review article that digs into how women speaking Japanese are expected to use gendered forms of language that put them at a disadvantage in the workplace, and this New York Times article that interviews Elena Ferrante’s Italian-to-English translator, Ann Goldstein.
How To Survive a Cringe Attack, The Cut (~22 min). If you’ve ever been in the middle of enjoying a croissant for breakfast or taking a leisurely stroll by the beach or putting away clean laundry and suddenly remember that time in third grade when you accidentally said “thanks, mom” to your teacher who was definitely NOT your mom and felt the white hot embarrassment of being 8 years old even though you’re now a fully formed adult… well, this one’s for you.
Treble Dutch: £13m old master painting stolen for a third time, The Guardian (~1 min). This painting has been stolen THREE TIMES from the SAME MUSEUM. THREE TIMES!!!
The Books
Thanks to those of you who voted in my poll last week! As it stands, the results are tied between three books for me to read next. Feel free to cast your vote and be the tiebreaker ruling my fate.
In the meantime, I read The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan this week after rescuing it from a box of books destined for donation. It made my brain feel like I was eating cotton candy. What a breezy reprieve.
I also read Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong after unexpectedly getting off the library’s waitlist. (Jia Tolentino reviewed it for The New Yorker, so I was glumly resigned to read the book in seven months per the waitlist estimate.) This collection of essays examines racial consciousness in the US through Hong’s blend of cultural criticism, memoir, history, art-making, and dark humor. It’s a really remarkable book that should be read at your earliest opportunity.
If you’re looking for other recommendations, CrimeReads has a list of the best new international crime and mystery releases; Electric Literature compiled 9 novels about living in parallel realities; and The Millions outlined the most anticipated books of August, in case you’d like to buy a recent release and support authors during the pandemic.
Talk soon! Until then, call your local used bookstore and see how everyone’s faring.