NYC Weird Sisters! See you tonight at our Happy Hour at Sweet & Vicious!
The WEIRD SISTER crüe and and friends are getting together to say hi IRL and celebrate springtime in NYC.
Come have a drink! Bring your friends & your feminism! XOXO
More info is on the event page here.
#WifeMaterial
I had a lot of feelings about this season of The Bachelorette before it even started, and I considered not watching it in protest of the franchise’s BS decision to have TWO BACHELORETTES—but ultimately I decided that if I was boycotting TV shows because of my politics, I would have stopped watching this horrid show a long time ago. It’s not news that the Bachelor franchise as a whole plays on deeply problematic ideas about gender—the fact that this season the men got to choose which woman they thought made better “wife material” (Kaitlyn, obviously—I’ll put a ring on her finger right now.) is not a line in the sand; it is in fact neither here nor there in relation to the show’s decidedly sexist foundation. Yes I have watched this show for the past thirteen (oh my god how can that number be real) miserable seasons. I have wasted so many hours of my life. And yes I shall continue to waste my life this season. If I believed that being a “bad feminist” was a thing, I might feel like this makes me a bad feminist, but I don’t. I think I’m a decent feminist and also a necessarily flawed human that is vast and containing of multitudes. I sometimes make decisions that don’t always exemplify my political beliefs—I shop at chain stores that no doubt use unethical labor practices, I slather my face with night creams in hope of stopping my inevitable female aging, and I watch The Bachelor. And The Bachelorette.
This past week’s episode was really on point in terms of the show’s heinous politics. The Bachelor franchise has a terrible track record in terms of racial diversity (see host Chris Harrison’s gross comments dismissing allegations that the show is racist here). The past few seasons we’ve seen the show make a minimal, face-value effort to address critiques around this by inviting a handful of people of color into the dating pool. Whether these guys and gals get any substantial air time, or make it past the first several episodes, is another story. But we’ve been seeing some more contestants of color on the show, and with this comes more overt, and not so overt, racism. The all-white or mainly white contestant pools of the past allowed for total erasure of race politics as an issue within the whitewashed alternate reality of the show. With more people of color being cast, white contestants’ privilege to never have to think about race is sometimes challenged, and we get to see how the show frames/addresses race (hint—it is not good).
Continue reading
Filed under Movies + TV
ALL THE FEMINIST POETS features a single poem and an interview from a feminist poet that we love.
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LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in Mobius: The Journal for Social Change, MiPOesias, Radius, and is forthcoming in Mom Egg Review. She is the author of the chapbook Thick-Skinned Sugar (Finishing Line Press). She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her biggest fans are her husband and pre-schooler.
Miss Missing
White sashes embroidered
with gold letters
showcase our locations:
Bottom of the East River
Abandoned Lot Southwest of Philly
Burnt House in North Carolina
Buried in a Park in Seattle
Last year’s winner pins
the crown to my head.
From Miss Ditch in Ashland County
to Miss Missing.
Mascara tears and black eyes
There she is, Miss Missing.
You probably saw my college graduation
photo on the news and in the papers.
All-American face and form. Flawless skin
now dressed in tiny red mouths
trapped in rigor mortis screams.
I pray for someone to hear
our remains. We sing a raspy song,
reenactment of last breaths
to welcome the new pageant girls.
The newest sisters of our piecemeal gang
include the one with fingerprint tattoos,
a girl who carries her head like a purse,
and the woman whose baby trails behind her,
still connected by the umbilical cord.
The girls add pushpins to the map
on the wall backstage. X marks the spot.
A rainbow of pins, thousands of them
crisscross with our limbs
like cross country railroad tracks.
Find any of the other contestants,
Miss Landfill Los Angeles or
Miss Abandoned Car in Brooklyn,
and I bet that beneath brown decomposing skin,
their bones are as pale white as mine.
(published by Radius)
Filed under All The Feminist Poets, Books + Literature, Interviews
“Don’t you hate when editors use the ‘I don’t know enough writers of color’ excuse to back up the homogeneity of their publications?” Now you can add your info to a working list of writers of color.
“We live in a prose culture, a film culture, a media culture, but I think we should live in a poetry culture; and I want to steal everything back, from everywhere, and put it back in poetry; that is my ambition.” Watch or listen to Alice Notley in conversation with erica kaufman last week at the CUNY Graduate Center.
“But the worst part was that it put the squeeze on all of us who were caught in the middle: women of color and trans folks, lefties, feminists, and radicals who had very deep reservations about call-out culture, purity politics, and the veneration of rage in activist circles.” – Katherine Cross writes about call-out culture and “tone policing” in online activism for Feministing.
“As a perpetual outsider, in virtue of my brown immigrant body, my accent, mannerisms, and the assumptions about my affinities and motivations, I have encountered what are termed as microaggressions both within the classroom and in context of presenting my research.” – Professor Saba Fatima on being a woman of color in academia. Continue reading
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
The WEIRD SISTER crew is taking a few days off to attend AWP in Minneapolis. If you’re at the conference, come say hi to us at the Monk Books/Groundwater Press book fair table (#1429), or at these rad feminist offsite events!
ON THURSDAY 4/9: Weird Atlas/Gazing Switchback
ON FRIDAY, 4/10: GIRL FRIDAY: An AWP Offsite Event Hosted by Our Flow Is Hard, WEIRD SISTER, & Dancing Girl
Can’t wait to see you! <3
Filed under Events, Everything Else
April 1st kicked off National Poetry Writing Month. A bunch of Weird Sisters are NaPoWriMoing over at GirlPoWriMo—stop by for fresh feminist poems popping up every day!
The Poetry Foundation blog’s group of featured writers this month is omg radness—Jennifer Tamayo delivers a message from The Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo, Trisha Low reminds us that “Poetry Is Not the Final Girl,” and Gina Myers tells us what she’ll do while she’s not at AWP.
For those of us who are going to AWP this week, come say hi to WEIRD SISTER!
In other literary news, Morgan Parker is launching her new book, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, into outer space tonight in NYC.
Read The Volta’s great review of Rosa Alcalá’s Undocumentaries. Continue reading
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
Come hang out with WEIRD SISTER at #AWP15, next week in Minneapolis!
We’ll be at the Monk Books table (#1429) at the Book Fair on Friday and Saturday. We’re also part of two extremely rad off-site events:
ON THURSDAY 4/9: Weird Atlas/Gazing Switchback
& ON FRIDAY, 4/10: GIRL FRIDAY: An AWP Offsite Event Hosted by Our Flow Is Hard, WEIRD SISTER, & Dancing Girl
Come say hi! <3
Filed under Events, Everything Else
This week, vintage photos of Friday Kahlo blew our minds with their beauty.
A current photo showing a period leak offended Instagram’s oh-so-proper sensibilities.
Thank Goddess for this Women’s Hip Hop History playlist from BitchTapes. And double-thanks to Bitch for highlighting the feminist hardcore band War on Women.
“Is it credible that fiction occupies a unique place? Credible that men who dismiss what female storytellers have to say as irrelevant to them, aren’t also inclined to dismiss – albeit unconsciously – what females of every variety have to say?” – Author Robin Black on men who don’t read fiction by women.
Poet Susan Howe and artist R. H. Quaytman talk about “the mother-daughter thing.”
“I can’t tell you the number of parents I’ve seen who think they’ve somehow failed at feminism because their daughters like lace and Barbie dolls; it’s much rarer to see the parent of a boy upset because his love of Batman and Star Wars doesn’t sufficiently challenge gender roles.” – An interesting piece on the devaluation of femininity.
In literary news, Brooklyn Poets launched The Bridge, a “poetry network connecting student & mentor poets,” this week.
Flying Object is hosting Where We Stumble: Dismantling Rape Sub-Culture this weekend in Western Mass. Registration for the event is closed, but you can still attend the public performance and open house.
The NYC CUNY Chapbook Festival starts this Tuesday! Check out the full line-up of fantastic panels and readings, plus the book fair featuring Belladonna*, Bloof, No, Dear, Monk Books and tons of other rad chapbook presses we love.
Check out The Critical Flame‘s latest issue, dedicated entirely to “The enduring power of Adrienne Rich.”
Next week begins National Poetry Month! Will you be NaPoWriMoing?
What else, what else, what else? Let us know what we missed in the comments! <3
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
Illustration by Forsyth Harmon
What does it mean to be a grown-up? I’m 32, and even though part of me still feels like a teenager, I’m slowly accepting the badge of “adult” and trying to wear it proudly. Whenever I feel like I don’t know how to be a grown-up—scared that it might mean trading in my sparkly nail polish, Baby-sitters Club obsession, and love of staying up all night writing—I look for guidance to the trailblazing feminist writers and artists that inspire me. Near the top of that list is Michelle Tea. Ever since I learned about Tea’s work in college, I’ve been drawn to her always-honest, often-hilarious, and usually heartbreaking memoirs, fiction and poetry that capture exactly what it’s like to be a working-class teen girl on acid in the suburbs, or a twenty-something queer punk navigating 90s San Francisco, infused with so much energy and intelligence and humor that it’s downright infectious to read. Michelle started the legendary all-women performance group Sister Spit in the 90s (and later the publishing imprint by the same name), built the SF-based literary organization/reading series RADAR Productions from the ground up, blogged about trying to get pregnant (and then about becoming a mother!) in her 40s, and founded a totally rad mothering magazine. She’s edited several fantastic anthologies, wrote a YA fantasy series, and so much more. Tea’s new memoir How to Grow Up details her beautifully unconventional path to where she is today—offering advice on jobs (“jobs are for quitting”), relationships, money (“I imagined the spirit of money as a tenderhearted fairy who longed to share herself with everyone”), battling addiction, and more. It may just be the guide to embracing a happy, healthy, uniquely awesome feminist adulthood that you, and I, need. Continue reading
Filed under Books + Literature, Interviews
“[Birds of Lace] is influenced by the spirit of cunty women, criminal queers, wild open waters and DIY opulence.” – Birds of Lace Editor Gina Abelkop talks with ENTROPY in the latest edition of their small press interview series.
“We all have biases but the whole idea of ‘greatness,’ which arises out of a white male tradition, is so awful for poetry and for people.” – Bruce Covey talks with Fanzine about Coconut Books, poetics, and more.
“I thought, This is a great genre where I can get people’s voices, I can mold them, I can sculpt them. They’ll still pass through me, but I don’t want to be the one who’s speaking. I don’t want my voice to be on the page.” – Juliana Delgado Lopera on ¡Cuéntamelo! (“Tell Me About It”), a collection of oral histories by LGBT Latino immigrants.
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
