Introducing…HINDER! Hinder is “an exciting new app that helps you keep track of all the unhinged anti-abortion zealots right in the palm of your hand!”
Available on: http://ladypartsjustice.com
How to Sound Like an Asian Female Poet
Image via Angry Little Girls, Lela Lee.
I wrote/recorded (click here to hear) the following in reaction to recent events. Also, our fabulous Weird Sister Soleil Ho wrote a related post (which you should also check out if you haven’t already)…
[Procedure: Have an actual Asian female poet silently mouth “take my face take my voice take my face take my voice” throughout this entire audio recording]
Are you a cis-white male poet who’s been rejected over and over for the same shitty poem? Do you want this same shitty poem to be selected for the Best American Poetry anthology?
Then look no further–just adopt an Asian female voice! Continue reading
Filed under Everything Else, Uncategorized
WEIRD SISTER Turns One Halloween Party!
WEIRD SISTER is turning one!!! Come celebrate one year of feminist literary + pop culture commentary with READINGS, DANCING, a FEMINIST COSTUME CONTEST + more!
When: Friday, October 30th, 8pm.
Where: Greenpoint Heights, 278 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, NY.
Readings by:
Emily Brandt
Marisa Crawford
Cathy de la Cruz
Amanda K Davidson
Naomi Extra
Becca Klaver
Caolan Madden
Christopher Soto
Jennifer Tamayo
+ more readers TBD
Followed by terrifyingly awesome tunes by DJ OMG!
$5 suggested donation — no one turned away. 21+
Check out the Facebook event page here. (And find amazing feminist costume-inspo here!)
See you there!!! ♥ ♥ ♥
Small Houses Have Small Rooms: A Comic
From The Conditions of Our Togetherness, a serialized comic book appearing monthly, here on Weird Sister.
Filed under Art + Comics
Rah! Rah! Roundup
“Through the pink ribbon, corporate America has embraced cause-related marketing — reframing shopping as a way to fight disease…In terms of visibility, the campaign has been a colossal success. What it is doing for women’s health may be harder to quantify. For one thing, the pink ribbon is unlicensed and unregulated. Which means not only that any company can use the symbol to sell its products, but that those companies don’t actually have to commit a dime to breast cancer research.”–Read Jennifer Lunden’s PSA to women everywhere HERE.
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
Consuming Tender: A Review of Monica McClure’s Tender Data
Image via Birds LLC
In Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, Stein catalogued the domestic objects that influenced her female identity. She writes, A Box, A Plate, A Frightful Release, Objects, Careless Water, Roast Beef, Mutton, Single Fish, Rooms, Buttons and a lot more. Each object relies first on its domestic connotation in order to then be re-imagined in Stein’s perverse poetic transmission of it. Stein’s buttons are simultaneously analogues and object manifestations of the female experience. Her poems both underscore the ridiculousness of glorifying the domestic by breaking with the Victorian obsession with adoring things and liberate the things themselves from our obsession with them. In liberating her objects, she symbolically liberates herself and the other women who, at the fore of the modern era, would read her book.
In Monica McClure’s Tender Data, a book of poems whose title clearly conjures Stein, McClure also catalogues objects, but exchanges Stein’s domestic objects for contemporary cultural ones. She bounces between her own lineage of female writers (Kathy Acker, Mina Loy, Willa Cather, Jeanette Winterson); cultural signifiers of the cosmopolitan elite (Cipriani, St. Tropez, Mercedes Benz Fashion week, W Magazine, Park Slope); the female healthcare debate (fertility, abortion, Plan B); and finally the average American Consumer (Coca-Cola, TJ Maxx, VH1, New York Dolls). However, Tender Data does not appear to be written with the intention, as in Stein’s case, of subverting these cultural objects, but rather is obsessed with them, reflecting society’s ongoing obsession. McClure takes us on a complex journey of objects and subjects that are desperate for a liberation poetry may not be able to give. Continue reading
Filed under Books + Literature, Reviews
Feminist Halloween Costumes for 2015
Last year there was the Sexy Bunch of Grapes. This year it’s the Sexy Pizza Rat. The more things change, the more you need a list of feminist Halloween costume ideas. In honor of WEIRD SISTER’s upcoming first birthday (!!!!) I’m updating last year’s hoary old list of literary feminist costume ideas with some Totally Topical Feminist Costumes for 2015, including plenty of references drawn from WEIRD SISTER’s first twelve months! (Don’t forget to review last year’s list of Feminist Halloween Do’s and Don’ts to make sure your Edgy Feminist Halloween Costume is feminist fun for everyone.) Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Rah! Rah! Roundup
R.I.P. Chantal Akerman, “pioneer of modern feminist cinema.” You can find some of her films here.
Filed under Rah! Rah! Roundup
The Universe Doesn’t Know You Exist : An Interview with Meghan O’Neil Pennie of Super Unison, ex-Punch
Super Unison, photo by Matthew Kadi
There’s this tree growing behind my apartment that took me five years to really notice. It’s huge. Twenty feet taller than our three-story building, with dense leaves, a squirrel’s nest, and a rotating cast of birds. I don’t understand why I took it for granted for so long. Maybe I needed to live in New York City for a few years before I realized how special it was to have an epic, dynamic, vital being growing in your backyard. Anyway, Meghan O’Neil Pennie, the lead singer and bassist of Super Unison, and former lead singer of PUNCH, is like that for me too. Meghan was the big sister of the drummer in my high school punk band. She was always lurking when we practiced in his parent’s living room. In college she was my best friend’s roommate, so we would often cook dinner together and hang. She felt like a family member who had always been around and always would be. So when she started singing for PUNCH, I hardly noticed. I feel stupid about that now. Her vocals on the five(!) PUNCH records released by 625, Deathwish, Discos Huelgas, are so fucking ferocious and unrelenting it hurts my throat and heart to listen. Meghan also has this incredibly powerful stage presence. I’m watching old YOUTUBE videos and found one of her performing at a festival in the Czech Republic and she’s leaping about stage with one broken foot while people stagedive around her. Meghan derived the title of PUNCH’s last record, “They Don’t Have to Believe” from the Kathleen Hanna documentary, The Punk Singer, in which Hanna says “she doesn’t expect everyone to understand or believe in feminism or her personal battle with illness, but they should have to stay out of her way.” Meghan’s work in her new band, Super Unison, continues in this lineage. Her vocals are upfront and unapologetic, slightly more melodic than before, a little less thrash and a little more riot grrrl. Here, Meghan and I talk about her new band, her lyrics, and how she became the musician she is today. Continue reading
Filed under Interviews, Music + Playlists, Uncategorized
Chronology Doesn’t Always Feel Good: An Interview with Eileen Myles
Photo by: Annabel Graham
On November 10, 2013, I interviewed Eileen Myles over the phone. Our discussion was focused on her two-books-published-as-one, Snowflake and different streets. Now that Eileen has recently released two books on the same date—it seemed fitting to finally release this interview into the world. Here is Part 1 of 2 of my interview with Eileen Myles.
*
Cathy de la Cruz: These questions are all about Snowflake and different streets.
Eileen Myles: I love this new twist in our relationship.
CD: I know… it’s so weird, but it’s kind of hilarious. In my mind, you are this book right now and you’re not my friend, Eileen. I mean that in the best way possible.
Filed under All The Feminist Poets, Books + Literature, Interviews
