¡Best Friends 4ever! A review of Belleza y Felicidad
Reading Belleza y Felicidad (Sand Paper Press) is like listening to a funny/sexy/serious/gorgeous phone conversation between best friends. In this case, the friends are Argentinian writers/artists Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Pavón, with translation by Stuart Krimko.
Laguna and Pavón’s friendship began when Pavón attended an exhibition of Laguna’s visual art in Buenos Aires.
The alchemy generated by their first conversations eventually led to the desire to create a spatial dimension for the writing and art they were making. It quickly took shape as a physical location, a storefront gallery and art-supply store….Belleza y Felicidad [the name of the gallery as well as this book] soon came to represent a refuge in real space as a well as an important node in the realm of the imagination….The place operated as if it were really an excuse to recreate a new category of literature; the gallery was, itself, the art (xi).
When you can create as well as work alongside your friend, you know you have a true friendship—one of life’s greatest joys. Unlike romantic relationships, being BFFs is socially optional. You both choose what frequency/duration/with what level of vulnerability—and you choose each other every time you hang out.
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Rah! Rah! Roundup
“Subjectivity and subjectification don’t cease to exist because they say it’s what they “want”. If that’s what they want we say: boycott the self and divest from your whiteness: Divest, Divest DIVEST.” — the Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo in an interview with Molly McArdle for Brooklyn Magazine.
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Shocking News from The Bachelorette: One Solitary Woman Was Harassed on the Internet!!!
Image via Caroline Gormley
OMG you guys—so, I’m getting caught up on The Bachelorette for tonight’s FINALE!!! and just needed to report back on some important findings from the “Men Tell All” episode that aired last Monday! So like, color me shocked-as-fuck—my jaw is literally hanging open; YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS: I learned on “The Men Tell All” that Kaitlyn had the extremely rare and shocking experience of being a female public figure who was slut-shamed and harassed on the internet! She even received death threats! Continue reading
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Rah! Rah! Roundup
Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. #WhathappenedtoSandraBland
Continue reading
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Feeling It: On Basketball Fandom, Empathy, and Learning to Read
We love this post on masculinity, sports, and literacy from our amazing friends at The Peach Basket, a blog featuring poets writing about basketball that you should check out immediately! <3
by Matt L Rohrer:
“Sports provide a rare sanctioned opportunity for men to express emotions besides anger. When I was a valet parker in my teens I remember my macho boss speaking openly about crying in his room when the A’s were eliminated from the playoffs. We didn’t judge him. We just nodded our heads and laughed a little. We were secretly rooting for him. Sports are vessels that equally display our peak capabilities and limitations. We watch and play not just because games are thrilling, beautiful, and occasionally cruel, but because we want to feel. We experience our failures and moments of grace. We get close to our desires, close to the pain of knowing some of them will never actualize.”
Read the full piece here on The Peach Basket.
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WE WERE THERE: Notes on “Creating Racially Equitable Schools”
Like so many writers, I also teach. Like so many teachers—especially of literature, especially of younger students—I am female. This profession is largely and historically comprised of a female majority, so it’s no surprise that so many media outlets hate on teachers, so many leaders bust teachers’ unions, and so many good citizens ensure that teaching is not afforded social prestige. And yet, teachers in schools across the city and country are engaging with some of the hardest issues America faces. On June 18th, I joined a packed room of educators and parents from across New York City to learn more about racial inequity in schools. “Creating Racially Equitable Schools” was a panel discussion and fundraiser for Border Crossers, held at the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School. The notes below are woven together from quotes and paraphrases of the five panelists: filmmaker Joe Brewster, school leader Martha Haakmat, educator and filmmaker Ali Michael, Professor Pedro Noguera, and Professor Howard Stevenson.
REAL: New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country.
VISION: In racially equitable schools, all children see themselves reflected and respected in the curriculum and in the pedagogy. All staff understand the history of race and racism in the United States.
REAL: New York City is diverse—in the daytime. People ride the subways together and work in the same buildings, then go home to their largely segregated neighborhoods.
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Your Brother Said There’d Be Drag Queens: My Rainbow Tunnel into Queer Marriage
My mother was rolled over to me in a hospital gown with new corneas and loose lips. “When are you and AJ going to get married? It’s legal now—isn’t it?” I quickly web searched to confirm that. I had stopped caring about all that after the last elections. She sighed, “That’d be cute.” Then, “It’s like I’m in a rainbow tunnel. So many colors, like I’m at Disneyland.”
•••••
I hadn’t considered marriage before 2008. Bigotry and casual homophobia were out of the closet in the ongoing debates over California Proposition 8, and the gay community reacted in the sharpest and most active defense formation I had seen. We were in the streets, gay and proud and loud, explaining: no, yes does not support gay marriage, no does. And in the aftermath, I huddled with activists around a stage and a TV interview with George Takei to learn what we already knew. My mother told me, “Just give it time.”
In the months following, the community that had gathered didn’t have a proposition to oppose. I joined a couple lackluster, vanilla activists groups before deciding to give myself some time to consider marriage for myself. Continue reading
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Rah! Rah! Roundup
If you live in New York or happen to be visiting, next week is your last week to check out Kim Gordon’s solo exhibition of new works at 303 Gallery.
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Lean and Choice: Parsing the Fat in Phil Klay’s Redeployment
It gave me pause to learn that Phil Klay’s 2014 bestseller Redeployment won the National Book Award for Fiction last year. When I finally finished the collection of short stories, I felt deflated, not by the warfare or the PTSD or the moment in the poignant, titular story where the protagonist shoots his dying dog, but by Klay’s clichéd, sexist descriptions of several female characters throughout the book. While Klay probably meant to showcase the male chauvinist bravado of a solider, the descriptions still strike me as outdated, even in the spirit of attempting to craft realistic characters in the atmosphere or culture of a war story. It’s not the book’s dialogue that bothers me—it’s Klay’s descriptions guiding us toward the visualization and realization of these women. Since the stories are told mostly in first person, the lack of distance between author and narrator suggests, at times, that we as readers are encouraged to see the women as the soldiers do. In these stories, as in so many recent narratives about masculine violence—from Breaking Bad to The Sopranos—the proximity of narrator and author forces us to ask: when are such depictions taking a critical, if sympathetic, stance on that kind of cultural misogyny, and when are they simply replicating it? I would argue that when, say, Klay’s go-to expression for older or more haggard women is “ugly,” he walks a fine line between unsparing realism and simply unpolished sexism. Continue reading
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