At Bitch, Amy Lam interviews MariNaomi about her new graphic memoir Turning Japanese: “I think every young person feels like they don’t quite fit in, or if they do fit in, they feel like people don’t really know them. My version of not fitting in was because I was half-Japanese in a very Caucasian area. It was definitely pretty naive to think that I would find some kind of belonging in a foreign country.”
The Offing, the online literary magazine formerly attached to the Los Angeles Review of Books, is making some big, necessary changes; support them and read more about it in this essay from editor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: “In 2016 our endeavors must include engaging in long overdue transgressions against tradition by actively working with and for people who have long been pushed to the margins, whether through dispossession, slavery, colonialism, erasure or all of the above.”
Over at Flavorwire Sesali B. writes about navigating abuse allegations in the media in regards to the recent split of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard: “But can you legitimately defend someone against allegations that are so personal? How? In a situation like this, can you really use your experience with them to gauge what their experience was like with someone else?”
Amandla Stenberg answers readers’ questions at Rookie as part of their new “How We Live” series, which is “a series centering on the lived experience and thought of black teenagers.”
Iman Williams writes on Beyoncé’s Lemonade for Entropy: “The Black feminine is denied entry and access to worlds and modes of being that cease to exist without her; Beyoncé’s Lemonade indicates that the conditions that situate the Black feminine in this interstitial space inaugurate a Black feminist futurity that exceeds a traditional symbolic order.”
Ginger Ko writes on connecting through the internet in her new essay for The Offing, “The Cave”: “I don’t consider myself obligated to maintain Facebook as a representative snapshot of the world, in which the most adamant and idle take up the most space with their ample voices and ample time. My blocked list is important to me, and shall be maintained for as long as my Facebook lives.”
Women are having to travel farther and father to access abortion, as reported at the L.A. Times: “As more states adopt more restrictive laws and the number of clinics dwindles in the so-called “abortion desert” – an area that stretches from Florida to New Mexico and north into the Midwest – women are increasingly traveling across state lines to avoid long waits for appointments and escape the legal barriers in their home states.”
Domonique Echeverria talks to Paper Magazine about her suicide attempt, the harm pharmaceuticals can do, prosthetics, and her own path to healing: “I’d done coke and heroin and acid and I’ll tell you, pharmaceuticals are the worst fucking drugs. They can make people sick. I guarantee you there’s more people addicted to pharmaceuticals than street drugs.”
The new issue of Divine Magnet (edited by WS contributor Seth Landman!) is now live, featuring work from Monica Fambrough, Lesley Yalen, Cheryl Quimba, Natalie Lyalin, and more.
What did we miss this week? Let us know in the comments! <3
“Since Friday, there have been stories of three Black women killed by acts of state-sanctioned and intimate partner violence. Those are just the three we lost this weekend, that we know about, but I’m sure there are others.” – Brittney Cooper’s “Connect The Dots: For Korryn Gaines, Skye Mockabee and Joyce Quaweay”
