What I read this month... (ep 2)

Here we go again…!

ARTICLES

1. Need help finding a good book? Try one your 9th-grader isn’t allowed to read by Robin Abcarian (LA Times)
   “Efforts originating from the left, Meehan told me, often involve protests against white authors using the N-word… Books targeted by conservatives often feature characters who are not white, or who are not heterosexual.”

2. In the Shadow of Silicon Valley by Rebecca Solnit (London Review of Books)
   “You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires, because democracy requires equal opportunity in order to participate, and extreme wealth gives its holders unfathomable advantages with little accountability.”

3. After Nearly Four Years, Manhattan's Poets House Reopens by John Maher (Publishers Weekly)
   “Rebuilding is, in a sense, like writing a poem. It's a perpetual act—one is never really done with it, even when the last word is in ink or the HVAC system is humming.”

4. What Does It Mean to Be Palestinian Now? by Noura Erakat, Ahmed Moor, Noor Hindi, Mohammed El-Kurd, and Laila Al-Arian (The Nation)
   “Lately, I catch myself thinking strange thoughts. I imagine a dying sun, eight billion years from now, swallowing the earth and turning everything to ash. I know I am not alone, and I recognize the dark fantasies of a broken spirit.

   And then my children, alive, beautiful, and vivacious—three little girls—wake me from my grim reveries. They pull me back from the precipice. Unknowingly, they hold the genocide at bay. They are too young to know what’s being done to their family, so far away from everything in their lives. I write this love letter to Gaza’s children, whose lives are brief and whose deaths are meaningless. I write this letter for all the people in Gaza, who were children once, if only briefly, before the awareness of their own worthlessness crept into their lives. I write this letter for myself, and I wonder, when all the children in Gaza are dead, who will pull us back from the precipice?”
   “These moments of horrific intimacy are filmed because those who suffer and witness them want to show the world that this really happened. But as the death toll reaches 25,000 (the number is likely much higher given the bodies under the rubble), I wonder if there is a cost to all the images we’re seeing, if they inure people to Palestinian death, if there’s no point in intruding on their most vulnerable moments, since those in power have not been moved to stop the carnage.”

   

5. Dreams in Islam by Livia Gershon (JSTOR Daily)
   “The Sufi tradition has always been particularly hospitable to the idea of revelation through dreams. For some Sufi thinkers, dreaming was a portal into a symbolic world where humans could encounter the infinite divine realms.”

6. Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes by Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)
   “The responsibility of preventing fake images from spreading often falls to social platforms — something that can be difficult to do under the best of circumstances and even harder for a company like X that has hollowed out its moderation capabilities.
   The company is currently being investigated by the EU regarding claims that it’s being used to “disseminate illegal content and disinformation” and is reportedly being questioned regarding its crisis protocols after misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war was found being promoted across the platform.”

7. On Book Hoarding and the Perilous Paradox of Clutter by Vanessa Ogle (Lit Hub)
   “Both of my parents had a hard time letting things go. Poverty—that fear of never knowing when they’d be able to purchase another one of whatever thing it was—was only one reason why.”

8. The Difference between Pleasure and Desire by Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Good Chats)
   “Pleasure is stillness, savoring what’s happening in the moment. Desire is forward movement, exploring to create something that doesn’t currently exist.

   Pleasure is a perception of a sensation. Desire is motivation toward a goal.

   In a sense, pleasure is satisfaction and desire is dissatisfaction, because pleasure is enjoying an experience, while desire is motivation to pursue something different.”

9. Playing the Dozens: On the Joys and Functions of Sh*t Talk by Rafi Kohan (Lit Hub)
   “Some, for example, have cast the game as a means of negotiating social status, a puberty or initiation ritual, an in-group signifier, or a mechanism of survival. These all speak to a kind of testing—a challenge being presented.”

10. What Fiction Can Reveal About the Fragile Fabric of Our Societies by Aminatta Forna (Lit Hub)
    “We Sierra Leonians saw ourselves as essentially peace-loving, even if our leaders were venal. If anything, our problem was that we were too passive. But when things begin, they must begin somewhere. There is a schema, one that might be traced from the first flap of the butterfly’s wings to the hurricane.
    On a noticeboard in my office, for a long time, I had taped a handwritten note to myself with the lines “Nonfiction reveals the lies, but only metaphor can reveal the truth,” which is true, I think, of a certain type of story. Two novels set in Sierra Leone followed The Devil That Danced on the Water. I continued to explore the themes of civil conflict in fiction.”

11. What I Wish I’d Known About: Becoming a Writer by Kill Your Darlings (Kill Your Darlings)
    “I wish I’d known that the chances of success weren’t as slim as I thought. Because when I really decided to commit to writing a novel, I thought it was a project that I was doing for myself that wouldn’t turn into anything, and there was no chance of financial reward or interest in my book. We get told constantly how impossible it is for young writers to be successful. But if you’ve actually written a novel, and taken the time to redraft and make it better, I think your chances are good—if you do the work.”

12. The government is considering legislation on the ‘right to disconnect’ from work by First Dog on the Moon (The Guardian)
    “Australian's do $100bn a year in unpaid overtime (this is theft fyi).”

13. How 11 Writers Organize Their Personal Libraries by Emily Temple (Lit Hub)
    “All the apartments I buy or rent are for my books, not for myself. I don’t need the space. I’m 5-foot-4. I have a whole bookcase that this guy calls “your crazy books.” The crazy book category. Those books are not alphabetized.” - Fran Lebowitz

14. Micro–interview with Yazmin Bradley by Tahney Fosdike (Sticky Teeth)
    “We do the work of publishing houses for them. We feverishly sell to one other. We brand ourselves as ‘readers’ or ‘writers’ and crave more more more.”

PROSE (fic and creative nonfic)

1. “Let’s Play Dead” by Senaa Ahmad (via The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021)
   “An elegantly embroidered handkerchief means I bayoneted this cloth 9,042 times and imagined it was the flesh of your enemies. A pair of white gloves means We will help you bury the bodies. We will not ask questions. We know you did what had to be done.”

POETRY

1. Love Song by Dorothy Parker
2. Harlem by Langston Hughes
3. For My People by Margaret Walker

Like what I’m reading? Keep up with what I’m writing here.

Until next time…

Flick. x

Flick is a multidisciplinary artist most well known for creating the staged lesbian sci-fi series SLUNTIK™. They look to create and collaborate on new works that embrace spectacle as political movement, that are bold and experimental, and that think specifically about the impact of process. They’re gamifying their aspiring return into voracious reading by using storygraph. They’re reluctantly posting a meaningless mix of selfies and professional news on instagram. Flick’s written work has appeared on stages in Melbourne, Sydney and Los Angeles, and developed & programmed by the likes of ATYP, Nightingale Content, Theatre Works, Melbourne & Adelaide Fringe, Queerspace Arts, & more. You’ll find out more by visiting the website flickflickcity.net.