#pearl cleage

[waiting-eyez]

Domestic violence is the front line of the war against women.

(Pearl Cleage)

[wellconstructedsentences]

I still believe that theatre has a ritual power to call forth spirits, illuminate the darkness and speak the truth to people.

Pearl Cleage

[dbguidebook]

Darling Bonnie's Book Club. #Societythings

[melodysbookhaven]

"We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl, because by now we were all old enough to know that what looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight."

Pearl Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

[yourcosmichomegirl]

BOOK recommendations - from an AQUARIUS:

You can actually help the collective, just by focusing on your own personal growth, but you should already know that.

[pinkfloyd-musicartnaturelove]

[litandlifequotes]

We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl, because by now we were all old enough to know that what looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage

[rosy-avenger]

I'm not political in the traditional sense, but I think some things are fairly obvious even to somebody like me: peace is better than war; global warming will kill you.

-Seen It All and Done The Rest by Pearl Cleage

[sivavakkiyar]

Miles did have some great lines. My favorite is the one where the interviewer is talking to him and Coltrane. This is a little before the proper ‘sheets of sound’ but his solos are already getting longer, expansive, infinite. How does he do it? Coltrane says ‘well, I practice, I practice to let the spirit in. And when the spirit hits, I play, I go, I don���t know how to stop’.

And Miles leans into the microphone and cuts him off, and says ‘I’ll tell you how to stop. Take the fucking horn out of your mouth.’

[haggishlyhagging]

The book list copied from feminist-reprise

Radical Lesbian Feminist Theory

A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection, Jan Raymond

Call Me Lesbian: Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory, Julia Penelope

The Lesbian Heresy, Sheila Jeffreys

The Lesbian Body, Monique Wittig

Politics of Reality, Marilyn Frye

Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism 1976-1992, Marilyn Frye

Lesbian Ethics, Sarah Hoagland

Sister/Outsider, Audre Lorde

Radical Feminist Theory –  General/Collections

Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism, edited by Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler

Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, Renate Klein and Diane Bell

Love and Politics, Carol Anne Douglas

The Dialectic of Sex–The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone

Sisterhood is Powerful, Robin Morgan, ed.

Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, edited by Barbara A. Crow

Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf

Sexual Politics, Kate Millett

Radical Feminism, Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds.

On Lies, Secrets and Silence, Adrienne Rich

Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals, Marilyn French

Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, Catharine MacKinnon

Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Sandra Bartky

Life and Death, Andrea Dworkin

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, eds.

Wildfire:  Igniting the She/Volution, Sonia Johnson

Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology, Barbara Smith ed.

Fugitive Information, Kay Leigh Hagan

Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, bell hooks

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks

Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage

Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes, Maria Lugones

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker

The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

Feminist Theory – Specific Areas

Prostitution

Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution, Rachel Moran

Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self, Kajsa Ekis Ekman

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade, Sheila Jeffreys

Female Sexual Slavery, Kathleen Barry

Women, Lesbians, and Prostitution:  A Workingclass Dyke Speaks Out Against Buying Women for Sex, by Toby Summer, in Lesbian Culture: An Anthology, Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe, eds.

Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution, Jan Raymond

The Legalisation of Prostitution : A failed social experiment, Sheila Jeffreys

Making the Harm Visible: Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls, Donna M. Hughes and Claire Roche, eds.

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress, Melissa Farley

Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant, eds.

Pornography

Pornland: How Pornography Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines

Pornified: How Porn is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families, Pamela Paul

Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Andrea Dworkin

Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, Gail Dines

Pornography: Evidence of the Harm, Diana Russell

Pornography and Sexual Violence:  Evidence of the Links (transcript of Minneapolis hearings published by Everywoman in the UK)

Rape

Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller

Rape In Marriage, Diana Russell

Incest

Secret Trauma, Diana Russell

Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self, Janet Liebman Jacobs

Battering/Domestic Violence

Loving to Survive, Dee Graham

Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, Lundy Bancroft

Sadomasochism/”Sex Wars”

Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties, Irene Reti, ed.

The Sex Wars, Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, eds.

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice Raymond

Sex, Lies, and Feminism, Charlotte Croson, off our backs, June 2001

How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women’s Movement, Sheila Jeffreys

A Vision of Lesbian Sexuality, Janice Raymond, in All The Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism, Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller, eds.

Sex and Feminism: Who Is Being Silenced? Adriene Sere in SaidIt, 2001

Consuming Passions: Some Thoughts on History, Sex and Free Enterprise by De Clarke (From Unleashing Feminism).

Separatism/Women-Only Space

“No Dobermans Allowed,”  Carolyn Gage, in Lesbian Culture: An Anthology, Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe, eds.

For Lesbians Only:  A Separatist Anthology, Julia Penelope & Sarah Hoagland, eds.

Exploring the Value of Women-Only Space, Kya Ogyn

Medicine

Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Treats Women as Patients and Professionals, Gena Corea

The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs, Gena Corea

Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler

Women, Health and the Politics of Fat, Amy Winter, in Rain And Thunder, Autumn Equinox 2003, No. 20

Changing Our Minds: Lesbian Feminism and Psychology, Celia Kitzinger and Rachel Perkins

Motherhood

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich

The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow

Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, Sara Ruddick

Marriage/Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich

The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930, Sheila Jeffreys

Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Sheila Jeffreys

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Michele Wallace

The Sexual Contract, Carol Pateman

A Radical Dyke Experiment for the Next Century: 5 Things to Work for Instead of Same-Sex Marriage, Betsy Brown in off our backs, January 2000 V.30; N.1 p. 24

Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

Transgender/Queer Politics

Gender Hurts, Sheila Jeffreys

Female Erasure, edited by Ruth Barrett

Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds, Cordelia Fine

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Cordelina Fine

Sexing the Body: Gender and the Construction of Sexuality, Anne Fausto-Sterling

Myths of Gender, Anne Fausto-Sterling

Unpacking Queer Politics, Sheila Jeffreys

The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, Janice Raymond

The Inconvenient Truth of Teena Brandon, Carolyn Gage

Language

Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues, Julia Penelope

Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary, Mary Daly

Man Made Language, Dale Spender

Feminist Theology/Spirituality/Religion

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, Mary Daly

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly

The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, Marija Gimbutas

Woman, Church and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage

The Women’s Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Pure Lust, Mary Daly

Backlash

The War Against Women, Marilyn French

Backlash, Susan Faludi

History/Memoir

Surpassing the Love of Men, Lillian Faderman

Going Too Far:  The Personal Chronicles of a Feminist, Robin Morgan

Women of Ideas, and What Men Have Done to Them, Dale Spender

The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Gerda Lerner

Why History Matters, Gerda Lerner

A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, ed.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, Ellen Carol Dubois, ed., Gerda Lerner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Suffragette Movement, Sylvia Pankhurst

In Our Time: Memoirs of a Revolution, Susan Brownmiller

Women, Race and Class, Angela Y. Davis

Economy

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth, Marilyn Waring

For-Giving:  A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Genevieve Vaughn

Fat/Body Image/Appearance

Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Wieser

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West, Sheila Jeffreys

Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, Jean Kilbourne

The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf

Unbearable Weight:  Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Susan Bordo

The Invisible Woman:  Confronting Weight Prejudice in America, Charisse Goodman

Women En Large: Photographs of Fat Nudes, Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin

Disability

With the Power of Each Breath:  A Disabled Women’s Anthology, Susan E. Browne, Debra Connors, and Nanci Stern

[tani-b-art]

We Speak Your Names by Pearl Cleage

Because we are free women,

born of free women,

who are born of free women,

back as far as time begins,

we celebrate your freedom.

Because we are wise women,

born of wise women,

who are born of wise women,

we celebrate your wisdom.

Because we are strong women,

born of strong women,

who are born of strong women,

we celebrate your strength.

Because we are magical women,

born of magical women,

who are born of magical women,

we celebrate your magic.

My sisters, we are gathered here to speak your names.

We are here because we are your daughters as surely as if you had conceived us, nurtured us, carried us in your wombs, and then sent us out into the world to make our mark and see what we see, and be what we be, but better, truer, deeper because of the shining example of your own incandescent lives.

We are here to speak your names because we have enough sense to know that we did not spring full blown from the forehead of Zeus, or arrive on the scene like Topsy, our sister once removed, who somehow just growed.

We know that we are walking in footprints made deep by the confident strides of women who parted the air before them like the forces of nature that you are.

We are here to speak your names because you taught us that the search is always for the truth and that when people show us who they are, we should believe them.

We are here because you taught us that sisterspeak can continue to be our native tongue, no matter how many languages we learn as we move about as citizens of the world and of the ever-evolving universe.

We are here to speak your names because of the way you made for us.

Because of the prayers you prayed for us.

We are the ones you conjured up, hoping we would have strength enough, and discipline enough, and talent enough, and nerve enough to step into the light when it turned in our direction, and just smile awhile.

We are the ones you hoped would make you proud because all of our hard work makes all of yours part of something better, truer, deeper.

Something that lights the way ahead like a lamp unto our feet, as steady as the unforgettable beat of our collective heart.

We speak your names.

We speak your names.

(Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball)

[emmersreads]

My Top 5 Worst Books of 2023

I read 119 books in 2023. Some of the were great, most of them were fine, but some of them were real stinkers. Here are my top five worst books of the year.

This year I didn't read any books that I expected to be bad. Each of these is a book with an interesting premise or perspective but that bungles the execution so badly that I hated the time I spent on it.

You can also read the whole thing on my blog!

Honourable Mention:

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose

You can feel extremely strongly about the themes in your book and still churn out absolute pure dogshit. This entry foreshadows a consistent theme to this year’s worst list but only places as an honourable mention because it’s the only book this year that I dnf’ed. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath takes the intriguing premise in the 18th century colonization of east coast North America but also everyone has dragons and then mangles it with the colonizers being a weird combination of the English and the Vikings. The novel interrogates the idea of ‘civilizing’ the indigenous people but without the underlying motivations of Christian and European supremacy and manifest destiny the messaging is confusing and weak. In addition to a coherent message, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath also lacks multidimensional characters and any plot at all. I dnf’ed at 85% completion when I realized that the book wasn’t going to generate a plot at that late hour.

Fifth Place:

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma - Claire Dederer

I began Monsters with high hopes. There is a lot of meat on the bone of how to love art by the truly reprehensible. Unfortunately it falls victim to a problem shared by all memoirs: in order to be good, the subject has to be interesting. Claire Dederer’s genuinely pretty good discussion of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski devolves into condescending platitudes about why teens like J.K. Rowling, genuinely reprehensible comments about whether getting an abortion makes a woman a monster, and finally into outsourcing her final conclusion to Pearl Cleage’s Mad at Miles. You might as well just read that one instead. Some of Dederer’s commentary is bad because it is poorly researched (Nabokov, J.K. Rowling), but what really bothered me about this book was the nauseating suggesting that women’s monstrousness is exclusively their behaviour as parents, as if being a parent is the primary imperative, at least for women. But else could be described as ‘bad motherhood’? Suicide? Yes! Having an abortion? Absolutely! Not devoting full attention and effort to your children at every moment of your life? Why, you’re just like Woody Allen. The inclusion of some arguments are heinous and the exclusion of others undermines the value of the discussions that do scan. Where’s Kanye West? Surely there’s more to his career than a few lyrics about how his fans don’t know the read him… surely… Sure, committing suicide is super duper monstrous because you’re basically abandoning your kids (heavy sarcasm implied), but what of women like Nicki Minaj? At least for me, a big lesson of the recognition of Problematic Artists is that we don’t actually need to hear from everyone in the name of fairness. Dederer should learn that too.

Fourth Place:

The Idiot - Elif Bartuman

Spicy Hot Take Alert: The Idiot by Elif Bartuman sucks and I am judging you for liking it. I want to be clear about this: I did put this book on the worst list rather than the blandest specifically because it’s so popular. This book is all the more unbearably pretentious because it has nothing to say. It’s fatally boring and exhaustingly incurious. I’ve seen it described on bookstagram as about ‘the formation of the self’ and I suppose corporate middle managers need a formation of the self too. That doesn’t make it book-worthy. Also what the hell are ya’ll talking about this book being relatable?? When I was eighteen I knew fucking everything. Sorry, but I’m different.

Third Place:

The Cheerleaders - Kara Thomas

The Cheerleaders was the first book I finished in 2023 but the memory is not distant enough. For me this was a failure because it seems to hate its own genre. What is the point of a girl detective mystery where it turns out there was no interesting conspiracy behind the deaths and the protagonist doesn’t even pursue the case exhaustively enough to find this out. Sure, maybe its more realistic to suggest that a girl grieving the too-early death of her older sister might be making things up, but I’m not in this genre for the realism. The Cheerleaders doesn’t feel like it has anything interesting to say about subverting the conspiracy-murder, just that it wanted to have a subversion and then couldn’t figure out how to execute that, resorting instead to a deus ex omniscient narrator. It’s like if instead of Sherlock Holmes solving the case through deduction, Arthur Conan Doyle emerged from behind the curtain and told you to go fuck yourself. Read the full review on my website!

Second Place:

Disorientation - Elaine Hsieh Chou

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang was the darling of 2023 but it is not the first novel about a yellowface-ing author who fools the white literary establishment by selling them exactly the kind of bland and easily digestible Asian stories they are comfortable hearing. But it’s a good thing Yellowface did come out because Disorientation needed more time in the fucking oven. Like Yellowface this book attempts a comedic tone, but it chooses pure cringe comedy goofiness over irony and as a consequence rather than being a humourous reflection of Shit White People Do it’s more Making Up A Guy to Get Mad At. It’s greatest asset is an attempt at a discussion of the intriguing topic of sexual politics. Since white men demonstrably do fetsishize Asian women, is it possible to have an individual relationship that is not based on fetishization? Unfortunately, Disorientation doesn’t actually have anything to say about it and so just wibbles along to a nothing of an ending. It’s a scream of rage to be sure, but not all screams of rage are coherent. This is the second entry on this list that undermines its message because it couldn’t bear to kill a few of its darlings, but not the last!

Worst Book of 2023:

The Bone Witch - Rin Chupeco

We live in an era where ‘wish-fulfillment’ and ‘self-indulgent’ are no longer automatic condemnations, which is all well and good for the people writing them but what of me, the discerning reader? One detects great love and passion in this book but unfortunately that’s no replacement for writing ability. The Bone Witch is haunted above all by the knowledge that the author must have a truly colossal lore bible for this thing. It feels like every chapter the book treats itself of an extended tangent about the political system of one of its half-dozen fantasy nations, none of which are actually important to this book, and damningly, none of which are even well explained. As you might imagine, this leaves precious little time for boring things like plot or characters. The plot is little more than disconnected scenes that the author clearly thought would be cool but didn’t think about how they would link together, meaning that the last quarter acceleration to the climax is occupied by a sitcom b-plot ass arc about helping a friend get into the very special dance recital. The characters are even worse with none of them rising beyond an outlining epithet: angsty protagonist, broody love interest, gay best friend. The attempt at a dark and moody tone is childish and goofy. I found the Geisha theming to be overdone and appropriative, and the use of gay characters to be offensive. The only time the book threatens to have promise is with its beginning, where the protagonist accidentally raises her brother from the dead; however, The Bone Witch is quick to inform us that this changed nothing about him or about their relationship, wouldn’t we rather think about how stylish kimonos are?

[radical-revolution]

Loneliness is black coffee and late-night television; solitude is herb tea and soft music. Solitude, quality solitude, is an assertion of self-worth, because only in the stillness can we hear the truth of our own unique voices.

—Pearl Cleage, Deals with the Devil, and Other Reasons to Riot

[ripeteeth]

For the book asks: 1, 8, 19?

book you’ve reread the most times?

Hmm, fuck. That's a great question. Barring children's books, it's probably Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. When I was younger, my grandmother would take me to the bookstore every time I visited her (she lived in another state so I saw her a couple of times a year) and I was allowed to always pick out one book. I got that one when I was about 14? It was my first time reading anything like that, where nothing was wholly black and white and the POV shifted to the character you previously assumed was the villain, only to realize that they were perfectly human with their own hopes, dreams, aches, miseries, and desires. It really floored me. I still love it.

8. what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

Ever? God, I have no idea. I remember reading a children's picture book of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in kindergarten, but that was with my class (and I have extremely vivid memories of sitting on a blue tarp in the middle of that classroom, the Waipahu breeze coming through the open door, and my crush's knee pressed up against mine while we read the book). I remember that around first grade, I really loved The Magic School Bus, The Teacher From The Black Lagoon, and as I got a little older, Sideways Stories From Wayside School, but I truly can't tell you the first book I remember reading. For adult books though, the first one I ever read by myself was What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage, which I read when I was about 12 and snuck off my mom's bookshelf because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be reading it. I pretty much fell in love with lit fiction after that and read a lot of it. My mom and I have bonded over that book, which was really amazing one to stumble on at that young age, as it centers on an HIV+ positive woman beginning a relationship and falling in love and stresses respect and enthusiastic consent in a beautiful way.

19. most disliked popular books?

YEAH BABY I'M A HATER.

Straight up, I gotta confess that I loathed This Is How You Lose The Time War, as I choked on the purple prose and lack of character development. I think that, if it had been marketed as a sort of prose poem, I would have liked it more, and I am genuinely very glad for the author that the book has recently had a spike in popularity. I also can't stand Love In The Time of Cholera, Prozac Nation, and literally anything by Ayn Rand, which I unfortunately read both We the Living and half of Atlas Shrugged because an old boyfriend worshipped her. (I was 18 and had no idea how fucked up she - or he - was, but damn that opened my eyes.) I also loathe Love You Forever, which I sold a bunch of when I worked at a bookstore and found really creepy.

Also, no hate to Neil Gaiman, but I find it very difficult to get into most of his books, though I did love Good Omens, but I think that there was enough of Pratchett in it to work for me. I've just accepted that Gaiman writes for an audience that isn't me, though he's lovely online.

[Wanna ask me book questions? Please do! I love to talk shit.]