#political nonfiction

[creatingblackcharacters]

Why your "kindness" might very well not be "not racist":

A quote, from the escape of Ellen and William Craft, where white-passing Ellen dressed as a white gentleman- Mr. Johnson- and her husband William her servant:

After the disappointed lady had resumed her seat . . . she closed her eyes, slightly raising her hands, and in a sanctified tone said to my master, “Oh! I hope, sir, your boy will not turn out to be so worthless as my Ned. . . . Oh! I was as kind to him as if he had been my own son. Oh! sir, it grieves me very much to think that after all I did for him he should go off without having any cause whatever.”

“When did he leave you?” asked Mr. Johnson.

“About eighteen months ago, and I have never seen hair or hide of him since.”

“Did he have a wife?” enquired a very respectable-looking young gentleman, who was sitting near my master and opposite to the lady.

“No, sir; not when he left, though he did have one a little before that. She was very unlike him; she was as good and as faithful a n-gger as any one need wish to have. But . . . she became so ill, that she was unable to do much work; so I thought it would be best to sell her, to go to New Orleans, where the climate is nice and warm.”

“I suppose she was very glad to go South for the restoration of her health?” said the gentleman.

“No; she was not,” replied the lady, “for n-ggers never know what is best for them. She took on a great deal about leaving Ned and the little n-gger; but, as she was so weakly, I let her go.”

“Was she good-looking?” asked the young passenger, who was evidently not of the same opinion as the talkative lady. . . .

“Yes; she was very handsome, and much whiter than I am; and therefore will have no trouble in getting another husband. I am sure I wish her well. I asked the speculator who bought her to sell her to a good master. . . . [S]he has my prayers, and I know she prays for me.”

The dismissal of the real pain of every single Black person involved, believing them to not know what was good for them, that she was so kind and thoughtful and doesn't understand why they would respond to her the way they did, to even believing that the woman thought kindly of her in return.... This might be an antebellum narrative, but the behavior is far too familiar contemporarily.

[theoptia]

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from The Message

Text ID: your mind expands as the dark end of your imagination blooms, and you wonder if human depravity has any bottom at all,

[patrochilles-or-bust]

"This is the import of history all around us, though very few people like to think about it. Had I informed this woman that when she pushed my [four year old!]* son, she was acting according to a tradition that held Black bodies as lesser, her response would likely have been "I am not a racist". Or maybe not.

But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic- an orc, troll, or gorgon."

Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World and Me

*context added by myself. Let it be known that when he turned around to this white woman that pushed his FOUR YEAR OLD out of the way with a snap, white onlookers gathered and threatened to have him arrested for reacting in rightful fury.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

About to deep clean & rearrange my bookcase …… I am about to be a girl reborn

[autumngracy]

Literature recommendations for the coming days (Pt 77)

[theorcasfriend]

The Jakarta Method x Vincent Bevins

Us crazy socialist dreamers aren't crazy and we aren't so alone. We've been fighting for justice for a very long time and we won't be the last to. Angela Davis said it best "Freedom is a constant struggle"

And why wouldn't it be?

[wiserebeltiger]

It is perhaps easier to find yourself hating the one who let it happen, than the one who did the thing.

[gor3sigil]

I did a bunch of digital art projects and writing about transness, being a freak, the journey I took from being an insecure girl to who I am today, and I'm starting to consider making a zine out of it.

Digital, because I can't afford to print it, but just for people to read through and if it can help others feel less alone in the process, I'll be super duper happy.

Maybe I'll do that. I don't have much knowledge in graphic design though so it'll take time lmao but it's a fun project !

[creatingblackcharacters]

I plan on reading this on a trip this weekend as reference for my upcoming lesson. If you were actually serious about reading Black on Both Sides:

In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials, Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.

Shout out to @aoi-jasmine for the link! And to Trans Reads for being a resource!

[feralnumberfive]

I abhor "Here's what candidate I think characters from *some form of media* voted for!" posts. Do NOT drag my blorbos and their friends into this fucked up world

[patrochilles-or-bust]

I want white Americans to know, from the bottom of my heart, that you will NEVER obtain the freedoms you wish until you're ready to build true community with people of color- and that means looking within, and having conversations you don't feel like having! Because they hurt your feelings!

LGBTQ rights, disability rights, workers rights, unions, public transportation, healthcare, education, housing- ALL OF IT.

So long as you are not willing to sacrifice temporary loss of privilege and comfort to gain stronger overall equity and freedom, you will gain nothing. You might even lose more- e.g. veterans thinking they're not "DEI" because DEI was supposed to imply "Black". E.g. White women losing access to food stamps and affirmative action even though they're the ones that benefit from it the most.

So from now on, when you try to say "we have to handle those things later" or "this is prioritized first" or "I have to think about me" when asked to consider the folks of color around you and how their needs might temporarily conflict with yours... Recognize that you're likely keeping yourself down in the long run. So long as you keep treating these things as zero sum, NONE OF US- and that includes YOU, poor white person- will ever get out of this. The cycle will continue! You all have another option- refusing it is YOUR choice!

[deanmarywinchester]

previous years: 2022, 2021 / list of worst sf/f/horror

the bangers were BANGING this year, I kept mentally readjusting my top 5 list every time I read something good so the honorable mentions are extremely honorable this year. I hope you read anything that sounds good from this list and tell me about it!

top 5:

chain gang all stars by nana kwame adjei-brenyah: when I say that this book is like the hunger games for adults, I’m not making a glib comparison between two books about fighting to the death, I’m saying that I haven’t felt so intensely about a book since I stayed up late to tear through the hunger games and sob about it when I was thirteen. this book is satire as real and devastating as I’ve ever read, with action scenes that feel like they’re being dripped directly into my hindbrain and a unique and believable love story. put it on hold at your library literally RIGHT now.

the actual star by monica byrne: about a post-climate catastrophe utopian society built around a religion started by a teenage girl in 2012 based on mayan traditions, and also about the teenage girl, and also about the maya. this book made me crazy because the future society felt real enough to touch, with its radical openness and collectivity solving problems that exist today but causing new ones that are totally novel and meaty and interesting to dig into. read it if you’re interested in different ways of being.

the spear cuts through water by simon jiménez: really, REALLY good, fresh, original epic fantasy. jimenez picks a few perspectives to stick to but hops fluidly into bystanders’ brains to give you their perspectives, so even background characters feel fleshed-out and no one’s pain is dismissed as a side effect of heroic battles or whatever. highly recommended if you like framing narratives and stories about stories, and like epic fantasy but wish it wasn’t mostly about finding acceptable enemies to slaughter with cool swords

the dispossessed by ursula k. le guin: I love how much this book is about hope as clear-eyed commitment to the boring and difficult work of a brighter and necessary future. sometimes the work of the glorious anarcho-communist revolution is leaving your university post and romantic partner for months at a time to dig irrigation ditches so nobody starves when there’s a drought. read this book for diplomatic conniving, a clash of values between a capitalist planet and its dissident moon, and hope.

imperial radch trilogy and its spinoffs by ann leckie: what if you were built to be a weapon of the empire, a serene sentient battleship with thousands of human bodies all containing your consciousness, and you lost all bodies but one and had to figure out how to be a person, singular and alone? what if you were a 19th century british military officer and you slept for a thousand years into the decline of the empire? what if you were grown in a vat to be a facsimile of human and then told off for eating all your siblings even though eating them was SO interesting? what then. leckie’s prose is incisive and funny, her unreliable narrators are wonderful, and her stories are intimate even though the backdrops are insanely huge. 👍.

honorable mentions:

house of leaves by mark z. danielewski: guys? anyone hearda this one? anyway. Something Is Wrong With This House horror with themes of storytelling and grief. recommending that you slam this book as fast as possible like I did so you can hold all its layers in your head at once.

the lathe of heaven by ursula k le guin: i thought I didn’t like ursula k le guin, and then I read this book, went OH and immediately devoured the hainish cycle. im so sorry miss ursula. this book about a hapless pacific northwesterner whose therapist is making him dream different realities into being is so sharp and sly and funny. themes of choices, ends and means.

he who drowned the world by shelley parker-chan: I liked the prequel to this addition to the radiant emperor duology. I LOVED this book. parker-chan has invented new and exciting modes of fucked-up codependency and im obsessed. historical light-fantasy with themes of ideals vs what it takes to reach them, gender, and regret.

babel by r. f. kuang: found the didacticism of this book annoying, but i really loved the concept of this novel and the way it slowly ratchets up the stakes. this novel is for people who want to smash the fun of the magic school genre against the reality of universities’ complicity in the imperial machine.

piranesi by susannah clarke: im late to this book but it’s such a weird little gem. peaceful yet unsettling. a man takes care of an endless house with an ocean inside it until he realizes the house is stealing his memories. themes of memory and devotion.

hell follows with us by andrew joseph white: I can only read YA these days if it’s a reread or if it’s genuinely good and really really strange. this is that. weird gory fantasy about a trans teen who escapes his militarized post-apocalyptic christian cult and finds himself turning into something Different. my only gripe is that he uses 2023-perfect language to describe transness and I think he should be inventing genders weve never even thought of. such is YA.

some desperate glory by emily tesch: a rolickin’ good space opera time with terrible women <3. a thriller about how the golden child of her isolated human-supremacist space station cult deprograms and the consequences of it. this feels like a grown-up SPOP until the theoretical physics gets involved. big fan

the library of mount char by scott hawkins: this book is harrow the ninth in suburbia until it becomes a more macabre version of the absurdity of the gomens apocalypse. God raises his children, sometimes brutally, to hone their powers in a neighborhood that mysteriously keeps out outsiders. came for the dysfunctional mess of the god-children and now I can never look at a grill the same way

runners up:

bunny by mona awad: books that make you WISH you were in mona awad’s MFA program where she must have been having a terrible time. the weird one out in an MFA program accepts overtures into the unbearable rich-girls’ clique to find out what they’re Up To. themes of aimlessness and the intersection of class with the art world

camp damascus by chuck tingle: have you ever wished that you were simply too autistic to be successfully demonically brainwashed into not having gay thoughts? horror-flavored thriller that was just fun

light from uncommon stars by ryka aoki: this author put a bunch of genres in a blender and came up with something fun and surprisingly cozy. an immortal woman must sell violinists’ souls to the devil in exchange for their fame, or he’ll drag her to damnation instead. there might be aliens and coffeeshop romance involved. definitely a blender.

the fragile threads of power by v. e. schwab: if you haven’t read a darker shade of magic and you like tightly paced high fantasy and historical fantasy elements, political intrigue, and pirates, read that first. if you have, there’s more now! lila bard are you free on thursday when I am free

the library of the dead & our lady of mysterious ailments by t. l. huchu: a teenage girl provides for her family in soft-apocalypse magic edinburgh with a job carrying messages from ghosts to their living relatives. an ongoing mystery series about the intrigues she uncovers among the dead.

severance by ling ma: this books is on the list of media that is the terror to me: it's about an apocalyptic disease that makes people reenact their routines mindlessly until they collapse. intimate apocalypse novel with themes of late capitalist malaise.

ocean’s echo by everina maxwell: i didn't really like winter's orbit because i'm just not a romance guy, but this second novel stands alone and the romance is more insane and less of the entire point of the novel. (also it's between essentially Discworld's Carrot and Moist Von Lipwig, which is. really something.) in the Space Military, a buttoned-up mind controller must pretend to bend a socialite with illegal mind-reading powers to his will. what if fake relationship but the relationship they have to fake is "brain linked master/servant pair."

the murderbot diaries by martha wells: novellas about a misanthropic security android who jailbroke itself in order to watch tv. the name "murderbot" is a joke but it very much did kill people <3 themes of paranoia and outsiderhood, corporate wrongdoing, repentance, and trust

black water sister by zen cho: zen cho is good at any kind of fantasy she writes, including this, her first modern fantasy novel. a closeted lesbian has to move in with her family in malaysia after college in the US, only to discover that her dead grandmother has some unfinished business involving a local goddess and a conniving real estate developer. themes of family, gender, and place.

the way inn by will wiles: a man who’s paid to pretend he’s other people to attend conferences in their place gets trapped in an endless Marriott. has the sharp humor of a colson whitehead corporate satire until it becomes more straightforwardly horror-flavored.

[kammartinez]

Kill them all, said the president. The drug problem would be eradicated in three to six months. He would resign or die if he failed. But if it wasn’t to be murder, the police had to have a reason to kill them. That reason was the caveat built into the president’s every speech, the sort that could be typed out in police reports and presented to the “bleeding-heart human rights people” who complained that the president was a butcher. Kill them if they resist violently. Shoot if they fight back. Get them before they get you.

from Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, by Patricia Evangelista

[karl-marxs-ghost]

Hey guys U.S. Rep Sarah McBride has a memoir maybe consider checking it out from your local library or buying a copy and leaving a review to show her some support!

[misforgotten2]

A book you very likely don’t have on your shelf (and why would you?) #667