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kumeko · 5 years ago

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A/N: For the Eos Compendium zine! I’ve been dying to write Nyx/Luna since I’ve seen the movie, and took this as an excuse to just do it.

Summary: Nyx wasn’t sure if the past kings had something else in mind for him or if he was still clinging to life out of sheer stubbornness (sheer stupidity, Crowe would have called it). Either way, Luna was here and he was alive and this time, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight.

…

“Nyx.”

A voice flowed over him like water, soothing the burns and lacerations that crossed his body. Every part of him felt like it was on fire, as though he was lying on a bed of coals. No, that wasn’t right—it was more like he was burning on the inside, a flame simmering just beneath his skin.

“Nyx, wake up.”

A heaven-sent balm, the voice continued to call his name. His eyes fluttered open, the bright light of the sun searing into his retinas before he squeezed them shut again. Fuck, he swore, but his throat was parched and the only sound that escaped his lips was a dusty cough. There was a tingle in his fingers and toes as he tried to wiggle them.

“You are alive.” A soft sigh of relief. Something warm and wet hit his skin. Cracking his eyes open an inch, Nyx slowly took in his surroundings. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out smouldering fires, jagged rubble. Hell, now that his body was awake, he could feel the cracked rocks beneath his back. The sharp points poked into his skin everywhere except for his head. A hand brushed his forehead, soft fingers hesitantly pressing into his skin. “Though I am not sure how.”

“Your Highness,” he managed, opening his eyes now fully to make out the bent figure of Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. His charge. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. Dozens of questions ran through his mind and Nyx closed his eyes once more. Taking a deep breath, he started with the basic steps. Was anything broken? Not his ribs, at the very least. Nothing felt cracked, just bruised.

And his skin, his skin felt like fire, like ash, like it would burn into nothing and flake apart at the slightest breeze. It was a strange feeling. An imprint of the ring was permanently scorched onto his finger and even though it wasn’t on, he could still feel the weight of it all. He breathed in. As he exhaled, Nyx opened his eyes and shakily started to rise.

Luna quickly grabbed his shoulders, helping him up. Closer now, he could make out the dirt on her skin, the tear streaks on her face. “Be careful, I do not think you have recovered yet.”

“As much…” His voice cracked. Nyx swallowed, his mouth still too dry. “As much as I can be, your highness.”

Not the response she was expecting, he was sure. Luna stared at him for long ten seconds, her eyes blinking owlishly, before she cracked a smile. “I suppose if you can talk like that, you are better than I expected.” Her slim fingers ran down his arm, leaving a trail of ice in their wake, before curling around his hand. Inspecting his fingers, she murmured, “Truly, it is strange. The ring has left barely a mark on you.”

“No, it definitely left something.” Nyx winced—his body still felt like it was on fire, ever smouldering. What had the kings said? He’d have their powers until the dawn had risen? He had taken it to mean the next day, but here he was. Maybe there was some other dawn they wanted him to live to. Or maybe he was alive purely by willpower, his body kept together by the shear strength of his stubbornness. Crowe would have called it idiocy.

She was probably right. He was too stupid to know when to die.

ii.

There were certain aspects of life that Luna had resigned herself to accept: her death, the fate of the world, the fact that her struggle would be a long and lonely one. The second she had summoned the trident, had connected with the gods, she had known all of these things to be true, whether she willed them or not.

The man following her like a loyal dog was not one of those things. Stopping in the middle of a muddy path, Luna turned around to face him. “You do not have to follow me.”

“What else am I gonna do?” Nyx’s lips quirked into a smirk and she didn’t know if his expression or his tone was more infuriating. A mix of both, most likely. “I’m a dead man walking.”

“Live your life, however much left of it there is,” Luna entreated, focusing on his scarred hand. Even now, she did not know how he bore the pain. His right arm was a mass of burns, thin flakes of skin chipping off here and there. The price of the ring was a steep one indeed, though not as high as she had feared. He had lived, at least. He should not be throwing his life away like this. “Meet your friend.”

At that, Nyx flinched. His eyes lowered and he shook his head. “Liberatus would understand. It’s dangerous out here and I don’t think your trident will cut it.”

“What I am doing is dangerous,” Luna corrected. “Whether you are here or not, my path is a difficult one.”

“I can make it slightly less difficult.” Looking more serious now, Nyx pulled out his Glaive knife. A knife that was now useless to everyone but him. He balanced it in his hand before slowing wrapping his fingers around the hilt. “I promised King Regis to keep you safe.” Gripping the knife tightly now, he tossed it behind her and burst into a million refracted lights as he warped to the wild beast behind her. “It’s the only reason I’m still standing.”

Luna spun around, watching as he killed monster after monster, his knife hurtling from one direction to another. It was a futile task. Even if they injured her, they wouldn’t kill her. Not yet. It wasn’t her fate to end here.

It was her fate to die across the sea, in a watery grave. You can’t save me, her lips refused to form.

Some part of her knew that he would try anyways.

iii.

The modest campfire flickered, just barely strong enough to survive the slight night breeze. Nyx quickly scanned the moonlit sky; with the bright full moon, anyone could spot them if they were looking hard enough. All it took was one magitech engine and while Nyx could take down a group, even he would have difficulties against that many.

“Is something wrong?” Luna asked quietly. On the other side of the fire, she hugged her knees to her chest, her eyes half-closed, and she looked more like a lost child than a fierce, stubborn princess.

“Nothing yet.” One last check and Nyx tore his eyes away from the sky. The embers flickered in and out of existence, the fire on the verge of dying, and he added another log to the pile. At least the smoke wasn’t too visible. “You should sleep.”

“As should you.” Luna eyed him now, looking slightly more awake. “I do not understand how you are still standing. When was the last time you slept?”

“…properly? Weeks ago.” Nyx shrugged, leaning back. “Maybe it’s the ring.”

“Perhaps so.” Luna pulled out the chain from under her dress, holding it up in the dim light. The fire flickered on the dull silver, casting reflections that looked like omens of the future. “Though I do not know of any such properties. Moreover, only the king should be able to draw out the ring’s power.”

“Prince Noctis,” Nyx mumbled, resisting the urge to spit out the name. Even now, he felt a surge of bitterness over all that was lost so the royal heir could survive. Over all who had died so a single boy and his entourage could make it to the next day. “When’s he getting the ring?”

The wrong question. As soon as he asked, Luna’s expression darkened and she let go of the chain. With a guarded look, she answered, “Not yet—there are still some tasks before he is ready. He must connect with his ancestors and gain powers of old. He must form convents with the gods.”

“And you won’t meet him till then?” Nyx clarified, though he already knew the answer to that before she nodded. This was a woman who had jumped out of a flying vehicle to help her king, a woman who kept pushing and pushing forward for a duty that wrapped around her thicker than any chain.

“Yes. There is much to be done.” Luna paused before softly adding, “And not much time to do it.”

iv.

“Your highness,” Nyx softly started, watching her from the corner of his eyes as she slowly picked her way down steep mountain path. It had been hard to find an opening where the empire had no eyes, a path that only the wild animals knew.

Before he could continue, Luna shook her head and cut him off. Firmly, she corrected him, “Luna.”

“That isn’t—”

“Insomnia is no more. Tennebrae was annexed.” Luna’s eyes lowered as though she was remembering some place, some time long ago, when neither of those were true. Her hand grabbed onto the nearby wall, keeping her steady as she found her footing forward. “All that I have left now is the trident and my name. There are not many who can still call me by it.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Have we not travelled together long enough to drop such formalities?”

Despite her light tone, her eyes were just as determined as they had been when they’d raced through Insomnia. Rubbing the back of his neck, he nodded. “Fine. Luna.” In his head, Nyx could already hear Crowe and Liberatus laughing. Quickly, he amended. “Princess Luna.”

“Not quite what I was hoping for, but it is sufficient.” Luna smiled.

“Anyways, about your brother...” Nyx trailed off. There was no easy way to say this. Biting the bullet, he forged on, “He’s alive.”

“Ravus?” Luna almost stumbled over a rock, shock colouring her expression. Grabbing his arm, she stared up at him. “Are you certain?”

“Yeah.” If there was one thing that remained true even after all that they’d been through, it was that news travelled fast and gossip even faster. The small towns that they had carefully bypassed were full of stories about a one-armed general and the rag-tag team that Noctis had managed to scrounge up. “He lost his arm, but he’s still there.”

For once, Luna was like an open book. Joy and sorrow warred in her expression, her hand slipping off his to clasp her other one. “He is truly alive.” Her pace slowed, her foot scuffing the earth as she digested the information. “The old kings were very generous then, allowing both you and him to survive. Though, perhaps it would have been better if he had not. He will only obstruct us in the future.”

“You don’t have to say that, you know.” Nyx looked away when she turned to him, staring instead at the center of the large crater they were heading down. “You can be happy about it.”

“Can I truly?” Luna murmured, her hands squeezing tighter together. Her nails dug into her skin. “Even now, he is still with the empire, is he not?”

“I was hoping he’d died.” Nyx shrugged. “It’s fine if you’re happy about it—no one else will be.”

“Is that so?” Luna squeezed her hands one last time before finally dropping them to her sides. “I am happy, but also a little sad. I do not think he is my brother anymore.” She smiled ruefully. “I think my brother died long ago, I had just hoped otherwise.”

The Archaean roared. It took all of Nyx’s strength not to fall backwards at the sight of this god towering over them, at this angry being who looked ready to smite at a moment’s provocation. As it was, the heat was terrible enough without this added fear. Wiping his brow with his free hand, Nyx tightened his grip on his dagger.

In the middle of a stone ledge, Luna regally stood with her trident. He was never sure where this courage came from, where all that strength fit inside of that tiny, frail body. Even as the Archaean glared her down, Luna didn’t back away. Determined, she held up her trident once more and beseeched, “Remember the covenant. The chosen king shall arrive soon to claim it.”

A massive hand took a powerful swipe, his fingers just barely missing the young woman. Even then, she didn’t flinch, and Nyx raised his dagger. A god. He could take it on. Maybe. At least, it would give Luna enough time to flee. “Princess, I think it’s time to go.”

“Stay back.” She didn’t turn around as she ordered him, her gaze steady on the god’s.

“He’s—”

“This is my duty.” Those words again. Her duty. Her sacrifice. What visions of the future did the gods send her that she had completely forgotten self-preservation? “I will see it through.”

Nyx gritted his teeth. “Fine.” Crouching slightly, he kept his hand steady in case he needed to quickly drag her away. He could be stubborn too.

vi.

Luna pulled her jacket around her tighter. It was raining now, Ramuh sparking lightning and thunder across the sky, and they still had miles to go before they reached his location. In front of her, the meager fire Nyx had managed to make sputtered and died.

“Shit.” Nyx leaned forward, shielding the weak embers. Using the dry kindle he had saved, he tried to coax the fire back to life. It was too late; despite the small alcove they were hiding in, the rain was determined to get in everywhere. With a sigh, he sat back. “Sorry, princess. Looks like we’re in the cold again.”

Princess. She hadn’t liked the change in titles at first, but rolling off his lips, it sounded almost like a nickname. Curling up into a tighter ball, she sighed. “You tried your utmost. It is all I can ask for.”

“Still. Would have been nice to be warm for once.” Nyx leaned back against the wall. This close, she could make out the profile of his face, the rough scars that told stories she would never know. His usually neat braids were for once a little messy, unable to keep together in the constant rain. “I guess he got it?”

“Got what?” Luna asked, startled back into the conversation. “Who?”

“The Archaean. Noctis.” Concerned, he looked down at her. “You sick, princess?”

“No, I am fine.” Luna rubbed her cold arms. “Noctis did achieve the covenant, the Archaean was appeased. There is a reason all that heat vanished.”

“And then Ramuh had to sweep in and make everything wet,” Nyx commented blithely, a bitter expression on his face. “I guess it won’t go away till he gets here?”

“Not until the covenant is forged,” Luna confirmed regretfully.

“Then wouldn’t it be quicker if we just travelled with him?”

“Not entirely.” Luna buried her head in her arms, listening to the rain as it fell. The large droplets were comforting. “I had considered it. Unfortunately, the gods require ample preparation time and it would be too dangerous for both of us to travel together.”

Nyx said nothing. They sat in silence, listening as the thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed, crashing to the earth on a lone tree in the mountains. Luna could hear Nyx breath shallowly, his body tense and ready for a fight. He was always ready to jump into battle, to defend, to protect. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be with someone else and share a burden.

“Do you want to see him?” Nyx asked, his voice softer now. She didn’t look up to see his expression.

“Him?” She didn’t need the clarification, not really.

“The prince.”

“I do not know,” Luna answered truthfully to her knees. It was a little easier like this, when all she could see was darkness. She thought of the wedding dress she would never wear. “I have not seen him since we were children. I am not sure what difference it would make now.”

There was a small intake of air. Surprised, Nyx pressed on. “Then your engagement—”

“A ruse to ensure he left the city. To ensure I entered the city.” Luna closed her eyes, remembering the little boy who read stories with her. Who had left her notes in her exchange diary, the one small thing she had allowed herself to have. “At one time though, I think there could have been love.”

There was a long pause. She listened to the sound of him breathing. “And now?”

“Now there is no time for love, just duty.” Just a single duty. She had seen the images many times by now: Leviathan, a bloody dagger, a ring. A chance to save the world, to change its destiny in exchange for her own. “I am the Oracle, I must finish what I set out to do.”

“You know, it’s okay to do something for yourself. For once.” His voice was awkward, fumbling. His kindness more so. “If you want to see him…”

Did she? It was a question she both wanted and didn’t want answered. She feared what the result would bring. “Nyx? Thank you.”

vii.

A black dog darted out of the woods and Nyx resisted the urge to skewer the mutt. “It’s you again.”

“Who?” Luna broke into a smile at the sight of Umbra and kneeled down to pet him. “I take it he received the message?”

Umbra barked, his tail wagging proudly, and Nyx tried not to snort. A messenger to the gods? More like a magical dog.

Unwrapping the package on Umbra’s back revealed an envelope overly stuffed with pictures. The snapshots spilled out, revealing its contents, and Luna lit up as she started to flip through them. “So it was Prompto this time, I take it.”

Umbra yipped, laying down on his paws as he watched her.

Curious, Nyx picked one up. Two men were smiling at the camera, a woman in black standing just behind them. “They look like they’re on a road trip.”

“I am sure they did not want to send me sad photos.” Luna glanced at the one in his hand. “Oh my.” She raised a brow. “I did not know Gentiana could be seen like that.”

Gentiana. Nyx blinked. The other messenger to the gods. He’d seen Luna talk to her when she thought he wasn’t listening, her voice low and calm as she discussed their plans. Or rather, he’d seen Luna talk to the empty air, since apparently Gentiana was invisible to all. The only thing he noticed was the waves of sadness that saturated the air during each meeting.

“Maybe I should get a camera.” She was invisible to all but the lens, it seemed. He stared at her placid expression, her neatly clasped hands. She looked just as unhappy as he’d expected.

viii.

I’ll keep you safe, Nyx had sworn.

On a boat to Altissia, Luna stared into the waves, the Glaive’s words echoing in her head. Part of her wanted to believe him.

A part of her knew better.

viii.

There was a part of him that had expected this. Well, not all of this—it would take a prophet to anticipate the destruction of a city, the massive body of the leviathan, the endless troopers. And it had. And that prophet was now sitting in a pool of her blood, leaning on her trident as she struggled to stand.

It had taken him a second to warp to her side, his hands carefully cradling her to his chest. “I’ll find a doctor, it’ll be okay.” The words rushed out of him, an unfamiliar sense of panic rising within him. His fingers shook slightly as he held her. “You’ll be okay.”

“It’s fine,” Luna coughed, her voice already faint. A bloody hand rose up to cup his cheek, a soft smile on her face. “I knew this would happen.”

And so had he, no matter how much he had wanted to deny it. Her words had been laced with goodbye since the moment he’d met her. “A doctor,” he repeated, getting up. Maybe he could find an evacuation team. Or go to where all of the residents were taken to. His mind was a mess, thoughts tumbling out of him, and he froze indecisively.

“Nyx.” Weakly, she pushed his jaw toward her to grab his attention once more. “Noctis must be saved. The ring must be delivered. It is too late for me, but the world still has a chance. You know this as well as I do.”

And he did, and he did, but there was a difference between knowing and accepting. Red blossomed all over her white dress, her skin growing cooler with every second that passed.

“Nyx,” she murmured.

“I know,” he answered, leaning down till their foreheads touched. His hand reached for his dagger.

It ended as it started, with fire and water. The ring slipped onto Noctis’s finger and Nyx closed his eyes as the coals simmering underneath his skin erupted into flames once more. The kings had come to claim their pound of flesh. His body started to flake apart, like ash, like dust, like petals in the wind.

Nyx, a voice called out to him, a voice like a soothing balm on his frayed nerves.

Luna, he thought, and he reached into the void.

#ffxv #lunafreya nox fleuret #nyx ulric #lunyx #kingsglaive #ff15 #nyx x lunafreya

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invertedbooks · 6 years ago

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“The Riot Grrrl movement of the mid-1990s soon satisfied young women’s desire for an “angrier” sound, but O’Brien noted it came at a cost of setting aside the very recent history of feminist music. “The 1990s hardcore girl groups took their success for granted … a sense of feminism refracted through a younger generation put off by their mothers’ acoustic separatist protest. By the early 1990s the vintage/separatist “womyn’s music” scene was mocked by both mainstream and lesbian entertainment publications as being out of date, or oppressively politically correct.

...

It may come as no surprise to find mainstream, male-dominated magazines mocking Holly Near and festival culture as fogey-dyke antecedents to the real story of “girl” rockers Jewel, Alanis Morrisette, Tori Amos et al. Radical lesbian style had rapidly become square due to its association with the 1970s, the parent generation for younger rock critics and fans. That association with parents, traditionally figures to rebel against in antiauthoritarian rock and roll, helps explain why the music industry press ignored the first wave of women’s music: it was not a youth-driven movement. The lesbian music scene made possible a new and very unexpected brand of adult liberation, putting mother-aged women in the spotlight as the daring transgressors who fled unhappy marriages for lesbian land. Its impact had been to peel back the layers of lesbian nation, revealing women of every age who had been forced to live in the closet their entire lives. Women who had married men and raised children while denying their own lesbian orientation (or terrified of acting on it), and who eventually felt able to come out in their mid-thirties, formed a substantial part of the women’s music audience. They were often entertained by lesbian artists with similar stories: Alix Dobkin had been married, was raising a daughter, and recorded her first album at age thirty-three; Holly Near did not come out until she was over thirty; and folksinger Ronnie Gilbert of the once-blacklisted Weavers made a spectacular comeback as a lesbian festival artist in her seventies. Plenty of very young women, too, built the house we call women’s music: Margie Adam and Jamie Anderson were both writing lesbian love songs to their girlfriends at age fifteen; Teresa Trull was nineteen when she started working with Olivia Records; and Lisa Vogel was nineteen when she founded the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. “Nonetheless, it was easy for critics to see the earlier stage of women’s music as limited to a peculiar band of grown-ups. Moms coming out did not seem sexy except to other moms; and this sort of misogyny and ageism is partly why Riot Grrrl became inscribed as the “new” movement.

Both Curve and Girlfriends, glossy lesbian ’zines targeting lesbians under thirty-five, publicized women’s music artists and festivals throughout the 1990s; yet at the same time their writers belittled the founding artists of women’s music. For the release of Alix Dobkin’s remastered Living with Lavender Jane compilation,” Girlfriends music reviewer Susannah Anderson-Minshall called the recording “a dusty relic of innocent times.” Curve’s September 1998 feature “Where Are They Now?” which informed and updated readers about women’s music pioneers, quoted a thirty-two-year-old lesbian who said, “I started playing guitar at age 15 and if they had Lilith Fair then, I would have been totally inspired.” This thirty-two-year-old would have been fifteen in 1981; during that year, long before Lilith Fair, there were already a dozen women’s music festivals around the country and around the calendar, with thousands in attendance at Michigan, National, Sisterfire, NEWMR, and the West Coast Music Festival, where a young Melissa played. Curve let its readers draw the conclusion that Lilith Fair set the standard for inspiration, and that it stood alone with neither predecessors nor concurrent and contrasting fests.

Bonnie Morris, The Disappearing L

#bonnie morris #the disappearing l #lesbian

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rockislandadultreads · 2 years ago

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New York Times Best Books of 2022 : Nonfiction

An Immense World by Ed Yong

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.

Stay True by Hua Hsu

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken - with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity - is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends - his memories - Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.

Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv

In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel - until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.

We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole

A quarter-century after Frank McCourt’s extraordinary bestseller, Angela’s Ashes, Fintan O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, continues the narrative of modern Ireland into our own time. O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity.

Weaving his own experiences into this account of Irish social, cultural, and economic change, O’Toole shows how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a Catholic “backwater” to an almost totally open society. A sympathetic-yet-exacting observer, O’Toole shrewdly weighs more than sixty years of globalization, delving into the violence of the Troubles and depicting, in biting detail, the astonishing collapse of the once-supreme Irish Catholic Church. The result is a stunning work of memoir and national history that reveals how the two modes are inextricable for all of us.

Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa

In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore.

Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

#nonfiction #nonfiction books #nonfiction reads #2022 books #best books #new york times #nyt #library books #book recs #book recommendations #reading recs #reading recommendations #TBR pile #tbr #to read #book blog #reading blog #booklr #book tumblr

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