Today’s list is short but worthy! Happy reading.
“as a whole, we have a tendency to escalate rather than de-escalate. in our (rightful) desire to ensure that harm is not minimized or ignored, we use inflammatory language, binary concepts of right and wrong, and oversimplified narratives that more often than not increase tension and heighten rage and shame. we do not ask the questions that are central to transformative justice: why has harm occurred? who is responsible, beyond the individual perpetrator — as in, how is community implicated? how can this harm be prevented in future?,” writes Kai Cheng, in i hope we choose love: notes on the application of justice.
Junot Diaz and the Myth of Male Genius by Lyta Gold.
Lauren Turner’s On Covered Mouths is an important piece on the silencing of stories of abuse in Canlit.
An interview with Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life.
Some lovely art on taking care of yourself this summer.
Britta Lundin discusses fanfiction, queer characters, and her new YA novel, Ship It: “[T]here’s so much great queer storytelling happening in fan fiction, and I’d love someone to take a look at that and go, “Oh, maybe we can be telling gay rom-coms in Hollywood; look how popular they are in fan fiction,” and use fan fiction as a tool for measuring audience demand.”
Do You Know Where Your Healing Crystals Come From? Something to think about.
“Reparation is physical, tangible, and it is concrete. It is more than territorial acknowledgements and it is not merely a ‘metaphor’…Reparation is more than hiring white-coded Indigenous faculty like me to token positions in programs that have deeply entrenched ideologies of what their field/discipline/world-view is. Reparations are a shaking up”, writes Zoe Todd.
The Tyee is running a series on Indigenous child welfare. Here is one part, How Canada Created a Crisis in Indigenous Child Welfare.
Why the merchandising of “The Handmaid’s Tale” is disturbing.
Some links for, about, and with motherhood:
Tammy Duckworth is unapologetically paving the way for disabled mothers of colour.
“Maybe instead of biology, I should be cursing the culture that taught me I’m less of a woman because I can’t have children; the culture that taught me that adopted children are less of a family than one’s own flesh and blood. Maybe I should be cursing my prejudices and my self-hate. Maybe I should be cursing the cisheteronormative Christian patriarchal society that dictates who and what I am and can be.” Mey Rude on trans motherhood.
Zoe S. writes, “to know your pain is to know your mother’s pain and the pain of women who preceded her, all of whom also exist in/as you.”
Missing Hope: A Trio of Miscarriages, and What Happened After.
Here is a link to GUTS’s “Moms” issue!
Also, check out the latest piece on our blog: Gwen Benaway writes about sex after sexual reassignment surgery in “Dreaming of Home“.