Reading Wednesday

Just finished: Mavericks: Life Stories and Lessons of History's Most Extraordinary Misfits by Jenny Draper. I don't have a lot to add since last week. If you read my blog you will like this. It is my jam. It's a rather inspiring read for—look, I haven't written about politics in a public post in awhile but you know. You know. 

Currently reading: Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, edited by Dianna Gunn. This one I picked up because a lot of the authors in it are my kind of people, and it's a cool concept. There must be a particular subgenre of leftist, author-led anthologies, and like. I want to fix that subgenre. I want it to exist, but I want to push it like, a notch further or two.

Part of my problem here is absolutely personal, which is that I'm intensely phobic of pregnancy and childbirth, and so in order to ping as horror in my brain, a story has to somehow be worse than my own fairly intense reactions to the subject. A few of the pieces are but they're mostly "wow it would be awful to be pregnant in a dystopian regime that viewed women as chattel" well, here we are. I have the same critique of my own writing btw. You simply cannot write bad things fast enough to get your book out before those bad things are just an accepted part of reality. Plus a lot of the stories are earnest, which is one thing that horror can't be. There's one story about an anti-abortion protestor that goes straight for black comedy and it is excellent; so far it's my favourite.

Signal-boosting

I remain awed by, proud of, and scared shitless for my incredible friends in Minnesota, who are fighting on the front line against literal jackbooted thugs. Even if you don't have a personal connection, I'm sure you're also gripped by the news.

Here is how you can help:

A post by naomikritzer

How to help if you are outside Minnesota.

This also has advice on how to start preparing for if and when this shit comes to your home state.

If you are in Minnesota.

I am also stealing some graphics that lydamorehouse posted that you can spread around, as long as you credit the artist. Credit where it is known:


By Rin Mix.


By Cas Fern.


Artist unknown but if you find out, let me know and I'll edit it.

Let Minnesota be the graveyard of fascism!