Anyway, onto the post.

Subscribe now

Notes from May

• I got my hair braided. Six cornrows, with no hair added. It’s a new look for me, but I like it.

  

• Later that night, we went to dinner with Jade and Nicole. We went to a Chinese spot in Jersey that had excellent General Tso’s chicken. After, we went to Tops in search of oatmeal raisin cookies but by the time we got there, they were sold out.

• I went on two book dates this month, both with people I’m deeply impressed by. More on that, soon!

• I had a three-event day, which resulted in me working from the back of an Uber. I started at an Augustinus Bader panel where I learned about their new night cream. Then, I headed to a Kate McLeod event at Kate’s apartment, which looked like something out of Architectural Digest. It was my first time trying the body stones, which are solid lotion bars. I was surprised by how moisturizing it felt and how easily it rubbed in. Then I went to Bottega for a very secret launch. It was on an upstairs floor on Madison Avenue with walnut walls that looked expensive. I was very late and took pictures, which I was not supposed to do. After that, I went to Bibliotheque, a book bar in SoHo, where I met Nicole Dennis-Benn for a late lunch/early dinner. We haven’t seen each other in a bit so it was great to catch up. She also gave me a copy of her next novel, Black Gold, which comes out in January. I can’t wait to read.

• That night, while C and I were going to bed, I told her about the summer before junior year, when I decided that cool teenagers woke up late. I naturally wake up early, it’s rare that I’m asleep past 7:30, but that felt like an old person thing to do and I was young. I would stay up all night talking to Lacey, Chamel, and Mia. Sometimes I would watch TV or lay in the dark. It worked. I started waking up with half the day behind me and felt mature as a result. C said “That sounds like you,” and I laughed hard at her knowing me so well.

• My stepmom graduated from Syracuse with her PhD. My sister flew into town from Texas and we drove up. During the graduation ceremony they talked a lot about AI. That depressed me. But I was happy because she’d worked really hard. I remember when she decided to enroll. It was 2022 and I remember saying to her, you’ll be done before you know it, even though it felt very very far away. And now here we are and 2030 feels impossibly distant even though I know it’ll somehow be here before I know it and I’ll say things like wow, how was 2015 15 years ago? It was just 2022. After, we went to Bonefish Grille and we had fried shrimp that tasted like a McChicken.

  

• Her graduation happened to fall on Mother’s Day Weekend so we spent that Saturday with my stepmom and that Sunday with my mom, who drove up from Baltimore. She picked up my grandmother and we all went to lunch at Ovelia in Astoria. I gifted my mom a body stone and my grandmother a bottle of Prada Paradox because she loves perfume. I sent my mother-in-law flowers, which she liked.

• Met with book club, my favorite thing to do. This time, we read The Witch by Marie Niaye, which I will write more about soon.

• Joanna Goddard hosted a bunch of us at her place for a sort-of salon. Unsurprisingly, Joanna is an incredible host. It was a nice cross-section of people from different spheres and I ran into a few people I knew, but had the opportunity to meet new people too.

• Celebrated the release of Fat Swim at Center for Fiction. It was an incredible event. Emma was so thoughtful about the event’s format, which made my job incredibly easy to do. For Fat Swim, she did a five-event book tour, each one touching on a different sense. Mine was sight. We incorporated this by projecting images that moved us and talking about why. I chose a painting by Sahara Longe and an image by Faith Couch, two artists I deeply admire. After, I bought a bunch of books and got a cool tote. I also matched my outfit to the book (I love a theme!).

  

• I had lunch with Sasha Bonét. We went to Salvo’s, which we’d planned to do the last time we had lunch, but it was closed. I enjoyed it! We talked about the things we were working on and giggled late into the afternoon.

• The next night, I had an impromptu dinner date with Blake at Charlie Bird. Blake is a friend I see sort-of often but in mediated spaces. We’re often hugging quickly at an event or seated close at a brand dinner. It was fun to spend time together differently and order half the menu.

• A lot of people have been asking me what the big dream is and I love that. I can articulate it though I don’t know how to reverse engineer it, which is why it feels “big.” I’ve been working toward it in earnest though, which is good for me. I like to be in motion.

• C and I went to Nicole Taylor’s for a rooftop happy hour celebrating her husband’s graphic design work. We had lots of fun talking about the music industry and its various characters, so much so we were very late to our dinner reservations after. A professional host, Nicole knows how to do a spread. My favorite thing she put out: lemon pepper popcorn. It’s hopelessly addicting, the kind of snack you eat by the handful.

• After, we went to see Terrace Martin at Blue Note. The last time I saw him, he performed with Kenyon Dixon, who sang a rendition of ‘Come Together’ that I still think about. I admire how prolific Terrace is—he puts out a lot of music and it’s clear that this work orders his life. I’m really inspired by people whose lives are organized around their creative work. It feels like a living example. I also like how jazz musicians often work together. It always seems so easy, at least the way they talk about it on stage in those manufactured asides. They’re like, I called my boy Robert Glasper, which is a nuts sentence, or K.Dot hit me, another nuts statement, but then we know it happened because we’re listening to the song on the other side. Writers don’t do that same thing, at least not as easily. We don’t just make collaborative stuff, and maybe we should?

• That next day, C and I met Alex at Chef Chaz’s popup at Frog, where we sat at long picnic tables and drank glasses of orange and white wine while we waited for barbecue. While there we ran into lots of people I knew. It felt like the perfect kickoff to summer. After, C and I stopped at Marvel for a vanilla cone with sprinkles that started melting as soon as they handed it over. It’s getting hot!

  

• Went to dinner with Madison U. at Miss Ada. We split a bunch of stuff and talked about the big dream. We also talked about the various seasons in our life and the ways we were growing around them. To say I’m grateful for her is a gross understatement.

• Saw the costume exhibit at The Met with Imani, who I haven’t seen in probably a year. We mostly bond over being one of the last people watching Law and Order: SVU but it was nice to hang out in real life. While there we also stopped by the Raphael exhibit, which was breathtaking.

• The third week of the month, C and I headed down to DC for her grandmother’s 95th birthday. The family threw a surprise party for her and invited a cross-section of family and friends. Her best friend from childhood, Miss Connie, flew in with her daughter. I only knew of Miss Connie through stories and many accidental phone calls—C’s grandma often calls her and says, “Connay? Aw, I was trying to call Connie.” It’s the cutest thing. It was beautiful to finally meet Miss Connie and to hear her talk about them being girls in Roanoke, Virginia. They have managed to hold on to each other through all of life’s happenings. They’ve buried husbands and siblings and friends and through that they have had each other. I was really moved by that. I was also in awe of the fact that in the twilight of her life, her family could easily gather 120 people in a room. A testament to a life filled with love and devotion from all sides.

  

• After, there was the cousins kickback, which ended with C and I getting salt and vinegar wings from America’s Best in Woodbridge at one in the morning, the ideal midnight meal.

• I see my baby sister every few months and I’m always amazed by how much she changes in the time apart. I’ll look back at photos of her where I thought she looked older and realize she was so small. Time is passing quickly. This time, I learned her music tastes have evolved. For a long time, she was a Hamilton-head, it’s all she would let us listen to in the car, but this time she insisted on “songs she knew,” which translated to Tyla, KATSEYE, Zara Larssen, and PinkPantheress. She’s a pop girl! We also watched High School Musical (her first time) and she asked me if they kiss at the end. To avoid spoilers I said maybe. She said, “that means yes!” She’s very perceptive.

• While in town we also went to see Mbiye and Sean. We had a long lunch at The Royal (the pork belly was a standout), where they had their first date. After, we stopped by C’s grandma’s for an early dinner and sang Grandma happy birthday. Then we swung back over to Mbiye and Sean’s for drinks and dancing. We went to Shanklin Hall’s third anniversary party, where we danced all night. The DJ was very good.

• The next day, we went to breakfast with my parents. Then I spent the afternoon with my cousin Mohsen. It’s hard to get him on the phone because he’s always working (he’s the executive chef at Ciel in DC) but in person we really get down to it, which I appreciate. We also worked out and I’m probably still sore from that.

• On the drive back up to New York, we stopped at Tops in Newark so I could finally get my oatmeal raisin cookies. It turned into an hours-long hang out with Jade and Nicole and we didn’t get home until after midnight.

• Sent pages to my agent!

• I caught up with Madison M. We had a five hour call where I filled in the shades of everything happening lately. She doesn’t let me hide from myself and I appreciate that. I try not to let her hide either.

• Went to Mercy’s five-years-in-Brooklyn hang at Herbert Von King. There were three completely separate groups in the barbecue pit, emblematic of Brooklyn as it stands: New York natives, who were double-dutching in the dark and playing DJ mixes on speakers. Then there were the transplants, the people I came to see, who were listening to Frank Ocean and talking about everything but work. Next to us, a group of young white people who looked like NYU graduates, wearing military caps and high socks, playing hackeysack in a circle. There was one black girl among them who looked very happy to be there. Fascinating stuff.

• Stayed out too late with a new friend and her friend. But I finally made it back to Bar Heretic, which was still very good on the second pass despite them switching up the wine menu.

• I spent the last day of the month on Sasha’s rooftop, which has panoramic views of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was a party for her brother’s birthday, whom I’d never met. The party was filled with lots of interesting people, including LaTonya Yvette, who I finally met after some months (maybe years?) of following each other online. We settled into the couches and talked about the writing process, where I lamented about, though being close to the end of the novel, feeling like I’m still at the beginning. I used this island metaphor, which I almost certainly lifted from someone else, maybe Isle McElroy, that writing a novel can feel like sailing between two land masses and at many points being in water so deep you can’t see the opposite shore. Figuring out the novel is an act of navigation, steering the ship so you can get to the destination, while attempting to keep the vessel intact and all the characters onboard. It’s an incredibly difficult task. Sometimes you have a map, sometimes you have instinct. Sometimes the map isn’t accurate. Sometimes an idea in the shape of a bird flies overhead, distracting you. Other times a wave or a storm knocks you off course. It’s a lot! She was very patient with me and my ramblings about ships and novels, which I appreciated.

  

Reading

The Witch by Marie Ndiaye

I read this with book club, so thoughts to come!

Death of the Soccer God by Dimitry Elias Leger

This is a novel about a real-life Haitian soccer star born into a wealthy family whose life takes a series of unexpected turns. It opens in a very Giovanni’s Room-type way: when we meet Gilbert Chevalier, he’s standing in front of a firing squad, staring death in the face. The book recounts his life up until that moment and how he landed in this tense situation. The plot is enticing but I really love the writing, which feels urgent and electric. I love the way Leger writes about jazz and Haiti and soccer. It’s bold and fearless and a little brash. I loved it.

Flyboy in the Buttermilk by Greg Tate

Greg Tate’s iconic book of criticism had been mentioned a few times in the past few months, so I prioritized it. You know how you think something is new and then you meet the source? Reading Tate is like that. I like that he says exactly what he means. His words feel elastic to me, but he’s holding the rubber band. You know? In his essay about Basquiat he writes about the griot:

“To read the tribe astutely you sometimes have to leave the tribe ambitiously, and should you come home again, it’s not always to sing hosannas or a song the tribe necessarily has any desire to hear” - Greg Tate

Someone told me they read bell hooks’s criticism alongside it, Both hooks and Tate reviewed Basquiat so I’m excited to read the two essays and see what comes of the comparison.

Watching

I was very outside, so I watched very little!

• The Cult of NatureBoy - I’m fascinated by cults mostly because I’m interested in the conditions required to sublimate the self and give the self over to a higher authority, especially when that authority is charismatic but largely nonsensical. NatureBoy is a social media influencer who rode the conscious community wave before creating his own master theory of the universe which relies on a thinly veiled synthesizing of the grifters that came before him. What interests me about NatureBoy in particular is how people flocked to him despite his incoherence. What he had was certainty, which I suppose can get you a long way. I also had a lot of trouble with the fact that he only really picked up steam after the abuse allegations came out. In the cults of yesteryear, the leader often performed goodness to hide the many layers of moral corruption and rot hiding just beneath the surface. NatureBoy, especially as he unraveled, let it all hang out. He wasn’t secretive about his patriarchal, misogynistic bent or violence toward women. And yet, people followed him around the globe. It says something, I think, about where we’ve gone as a people that the ability to inflict violence without masking it is alluring and for some, the point.

• Goat - Not good!

• Lurker - This psychological thriller is about a guy who gets folded into the entourage of a rising singer. It follows the development of their relationship, which moves from adoration to something much darker. Tonally, it reminded me a bit of Whiplash, and illustrated the precarity and fragility of fame. Archie Madekwe, who plays the artist, turned in an incredible performance. He manages to sensitively portray a person in the throes of fame, who is both drunk on his own starpower but yearning to be good at his craft and in that pursuit, not feeling good enough. He’s vulnerable and that comes through, which makes him a character to root for, even when he’s dismissive or cruel.

• Rock the Block - My favorite home renovation show is back! In this, former HGTV stars and design experts are tasked with designing a house. The goal is to renovate with the appraisal value in mind—the winner is not who picked the nicest finishes but who adds the most value to a home. It’s a fun watch and I like judging the choices everyone makes.

• Half Man - I really enjoyed this drama by Richard Gadd, the creator of Baby Reindeer. It explores familiar terrain—shame, grief, abuse–this time, following step-brothers, Niall and Ruben, whose mothers are lovers. Their dynamic is difficult from the outset. Ruben is brash and violent but also fiercely protective while Niall is enamoured with him, it’s so clear that he’s the sun. The show starts out strong. The first few episodes are brilliantly plotted and I like that each episode adds another level of dimensionality to their relationship while also tugging us forward through time. I also like that it trusts the readers to fill in the time gaps. All in all, well done!

In Heavy Rotation

• An update on the now very-sold out Vibram V-Souls. I’ve been wearing them every day since I bought them. I can’t get enough. They’re incredibly comfortable and surprisingly versatile and a consistent conversation starter. Every time I wear them out I field a compliment. I’ve also being seeing them in the world a lot—it’s possible I’m just attuned but it feels like something is brewing.

• I never considered myself a chunky lip liner person—I value precision—so I initially dismissed this lip pencil from Ilia but this month I realized I reach for it more often than I expected. I had that unique experience of falling in love with something without realizing it, only to look up and realize that I miss it when it’s not in my bag.

• I’ve been pairing that with the R.E.M. Beauty Glossy Lip Balm in the shade Juicebox.

• Nala Sinephro’s Space 1.8. I write to Space 4 on a loop most days.

• My current fragrance mix – Maison Louis Marie No. 04 Bois de Balincourt and Armani Santal Dan Sha or swapping out Armani for my all-time favorite Diptyque Lunamaris.

On My Wish List

• To finish my draft, damn it!

• A weekend upstate

• A warm lobster roll

• Allegra posted about these sunglasses from a brand I’ve never heard of—Side Eye. Looks promising! I like these.

• This dress from Ronny Kobo. I’m loving all things pool blue at the moment.

• These Keen sandals, which feel ugly in a good way

• I’ve been doing a lot of fantasizing about pants. I’m looking for breezy pairs that I can throw on and feel put together in.

Expense Report

• I spent a truly painful amount of money this month on mundane administrative things.

• I did buy some stuff from Mango, but I’m returning most of it. The one thing I’m keeping is this nylon pen case and maybe the brown jeans

• I also bought books because I can’t help myself!

  • The Abyss by Jeyamohan, trans. Suchitra Ramachandran

  • Immersions by Kyle McCarthy

  • Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly

  • Break Room by Miye Lee

Until next time!

Subscribe now

We met at McNally Jackson Rockefeller Center—my first time at that location—where we talked about the books he read while writing Lázár, Toni Morrison, and how Camus changed his life.

Subscribe now

Can you state your name for the record?

Nelio Biedermann

What do you do?

I’m an author, the author of Lázár.

What role did reading play in your life growing up?

I always read a lot. We went to the library with our mother every week and just picked up tons of books. I kind of lost reading when I got into school and higher education. Now I read a lot because I think if you write, you also have to read.

What were you reading as a kid?

Detective stories and ancient stories.

Was there a book that got you back into reading?

The Stranger by Albert Camus. It was one of the most influential books for me. After reading this, I also wanted to write. I didn’t really have that urge before. I liked it so much, I wanted to create something that comes close to it. I just wanted to create something as well. The character is so special. It’s this man Meursault and he has a very ordinary and organized life. Then his mother dies and he kills an Arab man. It’s set in Algeria. He gets sentenced to death, but really he gets sentenced to death for his relationship with his mother. In court they say that he hasn’t been loving towards her, not really for the crime that he did. It’s very philosophical, but in a way that is very easy to read about. The language and the style is so, so special. I listen to it via audiobook every year again and again because I love it so much.

How did it shape your approach to writing?

You can’t tell that it is one of my favorite novels because my writing style is very different from it. It’s very sparse and not a lot of words. The writing isn’t complex at all, which I think is really strong but really difficult to achieve. It kind of reminds me of Hemingway.

How has your taste evolved since you returned to reading?

I read more and in more directions. My interest has widened. I’m interested in more, different things. The more you read and the more you get to know, the more you also realize how many things you haven’t read. It can be kind of overwhelming but I love that you have so many possibilities.

Is there a book you’ve read recently that feels far away from your original interests?

I just read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Flesh by David Szaslay. What interested me the most in both of them was the writing style. What really fascinates me about Toni Morrison is that she is able to be so well known and critically acclaimed, but her work also has this experimental touch to it. She really experiments, especially in her first novel with different approaches to telling the story. Flesh kind of reminded me of The Stranger because it’s so condensed. It’s really broken down to the most existential questions.

Are there any books that informed your approach to writing your book?

I read a lot of books about the period of time I’ve written about in Lazár, novels from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1950s. Hungarian literature but also German literature from this period, Thomas Mann and Joseph Roth’s The Radetsky March were very important for the book. I was very much influenced by other books, especially because I didn’t experience this period of time myself, so I had to get back to these novels.

How is your reading life looking now that you’re balancing author life?

I don’t have as much time as I used to to read, but I still try to read as much as I can. I read while I write. I tend to read in a certain direction. I couldn’t read something that is completely different in style or a theme to the thing that I’m working on at the moment. I probably could not read Blood Meridian because it has this very specific style and theme that’s so different from the things that I’m writing about.

What are you reading now?

Just Kids by Patti Smith. I’m meeting her on Saturday so I kind of have to. I love it. Flesh. I think if you read books while writing it can inspire you. After I read The Bluest Eye, which was also very different, but so strong, I immediately had the urge to rewrite everything that I had. It’s so humbling. I can’t read anything else from her until I’m done.

Are there any books on your TBR that kind of circle the direction that you’re trying to go in your second book?

Read more

Subscribe now

Black: At the beginning Vernice is this quiet, sad, silent kid and everyone was just worried about her and the loss of her parents. Tayari was kind of hinting that she was lost and there’s a lot that she was trying to figure out. All that Niecey was given, in regards to a matriarch that poured into you–if Annie’s grandma saw that that’s what she needed, I feel her life trajectory would’ve been very different. She had the potential to be a more honest character. A lot of the resources were given to Niecey when I feel like her character was the most dishonest and the most annoying. The way she was introduced, I would’ve assumed she would’ve been the character who fell short of the resources. I was surprised that she was the one that was given so much. The relationship with Joette, annoying. For her to just end up with a man I was like, “Girl you’re pissing me off.”

Yellow: This was all really familiar to me. The last two books, it’s been hard for me to criticize because it’s so relatable to me. I’m more so surprised at the parallels versus really critiquing the work or thinking about it more critically. My mom is from the South. My grandfather had a juke joint. She went there as a little girl, had little pickles. Also the story of Atlanta. I’m from Atlanta and the class stuff is very present. All the neighborhoods, the black people in Southwest Atlanta, all of that is a thing. The Spelman layer, I don’t have, but the beginning of the book was almost pleasant because it was like I had a connection with my mother and my grandmother. This was illustrating their world a little bit and the things I heard about it.

Magenta: I mean, to that point—so much of the writing and the depiction of the experience of going to Spelman was so familiar. It was almost overly didactic. It’s really on the nose. The interspersing of the facts, the history lessons. Maybe people enjoyed that. I can relate to these young women being motherless. My parents came to the United States in 86. I was born in 87. My mom and dad were together until I was five and my mom left. She moved from the Pacific Northwest, where I’m from, she moved to the east coast and my dad raised me. She was not very present for quite some time. I would write her letters and she wouldn’t respond. I was, as the girls in the book were, looking for mothering in other places. I convinced myself that I could, through my dad’s girlfriends, find those relationships. I can relate to that feeling of finding a connection with someone and then trying to be taken under the wing. And Spelman did in many ways. As the story was unfolding, there were so many girls that were coming to mind. There was a kind of a theme running through the book around lying—there’s that line, “She might not know she’s lying but she comes from a lying lineage.” That experience of being in a melting pot like Spelman where everyone, no matter where you come from, we all have to wear the white dress, you get to cloak yourself and then decide who it is that you want to be. I don’t know that I ever framed it within the context of lying or deceit, but through this book that motif started to come to life for me.

Bubblegum: I was going to say something similar to that. I thought the story was going to be that she was maybe neurodivergent and that Annie would kind of lead her through life. But it kind of turned. We didn’t really touch on why she was mute for such a long time either. I was trying to understand why that was brought up in the first place.

Green: Not that I think of Tayari Jones’ work as being like, we’re going to get some magical realism in here, but I’m like, “you’re doing something with this.” We’re talking about speech, there’s spirits. But this is just a novel of manners, right? By the end, I felt the tension between that and the beginning. I was a little bit confused by it at some points.

Purple: I’ve only read An American Marriage and then this book by her, but I do think that she loves to retell 20th century Black novels. American Marriage was essentially, If Beale Street Could Talk in a trench coat and then this is very much Sula, but not Sula. She kind of gives them a different ending. On page 63 we see Bernice struggling with this idea of Annie leaving and she’s making it seem as if maybe she’ll never speak to her again, which we know is the dilemma of Nel and Sula. She writes, “Listen, y’all both are so devoted to your mothers, but you have been more to each other than what either of your mammies ever gave. So give Annie some of that devotion that you have been wasting on a daydream. Write to her. Don’t wait until one of you is dying to try and understand.” And I was like, that felt so Sula-esque, so specific. It was a clear callback to me.

Marigold: Our complaint about The Wilderness was that it felt very strange. It felt too modern. It felt like millennial brain. I enjoyed reading this because she incorporated a lot of ‘50s era AAVE without it feeling like it was millennial brain rot. It felt very much of the time, which I liked.

Purple: One of my favorite parts of the book was when she was trying to get to Spelman and she goes on the bus and then she becomes an accidental activist because of racism and she loses all of her stuff. I felt so viscerally upset by that. I was like, what are we going to do? The luggage is gone. The hat box is gone.

Marigold: I hated that part because I was like, here we go again with breaking down these characters and the main character just can’t catch a break. At that moment I put the book down. I was like, “I can’t do this right now.”

Purple: I do think that there’s that opportunity for transformation, her ability to make herself anew because she does not have anything from her old life. That felt, to me, like an opportunity for her to be a blank slate.

Yellow: Let’s talk about the class thing a bit. I’m actually proud of what Vernice did with what she had, even if she was not as communicative as she should’ve been with Joette. But this is the 1950s or ‘60s. Upward mobility was necessary for safety and being the best person wasn’t always advantageous. My mother is Vernice-like and I’m the product of that. At the end of the day there weren’t many options.

Red: I think there still aren’t. Not for people like Bernice coming out of a town like this. I think it’s still very much what a lot of people have to do, which is why I understood why she couldn’t be with Joette. And she was like, “But this is what we have to do. We have to get married.”

Yellow: Yeah, you have to do the things to get the places and get the stuff that comes with it.

Red: And it wasn’t just about the money. I liked that Tayari gave Joette money so that it didn’t take away from her class mobility. It really gave her the option to be with someone she loves who also had money, but she wouldn’t get the respectability.

Yellow: Joette was a brat.

Magenta: So fucking annoying. It’s my worst nightmare to have someone at my wedding who is not happy for me.

Red: I mean especially someone you were sleeping with. I liked Joette though, she was complex. She was pushing back against something. A lot of these people are often hypocrites who are living in luxury, and understand what it’s like, but she’s trying to tell our girl, “You don’t know what it’s like. You’re going to hate it. “ And it’s like, well, she didn’t have two pennies to rub together. She’s going to love it actually.

Yellow: I thought she was projecting. The country mouse thing was cute at first, but then it became mean. Then that thing at the end where she was like, “If you want me to bury your friend, you got to go tell your man about us.”

Red: She was acting like a man, which I think also happens in lesbian relationships. You start to perpetuate this thing you say you’re fighting against. She was acting like a man with money.

Purple: I don’t begrudge Vernice for the class migration. My issue was, why are we talking about Annie at all?

Yellow: You didn’t like the contrast.

Purple: I didn’t. In the end, Annie collapses into Vernice. She becomes Vernice’s foil. She became her last test. If the book was just about upward mobility and her trying to do the things, I would have enjoyed that. My issue was Annie as contrast, and pretending that this is actually about their friendship. She became flatter as the novel progressed.

Red: Isn’t that what happens in Sula? Isn’t that what happens in friendships sometimes? As life goes on, one person diminishes. They really do start to kind of dissolve a little. Nel’s character was so connected to Sula, and Sula was so much bigger. Not that either one of them is less significant, I do think that her character did dissolve with time. When they were younger, she had a much bigger presence and as they got older, she got married. She kind of shrunk herself. Annie also really shrunk her life in a lot of ways, not just because she was poor, but because of the way she gave herself over, she lost her center.

Purple: Okay actually, yes.

Marigold: Niecey’s aunt has been talking about Annie’s smallness from the beginning of the book, even with the way that they relate it. She would always say, “Niecey, you and Annie are very different. You’re going to see it one day. Annie will always strive to find this thing that you are going to be at peace with knowing you’ve never had.” The thing that you guys actually relate on, is the thing that’s going to show you that you’re the most different. I feel like a lot was poured into Niecey in the book because that’s the character she was always going to become.

Purple: Circling back to Sula and Nel dissolving, What made Sula interesting and makes Sula really powerful is the fact that Sula is existing on the outside of the power structure whereas Vernice is actually migrating into the power structure.

Tangerine: She’s just doing what she’s supposed to do.

Purple: Right. Nel cannot be close to Sula and still be accepted in The Bottom. In some ways Annie complicates Vernice’s situation, but the society’s on her side. There’s something about the big guy winning, because the big guy has the power structure, it never resonates for me because the question becomes, is she willing to shed Annie?

Red: I agree with what you’re saying about what made Sula interesting is that she was living outside of that structure. I think Sula had a kind of security that our girl Annie doesn’t have. She had a house. She didn’t have to worry about how she was going to eat. But also what poverty does to a life. That kind of poverty makes you do the same thing every day. There’s no real variation. Not to say that being rich or being middle class doesn’t have that too.

Tangerine: Yeah Vernice wanted to have a career and now she’s just with that man.

Purple: In a way they both dissolve. I don’t think that Vernice comes out being a more interesting character in the end. She just gets to be alive.

Red: I thought the family was interesting, That system is interesting because it’s got gossip. With Annie, there was nothing that can happen. She goes to the bar, people drink, people fight, she misses her mom.

Purple: I liked Annie’s character a lot personally. When Bobo left her, I was really compelled by that because that idea that they loved each other and that he actually was willing to leave her for his own version of upward mobility.

Red: Is that what you think happened?

Purple: He left her because he wanted to date the Catholic girl who he felt was a better woman.

Yellow: I think if Annie had been of the same mind, he would have stayed.

Purple: He wanted to be with someone he felt was equally yoked. Even though there was really no evidence of that being his situation. He was just smart.

Green: The thing that I wanted a little bit more of the toll of the work of mothering on her grandmother. Her grandmother’s exhausted. She’s had fifty-leven babies.

Red: She disappeared. I was looking for Granny. Weren’t y’all worried about her?

Red: Why would the grandma let a teenager work at a bar knowing her daughter’s an alcoholic?

Purple: She was tired. Asking your mom to get a perm, she can put up a fight. Asking your grandmother who you’ve been foisted upon if you can get a perm, she’d be like, “Fuck it. I’ll take you down to the hairstylist myself.”

Green: I think on some level she resented Annie. Sure, she had no say in this, but also because you are here, I have to deal with you. If you’re going to end up like your mother, go end up like your mother. The antipathy there comes through so intensely.

Tangerine: Which is also why she probably didn’t invest as much into Annie as Irene did into Vernice.

Red: She didn’t have the same tools.

Yellow: I think she was exhausted and did the best she could.

Green: The work of having all these children, what they do to your body. You were exhausted and when you think you finally catch a break, one of them not only leaves you, but then leaves you with another baby. If that had come through a little bit more, I feel like I would have found the ending a little bit less eye roll-y. All these women are tired in this whole line, and if we’re not sitting with that and interrogating and maybe offering just a crack in the window somewhere, then what are we splaying this out for?

Red: Is Vernice the crack? There’s always one person who kind of miraculously gets out.

Yellow: Auntie Irene was the crack for me. She went to Ohio and had some kind of man. She was sort of doing her thing.

Bubblegum: I feel like they both ended their respective cycle. Bernice chose a man that she can be safe with, that she knows won’t kill her.

Red: What a low bar.

Purple: Sometimes that is the bar.

Bubblegum: I think making the choice to not have the baby, she probably would have liked to be a mom, but also knew that she was going to leave the baby with someone else or that she couldn’t actually raise it herself.

Purple: I felt the narrative punished her for the abortion. I would rather her destitute and homeless than dead. Her being dead pissed me off so bad.

Red: There’s so many interesting things she could have done with her mom. We’ve been waiting on this mom the whole time and then there’s no payoff. We get none of her. We don’t even get to really see her.

Yellow: All we got is her baby peeking out the window.

Marigold: But Tayari said it, the whole book, that we were never going to get anything. The narrative kept saying, be prepared to be disappointed. It was telling her and us.

Red: She could have gone to her house every day and just watched her. That would have been interesting and a little perverse. Or she takes the baby to her mom and says here now you have another baby to raise.

Purple: Why did she have sex with the random man at her job? I was like, Tayari, you’re trying to pack Annie up. Because the thing is, all she ever wanted was her mom.

Marigold: Because she worked at that bar when she was younger and then they put her back in the same scenario with a different outcome.

Green: I rolled my eyes at it, but I was like, okay, this does happen. Just thinking about human behavior. I can see how this happens. She’s vulnerable and he takes advantage of the arc at the end of this. There’s just something about punishment via death that just feels so…

Tangerine: It was kind of funny when Annie’s grandma made everyone think she died.

Green: There’s so much clarity when somebody has died versus when they have disappeared or chosen to leave. There’s a world where the grandmother, having had to explain a million times over. My daughter is not here. She left. To have to do that with the grandchild who is the daughter of that daughter, on some level she’s like, I can’t do this again.

Tangerine: I thought it was really friendship-romantic when Annie left and she left her dress with the markings of her size.

Red: I liked that too. My favorite part of the book was the whorehouse and those characters. Like the girl who called her mama, the idea of finding motherhood in these kind of odd places, that felt to me like the most daring place to search and also connecting that to Baby Doll’s mother selling her. That was really strong. When Baby Doll was like, “I knew what she was”, that felt true that she could see straight through this woman. Annie offered the whorehouse lady, the Madame, a kind of redemption. Maybe one of the only people who saw her as inherently good.

Purple: And kind of required that of her also, asked that of her because. She seemed like the twin who had no expectations. Annie is, in some ways, the twin who has no expectations. I thought it was interesting to kind of pair them and then find a certain level of kinship with each other.

Red: That was a fun part of the book And also the men kind of betraying the women by sleeping with the—

Green: –running up the tab!

Purple: That was crazy. It was the equivalent of drinking the day’s wages away.

Green: I did appreciate that it was framed as fucking with their money.

Red: There was also this acceptance of men being untrustworthy. I hated how male centered this book was. It was all about the men. Every woman in the book had this kind of male needing to validate them and make them whole.

Magenta: Yeah the low self-esteem from not having a mother figure. Seeking it in men. They ended up enjoying staying at the whorehouse for some time. Her finding mother or clawing for Lulabelle. I was surprised. I thought that she would invite her back eventually. Once Bobo had left her and she sent her a letter and was like,”He left me, he left me. You told me that you wouldn’t take me back, but will you take me back?” I thought that maybe at that point she may. And so I was kind of pleasantly surprised that she didn’t.

Red: She clearly cared about her. She didn’t want her to come back because she knew she would put her to work.

Magenta: She knew what the fate would be if she came back. Unfortunately she still took the path that she took.

Purple: The character I felt the worst for was Baby Doll because Baby Doll’s been so devoted to Annie and Annie can’t even see that that’s her best friend. Vernice is not her best friend. I was like, you can’t see your best friend when she’s sitting right in front of you. I wish the book ended with her and Babydoll just getting an apartment together. Even if she worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and we knew a fire was on the way, that would be better than a botched abortion.

Green: Baby Doll was also the only person who’s clear eyed about their mother. Yes, Bernice’s mother passed and she can’t seek out the source of her longing, but she’s still holding on to some of that mythology, right?

Red: But she had so much anger for her mother. She was still holding onto her mother too, but in a different way, just not in this kind of myth way. She was full of rage in regard to mother figures. She was suspicious of everyone, which is what happens when your mother betrays you.

Green: All of the older people repeatedly telling Annie, “Don’t go looking for your mom. You’re not going to like what you’re going to find.” It made sense to me that somebody in her position would be like, “What do they know?” But it’s interesting that in her friendship with Baby Doll, it doesn’t come up. That’s her agemate. Like, can y’all work through something? Can this friendship be a foil for the dynamic that you and Bernice have?

Marigold: I couldn’t relate to not growing up without a mom, but I could relate to growing up without a parent. You always tell yourself stories in your head. The book was riddled with all the stories other people would tell Niecey and Annie about who they’re supposed to be based on the absence of this parent. I found it interesting that when those people left, they just kept telling themselves a version of their own stories. I was curious to see in what way they live up to them. I felt like Annie became exactly what they told her she would be if she didn’t listen to her matriarchs. And then Niecey became exactly what they told her she had to be as well. I didn’t want that for them because I feel like with the absence of a parent, you have to figure out who you want to be based on your own truth.

Magenta: I’m thinking about that one moment in the book where it was just a few pages, but when Annie did think that her mother had passed and she felt a sense of relief. What might she have done had she remembered that? Recalled that and then built on top of it instead of reverting back to seeking for her and searching for her once it was revealed to her that she actually is alive.

Red: What did you think about those guys?

Purple: I was obsessed with them. Those are my favorite characters in the whole book. I wondered if they were angels.

Red: Were they lovers?

Red: But then they come back and is like sorry I lied? And then the fake death? We didn’t get the payoff of Annie’s mother. I read this book to find out what happened with Annie’s mom. That was propelling me and then I felt, where’s the payout? How did she walk? How did she talk? How did she spend her days? What exactly was she doing?

Purple: Her having that baby and naming Annie Kay, I think answered all the questions we needed to know the answer to. I was like oh you’re as trifling as they say.

Red: She wanted a second chance.

Yellow: She also became sober. When she goes to the bar she orders Coca Cola. That shows something too.

Purple: I think Annie represents a version of her that she refuses to return to. That’s the baby she left in Honeysuckle. A couple years ago I had a conversation with my mother and she said something to me that was really profound. It made a lot of her choices clear to me. She said she often felt that if she could do right in a new situation, it would make all of the other situations that preceded it okay. Annie complicates her trying to make this new situation okay. It would require her to look in the face of a choice that she made and a wound that she created. I understood her inability to engage with Annie. You need the opportunity to try again. You need the opportunity to begin anew.

Red: Which is what Vernice is doing.

Green: The thing that Annie’s mom did is the thing that so many men do all the time. It is interesting to me that the moments where the book kind of plays with the idea of what it means to be fatherless versus motherless. Fatherlessness is a non-event to some people.

Red: Yeah we don’t know Annie’s dad at all. She doesn’t ask about him.

Tangerine: This is why I love a dead mom story. It’s why I love the monkey Punch. Have you guys seen Secrets and Lies? It reminds me of this. The girl tries to meet up with her birth mother and she doesn’t want to revisit the decision she made.

Yellow: I keep coming back to this, but we went to Spelman and did not explore the sisterhood. We didn’t hear about any of the women besides Joette that she got to know. You can’t go through that experience and not have that.

Tangerine: The only person she had to call on was Joette, but that’s not her friend.

Red: And Joette’s cousin—

Purple: Marylinda. She was like the underground railroad. She was doing the revolution.

Red: I actually hate that the abortion didn’t happen in Atlanta.

Purple: When the cops showed up? That’s when I knew the book was not a serious document.

Red: The battering ram? Like a new toy they hadn’t gotten to open yet.

Green: I was like, that’s enough.

Purple: The novel did not allow for the tension that she placed to actually build. I think there was this need to kind of make Vernice virtuous. It almost felt like everything was happening to her as if she wasn’t orchestrating it. The only time we see her making a choice is in the queer space where she’s shutting that door.

Yellow: Her mother in law is verbalizing the things that she’s doing.

Purple: But I think we put that on Mrs. McHenry, not Vernice. She’s not fully participating, which I don’t like.

Red: That’s true. There are characters that are kind of really hungry and they’re like, I’m taking notes. They’re chasing it. It’s not treated in that way.

Purple: It was all about Mrs. McHenry becoming her mother but they didn’t have a lot of intimacy. There were a lot of ways where Mrs. McHenry was trying to constrain her within this box and Vernice kind of was willing to go, I don’t think it’s solely because she just wanted a mom.

Red: I think she also wanted upward mobility.

Green: Yeah Mrs. McHenry was like, it seems like you need a mom and also like you’re trying to move on up. The math is the math and that’s fine, but what if Vernice had done the math?

Yellow: I’m sure she did the math, but I think to your point, we didn’t let her say it because it would sort of make her less pure.

Purple: There was some kind of weird morality tale in there that I thought was wholly unnecessary. Especially because the beginning feels so much more varied. We start out with all of these characters who are very complicated and interesting. We have Ms. Ola Mae and Ms. Jemison. I loved when they pull up in their Thunderbird. I love that gay shit. There are these women who are going to church. They’re in a small town. Everybody’s really contributing. In the end it just felt so empty. It felt so devoid of life. It’s just Vernice and her man in the end.

Green: I was waiting for her husband to be gay.

Purple: I would like to call our attention to the second to last page where she says Victoria Falls is one of the seven wonders of the world. When Eleanor Roosevelt stood on its bank and witnessed the mighties and Baisi hurling over a cliff, conjuring missed enough to nurture an entire rainforest, she could only say, “Poor Niagara.” This is something that Bobo told Annie who told me I have never seen a waterfall, but you don’t have to see a thing to know what it feels like….I told him because I couldn’t bear the desertion of being unknown in the world. Fear was undignified. I could endure that silent humiliation, but not loneliness. I could not be alone in a world with no more Annie. I said, So your best friend dies, and you’ve replaced your best friend with your husband. What kind of nuclear trad-wife nonsense is this?”

Tangerine: I can endure silent humiliation. Like babe, why?

Green: Victoria Falls and we’re getting an Eleanor Roosevelt quote also. This is what this lady had to say about Victoria Falls. Everything feels second or thirdhand.

Purple: Then she writes, a soft silence preceded the waterfall so strong was the current sharp, briny, destructive, yet cooling and cleansing as the sea. So you were cleansed by your reveal of your lesbianism.

Bubblegum: Is she saying that Franklin knows her but similar to this waterfall that you don’t have to see a thing to know what it feels like because he wasn’t there in her childhood. That he could still know her and not have that same relationship with her that she had with Annie.

Purple: I like that reading. But can you imagine saying, “Oh, a man is the same as my best friend who I slept next to in a drawer.”

Green: People do it everyday.

Purple: I hate to see a man at the center of a woman’s life. That is just the most boring arc. The love of your life is your best friend, so we have to kill her so that we can make room for this man.

Red: He wasn’t even trying to help her with her best friend. I’m sorry that’s not your man. What’s the point of the power of the middle class and all of this if you can’t call up a doctor friend? I understood what they were saying. You have to be safe and you have to be careful but what’s the point of the power if you can’t help others.

Yellow: He’s scared of his daddy. And that attitude is of the time but also of today.

Purple: The book refuses to look power in its face. It doesn’t allow it to be ugly. It felt like we were witnessing them on their best behavior. Everything’s been filed down to a much more respectable sheen.

Thanks for reading! Our next book is The Witch by Marie Ndiaye. Hopefully you’ll read along. And if you’ve read Kin, what did you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts too.

Subscribe now

A few months ago I got an email asking if I’d be interested in interviewing the recently appointed chief librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library, Edwin Maxwell. I immediately agreed. I wished I’d thought of it sooner, but admittedly I didn’t think you could just talk to the chief librarian of anywhere, much less the institution that issued my very first library card. I met Edwin and his team at the main branch on a cold, rainy day in March where we talked about what makes a reader, comic books, and why he’ll never give up his hour-long commute. Read about that, below.

Can you state your name for the record?

Edwin Maxwell.

What do you do?

I’m the chief librarian at Brooklyn Public Library.

What does being the chief librarian entail?

We have 62 locations in Brooklyn. In most cases, it’s within a half a mile of everyone’s residence, but definitely within a mile. I am responsible for all the public service that happens in 61 locations. The 62nd location is the Center for Brooklyn History, formerly known as the Brooklyn Historical Society. I don’t oversee operations there. It is our only real archive. With the other 61 locations I oversee public servicing. Any way that you interface with the library as a general member or patron, I oversee those operations.

How long have you worked at the library?

Now you’re going to make me age myself. Just over 20 years. The majority of time has been here in Brooklyn. I worked in the city for a few years and I’ve also worked out in Long Island. I did two stints in Brooklyn. The first one being about 12 years and then I’ve been back in management roles for the last six or seven here. It flew by.

Where are you from?

I am born and raised in the Bronx. I still live in the Bronx. I often say I sleep in the Bronx, but my life is in Brooklyn and has been for a very long time.

What was your reading life like as a kid? What built your relationship to reading?

Reading as recreation was devalued or deprioritized when I was growing up. I did not grow up in a reading environment, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t read. I read a lot of comic books. My aunt worked for one of the major comic book companies, and I was very interested in things like animals. As a little kid, I would read every zoo book and guides about how to put something together. Oftentimes what you hear from people, if you’re not reading in the traditional means, if you’re not reading canon, then they don’t consider you a reader. I don’t think that’s true. I fell in love with more traditional methods of reading around college. The canon of literature when you’re in high school and junior high school is kind of forced upon you so you don’t learn to love or enjoy reading because it’s seen as a task. It was later on in life that I really picked up reading as a recreational activity.

What kind of comics were you reading?

I was a big Marvel fan. My aunt worked for DC. But those were easily available to me because they worked in the offices and we could read them beforehand. The comic book companies would have a collection of all the comics. Even if you were in DC, they had a lot of Marvel stuff. There were some DC lines that I would read from. I was a big X-Men person. I liked mutants. I was a Wolverine and Gambit person as well. I don’t know why this didn’t transition into fantasy.

What books sparked the shift to more “traditional,” reading?

I remember Shakespeare being pushed upon us. It wasn’t until MacBeth. I don’t know why Macbeth, but that shifted me. I read a lot of instructional things that people might call self-help. Those books helped me make the transition. I also went to undergrad for business, so a lot of business material, entrepreneurial, and books about financial literacy got me into more traditional types of reading.

What are you reading these days?

I still tend to read more nonfiction. I’m a people person. My exploration through reading or any other form of media is trying to understand people and understand different points of views. You learn a lot about a person by what they read. If someone says, “Oh, this is one of my favorite books,” even though that might not be my genre or thing that I would be interested in, I’m interested in what makes you you. So I would read that.

If someone wanted to get to know you, what book would you tell them to read?

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I would say I’m more spiritual than religious. I’ve been in the church and then went to Catholic school for a portion of my life. To me, that book is a parable. It sums up life. I am a more positive, optimistic person. To me, you go through obstacles and it’s ultimately for your benefit. That’s the message. I don’t want to misquote Paulo Coelho, but he says the universe conspires for you. It resonated with me and always has. I would recommend it to people who are trying to fall back in love with reading. It’s also a small book, it’s not long. It’s not a huge commitment. It has a beautiful story.

How much are you reading these days?

I read about a book a month from beginning to end but I read a lot more than that. I read a lot of studies and am constantly ingesting information. Being here, a lot of material is put in front of me. Some people have to read in its entirety. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy. There’s so many books in the world. Pick it up, read a page, read a chapter. If you’re into it, then continue reading it. If not, put it down, come back to it, try something else. I’m constantly nibbling at things. I also use reading as a social tool. I may have a group of people at work that we share recommendations or read something together. I do that with my wife. I do that with friends.

What’s the last book you picked up?

The Next Conversation, by Jefferson Fisher.

What’s the last book you finished?

The Forest of Noise. It’s poetry and it is set in Gaza. It won our book awards two years ago. It’s the social aspect of it, to get to understand a firsthand account of what’s going on in Gaza and not just necessarily looking at the media that is being presented to us. It’s intense.

What book has taught you the most about people?

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. I’m actually in this a little bit, just a little bit. But this book talks about the work that I do and the importance of it, of what it means to have places where people can gather essentially for free. What does it mean to be part of the public good? Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell changed how I looked at the education system. Everything I pick up teaches me something about people. Fiction as well. Some people are more attracted to the literary side of it, like the placement of words, how moving those words around can change the meaning. I’m like that when it comes to hip hop. But reading, that connection for me is peering into somebody else’s perspective and point of view.

What’s the last book someone recommended to you?

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. I was at a bar telling someone I was trying to get back into fiction. They said this would be the next Game of Thrones.

Who in your life has the best reading taste?

My wife. I also have an older cousin who was the first of our group to graduate. We were all first generation college students. His master’s was in Africana studies. His taste tends to be more on the nonfiction side, more into history than I would be, but I would take his reading advice. Then everyone here. With the book prize, we have different committees for different genres. They’ll read everything that comes out.

What’s the last book you read that you felt you had to recommend to everybody you knew?

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Everybody should read that. For Black men, it’s one of the rare times that you see something that speaks to your experience. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that quite articulated it that way. And for our counterparts, it gives you an understanding and perspective of what it is to be a Black man better than anything that I can point to.

What’s your reading routine?

During my commute. It’s about an hour. So I’m either reading or listening to something on the train ride from the Bronx to Brooklyn. That’s where most of it happens. Even though I work in a library, it’s hard to read. I guarantee you everybody that works here will say, “I wish I had more time to read. I’m surrounded by it encompassed by other things.” That’s why I don’t want to give up the commute. If I moved to Brooklyn, I’d never read.

Paperback or hardcover?

I use audio the most. But I think the answer is always paperback first. However, if it’s something that you go back to read or something you want to keep in your collection at home, hardcover.

What are you thinking deeply about right now?

The state of the world. We have a lot more in common than we like to give ourselves credit for. We’re living in a very polarized time. It’s like either you’re on this side or you’re that side. There’s a lot of commonality and I wish more people would take time to think deeply about that. We all have families that we care deeply about. There’s issues that we care about. We all bleed the same color. We have so many more similarities with us than there are differences. I love the spectrum of people. That’s why I love New York City. That’s why I love Brooklyn. I love that you can go three blocks down and feel like you’re in a different country and experience similar emotions but in a very different container.

What’s your favorite extracurricular activity?

I love culture. I love how people are the same but it shows up differently. I don’t think you can understand people unless you travel. I always tell people if you go and travel more, you can see how broad this world really is. I can tell you how many billions of people, but what context do you have as to what that means? The things that people are so self-conscious or caught up about, that’s admired in another part of the world. And I’m not talking about a small group of people, millions and millions of people.

Anywhere you would go back to?

A lot of places. But I really enjoyed Bangkok. It reminds me of the New York I grew up in.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading! For the paid list, there will be a second book date this month with a young, debut author who loves Toni Morrison and Camus. More on that in a week or two.

Subscribe now

A friend reminded me I need to be better about sharing my work and the events I’m doing. So with that said, on May 13th, I’m doing an event at The Center for Fiction with the brilliant Emma Copley Eisenberg to discuss her newest book, Fat Swim, out now. I also wrote a short story called “They’ll Talk About Us Plenty” for Jupiter Magazine, which I’m very proud of. You can read that here.

Another cool thing I saw, the Brooklyn Public Library is putting on a program called The Public Critic where you attend cultural events and then write about them under the tutelage of working critics, including the brilliant Doreen St. Felix. Criticism is sacred! And if you’ve ever thought about getting into writing criticism, this is a very cool opportunity to learn from the best.

Okay, onto the post!

Subscribe now

Notes from April

• On the first day of the month I went to dinner with Hannah and Adrienne. We grabbed dinner at a rooftop in Midtown because in picking a place my one request is that it had a view. The food was okay, the company was immaculate. Can’t wait for us to do it all over again soon.

  

• The next day we headed to Jersey. Jade tore her achilles so we made her a meal. By that I mean C cooked and I talked a lot. That night’s menu: crab legs, lobster tail, lamp chops, pearl couscous, and roasted carrots.

• That weekend, I went to an Audre Lorde event at the Schomburg with Crystal. I went into it with no expectations and came out sure that I was existing in the lineage of women who have loved and longed long before I showed up and that I am the end of someone else’s beginning. We all beget each other, ultimately. The work makes more work, and for that I am grateful. While listening to Beverly Guy Sheftall, I wondered if I should be a professor. I also became further convinced that mothering is a radical act, and done properly is the way we get free. I often find myself around people who had to unlearn or negotiate themselves inside of their families. I was fortunate to be taken seriously from the beginning and raised with a liberatory politic. My favorite part of the day was when Lorde’s former students spoke, two were from the last class she taught at Hunter College. One student, the poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor, said that after taking Lorde’s class she wanted to be a poet more than she wanted to be a mother. That cut right through me. The event culminated in Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor reading “Call.” When she started speaking I cried even though I didn’t want to. It was uncontrollable. Eventually I was weeping, Tears stained the long sleeve I was wearing and I kept looking at Crystal and saying what the fuck. It was incredible.

  

• Jet invited me to a screening of Is God Is, which I loved. More on that below. Another thing I loved: that she texted me midday and asked if I could go that night. I love a day-of plan.

• I raided the sale books section at Book Culture on 112th. I got so many good titles, I may need to make a video or something to go through them all.

• I was featured in a campaign for Woodstack, an indie sneaker store with locations around NYC.

• We had another book club meeting. This time, we discussed Kin. More on that in the next send.

• C and I went to the KWN concert. It was fine. I like the music. One thing I noticed: everyone was coupled. I love love!

• The following week I went to Antigua for my sister’s birthday. It was perfect. I bathed in blue water and watched the sun disappear into the ocean. I hollowed out lobster husks with my teeth. I lay on the beach and read until I was sweating. I ate saltfish for breakfast and laughed with my sister until my stomach hurt. By the last day, we promised to return once a year.

• I got dark brown toes as an experiment for the trip. Would not do it again, except maybe I would?

• I spied the perfect office chair in the Antigua airport. it’s the ones the TSA agents sit in—monitor height but with this incredible geometric profile. I didn’t take photos bc i’m a rule follower but just know I need that.

• C, Allie, and I went to the last Sasha Keable show at Blue Note. We arrived two hours early because we wanted a good seat and the line was already halfway down the block. We ran into Sophia in line and ended up sitting together. That was the first of many run-ins (it was lesbian central). The concert itself was very good. Sasha has incredible stage presence and sounds even better live. The best part of the night was a couple getting engaged on stage. I was sobbing! Like I said, I love love. After, we took the LIRR home and stopped by Insomnia Cookies on the way. There’s something about eating Insomnia in the late night hours that feels appropriate. I swear it made them taste better.

• Got dinner with Alex at Roman’s (yum). It was my first time seeing her since her sojourn in Mexico City so I wanted to check on her heart. We giggled and ate some of the best chicken I’ve had in recent memory. She also made me try the fava bean puree, which I ended up really liking.

• Had dinner with my agent Danielle. We went to Sailor, where we split fish and chicken and talked about publishing. I asked her my favorite question, what’s selling? Followed by, what are people writing. Lots of romantasy and horror. And friendship books.

  

• Alex left her job—read her gorgeous letter about it, here. To celebrate, she invited a bunch of us to sing karaoke at Up Stairs. It was lots of fun. I revealed my subpar rapping skills to all her friends.

• Soft serve season has officially commenced. I have been celebrating appropriately with weekly cones from Marvel Creamery.

• Went on a book date with a cool writer, but then again everyone I go on a book date with is cool!

• Had a three-event day on the last Wednesday of April. I started out at a panel, thrown by Gran Coramino and moderated Kevin Hart, then jetted to a Diptyque party at the new New Museum. I had some time between events so I stopped into PT Knitwear, where I signed a lone copy of Homebodies and bought two books: Darkology and Lush. Then I took myself to dinner and read by candlelight while eating french fries. I ran into friends at Diptyque so I hung out longer than I meant to before heading to my final event of the night, a tequila tasting with Humano at Gitano. Nicole works for the company that owns the brand so it was really an excuse to see her and Jade and drink a yummy margarita. C was at a work happy hour so we asked her to meet us out. The four of us ended the night at Buddakan and I proposed we do a summer bucket list which is just a ploy for us to hang out a bunch. One of my most-anticipated line items: a sunrise date.

• Spent the last day of the month at Inness for a day of wellness with Necessaire. The brand is launching a detox shampoo (C has already tried it on her locs, she likes it!). We had the entire property to ourselves, so we spent the day getting massages, doing yoga and floating in the pools. I felt my brain sort of reset and was able to be deeply present, a reminder to do stuff like that more often.

• I discovered Lenka bars, which are very good. I texted Alex and she informed me she knew about them already and said nothing because I don’t like Bjorn Corn, her sacred snack food. That yeasty popcorn is not good, I’m sorry! But these seedy granola bars are.

Reading

• Another Country by James Baldwin

  I picked this up because it came highly recommended by a bookseller. Also, Baldwin isn’t a hard sell. It’s about a group of friends who are exploring big questions about life, love, ambition and grief.. It is gorgeously written and incredibly alive. The novel moves between a few perspectives, starting with a Black man, Rufus, and ending with a white gay man, Eric, giving us access to the darkest parts of their fears and imaginations. All of the Black characters are in interracial relationships, which shapes the way they relate to one another. On the Black characters’ side, there’s a base level of suspicion and a rage toward the injustice of how whiteness warps their ability to trust whether their partners love them for them or are trying to work something out. On the white characters side they vacillate between a defensive posture and light introspection. It’s fascinating. I could write a lot about this book and the things it made me meditate on but that’s generally what Baldwin does, turn the novel into a mirror, even if it’s a fragmented one.

• Escape! by Stephen Fishbach

  This was one of five books I brought on vacation. It’s written by a former Survivor contestant and is about a Naked and Afraid-style show where the characters are attempting to escape an island and win a cash prize. The caveat is that they get more money the longer they tough it out. This is mostly besides the point. It’s really about what people are willing to do in the face of mounting pressure and how far one will go to hold onto an identity that’s fraying and crumbling despite every attempt to keep it intact. That said, it lacked catharsis, which made it hard for me to feel that the book successfully did what it set out to do.

• Floodlines by Saleem Haddad

  I also read this on vacation and in the days after. It follows three sisters who are living abroad after fleeing Iraq post-revolution. Their father was an artist, a very famous one, whose work shaped the country’s visual identity and lives on in a monument to the new regime. The novel explores the echoes of his legacy and how it shaped their lives as artists trying to make sense of their individual practices, their relationships to each other, and themselves. It also follows the son of one of the daughters, who is going through a life-altering breakup and grappling with the trauma of being a war reporter. I really liked it. The writing is electric and even though I didn’t love the ending (I have a hard time with endings and maybe assign too much weight to how I feel about the whole thing based on how it lands the plane) I liked the book generally and would recommend it.

• Transcription by Ben Lerner

  I couldn’t be the only person not reading Transcription so I picked it up a day or so after it came out. It opens with a writer who is interviewing his aging mentor. On the way to the interview the writer drops his phone in some water, which prevents him from recording said interview. Inexplicably, he can’t tell the mentor this, so they do a “preliminary,” interview, which is very much a real interview, where one person thinks they’re being recorded and the other is pretending that’s the case. It creates an interesting underlying tension of performance, truth, and fabrication. The whole book is interested in the underlying tension of performance, what happens when this is acted out uninterrupted and when it’s called out. It’s also about the narratives we construct in service of making sense of our lives and whether the truth is important for that work. What I liked most about it is its commitment to showing and not telling. Most of what we learn is told through dialogue. It’s how we learn about the character’s relationships, what they think and how they feel. Still, it doesn’t feel like a lack of interiority or intimacy. I felt very close to the characters’ understanding of themselves, even though on some level I knew it might not be the truth. I went in feeling very meh towards it and left it thinking, I get it, it’s good, but I’m not blown away.

Watching

• The Drama - Boring and unbrave. There’s a level of cowardice involved with using identity for shock value and refusing to contend with that. I really liked Angelica Jade Bastien’s review of it for Vulture.

• Is God Is - After watching Is God Is I posted a photo of the movie’s poster on my story and said, “If Toni Morrison made a movie, it would be this.” The film has a similar magical quality without losing its verisimilitude. It is both real and unreal, human and divine. It’s about twins who are burned in different places and experiencing the world differently as a result. Abandoned by their mother and burned by their daddy, they have carved out a life together, circling the question of what comes next. We get the sense that there’s a wound pulsing between them, an unanswered question. Then, a letter from their mother arrives and it kicks off a journey that changes everything. I really loved this film. It was effective in the way a Morrison novel is. It doesn’t require lots of laboring to make its point but is satisfying all the same. The movie is adapted from a play with the same name by Aleshea Harris and you can sense that origin point on the screen. What good plays do well is pull at eternal threads while transporting us into the very specific ailments of the characters on stage. The movie does this deftly all while being highly entertaining and funny too. It’s out on May 14, I hope everyone sees it.

• Love Overboard - If Love Island and Below Deck had a baby, it would be Love Overboard. It is deliciously messy and the participants have some sense. I really enjoyed it and kept recommending it to everyone I know.

• Mr. Loverman - Adapted from a novel by Bernadine Evaristo, Mr. Loverman follows a closeted, elderly man who decides to live in his truth after decades of secrecy. I didn’t make it very far with this because I got distracted but what I did see, I liked a lot. Funnily enough, my in-laws are watching this and they really enjoyed it too.

• Imperfect Women - A diabolical friend group unravels when one of them dies under mysterious circumstances. It’s an easy watch and very middle-of-the-pack as far as these shows go. It’s no Presumed Innocent or Big Little Lies but it’s not as incoherent as say, His & Hers or 56 Days. Do with that information what you will.

• Is This Thing On? - I think Andra Day is contractually obligated to sing in whatever film she’s cast in. And I get it, a voice is a terrible thing to waste. That said, I didn’t love Is This Thing On, a movie about a middle-aged man whose marriage is falling apart. He turns to standup on a whim and ends up finding his voice along the way. This was a hard one for me to get into, mostly because there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of character development or characterization more generally. They don’t see each other, which feels obvious and thin. I needed more.

• Temptation Island - I made it three episodes and couldn’t finish. I ended up asking Jade for the cliffnotes.

• Margo’s Got Money Troubles - underwhelmed!

• The Dark Wizard - I care very little about rock climbing but love character driven stories, which is why I’ve been watching Born to Bowl with great interest and why I stayed up past my bedtime watching The Dark Wizard. It chronicles the life of Dean Potter, a climber who revolutionized the sport. He was complicated—egotistical, passionate and troubled. He inspired deep loyalty and later incredible amounts of contempt from the people who once venerated him because he could be really really terrible to the people that loved him. I was really moved by this portrait of him, which is unflinching in its depiction of his struggles with mental health and the use of extreme sports as a source of dopamine and adrenaline. He was so clearly fighting himself and for much of the documentary (there’s one episode left), he wins by just staying alive. It’s a fascinating and often anxiety-inducing watch.

• The Unchosen - The show is well plotted but not very good, which I didn’t realize was possible until this. It’s a fictionalized show about a cult that unravels when a newcomer saves one of the members. It was fine!

• Funny AF- I love stand up comedy and I loved Netflix’s other competition show, Rhythm and Flow. If you like both of those things, it’s likely you’ll enjoy this too.

On my wishlist

• For the manuscript (thanks Erin!!)

• I love a thin, super sheer top

• A silver anklet, preferably a snake chain

• These slip-on Pumas

• Curious about barefoot shoes because I have wide feet, specifically these from Alohas

• This necklace from Hernan Herdez

Expense Report

• Lots of all-cotton underwear for a testing story at work (Natori makes some excellent ones , as does Jockey)

• An incredible amount of books

• More car stuff (boo tomato tomato)

• Those sold out heels from Topshop

• Vibram v-souls. I’ve been holding out but they big ugly shoe got me y’all. Will report back.

How was y’all’s month?

Subscribe now

For this edition of Book Date, I went out with writer Doreen St. Felix. I’m a longtime admirer of her writing and after hearing her in conversation with Sasha Bonét back in September at the launch event for The Waterbearers I knew I wanted to hear more about her reading life. We met at Unnameable Books, which I haven’t been to since my first book date, where we talked about the book she read too young, structure as the point, and her reading routine.

Can you state your name for the record?

Doreen St. Felix.

What do you do?

I’m a writer.

Where are you from?

Brooklyn, New York. Canarsie to be exact.

How did growing up there shape you?

The horizon was always Caton Avenue. I thought that was the whole world. I knew nothing of Manhattan. I grew up in Canarsie at this really interesting demographic shift. White flight was almost complete when we moved in in the mid ‘90s. My neighborhood was a bunch of Caribbean people, a lot of Filipino people and a lot of church people. Everyone was quite churched on my block. In some ways it was that idyllic Crooklyn vision of childhood with a dark underbelly. But it’s my reference for everything—an extremely religious immigrant swamp community at the edge of Brooklyn. It’s weird when you grow up in a neighborhood like that and then you eventually cross over. You learn about Manhattan, you cross the Brooklyn Bridge and you realize that the New York that you feel is yours is not actually fully yours. There’s a little grief in that. That happened for me when I went to high school because I went to high school in Manhattan.

What was your young reading life like?

I was not a very verbal child. I was very shy. I did not like to be talked to, but I liked books. I would hide in the bathroom and read book after book after book. It was obsessive, addictive. It was cover, I think, for some interior discomfort with being a person in the world. I’m the youngest in my nuclear family by a lot of years. There’s a big generational gap between my parents and my sister. I was always trying to understand who they were by reading what they were reading. My mom was getting her associate’s degree at Kings County when I was a kid. She took an elective and it was an English literature elective. She’s from Haiti, so she didn’t really know about English classics. Everything that she brought home, I would try and read. She became really obsessed with—I mean, this isn’t English literature—but, Ibsen. I remember she was reading A Doll’s House, so I read A Doll’s House with her, not really understanding what it was about. Reading was a way of making myself visible when every other avenue was not available to me because I was so shy. It was a way of trying to understand the older women in my life, that being my mother and my sister.

What kind of books were you reading as a child? What did you really enjoy?

I remember reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, because again, it was just on the shelf. After that, my most visceral reading memory is Assata. I had a cousin who was being radicalized at that time, my cousin Rudy, and he gave it to me for Christmas.. It’s funny that my first real memory would be of nonfiction, something in the memoir mode. It was the first time I realized that you could do that to life, that you could subdue it and turn it into narrative, to say nothing of how it made me think of myself—as someone who was about to be a Black woman. That book was really important to me. I, on the other hand, was a total romantic. As I got more preteen, I was such a Jane Eyre girl. Mr. Rochester, sexual awakening. There were certain books I read that I don’t know if I necessarily liked, but I knew were integral in me understanding that there was an adult world. I think of Push as being one of those. Really random, but The Five People You Meet in Heaven. As I got a little older, my friends and I would hang out at Barnes & Noble all the time. It would have these NPR-core displays of what you’re supposed to read, and before I developed my own taste, I would read those books. That is a real core memory of being like, oh, this is what contemporary literature is. The Bluest Eye was really critical for me. I have a memory of being on my mother’s bed and reading it in one sitting. I remember feeling pained because I couldn’t talk to her about it because she had never read any Toni Morrison. Then I did the kind of complicated gesture that some Black women do where people try to claim her as a maternal presence, even though that’s not what she’s doing. Toni Morrison is not your mom. Also Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!. That was quite personal because my parents taught us about Haitian culture, but we didn’t read Haitian literature. That explained to me our way of talking to each other, the way that we had a call and response rhythm embedded in how we communicated. That book was very essential and demystifying.

Is there a book you read too young?

Assata. I’m the youngest in my cohort of cousins by far. The 10 to 12 year age difference that I had with the rest of the people in my family made me yearn to be older in a visceral way. When they were getting woke and deprogrammed, a lot of what they were experiencing would trickle down to me. Obviously precocity is something that was very much fetishized and valued in the ‘90s, but I do think there’s something to be said about protecting innocence. I wish that I had read that when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old.

A book you still don’t fully understand?

For years, I have been trying to get through Ulysses. I recently learned there’s a way of reading it that’s not chronological that I should maybe try. The right way to read it is to go through certain later chapters first. That is a book that gets into you, I am always beset by nightmares as I read. It’s like my body physically rejects it. That’s where the lack of understanding comes from. There’s something about the bodiliness of Ulysses that I respond to, but it makes it impossible for me to actually get through this book. I think I’m on year five of trying to finish Ulysses.

What’s your taste like these days?

I don’t read a lot of contemporary literature. I have an aversion to how sentences have shortened. The margins are wider. I like to read literature that’s not about where I am. It’s not about the literary space in New York. I don’t really have that much of an interest in it. I find myself going for books that are maybe like 50 to 60 years older. I’m very interested in the ‘70s. I read a lot of Bessie Head last summer, a really incredible South African novelist. She wrote this book called A Question of Power. It was written after her mental break and she embeds within the narrative what it must feel like to lose sense of one’s ability to make sense. That book is unbelievable. Ready to Burst by Frankétienne is a novel that is really emblematic of the spiralist movement. I think a lot of people would feel some kind of relief if they could learn about this way of telling novels in which time is not just marching forward. It spirals like a conch shell. It’s funny, a little bit of a nasty book. The Vegetarian. A really important book to me last year. If we’re getting Kafka-esque, I’m there. Hangman by Maya Binyam does that too. I love a fable. I love parables. If Catholicism is literary, it’s literary because of the Bible, and it all begins with the word, right? So when I’m reading books that are built on that structure, my lizard brain gets activated and I get really turned on. Lately I’ve been drawn to books where the structure is the point. Two that come to mind for me are Minor Detail by Adania Shibli and Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. Those are two contemporary novels where the question of structure is not so attached to memory. Memory is what we think about when we think about a novel deciding to mess with structure, but with these, it’s a lot more embedded in the anti-imperialism in the novel.

What does your reading life look like now?

I wish my reading life was a little fuller than it is. It’s very hard to read these days. I’m also into doing the completist route of writers I like. I’m going through all of Elizabeth Hardwick’s output, in part because I love reading criticism. Flyboy in the Buttermilk, Greg Tate, huge text for me. White Girls by Hilton Als is huge for me too. But Elizabeth Hardwick, her book of literary analysis, Seduction and Betrayal, has been important to me for years. I’d never read any of her novels until recently. I read Sleepless Nights. I love seeing the writer as critic and then the writer as novelist. Maybe because I’m at a transitional point in my own writing life, it’s very attractive to me right now. Right now, by my bed I have Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. I don’t know if I’m enjoying it but I’m gonna push through. I like pushing through.

So you’re not a DNF’er.

No. Very rarely do I do that.

What does your reading life look like? How are you fitting it in?

I do it really early in the morning. I don’t believe in distracted reading. I need to have a clean mind. It’s about getting in a hunched, uncomfortable position, being a little bit cold and sitting for hours. When you have the disconnect from a book because you’ve put it down for too long, I’m just so frightened of entering that space with something that I’ve decided to read. Books are sacred, so I want to know I have the right mind and the right time to read. I did get a Kindle recently, which I never thought I would do. It’s kind of fab.

Say more about the fab Kindle.

Books are mass. They take up a lot of space. I don’t have space for every book in my house. I’ve been reading these history books by this Catholic writer-historian Gary Wills. I’m not going to buy Gary Wills’ books, but I want to read them. I can do that on my Kindle.

Who in your life has the best book taste?

My friend Durga Chew-Bose. She has great book taste. Sarah Nicole Prickett also has incredible book taste. My friend Nick Glastonbury, who is an anthropologist, has good book taste. The stuff he puts me onto, really incredible. I also have friends who keep up to date with romance novels and whatever’s happening in the YA space. I really appreciate it because I’m so not clued into it. I feel like I’m getting a sense of reading appetite from them.

What’s the last great book someone recommended?

The Sea, The Sea. It’s about a dandy figure, who does not seem to be aware of his effect on others. He’s totally delusional. He won the Man Booker Prize in 1975, and it’s about his retired life. It’s kind of long.

How are you storing all the books you do have?

I’m getting this bookshelf made. Khalil’s making it. He’s a great carpenter. Half of the wall, we did four rows of books and now we realize we need to do the other side. I also love to have stacks by the bed.

Hardcover or paperback?

Paperback. It’s lighter.

What are you thinking deeply about?

Illness. On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf is my formative essay both in form and in subject. It’s Virginia speculating on why illness is not the great muse of contemporary novels. Romance is an engine. War is an engine, but not illness, in part because confronting that our bodies have to deteriorate is the great crisis of our lives. I grew up in an environment of sickness. A lot of people that I love have always been ill. For me, it’s a greater push to act than the optimization health culture that we’re in. I’m so much more comfortable around the weather that’s around when people are sick and they’re trying to get better and to take care of their bodies. That to me is where I feel the most alive, more so than this super obsessive running all day, optimizing your diet culture that is becoming dominant right now. My mother is a nurse and she worked at Coney Island Hospital when I was a kid. There was no one to watch me after school, so she would sneak me into the hospital. I would just chill with the nurses at the station on the coronary recovery floor. I would be in the waiting room, I would talk to patients. It was my playground. I’m uncovering the ways that that’s been extremely formative for me. I’m trying to sublimate it into a short story.

That’s extremely exciting to me. Lastly, what’s your favorite extracurricular activity?

This is going to sound real auntie-ish but I love cooking. I love drawing out the necessity of feeding myself and people I love to a whole day affair. I love the drama of one vegetable being on sale at this supermarket, and another being on sale at the other supermarket. I’m completely inefficient—I’m going to spend three hours getting these ingredients and I’m going to do a mise en place on the countertop. Right now I’m also maybe trying to learn to play basketball because Love and Basketball.

Subscribe now

Anyway, onto the post.

Notes From March

• I started off the month with book club. We read I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For by Bzrat Mezghebe, a novel about Eritreans living in the DMV-area shortly before and after independence. It grapples with transience, inheritance and silence, interrogating what it means to make a life in a new land and the nature of home. Our full review of it, here.

• We had friends Christmas three months late because schedules are difficult and as we get older it gets harder to sync. We got it together eventually and it felt less Christmas-y and more like a long overdue hang. C and I have always hosted, but this year, Allie had us all over. We ordered pizza, drank wine, and hung Allie’s mirror (Carrie did it really, we just cheered her on).

• I’m in an Aretha phase at the moment, specifically her 20th studio album, Let Me In Your Life. I’ve been listening to “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)” on repeat.

• I didn’t really do much in the way of a Valentine’s Day gift for C so I made it up to her in early March with a “yes” day. We started with lunch at Bordertown in Greenpoint. She ordered a pork belly situation and I got a blue crab and shrimp tostada, which I still think about. Then we moved on to Tokyo Record Bar, which she’d been wanting to try. We ended the day at Human Head, where we moved slowly through the selection. The music they were playing was very cool, so cool I couldn’t Shazam it, and it was filled with people who are clearly serious about music. We left with lots of records, including the movie soundtrack recording of The Wiz.

• Herrana, a director and filmmaker I admire, posted on her Instagram story that she was hosting a volleyball pickup game. I haven’t played in a decade but was a setter all through high school and have been meaning to find an adult league. It was fun! I definitely needed to warm up more beforehand—I was sore for days. I also threw my back out which feels like something to file under stuff that happens after 30.

• After volleyball I met up with a college friend Ganeesh, who’s one of the funniest people I know. We went book shopping together, shaded in details of the last couple years, and plotted world domination. I think we made lots of headway.

• Got an incredible facial at Spencer’s Spa. It’s as gorgeous as they say.

• That Sunday, after biscuits, C, Allie, and I went to Hellbender for brunch. We walked in two minutes after it opened and there was already a 20 minute wait. We walked around the block to kill some time and ended up at Topos. I bought three books, including an Alice Coltrane biography and a gray Penco clip. At Hellbender we had an incredible steak and fried mozzarella that I’d eat everyday on repeat. After, we went shopping at Uniqlo and C bought some fun pieces for Spring.

• The following week, C, Carrie and I got dinner at Fish Cheeks and then went to see Hoppers. The theater, hilariously, was full of adults.

• I went on a book date that I’m very excited about. More on that, soon.

• I finally got my hair cut and colored. I love it so much I posted three photos and immediately went to Allie’s house after so we could talk about it for fifteen minutes.

  

• I made a pilgrimage to Stray and ended up talking to Danny for hours as I always do. I bought records, an enamel tray, and a sculpture that Carrie said could “easily cost $1200” but only ran me $60.

• Joanna invited me to a focaccia making event she hosted with Haven Well Within. We gathered in this low lit cellar beneath La Mercerie, which, thinking ahead, would be perfect for a birthday dinner or book launch. I put garlic and rosemary on mine (I’m a simple girl!) and chatted with my seatmate Jessica until it was time to go. We both work in beauty, so we ended up talking shop, arriving at the conclusion that this peptides craze and aesthetics obsession is really about externalizing the appearance of wellness rather than actually being healthy and collapsing the two to be synonymous. There are racist undertones in this pursuit that I don’t need to belabor (y’all are intelligent!) but we’re moving in a sinister direction.

• On the first nice Spring day we went to Bar Heretic in Fort Greene. It was slightly too cold for outdoor dining and the thin cardigan I had on but we did it anyway. They serve natural wines and everything we had was phenomenal. Even the orange was good, which if you know me, is saying something.

  

• My friends Blake and Asia collaborated with Brown Sugar Babe on a fragrance collection and they had an event in New York to celebrate. I loved the campaign, which recreated iconic scenes from Waiting to Exhale. I also love them—they’re gatherers and community builders so it wasn’t shocking to me when I walked into the low-lit, mirrored room, I was met with Black women and men who were brilliant, fabulous and wholly themselves. It was a testament to the way they move through the world and I loved seeing that come together in real life. The scents smell great too, which is sort of a given.

• I saw Pillion with Alex and Court. I enjoyed it! More on that down below.

• The following week, we ventured to Jersey for a triple date with Jade, Nicole, BA and Nikki. We went bowling and talked about AI. I am, unsurprisingly, staunchly against it but it was interesting to talk to someone who’d moved from my position to fully adopting it and integrating it into their everyday life. On some level I understand the logic—freeing up the mental space occupied by menial tasks like emails and keeping track of invoices or whatever to make room for other things is seductive. But I’m increasingly hearing it referred to as a thought partner, a tool to gain clarity on ideas. I view this as an act of self-deception, aided by the facelessness and initial depersonalization of large language models. In the pitch, people say I just need to train the AI bot in the same way one trains an algorithm—that by feeding it you get closer to the desired result. But didn’t we learn this lesson the first time around? Thanks to those very same algorithms, we are more siloed in our digital echo chambers than ever, but at least there are other people there. With AI, people are wholly alone, believing they have company. I want people to consider that we are less in control than we believe, that we are being fed, the mind slowly tuning to the frequency of amalgamated, stolen goods. That’s not even to speak of the willingness to cede authority to the LLM because it’s fast-responding. Ease does not equal accuracy and yet it’s being treated with increased deference. It feels that we’re getting further away from the plot and that even the staunch holdouts are starting to be persuaded by the perception of ease and increased productivity. I’m concerned people have begun to give up on pushing back meaningfully, which portends a bleaker future than I previously predicted. All that said, the wings at Albatross in Edison, New Jersey are pretty good.

• That Wednesday I had a marathon of events. I started the morning with Good Weather Skin to celebrate the launching of the brand’s mineral spf lip gloss, which, impressively, has zero sunscreen taste. It was in the village so I walked the couple blocks to Three Lives and Company where I bought five books, none of which I went in for. I worked for a little and then went to an Ebay event where I ate lots of steak skewers and prosciutto on a potato chip. I ran into lots of people I admire, like Dolly, who talked me through running a micro-bakery deep in the pandemic and Mikey who runs Page Break, a very cool reading retreat series. I also met Talia, who was curating an edit, along with Emilia and Jalil. After, I stopped by Pearl Box for a Hero Cosmetics party and then walked across the street to the Staud event thrown by American Express. I told three people I wished they were raffling off statement credits to settle outstanding Amex debt. Instead I got a silk scarf from the collection and a t-shirt. The party was at The Manner hotel. It has a living room that looks like something out of The Incredibles 2. While there I ran into a musician and artist I’d met at a brand dinner two summers ago and we had an illuminating conversation about the novel. She’s on her third album and told me the hardest project is the second, which I’m finding to be very true.

• The next day, I met up with Chinue at Hunter’s Point Park. She is the little sister of a set of twins I went to preschool with. She’s a writer now and in the beginnings of a very interesting novel I hope I’ll be able to read soon. We caught up (I haven’t seen her in 20-something years so there was a bit to cover) talked about books and she recommended two: Meridian by Alice Walker and White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I headed to Book Culture in Long Island City after to buy them and only found White Teeth. Somehow they had no Walker in stock. While I scanned the shelves, I overheard a woman asking for Strangers which was accidentally shelved in fiction. I thought that was funny. I checked out three books and took pictures of the interesting stuff I want to buy at some point in the future.

• The following Saturday, I went to the Honey Pot salon series, which focused on reclaiming wellness and figuring out what that means for us as Black people. It was a beautiful event, partly, I think, because everyone took it very seriously. It was at Apartment Rael, which I’ve been meaning to go to, and started out with a short breathwork session, led by one of the panelists, Teya Knapp. During the breathing, which required quick inhales and exhales, I peeked one eye open like I used to in church during prayer and was pleased to see everyone holding themselves and closing their eyes. Like I said, real serious. Kayla Greaves hosted the panel and did an incredible job. She held the energy in the room so delicately and by the end I wished she would host everything. Sasha Bonét was also on the panel, which was exciting because y’all know I love Sasha. While there, I told her that The Waterbearers is the most important book to come out in the past five years. I think every Black woman should read it and then give it to somebody else and then those people should have a book club. She read passages from the book during the panel and each section sparked a tangent of conversation that seemed to call up memories for just about everyone. We had a brief intermission and then did writing exercises with Craft & Release that asked us to interrogate our memories and write scenes based on them. Mine were too personal to share but I liked hearing other people’s reflections.

  

• The day after that (I’ve been very busy), I did a reading at NYCxStudios for their Reading the Greats series, where a writer reads a short story written by someone they admire. I chose “Shape Ups at Delilah’s” by Rion Amilcar Scott, which was published in the New Yorker a few years ago. It starts out as a love story between two exes but unfolds into a fable—exploring ownership, misogyny and theft. It’s about so many things but what I keep coming back to is the idea that there is the work and then there are the tools we use to do it. The tools might fascinate onlookers, especially those who want to do what you do, but they are ultimately immaterial. It’s a fantastic story and I hope everyone will read it.

  

• While there, I had an interesting conversation about love as a force, a source of power, neither good nor bad, just an energy that tethers two people together. This reflection was initiated by the book I’m currently reading, Another Country by James Baldwin, in which love and desire drives a character to violence and madness. I’m oversimplifying it, surely, but it got me thinking about how we bind love to goodness. Good love is real love, healthy love is real love. The rest is attachment or karmic debt or some other, sinister thing. And it’s not that I disagree with this idea wholesale, or think we should go around getting into or encouraging toxic relationships, but I am interested in decoupling love from the practical and elevating it into something divine. If love is energy and by extension, power, then we are constantly in negotiation with it. It can overwhelm us, it can make us feel strong, it can ruin us, it can free us. It’s something I’m still circling and will probably always be.

• On the very last day of the month, I went to a dinner hosted by Aunu, a beauty brand that formulates everything with manuka honey. I’ve long-loved manuka—I have HS and it’s a gamechanger for wound care—so I needed little convincing. I ended up being seated across from Willa, who I used to work with when I was a baby beauty editor at Nylon. She was doing social at Bustle and already a star. Now she’s the editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan, which, if you know Willa, is not at all surprising. It was good to catch up. I also spent lots of time chatting with the dermatologist next to me, lamenting about the evolution of aesthetics and asking him what people were coming in for these days. More C02 lasers and very intense treatments, he said. Interesting!

Reading

I picked up more than I completed but I read two books this month

Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

I like a novel that does something interesting with format, which is why I picked up Seduction Theory. It’s told through a graduate thesis written by a student, Roberta, who’s the sort-of mistress of her professor, Simone, whose husband, Ethan, has cheated with the secretary Abigail. It’s a compelling idea but the execution was ultimately confusing because the story is told this way but there are instances where the novel abandons the thesis and jumps into the “real,” along with things Robbie couldn’t possibly know.. It’s hard to tell where the thesis is engaging in critical fabulation, which makes you question the situation entirely and not in a good way.

Loved One by Aisha Muharrar

This came highly recommended by Extracurricular readers so i placed it at the top of my list. It’s about a woman named Julia whose situationship-turned-best-friend, Gabe, dies, leaving her with an enormous amount of grief. She decides to go on a quest to collect some of his belongings, most of which are in England with Elizabeth, the last woman dated. Julia hatches a plan to track her down and the two end up forging a shaky alliance while she’s in town. Despite being near-total strangers, they are linked by this loss, bound by grief and also separated by it. It wasn’t for me, ultimately, but if someone told me they enjoyed it, I would understand why.

Watching

A good mix!

• Chameleon Street - This is a film about a con artist, William Douglass Street, who is beleaguered by his desire for upward mobility despite his lack of hard skills. Impatient and certain of his greatness, impersonates various professions to make money. He takes on lots of roles—journalist, doctor, lawyer—and is successful at them, which is part of the hilarity. Street is also a misogynist, often casting off the women who love and believe in him without a second thought. It creates an interesting, complex portrait of a man who is being stepped on by a system and is, in that knowledge, turning around harming other people. It has a sort of surrealist feel to it too, and reminds me of Percival Everett’s work in tone. I liked it a lot and would love to see more indie films explore spaces like this. It’s a shame this didn’t herald the beginning of Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s long career of writing black comedies, but is instead an instance of his genius and potential.

• Bridgerton - Part two was better! It takes on class in a more meaningful way and illuminates the stringency of their society in a way that expands the universe but it’s still not good. The biggest miscalculation the writer’s room made was the reveal of Lady Whistledown—even Gossip Girl knew to keep you-know-who’s identity low until the end.

• Fackham Hall - Parody movies are back! This one takes aim at the Downton Abbey and Gilded Age-type films of the world, which dramatize the lives of the aristocracy. I didn’t expect this to be as good as it is, or as smart, but it was both of those things. Very funny, too.

• Neighbors - A24 getting into unscripted television has to mean something for the film industry writ large, but I’m not sure what. Either way, Neighbors is funny. It follows sets of rival neighbors who are angry with each other for various offenses, like the height of a fence or a property line. These disagreements have spiraled into full-on feuds, where cops are called, restraining orders obtained, and Youtube channels started. Of course the characters are quirky and a little nuts. A fun watch, and does something for the part of me missing Tiger King.

• Vladimir - I really enjoyed the book but feel differently about the show. The tone feels off, as does the cinematography. It’s a little too glossy and hokey. What made the book good was the largely internal observations of the main character, which, given the medium, are largely absent from the adaptation. This is the trade-off of moving a story from one format to another. Sometimes it works, in this case it doesn’t.

• Rooster - A little funny, a little corny. Yaminah, whose mom is a brilliant professor, said it’s an inaccurate depiction of academia because they have too much time on their hands.

• DTF St Louis - There’s a dark aura around this show. And I mean that literally. Everything is very gray. I don’t love that but I do like this show, which depicts a complicated relationship between a broadcast news reporter and his ASL interpreter. The show is constructed as a puzzle, depicting the same dynamic and set of circumstances over and over but with a little more information each time. It’s a bit tedious, but feels true to the way we understand information. Either way I’m invested, and watch it every week.

• Wonder Man - I really enjoyed this show, which is about an actor with magical powers who is taking great pains to hide them in a society where it’s not accepted but valued by the government, who want to use his abilities for their own gains. To do this, they create an elaborate scheme involving an aging actor plagued by scandal, who, over time, starts to become attached to his target. It’s well-done and the characters are complex. I’m excited that it’ll be back for season two.

• White Lies - After watching Chameleon Street, I was algorithmically directed to White Lies, a comedy about a museum worker who pretends to be an artist to impress a woman who happens to be an art dealer. The problem is, he doesn’t have paintings. He decides to pay a white woman who’s addicted to drugs to use her paintings, most of which are self portraits. He crafts a narrative around it—a commentary on white beauty standards—which made me laugh because it made a little sense. The art dealer, on her part, is struggling to get him represented at the gallery she works for, because they’re uninterested in breaking out a young Black artist with illegible work. It’s an interesting exploration of these dynamics and plays on the idea of the Black trickster, a popular figure of the 80s and 90s. These characters often exploit white ignorance in order to enrich themselves, a subversion of a power dynamic where Black people are held down socially and economically. It also explores the protection of illegibility from the position of the illegible person, vesting them with the power rather than that illegibility locking them out of opportunity. It illuminates how a lack of knowledge can work in the favor of the exploited and oppressed. It pokes fun at liberalism and exposes a tendency toward white saviorism by showing a more complete picture where the white person isn’t totally aware of what or who it is they’re trying to save. This trope has largely disappeared from film, but it’s something I’m noticing in watching White Lies and also Chameleon Street. Maybe I’ll write about it. We’ll see.

• Hoppers - I loved Hoppers, a film about a girl who wants to save a pond in her hometown from developers. It was in turns funny and profound. My one critique of the movie is that it invokes the idea of humans as capable of change while the “other,” in this case, the animals, as one-track minded and incapable of nuanced thinking. Either way, I really enjoyed it.

• Anniversary - This is a banger of a film and I think it’s crazy more people haven’t seen it. It’s about the breakdown of a society ushered in by a white woman who writes a radical book about restructuring America to become a technofascist state. It’s told from the perspective of a professor, who once had this woman in her class. She was dismissive of her then and a bit scared by her and is startled when she shows up at her house on her anniversary and is introduced as her son’s girlfriend. The movie revisits the date over the years, showing the evolution of their everyday life. It’s fascinating to watch the transition from normal to unrecognizable and comparing that to our current moment. Spooky but necessary watch.

• Pillion - This movie needs a trigger warning for anyone who’s been in a relationship where they felt no control and at the mercy of the person they loved. It follows a gay man, Colin, who has never been in a romantic relationship and meets a much more experienced, motorcycle-riding guy, Ray, in a bar. The two have a quick, brutal sexual encounter that Colin takes in stride. This is the beginning of their relationship, where Ray is in total control and Colin will do nearly anything to keep his attention. Ray’s rules are so strict and immovable that if Colin wants to continue to see him, he has to do what he says. Pillion is nightmare fuel for anyone who has been in a relationship where any attempts to assert their needs results in punishment or withdrawal. It’s a hard watch but an interesting one and is another piece of evidence for my theory that many of the most universal stories are deeply specific.

• Top Five - Why did Rosario Dawson have that fedora on?

• Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice - Really bad, wow.

• Maggie’s Plan - Maggie Has a Plan is about a woman named Maggie (played by Greta Gerwig), who wants to have a baby. She’s willing to do this on her own and when we meet her, she’s settled on a quirky but attractive sperm donor willing to give his genetic material with no strings attached. This plan is sort-of thwarted when she falls for a coworker, a professor at her college who’s in a complicated place in his marriage. His wife is the accomplished one while he has a novel he can’t finish, which he blames on not having enough time to complete due to his responsibilities at home. Maggie offers to read his novel, which endears him to her, and eventually they begin an affair. Things continue from there but it ultimately felt flat to me. No one was evil enough or interesting enough for me to care and everything resolved too easily for the stakes to feel real.

Wish List

• These pants from Brooke Callahan, which come in an incredible amount of colors. I’m feeling the green and the turquoise—I’m in a blue phase

• As a Queens resident, I feel that I need this shirt from Only NY

• These taffeta shorts from Chan Luu

• Brown denim

• Denim shorts that stop four inches above my knee, these Levi’s feel approximate to what I’m aiming for

• A Longchamp Le Pliage tote. I had one all through college and miss it terribly.

• I came across Nina Gordon, an Australia-based jewelry brand that works with lots of silver. I’ve been wanting to wear more bracelets so I immediately saved this thin bangle. I did some more clicking around and found these tiny silver hoops, which are very cute too.

• Also into this ring from Mexico City-based brand Ruiz.

• Decided I wanted a pair of Nike Shox after someone I follow said wearing them with a pair of flare workout pants has the same vibe as jeans and a pointed heel.

• These sunglasses from 12PM Studios

• I also want a pair of mid-rise jeans that stop just under my belly button. These “low-rise” jeans from Gap look promising

• A slip cover for my chaise. I’ve been saving Etsy makers and sifting through their reviews for weeks but am very open to recommendations

• Rain boots. I like these hemp ones

• Something about this Kotn shirt is doing it for me, I’ve been loving the double-layered thing

• St. John’s was doing well in the Final Four, which led me down a merch rabbit hole. Some stuff I turned up from Homefield, a coaches jacket, this t-shirt, and a corduroy hat

• I’ve been on a quest for long-sleeve t-shirts. My search has turned up a few promising options, including this one from J Crew and this Gap one

• I need a new shower curtain and I kind of want a striped situation. I’ve sent this one, this one, and this, to C

• A going out top I can wear with capris

Expense Report

• HonestBaby Wash Cloths - I’m a big fan of baby washcloths. They’re thin but not too scratchy and work well for getting in all the nooks and crannies. These are my favorite—I recently bought another five-pack.

• Some stuff from ASOS, most of which I returned

• Boring car stuff

• A plane ticket to Antigua for my sister’s birthday

• So many books I’ll probably make a video about it, including

  • Sunjata by Suso and Kanute

  • A High Price for Freedom by Clyde W. Ford

  • I Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa

  • The Last On Earth by Deepa Anappara

  • The Loneliness of Angels by Myriam J.A. Chancy

  • Cosmic Music by Andy Beta

  • Fixer Chao by Han Ong

  • Red Pill by Hari Kunzu

  • Set for Life by Andrew Ewell

  • Reel to Real by bell hooks

  • Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks

• Records from Human Head

• Many dinners out

Subscribe now

We met on the first Sunday of March at the same place we always do. We always meet around dinner time so we trade off providing food. Last time Marigold and Purple served us Peaches, chosen because it’s reminiscent of the food at Nakia’s. This time, Green and Black chose Makina, a newly opened Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurant in Sunnyside. We had two types of injera, lentil and beef sambusas, shiro, gomen, misir, and Green made lasagna that was so good, I’m still thinking about it.

Many of these foods make an appearance in I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For, a kaleidoscopic novel about the Eritrean community in the DC area. The book takes place shortly before and after independence, in the wake of a war that has displaced and scattered families across the globe, many of whom are questioning what it means to make a life somewhere they never intended and whether they can ever return home.

A condensed and edited transcript of that conversation, below. Spoilers abound.

Subscribe now

Green: I think this is probably the first Eritrean-American novel.

Black: I haven’t read any other books about our experience in this sense.

Marigold: I think it’s a good book. I had a hard time pushing through it. And so I think the pacing was hard, but then I loved all the characters. I could see them. I remember them. I would give them each a hug. I could visualize them. But I think that’s the only thing I’m just like, what was hard about keeping it in my hand? At night I would still be up and I’m just like, okay, I’ll just lay here instead of reading,

Green: I think I would have had a harder time with it if I’d read it over a longer period of time.

Bubblegum: It’s not a book version of a soap opera. But you know how soap operas just kind of never end? That’s how I feel about the book. You keep going and I’m just as interested.

Purple: What the book does most successfully, at least for me, and really where it transformed my perspective, was the need for a story to be complete and how to live a life in the absence of all of the information. Between 23andMe and ancestry.com we live in a culture that is obsessed with finding the truth. This really grounds and makes human the experience of gaps in information and why those gaps exist.

Yellow: I think she wrote it really well. Every character was very easy to understand.

Marigold: What about Berekhet?

Yellow: I don’t know, he just left.

Marigold: I thought he died.

Yellow: No, he went somewhere. We always knew he was going to go somewhere.

Marigold: Now why was that little girl kissing him on the mouth?

Purple: That actually made a lot of sense to me. I was very shocked to see that represented in a book. I was like, “Oh, this is so real. We don’t really talk about stuff like that. I thought it was really brave to do.

Marigold: She didn’t make it sexual at all.

Green: It wasn’t sexual. I appreciate that it didn’t take on all this weight and meaning. Obviously, Lydia felt anxious and awkward about it and was attributing his absence to possibly that, right? But there wasn’t a big thing where her mom finds out, Zewdi finds out, they’re shaming her, none of that.

Purple: Yeah he didn’t say anything to her or take it anywhere. It got to be her personal experience, which I appreciated. What I really appreciated about the book is that it’s fairly kaleidoscopic, but you don’t feel cheated by not having all of the information. We understand the conditions that cause the erasure of memory and the conditions that create the disruption of it as well. I really appreciated that. I feel like sometimes with books, it can feel like the author doesn’t have control of the story, but it felt like Bsrat was very true to the experiences that all these characters were having, so I really appreciated that. It was interesting to be able to be like, okay, so a lot of people are just living with gaps and have made peace with a lack of information. We have this obsession with knowing the full story or knowing the truth or knowing all sides of something as if that information will kind of change things. It was interesting to watch these characters live full lives around that. I really appreciated that. I thought that was something really cool to see on the page. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it done this way, so I was really excited by that.

Black: I had so many moments. I don’t know if I’m too close. I recognize all of it in different parts of my life with different people in my life. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to objectively review it. For me, it’s so real, down to that first kiss. My best friend and I went to a big Habesha party, and she met this guy. That was her first kiss and she found out it was a cousin. It was a little bit different. Even Lydia, with her searching for her parents and wanting to find roots, or constantly looking at the photos.

Purple: One of my favorite parts of the novel was the representation of co-parenting that’s non-sexual and platonic. I thought that was really cool about Zewdi and Lydia. In America, there’s so much focus on the nuclear family. In books written by white American authors, a family drama almost always consists of the fractures or the inherent tension of the nuclear family and does not respect or even pay any attention to alternate families. There are all these weird boundaries that they put up to kind of delineate between people and create a very neat lineage. I loved the way that this explored something else and represented a different kind of family structure that’s actually extremely common.

Bubblegum: I thought it was interesting because I’m so distant from this story. I’ve never known anything about this conflict. What resonated is not understanding who your parents are because that’s something my mom deals with. I was just thinking, I wonder how that’s going to look when Lydia is in adulthood. There’s still always going to be this longing. That transfers through generations, because while that’s not my story, I still feel that a little bit. It’s weirdly passed down. I think all the time, my mom doesn’t know who her dad is, so I don’t know who my grandfather is. And I always wonder, what is that?

Marigold: It is a common experience with our parents or grandparents’ immigration story. This idea of belonging and who are you? Why is your last name different from all of your family? And what’d you do different? And it’s a secret. I still don’t know how my mom got here. She thinks it’s a dishonor to tell your child. I think it’s dishonest.

Green: I got to see Bsrat talk about the book and she spent a lot of time interviewing folks. You can feel that texture in there. There’s so much coming through. So many people’s families will not talk about this stuff. But people will if it’s under the auspices of a project.

Black: It was imprinted in us from when we were younger that we had to memorize eight generations. It was so important, especially for my dad. I was like, “Do I need to remember all this? No, actually I’m going to erase some of it. “ There’s so many gaps that I’ve kind of been like, “It’s okay. But now, reading [the novel], I was like no, I want to find out more while I can. When my dad passed I realized there’s a lot of knowledge that also disappeared. Not just specific history, but how did you feel when you had to give up on your dreams? The feelings of it, which is very different. What are the questions that we need to ask our parents and our other relatives because it was a very transitional generation. Everybody’s spread out all over the world and then there’s a few that are still back home. It brought up a lot of things.

Marigold: Why do you think that generation of parents and grandparents keep so much secret or sacred? There’s an anti-sharing thing.

Black: They don’t think about sharing the same way. There’s certain things we just don’t talk about. They didn’t come equipped with that when they moved here. Even with my father when he was really sick. At one point it was really hard. We were like, “Oh, do you want to talk to a therapist?” He was like, “What are you talking about? Why would I talk to this other person that doesn’t know me about these things?” So they didn’t come equipped with these tools or even certain questions that we can ask. They just didn’t exist in the same way. The other thing is, it’s a survival mechanism. I thought a lot about Zewdi in terms of how she grew up. She really wanted to have a family or—

Marigold: She was told to want that and then she let that go.

Black: You don’t think she wanted it when she was younger?

Purple: I think she wanted it. Maybe compulsively and that was what she’s supposed to do, but I do think she did. What I loved about her story is that it displays the transformation of a dream. Even if she did want that, she’s on the other side of it and she got that in a different kind of way. Her acceptance and ability to have a new dream was really cool. I loved that Bsrat honored the fact that her being older didn’t make her life any less full. This idea of her being biologically childless and without a husband somehow would make her less than within the context of her community, but she was so vibrant and so involved and was this business person who people went to and still deeply entrenched in the community. She didn’t lose status because of that.

Marigold: She’s that girl. She’s now living this life that she was already trained for and she’s when she’s in LA she’s like, “I should actually love this because I’ve done this. “ That’s when I knew she wasn’t going to stay with that guy.

Bubblegum: It’s nice to hear that she was in love before. The guy that worked at the hotel didn’t work out.

Marigold: The only person in that book that was truly free was Zewdi and she was still struggling with flashbacks of hiding. Lydia was still trapped in what she didn’t know. They were all still in that moment. And even at the end, I think she was the only free person.

Black: I feel like she recognized that freedom after the whole thing with Asghedom, I don’t think she was fully freed until she told him no. That’s when she was really freed. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to LA and she was still talking to him. It was this idea of, “Oh, I should be talking because this is a good man at my age. “ But she already knew, you could tell from the beginning.

Green: It’s so striking to me that she said no. Particularly immediately post independence. A lot of the folks that were around and in the DC area and in the States for that. The very particular euphoria of that. The way they talk about it reminds me of the first post COVID summer. People are just so caught up in that joy. And so in that moment to be like, “I’m not going to do the thing that I’m supposed to do right now,” is especially bold.

Black: And everybody was going to go back but nobody moved.

Purple: I loved that. Everyone’s like, “Are you going to go? Are you going to go? “ What does it mean to return home? Especially when you now have another home.

Black: Yeah like are you American? Are you Ethiopian?

Purple: You can tell Bsrat loves Zewdi the most. And then Berekhet.

Marigold: She described him really well. I could see him walk through the door.

Purple: When she had him take the picture in front of the car, I loved that. And he was working at 7-Eleven.

Marigold: Him learning sayings through rap music.

Purple: I really loved how he kind of was like, to Elsa, “You were a freedom fighter, so I expect you to be more open-minded.” And it’s just the generational gap of what freedom looks like and what freedom means and what survival means…what the stakes were and the fundamental misunderstanding of the conditions that create behaviors between different generations of people. What freedom is to one is not what freedom is to another and it’s also not what survival is to another. That was really, really interesting to me.

Green: That’s actually maybe one of my favorite things. There’s such a complicated range of feelings about freedom, independence. Like Is this an idea? Is this a thing, a concept that you’re just wrestling with, or is this urgent? Is there no other choice? The shifts between even the Doctor’s sort of pragmatic approach.

Purple: I liked him. Though he wasn’t there a lot I got him. If I was a character in that book, I probably would be him in some ways. Maybe I’m just in this head space at this moment, but, every time I encounter something like this, I’m like, there are a lot of ways to participate. I felt that way reading The Wilderness too. The moment that we’re in now, everyone’s thinking about how to show up and how to move through the next however long. I understood his role. He’s like, ideologically, this might not be ideal, but at the same time, I’m keeping these people alive. It might not look sexy to everybody else and it might look kind of convoluted and like he’s making a lot of compromises, which he was, but even if he wasn’t value perfect or ideologically perfect, most of them are only alive because of the fact that he decided to lock in and take care of them.

Green: We need that too. There’s a lot of that in my family. My grandmother was born in Asmara. She spent a lot of her life in Addis and her siblings are mostly still in Addis and they’re all half Eritrean. My mom to this day still doesn’t like when I reference having some Eritrean heritage because she’s like, “Your family’s still there and they just have been under the radar for a long time. Don’t make it hot for them.”

Black: It’s real though, because I think about my grandmother on my father’s side. Her whole life she lived in Ethiopia and Addis and then ‘98 happened and they all had to leave because their family is from Eritrea, but have been in Ethiopia for generations. But it doesn’t matter, you go back.

Green: Yeah they forced a lot of people out.

Black: They confiscated all their properties, businesses, everything.

Marigold: That just made my heart beat fast.

Black: I mean, it’s not that long ago. Some of my family were traveling at the time, so they were never able to go back home. They were in Europe and they had to figure out how to come here. This is after the war and it was a few years when everybody was like, everything is great. It was open between the two countries. There’s a couple generations now where there’s a lot of trauma. It’s multi-level. It’s not as easy as you’re from this country, you’re from this country because it’s so intertwined.

Green: I always judge my mom for being sort of very blasé about independence. When my uncle left Virginia to go rebuild Asmara and be part of what you think of as this big fanciful ideological project he had a wife and two young children who he left in Virginia. There’s a lot of family feelings about what the project of independence means and what the work of it means. Some of the reserve and some of the tension is about that. There were other people who were helping raise his kids.

Marigold: I was thinking of Elsa a lot while reading and my grandma because of how she was with Berekhet and assimilating him to DC and what she thought he should be doing. Growing up, there were people who would come to visit, like my mom’s aunt who would come to our house for a week or two and my grandma for a few months. They stayed and they would go back. But I remember my two cousins when they first came to America and my grandma gave them the same package that she gave everyone, but it was interesting because they were staying permanently. They worked at McDonald’s, they went to a church across the street. That’s just what my grandma knew and she knew it to be right. One cousin was like, “I’m not working at McDonald’s, it smells like pickle juice in there.” And she felt so annoyed by him going against what she knows is the way to start a life here. I was reading the novel and was like, “Oh, this is such a recipe for immigrants.” It was interesting because my cousin also was like, “You don’t know and this is not what I want to do.” But I can’t say what he did was better or worse.

Green: There’s an interesting thing about how gender plays into that.

Marigold: Yeah, it’s always him.

Black: In Ethiopia with gender roles we’re very much ahead. There’s this contradiction in terms of having female warrior soldiers, but also in terms of education, there’s a lot of women that are highly educated. But then there’s the other part of it too that’s way behind. But compared to many countries in Africa, especially because of the war, allowed a lot more females to have prominent roles within the revolution and all the other organizations. Education was really important and all that and not separating the boys the same. But that part with Berekhet annoyed me so much with Elsa. Like why was she forcing him?

Marigold: There was something in her. She was also playing a role that she gave herself and he challenged all of them. He was a symbol of freedom for all of them, which is why Lydia kissed him on the mouth and Zewdi was like, “You need this man in the house.” For Elsa, he showed her who she was. They had to lean in to him to find their answers.

Purple: Kind of like Nanny McPhee. My mom kind of has that personality. If she feels like one of the cousins is going wayward, she’s like, “You just need to go to SUNY Old Westbury and just go to the thing and just go to class.” My mom was the first one to go into higher ed because my grandmother came and she worked as home health aid. My grandmother and her sisters all worked in some kind of domestic or domestic adjacent role when they came to America. My mom is the generation after that. She felt like she had to mentor everybody’s kids after that.

Bubblegum: Definitely. Someone coming from your home country and taking your room, hosting and being removed from all of your space. My parents grew up that way because my grandmother brought her entire family over and her husband’s entire family over. It was good but also harmful because you can’t trust your whole family.

Marigold: I also love that nothing about this book is her educating you. The only education you got is through Lydia a little bit. You come to this book with a knowingness or not, you go figure out what you don’t know. I love that she didn’t spoonfeed us.

Green: Yeah I thought the time jumps worked nicely that way.

Purple: The book works on different levels for different people. For some people they’re going to identify with it a lot. There’s going to be readers who read it and don’t know anything about the conflict in Eritrea. There are people who read it and identify with a that character. And then there’s going to be people who have an immigrant family and are like, oh, I recognize parts of it. So I thought that was really fascinating. I will say that from a fiction craft perspective, it was not my favorite.

Green: Did you think the book was a bit slow at the beginning?

Purple: Absolutely.

Black: The first half was very slow. It started speeding up a little bit in the third quarter and then a lot happened in the fourth quarter.

Green: That felt very Habesha to me—information being concealed, a tossed out thing. Slow, slow, slow then it kind of picks up a bit. I don’t know if it’s a stylistic thing but it reminds me of my aunts talking about stuff.

Marigold: It ebbs and flows with the pickup though because you’ll get into deep conversation, like Berekhet’s welcome party. I loved visualizing that. But then nothing happened for 20 pages. I didn’t need Lydia to get hit by a car. I do think they narrative needed it to get all the information out.

Green: I feel like they never would’ve given it out. It would’ve been drawn out. There’s something about tragedy and relief that does prompt some kind of something.

Marigold: Do you think the Swedish family knew Elsa wasn’t the mom?

Purple: The Swedes felt all-knowing. But to be honest the secret didn’t do anything for me. It could have gone either way. I also love the relationship between the mom and Twin. It was really sweet. My favorite part was when she was like, when you’re ready to talk about what’s really bothering you we can have a conversation.

Green: Yes, I did enjoy that.

Purple: I said, “Okay, sister.” She said, even in war, I’m not playing with that ass. Elsa being the reason Lydia’s dad dies was rough. I get why she doesn’t talk about anything, It’s painful.

Green: Right, like I have to wake up every day and go to work. You want me to be sitting here talking about this for a while?

Black: But as a 13-year-old she doesn’t know.

Green: Yeah of course.

Marigold: Lydia looked at that photo and something in her didn’t feel right. It’s because they bought that man in that house. He unfolded everything.

Bubblegum: The book did make me think about what it would take for me to decide to sign up for some sort of Rebel group.

Purple: Nothing. Don’t conscript my ass. I’m not even Martin Luther writing the fucking 95 theses and sticking them on the wall of the Catholic church. I’m not doing that. Hell no.

Marigold: Yeah I can’t help you with survival skills. If a bomb comes, I’m screaming.

Thanks for reading! Our next book is Kin by Tayari Jones. Hopefully you’ll read along.

Onto the post!

Notes from February

• At the top of the month, C and I turned 12. We spent our anniversary cuddled up and looking at each other, sort of in awe that we’ve spent so many years loving each other. I’m grateful to every version of us for choosing each other.

• C asks me to be her Valentine every year with a different papercraft. This year, she made a card with a little bouquet. It’s one of my favorite traditions.

  

• Allie surprised me and C with Magnolia’s on her way home from work. My friends know how much I love their carrot cake (it’s currently my favorite in New York) so it was incredibly thoughtful and a fun surprise. That night I ordered dinner from a nearby chicken spot and we watched Seeking Amish, which follows a group of people who decide to become Amish because they’re interested in leaving the secular world, which, for various reasons, doesn’t suit them. More on that later.

• We went to dinner at Roman’s with Madison and Lex. The food was out of this world. I’m still thinking about that pasta.

• Citrus was good this month so I had lots of yummy oranges. Every time I mention oranges to my mom she reminds me that she ate lots of them when she carried me so I like to think that I’ve been on this for my whole life.

• Went on two book dates this month. Both with writers I deeply admire. The second was with Tayari Jones, which you can read here.

• Mal was in town so she stopped by the apartment. We did lunch at Queen’s Room because she was craving pancakes.They make a decent one along with an excellent biscuit—it’s my favorite biscuit besides ours. I always end up ordering the kale salad with salmon, which is reliably good. We caught up on life and I nudged her on moving back to New York because I can’t imagine a summer where I don’t run into her.

  

• Telsha was in town for fashion week so her, Yaminah and I got together for dinner. We went to Lovely Day, a Thai spot on the Lower East Side that was populated with groups celebrating things. It was the perfect environment to catch up—we ate ginger fried chicken and french fries, drank wine, and chatted until they started folding up the chairs. It came exactly when I needed it and I can’t wait for us to do it all again.

• On Valentine’s Day, we went to Celia’s standup comedy show at UCB. She did great! That next morning we left for Jamaica, where we spent six days laying out and eating until we were full. We stayed at the adults-only side of Princess, an all-inclusive resort near Green Island, a little over 20 minutes from Negril. It was our first time doing one. C has always been curious, and while we wouldn’t do it again (it’s too smooth and buffered, I prefer something a hotel that’s a bit more boutique and lowkey) I’m glad we did. We agreed that we would go back with family because it’s perfect for big groups and that when we go back to Jamaica we’d want to stay at Rockhouse or Strawberry Hill. We didn’t get off the resort much but the one time we did, it was to hang out with Alex and Alena. Our dates happened to overlap so we met at Skylark, a sort-of halfway point between our hotels. We spent the afternoon laid out on Seven Mile Beach, doing shots, swimming in the rain and eating codfish fritters. As the sun set, we were a mess of limbs laying on a pool float, watching the sun sink into the sea. It was perfect.

• Allie brought me and C Valentine’s Day gifts—cards with our favorite candy. It was very sweet!

• The day after we got back from Jamaica, I met up with Tahirah and we went to the Issey sample sale. We spent hours trying on everything in our size (I bought a set) before heading down the street for lunch at Frenchette. Tahirah and I talk near-daily and rarely hang out in person but have vowed to change that this year.

• My aunt was in town so after lunch I met her at her hotel in Midtown. She wanted to see a jazz show while in town—this has kind of become our thing—so we tried to catch a show at Tomi Jazz but the line was around the block. Not in the mood to wait, I brought her back to her hotel and we ended up talking in the car for hours. There were many tangents, but one in particular that’s stayed with me and since been synthesized with my dad, is the Black church’s potential to be a cultural institution amid the collapse of our institutions. I’ll say more on that later—perhaps Good conversations I had last week part two—but we also touched on the need for Black people to rethink our value systems. If we know that the capitalist death machine is built atop our bodies and requires our death and annihilation to function, then we shouldn’t be importing those very same values into our communities and calling it success. Just a thought.

• An author I’m friendly with has sent me a selection of Heated Rivalry fanfiction, so working my way through that.

• My friend Sophia designed the Black History Month jersey for the Women’s Hockey team and they had her do the puck drop at the beginning of the game. C and I went and had an incredible time. It also sparked the thought that lots of games can be broken down into a few categories. Most are a game of keep-away with varying numbers of players and perhaps more importantly, kind of feel like versions of lacrosse.

  

• The Sirens play at the Prudential Center in Newark so after we went to Tops Diner because we were too close not to. We split wings and mozzarella sticks and I got a four-pack of oatmeal raisin cookies to go (I’m still in a phase).

• A few days later I had lunch with Jet at Dumbo House, which I haven’t been to in many moons. We yapped for hours and talked about the novel. She asked me some incredible questions about the novel. Her ability to hear words and their intention is stunning to me, she listens so carefully and responds so thoughtfully. I’m grateful whenever she lends me some brain space and offers feedback.

• Extracurricular was mentioned in Cultured Magazine’s The Substack Stars article by Sasha Bonét—a writer I admire and a person I adore. I’m thrilled to be in such good company.

Reading

I read one book this month, I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For, which I read with book club. More on that in the next send.

Watching

Less than usual!

• Hamnet - Carrie reminded me that we went to see this in December but something about going to a movie theater erases the thing from my memory. I’m totally immersed in the experience that after I forget to comment or write my thoughts down. With that said, I didn’t like Hamnet, though I think everyone in it is talented at what they do. The child actor was brilliant. I also liked the characterization of the wife, played by the incredible Jesse Buckley—who comes to regret her amenability which evolves into contempt. But ultimately it felt like a serious movie that desires seriousness, constructed explicitly to elicit feeling and awards. There was nothing surprising about it and the play went on for entirely too long. When the movie ended and we left the theater, I looked at Carrie and said, well it was a movie—and she agreed.

• Suddenly Amish - This is the latest in TLCs spate of conservative reality television, which highlights strict and secretive religious communities. The Amish isn’t new terrain for the network, but previously it was about young Amish people escaping or subverting their norms to become more secular and now it’s the other way around with disillusioned young people yearning for structure. The show is campy and insane and admittedly entertaining but the entertainment value elides the larger implications, which is that a strict patriarchal structure will offer us safe harbor, though we know that isn’t the truth at all.

• Ella McCay - This movie, which came out last year and is only very recently on streaming, is about a girl who becomes her state’s governor. It’s a comedy but it isn’t funny. At the end I thought that the film was insane and not in a good way. It’s clunky and the husband was randomly evil in the end. The soundtrack reminded me of Daddy Day Care or a Disney Channel original movie with a far worse plot and script.

• The Night Manager - I watched season two in February which I preferred to season one. It takes place five years into the future, where our night manager is on a new assignment in Colombia where he ends up on a collision course with a young arms dealer starting a counterinsurgent army of child soldiers. It’s good for lots of reasons but there’s some gay energy happening which immediately made it more compelling.

• Steal - This heist thriller made very little sense but it was a decent watch.

• National Treasure - I loved this movie as a kid, but watching it now against the backdrop of—gestures widely—changes the tone. Now, it feels like self serious science fiction that valorizes a society constructed on civility so long as you don’t open the cabinets and drawers.

• Splitsville - Watching this was my first time believing in the notion of Dakota Johnson. Critics claim that she’s talented but I just haven’t seen examples of that being true until watching Splitsville, where I thought, maybe she has been miscast. I really enjoyed this because it plays nicely with my idea that we shouldn’t dispose of the people we love even if it requires some reworking of the relationship. It also defined, quite clearly, what today’s comedy can look like. It’s somewhere between absurdist stuff like The Chair Company and Bugonia and the slapstick comedy of the early 2000s. It’s more restrained, and while there are elements of physical comedy, so much of it is situational and a matter of timing, so in that way it’s classic too.

• You’ve Got Mail - My brain is too switched on for this. The funniest part of the movie was that random lady being in love with Franco, the dictator. I laughed out loud. More and more, the protagonists of films like this, where they fall in love with corporate cronies who are unambiguously evil, just feel like the blueprint for how these women start out liberal and quietly descend into right wing talking points and stumping for Cuomo. I also watched Two Weeks Notice, which feels like it circles a similar drain but with a more moral protagonist.

• Queen of Chess - Judit Polgar is incredibly cool.

• A Mighty Wind - This mockumentary is about 1960s folk musicians who reunite for a tribute concert at Carnegie Hall. It’s very funny and stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara—¸RIP.

• The Burbs - I feel like I didn’t hear about this show enough. I really loved this series about a new mother who moves back to his suburban home town from the city, only to learn that there’s plenty of drama and hijinks in the safest town in America. Keke Palmer is fun in this and I love a motley band of armchair detectives. It also stars RJ Cyler, who is one of my favorite actors right now–I want to see him in more shows!

• I Know This Much is True — This show is a series of extremely unfortunate events. It follows twin brothers, both played by Mark Ruffalo, who have had a traumatic childhood. Both grow up grappling with their past but to differing effects. One has severe mental illness and the other, a quick temper. It is incredibly well done and also gutwrenchingly sad. It’s a good watch but it requires the right headspace.

• A Fish Named Wanda - As you know I love a heist movie and this is a classic. This one is about a band of thieves who pull off a diamond heist and spend the rest of the film trying to outsmart and deceive each other. It’s funny and insane.

• Cross - Season two is remarkably bad.

• 56 Days - This show is the epitome of a meeting that could have been an email.

• Hanging Up - I was in the mood for a Nora Ephron film so I decided to watch Hanging Up. It’s a moving portrait of sisterhood, grief and how families handle that sort of of thing. It stars Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow, an incredible trio.

• Traitors UK - UK is superior in every way to the US version. At this point I’m petitioning for the US version to be abolished. This season in particular was a real treat. I didn’t think season two of UK could be topped but this one somehow achieved it. Brilliant gameplay throughout.

In Heavy Rotation

A new rubric to encompass the things I used the most this month

• Dior Lip Oil - I’ve always been curious about this lip oil, which went viral a few years ago and became the it-girl lipgloss. I could never bring myself to buy it, but I lucked into a Sephora gift card this month and bought one in the shade Peachy. I’ve been wearing it nonstop.

• Necessaire Lip Balm - Love this one, too. It has a metal applicator, which feels nice and a slight minty scent.

• Maison Louis Marie candle - A well-priced candle that burns evenly and smells incredible. It’s more than halfway done and I miss it already.

• Flamingo Estate Petrichor Candle - Now sold-out (it’s a limited edition scent Flamingo Estate releases in January), but this has been burning in my bathroom for a bit and I have been obsessed. It has notes of Amber, Eucalyptus, Myrrh and Vetiver—it’s a fresh, grounding scent.

• Ashley & Co. Yulepine Candle - Great throw and has all the scent notes I like.

• Camp Snap Super 8 - We brought this to Jamaica to capture our trip and loved pulling it out during drives and random moments on the beach. It’s rare that C wants any parts of documenting things—I’m usually the one taking photos—but she loved using this, which is saying something. It’s superlight and easy to use—I suspect we’ll be toting it around all summer.

  

• Aestura Moisturizer - I ran out of my go-to CosRX moisturizer a few weeks ago but decided to test this after going to a preview with the brand’s PR company. I really adore the feel and am happy with how moisturized it makes my skin feel. I don’t have the typical tight feeling I get during the winter and skipped my usual bout of winter eczema altogether, which I think is due to this. I’ve also been using the hydration mist, which is really nice too.

• Clinique Body Comfort - My current favorite body butter, found while testing products for a large story for Strategist.

• Allies of Skin Sunscreen - Every time I wear this, people compliment me on my skin.

• Nairobi Wrapping Lotion - I’ve been using this on my slickback buns and blown our braid outs for the past few months and have been loving the results.

• Lands End Tote - I’m a Lands End tote truther. It has more built-in storage than the LL Bean tote and I love the small size, which fits books and not a laptop. It’s cheaper, too. Mine is also monogrammed, which I like because I can’t resist something with my name on it.

Wish List

• These now-sold out pony hair heels from Topshop

• This v-neck cotton sweater that Ali Labelle posted about. I like the Marine color too.

• These brown Relax Lacrosse pants

• This nipped-waist barn jacket from Eloquii

• While watching Hanging Up, I noticed the trench Meg Ryan was wearing, which felt pulled together but still a bit relaxed. I’ve been searching for versions of it since. My search has turned up this one from Gap.

• An unnecessarily expensive but apparently perfect white tee.

• Artwork by Sahara Longe

• Contrast piping is everywhere and I’m loving it. I want this bathing suit from SoSo, which fits the bill.

• A carrot cake Jellycat

• I’m obsessed with cotton sweaters at the moment. I have my eye on this cotton crewneck from J Crew. Also into this one from Free People, which is a little slouchier.

Expense Report

• Cleaning services because we left our apartment in a hurry and my aunt was staying the night and needed it to be nice when she arrived.

• Three books

  • Notes to a Black Woman by Francoise Ega, trans. by Emma Ramadan

  • God’s Country by Percival Everett

  • Miss Ophelia by Mary Burnett Smith

• These heels from Desigual.

• $2200 to Princess for our near-weeklong stay

• A cart from The Real Real, including this shirt from Paloma Wool and this sweater from Jenni Kayne.

• Lots of oatmeal raisin cookies

Until next time.

Subscribe now

Can you state your name for the record?

Tayari Jones.

What do you do?

I’m a novelist. I’m a professor.

What was your young reading life like?

I was a very committed reader as a child. They had this thing called the Georgia Book List. Every summer, they had a list of like 20 books and the more books children read off the list, you get prizes. I got all the prizes every year. I love the Georgia book list. I judged people who did not read the books on the Georgia Book List. The class would make art to commemorate the year’s list. One year we made a quilt. The teacher gave us each square, taught us how to do the stitch and you had to take it home and make your square. And then we returned it and she came back in a couple weeks with a beautiful quilt that we felt like we had made. Now that I’m an adult, I get it. Anyway, on the last day of school, I hung around to all the other children that left because I wanted to ask the teacher if I could take the quilt home for the summer. I loved it so much. Each book was celebrated and I wanted to have it to hang in my room while I read the next year’s books. And she said, no, the Georgia book quilt wasn’t for any one child. It was for the whole class. I was so embarrassed. I felt like I had overstepped. I didn’t read any books from the list that summer because I was so embarrassed. But there’s a happy ending to this. Flash forward 35 years or so, I was working at Rutgers and I received a box in the mail. I opened it and—I only saw a corner of the fabric—and I was like, “Oh my God, it’s a Georgia book quilt.” She said that when she retired, she remembered the little girl that wanted the quilt. But more importantly, she remembered how much that little girl loved to read. And she had seen that the following year I had not turned in a card saying my list and she connected it to this thing. She always felt so bad about that. She had seen in the paper that I had written a book and she sent me the Georgia Book Quilt.

That’s the best story of all time. Is there a book from the list that really stuck with you?

There was a book about these children, these Mormon children, and one of the children was a genius and they would subvert the adults all the time. I love that one. There was one about, I think it was called The Witch of the Cumberlands, and it was about this house that was haunted.

I wrote what I thought was a radio play to go with it. It involved me playing a flute solo as the theme music. But someone said, “Take aid from a spirit, heed the price.” I would think about that all the time, like “Well, what if a spirit offered you something really good?” I worried about it. I also remember a book on that list called Alan and Naomi. It was set in the 40s, in New York. She was a refugee from World War II and she had what we would now call PTSD. But this boy, his mom made him be nice to her because she was younger. He didn’t want a little friend and he had to take her around and they developed a friendship. I still remember the list, I can’t believe it. I also remember the prizes we got for reading books.

What kind of prizes did you get?

There was a book of coupons for Baskin Robbins and you could get a free ice cream every week and you could get any cone you wanted. You could get the sugar cone or the plain cone, or you could get it in a cup. And if you chose the cup because you didn’t get a cone, you could get a little bit of whipped cream. I was all about it.

What does your reading life look like now?

I find that I’m working very hard to recapture reading just for kicks. Because I’m in the industry and the business, I feel like I’m reading books by people I know. I’m connecting the dots. I know who people’s editors are. I want to go back to where I was when books existed for me, almost like they fell out of the sky, and get that kind of pleasure where it’s only the page. So I started reading older books where there is no hype, there is no story behind it. I could just read it. That’s kind of how I came to revisit the whole entire Toni Morrison canon. I read it for the beauty of each word beside the other.

Do you have a favorite Morrison novel?

My favorite Morrison novel is my favorite novel of all time. The one, the great, the only, Song of Solomon. It is a perfect novel. There has never been a more accomplished novel in the English language.

Not before or since.

There would never be. I don’t find Morrison inspiring actually as a writer. Because I feel like when you read Toni Morrison, you feel like, okay, the novel is done. I might as well go do something else, work in the post office, because the novel has been handled.

What’s the last book you read for kicks?

Read more

I wrote back in November about how people will try to take things from us and we will have to decide what we want to preserve and hold on tight. I have chosen to preserve my capacity for shock, awe and grief by choosing not to look upon the dead with naked eyes. I can bear witness with other senses and I do. I have chosen to grasp humanity in my fists and believe that we have the capability to create a different kind of world—that is, if the sea doesn’t swallow us first.

Anyway, onto the post!

Subscribe now

Notes from January

• We spent New Year’s Day at Crystal’s, where we ate black eyed peas, greens and cornbread. It was my first time having black eyed peas. I spent much of my childhood and nascent adulthood being a picky eater. If you asked my friends what I liked it’d be some version of chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks and french fries. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve branched out. Now, I push myself to eat at least one bite of something before dismissing it outright. Turns out I liked black eyed peas—they remind me of an earthier pinto bean. Since my experiment, I’ve requested that Connay make oxtail and black eyed peas—I don’t know if it’ll turn out but it sounds yummy in my head. While we were there, I also learned how to do the hustle (Crystal is from Detroit) and learned that there’s a whole other electric slide that people from Detroit do, which has extra moves and is done to a deep cut (at least to me) deep cut Stevie Wonder song, “My Eyes Don’t Cry”. Now I want to go to Detroit and experience it IRL.

• Lou was in town from Mexico City so I made it a priority to see them. We grabbed dinner at Fish Cheeks one night and another we had a movie night where they made me the cutest fruit plate with all my favorites. Perfect, truly.

• C turned 31 and I headed to Stray Vintage, a record store and vintage home decor shop, to buy her a gift. I meant to drop in but ended up talking to the owner Danny for hours. I visit once a quarter, probably, and we always trip into some conversation about music or the state of the world. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon. I also discovered P.F. Candle Co’s new hi-fi incense while I was there, which has quickly become a favorite. I’ve been burning the Vetiver scent faithfully and have already gifted a box to Alex.

  

• For C’s birthday we went to dinner at Daphne’s. Later in the week, we did karaoke with a handful of friends and dinner at Soothr, a Thai restaurant that recently opened a second location in Long Island City. The food is incredible, the drinks are yummy, the space is gorgeous and we were in the best company.

• We hosted Jade and Nicole for dinner this month, which sparked a spate of home decor projects. I love an excuse to spruce up the apartment and do things we’d been meaning to get to. Our biggest thing was painting the bathroom, which was a dingy white. I decided on a deep brown and spent the week before trying to decide between swatches. In the end we were between Velvet Plum by Benjamin Moore and Tea Leaf by Sherwin Williams. We went with Tea Leaf, a gorgeous deep chocolate brown. We also had the good sense to hire a painter, who did an incredible job. Happy to share his information with anyone local to NYC—just shoot me an email! We also hired a new cleaning service—Team Clean—for the visit, which ended up freeing up time for us to do other things. Would also recommend—and if you mention me, the owner Candace graciously offered some money off the first service.

• We also impulse bought a chaise for the end of the bed, which has become a laundry spot. It’s a little too big but incredibly comfy so I’m hesitant to get rid of it.

• Our friend Cameron opened his wine bar, Crybaby, so we went to the soft opening mid-month. The wine is incredible—I had my favorite pinot noir in recent memory—as are the drinks. There’s a frozen Naked and Famous on the menu that nearly knocked us flat, I can’t wait to sip that all summer long.

• We had our first book club and it went incredibly well. More on our thoughts very soon.

  

• Nicole sent us cookies from Fat Butter, a small-batch bakery her and Jade love. The maple oatmeal raisin was a revelation.

• Like everyone else we were snowed in. C requested lasagna, the one thing I know how to make, so I immediately agreed, given that she makes literally every other meal we eat. Jade happened to be making lasagna soup, so we made our respective meals together over Facetime. 10/10 recommend cooking with your friends.

• Carrie hosted us for hot pot at her apartment and it was a great time.

  

• I’ve been back in the gym in earnest this month and it has done wonders for my mood. I’ve also made a dark deal with the stairmaster. It’s punishing, but I feel accomplished when I finish. I don’t know how people are running on that thing.

• I’ve taken to wearing my cashmere sweater from Aritzia around the house. It’s cozy and also feels less slouchy than the free t-shirts I acquired in college or my Hanes. It’s also less suffocating than my sweatshirts, which are mostly made from a thick, heavy cotton.

Reading

I read two books this month—The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy and another I’m reviewing. Writing about both more extensively so more on these later!

Watching

90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days - I’ve been sucked back into the 90 Day industrial complex. It’s a particularly unhinged season where everyone is diabolical in one way or another. There’s the elderly white woman with a love addiction who has taken up with a Nigerian man that’s clearly wrapped her up in a romance scam and forces her to wear a wig (mind you she’s hiding a long lesbian past!!), the woman who’s been lying about her parents siphoning her money for many years, the Turkish man with a gambling addiction, the Black ginger who’s fallen into the manosphere—the list goes on. Usually I have a couple I like and want to see make it, but this season I have zero allegiances and lots of judgment.

Mayor of Kingstown - C loves this show about a prison town and its gray market economy so we’re watching together. It’s essentially Scandal but with Jeremy Renner.

Zootopia 2 - That’s Oscar-nominated Zootopia 2 to you. In the latest installment we’re reunited with the fox and the bunny who, since solving the big case that saved the city, have gone from pet to threat. The department isn’t accepting of the unconventional duo and are eager to go back to how things were, where the big mammals run the show. Of course our overzealous bunny isn’t willing to stand by while crime is happening around her, which kicks off another adventure. This time, the pair confront species discrimination, gentrification and some internal strife as they grapple with the fact that the same dynamic that helps them to solve crimes may also be jeopardizing their friendship. It’s a well-told and emotionally complex story, though I will say the twists felt deeply obvious in a way that felt less satisfying than the first movie.

Unlocked - This documents a prison experiment where a highly restrictive jail gives inmates privileges based on good behavior and cooperation. Many of the privileges, like a commissary allowance and free phone calls seem to be common sense and only exist to create another source of income for the jail. So that’s bleak.

Traitors US - It’s a truth universally known that Traitors US is an inferior show. The contestants are overall dimmer and the gameplay tends to be clouded by the existing alliances outside of the show. This season, the contestants have separated themselves based on their previous work. There’s the “gamers” (Survivor and Big Brother alums) and the Housewives and then everybody else. The Housewives say unhinged things like “everybody’s out to get housewives,” or “housewives don’t kill housewives,” which is so nonsensical it makes my head spin. This is a generally dim bunch but there have been a few moments of exciting gameplay—I’m interested to see how this season plays out.

His and Hers - A mess!

When Harry Met Sally - Carrie came over to hang out and let us know she’d never seen When Harry Met Sally. It was my second watch and even more charming the second time around.

Tell Me Lies - So diabolical I have a group chat titled “TML Support Group” with Lacey and Jaime. This season we’re back with this diabolical friend group and everyone is up to their nonsense. Lucy is reaching levels of insanity that have me wondering when someone will perform an exorcism. It also feels like Stephen is poisoning the well—where in earlier seasons they were his victims, now it feels like they’re all slowly becoming worse versions of themselves. Unfortunately, I’m glued to the TV.

Charlie’s Angels - Still one of the best movies of all time. This go-round, I noticed that Melissa McCarthy is in it, so that was fun!

The Mastermind - As y’all know, I love a heist movie. This one follows an unemployed man in Boston who decides to rob an art museum. It strips heist movies of the usual glamour, where the viewers become accomplices, thrilled by the payoff of the caper. There’s this celebration of the maverick who manages to outsmart the institution. This film turns that on its head, focusing instead on the reverberating effects of the main character, J.B., and his choices. I really liked it. Also it looks great.

The Night Manager - Tahirah recommended this to me, and it’s right up my alley. It’s about a hotel manager and former British soldier that gets swept into the world of intelligence. I love a spy show so this very much scratches that itch. I’m also a Hugh Laurie fan, he’s very versatile and fun as a villain.

Bridgerton - I wasn’t impressed with season four, which follows the second son, Benedict, who is resistant to marriage. He ends up falling for someone near-immediately, upending any characterization that suggested he was attached to his freedom and art career. What ensues is a Cinderella-esque storyline that I was quickly bored by. I will say, the last 30 seconds of episode four made me gasp, so I’m open to whatever’s left of this season. Nothing compares to season two!

Wish List

• I’m really loving a low-profile sneaker at the moment. Particularly these Wales Bonner ones and these from Miista.

• A cool stool from Lulu and Georgia

• I’m in search of a shoe cabinet for a wall that’s a little less than 30 inches. I could go custom, or I could try this cabinet from West Elm.

• A great, extra-long coat from Calvin Klein

• This canvas tote that was floating around in the group chat at work (the last thing I need is another tote)

• Still on the nightstand hunt. Current fixations are this one and this floating cabinet

• A floating shelf for the bathroom. I also like this wall shelf from Fern Living for the same spot.

• Loving this record storage from Simple Wood Goods

• Not a watch person, but I think this silver Casio would look nice on C.

• This Staud dress

• I have my heart set on this credenza from CB2—I think it’s the piece that will pull my living room together

• This Prada travel mug dupe

Expense Report

• A vintage Brooklyn Museum print

• Vintage bowl from Stray Vintage (pictured above)

• A new mirror for the bathroom

• A paint job ($250)

• A new bathing suit from Goldie Swimwear—which, hilariously, me and Alex both bought unbeknownst to each other.

• Sandals, a sweater, and a skirt from The RealReal

• An IKEA Pax that has to be returned

Until next month!

Subscribe now

Can you state your name for the record?

Thelma Golden.

And what do you do?

I’m the Ford Foundation director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Where are you from?

St. Albans, Queens.

What was your reading life like as a kid?

I grew up in a home, that sort of privileged reading as am acceptable and appropriate activity at any time and any moment. I also grew up in a home where my mother made a physical room in our house—what might’ve been the den for other people—into a library that my father populated across lots of genres. I also felt lucky because as a child who liked to read, my father did not make distinctions between children’s books and adult books. I often engaged with books that were far beyond my level of comprehension because they were there. Books were an important part of our daily lives. I had teachers who encouraged my reading and grew up in the Queens Public Library system. I think about the librarians at the main Jamaica branch who completely encouraged the range of my interests that were made even more possible because of the ways in which they allowed me to explore my curiosities through books. I grew up in St. Albans, so I went to the St. Albans branch. As a young person, I could walk from my house, but the great signal of my maturity was when I was allowed to take the bus by myself to Jamaica Avenue and go to the main branch.

What were the first books you remember?

The books I remember, and I think they were not the first—obviously I was raised on a whole diet of children’s books—but the first book I can remember my mother speaking about as important to her was Paule Marshall’s, Brown Girl, Brownstones. My mother grew up as a child of Caribbean immigrants in the thirties and forties in Brooklyn. I realized when she gave me that book, what she was telling me is, this is the world I come from. For my father it was Go Tell It On The Mountain. I remember him broadly speaking to me about the work of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. Baldwin is from Harlem and Langston Hughes made his career here. My father was born in Harlem in 1926. It did not occur to me again until I was older that my father lived in the world at the same as those figures.

What’s the first book that changed you?

Brown Girl, Brownstones. The story of this young girl and an understanding of history and family and identity. It was special because my mother offered it to me. I also think of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I can think of so many books I read as a very young person that allowed me to understand the power of narrative. When I was in 10th grade, the head of school at New Lincoln was a fantastic, legendary educator named Verna Oliver. She proposed as an extra credit project that we read Invisible Man together chapter by chapter. I went to her office on what would’ve been my PE break for what felt like the entire school year reading and talking about Invisible Man with her. She gave me a paperback copy, which I still have. In a way that felt like the opening for me into my commitment and stewardship of black art and culture.

Any notable books this year?

A highlight of my fall as The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. I loved it because it’s such a profoundly insightful, expert exploration of black sisterhood, both within and outside of the bonds of biology. That is something that has powered my life. I do not have biological sisters, but I have sisters who have been a deep part of the way in which I understand myself. It also allowed me to process a lot of what has happened in the world because her characters moved through this contemporary condition, both here in Harlem and LA. Over the last couple of years I had given myself a curriculum where I was reading lots of novels set in Harlem. So, doing a lot of rereading in this moment of the museum and wanting to both hold that history of Harlem, Harlem as a character in our literature, but also to be able to better narrate for myself what this moment in Harlem would mean. So the fact that I finished that curriculum in the spring and then read Angela’s novel this fall, it sort of was the last novel I read, which is set in Harlem and in the contemporary moment.

Any books you’re hoping to get to?

Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. Nia Imara, Painting the Cosmos. There are many new exhibitions with fantastic catalogues, and one amazing one: Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo. I’m also a rereader, I’m constantly going back to books. Then there’s certain books I like to read at certain cadences. I read Sula every three years so I feel like I’m at that time. I’m always moving between old and new. Fiction is the thing I read the most but I also read a lot of nonfiction. I love essays. I’ve been really rereading [Joan] Didion over this past year or so. I am always thinking about the ways that my reading life can be in conversation with my looking life, because my looking life is really what consumes me. I spend most of my time looking at art. Sometimes I want [the book] to be different. At other times, it’s a way to go deeper into what might be.

Why did you pick the Studio Museum bookstore?

I love catalogs and art books and my relationship to my interest in art really began in museums as a young person going on field trips and growing up in the city, but also in the library, looking at big monographic books of artists and flipping through them at the Queensborough Public Library. Those books were not for circulation. They were books that I looked at at the library. They appeared to me then to be huge, both big and thick. They continue to be, that’s just the nature of them. As a curator, I think about the catalogs for my exhibition as worlds unto themselves. They’re related to the exhibition, but at the same time, they’re crafted and created to allow someone an experience even if they did not see the exhibition. When I look on TikTok, lots of people use art books as decor. I’m not a hundred percent mad about that, but I often want to say to people that it can be like having an exhibition in your home. So when I see them closed in people’s homes, I say, no, open it. Give yourself the chance to take a look. Maybe every day, turn a page, look at a work. And also, if you are intrigued, take a look at the writing that’s inside.

Who in your life has the best reading taste?

This is a hard one. One of the great privileges of my life is that I have come to know many of the writers whose work I love. It’s a result of having the privilege of being the director of this institution for 25 years. I don’t know if I can answer it that way, but the person who I think has an influence on me continuing to have a reading life that is broad and deep and eclectic, and often doesn’t suggest, in that you must read this, but points a lot, is the author and my dear friend Hilton Als. Hilton is a profound reader and an extraordinary, brilliant writer. My engagement with his work often widens the scope of my reading life. He lays out sets of ideas in profound ways that then allow me to understand that there’s either a speculative fictionalized world that I need to engage in one that lives in the realm of nonfiction. Sometimes when I get into these modes where I’m reading a certain kind of thing, and I’ll say to him, is that strange? And he always has a read on why it’s not.

I’m also curious. As we got ready to open this building I was spending time on many social media channels that weren’t ones I was engaged in myself. That’s what landed me smack in the world of BookTok. It fascinates me endlessly. I am deeply interested in the ways that relationship between readers, authors, their books and audiences mediated through social media. It has such a profound effect on the ways people move through their own reading lives. The algorithm, I guess, can’t tell who I am exactly so I’m in several sub genres of BookTok. I end up in a part of BookTok that’s so niche. I love it because all of a sudden I’m like, okay, wait, what is this? I’m constantly screenshotting. I love reading literature from other places. Recently, I was interested in a BookToker speaking about Afro-Brazilian literature, but I was looking and found that many of them were not yet in translation. It gives me other worlds to explore. BookTok also confirmed what was always a side quest for me: seeing the foreign editions of books I love. Inevitably, I want to buy them. That would usually happen with travel.

Another category of books that, no matter what, I’m going to buy is non-art books that use works of art by artists of African descent on their covers. You do that, I’m buying your book pre-order.

How would you describe your literary taste?

Eclectic. Eclectic because I don’t always love the things that everyone loves. Sometimes I feel I should read them, I want to talk about them. But then I realize, no, but I want to actually read the things that truly are inspiring to me. A lot of my reading taste has been informed by my education. I was a high school student who had teachers who were deeply committed to my reading life, such that I got to spend time every week talking about Ralph Ellison. When I was in college, I was a double major in art history and African-American studies. The African-American studies department that I studied in was very humanities, social sciences based. There was a lot of focus on African-American literature, and because I was a student at Smith College, particularly Black women’s literature. I feel grounded in that literary tradition. But also having gone to a liberal arts college that continues to be deeply committed to the humanities, It formed a base for how I think about what I love.

Read more

Last month I declared that in December I said I would become a recluse and I did not, though I did get deep into my routine and closer to the things I’ve set out to do (I’m running out of ways to say I’m working on the novel). I wrote quite a bit, enough that it feels like progress, and finished a short story I was running from. I went to the gym a bunch and got back to waking up at 5AM, when I can hear myself best. I saw friends a lot, which is when I’m happiest and FaceTimed my sister often. By the end of the month I felt better and I went into the new year (writing this from 2026!) feeling cautiously optimistic.

Anyway, onto the post!

Subscribe now

Notes from December

• We started out the month at Babe. I’ve been to every event they’ve hosted since September and at this point it has become ritual. Everyone there is beautiful (important to me) and now we have a good group of people we tend to go with. C and I met up with said group and spent the night drinking lots of wine, running into people we knew and people watching. It was a great time. At the end we all hugged and promised to see more of each other in the new year.

• A few days later, Nicole invited me to her friend Yaya’s art show. It was that night, which was great because I love a spontaneous plan—it shortens the time between my yes and the event, which means I stay excited. The show, Late Stage Babe, explores the commodification and exploitation of Latina women through prints that depict Yaya as a cutout doll. I really enjoyed it. After, we headed to Bar Valentina for a quick nightcap where we split steak frites (this place has great french fries), drank seltzer and ginger ale and talked about life. I love a deep chat in a low-lit bar so this was my ideal night. I also wore a very cute outfit—I love an excuse to catch up.

• A friend, who I’ll call Marigold for reasons that will become clear later, and I started a book club. It’s in person, which I’m excited about—I believe 2026 will be a year of gathering—and includes some of the most brilliant women we know. With their permission, I’ll be publishing their anonymized thoughts on the novels we read, contemporary fiction mostly written by Black women. We chose contemporary fiction because it’s important to engage with work being created right now. We often venerate past works and declare that our best days are behind us, but I find that to be nihilistic and untrue. Incredible things are created every day, every year, and it’s on us to support, amplify, engage and critique the existing work, especially if we want to see more of it. At the end of our meeting I’ll publish “Book Reports,” which will include questions we asked, things the text brought up, what we liked and where we challenge the work. Even though our in-person book club is a small group, we would love it if people read along with us and shared their thoughts, whether that’s in an email reply or comment. Our first book is The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.

• Alex hosted a holiday gathering at Lucky Strike in Queens. She split us up into three teams of six and gave said teams reindeer-themed names (Dasher for life!!). To make things competitive, the losing team had to settle the tip. Everyone got very into it, swapping bowling advice, strategizing and switching out balls every few frames. The DJ also happened to be incredible that night, so much so I kept saying that I would follow him wherever he went—and I mean it! (DJ FX if you’re curious). I left feeling like we should do this all the time, a telltale sign that we had a great night.

  

• A few days later I had lunch with Sasha Bonét, who I adore. She’s a brilliant writer and so smart I could talk to her endlessly. We went to Abracadabra Magic Diner, a Turkish spot in Ridgewood, where we talked writing and relationships and I had a borek for the first time (big fan).

• Alex has a love songs playlist that she makes yearly and graciously shares with us. I’ve been listening to it on shuffle while I go about my day and have found new favorites, like Stevie Wonder’s Visions, which I’ve been listening to obsessively.

• I’ve started waking up at 5AM again and I realized that it’s been the missing piece of my routine. I need silence and twilight to get into the thing and I’m trying to organize my life around that.

• Yaminah hosted a game night at her place which was lots of fun. She made chili and cornbread and put out a fruit plate. I ate all the honeydew melon. I Shazamed a lot of music. I’m a shameless Shazammer. I can often be found in a restaurant or bar or coffee shop with my phone balanced above my head like a wine glass. I know that I look silly but I don’t care. What makes the whole thing even more ridiculous is that my Shazam works about 45 percent of the time so I often lose the song or wait until it’s on its last notes to decide I need it in my library. It’s a whole thing but I enjoy the thrill.

• C and I had tacos from the place on the corner which makes a passable al pastor but isn’t as good as our old truck by the subway which left when they started renovating our stop and never returned. While we ate we read our individual books—she was listening to Heated Rivalry on audiobook while I was paging through a novel I eventually put down and I remember feeling really content at that. I love when we “parallel play” and do our own activities next to each other.

• Sean came over and we went to a Moroccan spot in Astoria, Dar Lbahja, that’s lowkey and makes a very good lamb shank and couscous. The tea is great too, as are the french fries. After, we came back to the apartment, watched episode four of Heated Rivalry and ordered Insomnia cookies.

• On that same note, I’m obsessed with Insomnia Cookies right now. They make my favorite oatmeal raisin and they deliver.

• I had my dream book date. More on this later.

• I went to the Studio Museum archive sale where I picked up more books than my shoulder could reliably lug home. I also bought the tote bag, which is very sturdy and nice-looking. I also ran into Angela Flournoy which felt lucky, given that she’s our January book club pick!

• That same night, I was back in Harlem for dinner with Jet. We went to Clay, where we split sausage and broccoli rabe paccheri (my first time having broccoli rabeI didn’t hate!) and roasted chicken. It was supposed to be a quick thing before going to Harlem Fete, a Black literary party, but in true us fashion, we ended up talking until late. When we did finally pull up, it was a half-hour before the party ended and I spotted Brit Bennett pulling on her coat. Once inside, I ran into practically every writer I admire along with my first publicist, Karintha, who I adore. At some point, I realized I was standing feet from Jacqueline Woodson, which made me freeze. I don’t get starstruck unless it’s with writers because I’m both impressed and intimidated. She was talking to Ola, who runs The Free Black Women’s Library, and Verta, who had on this beautifully tailored blazer and great glasses (and will be starting a Substack one day soon). I was telling Jet I would love to meet her and so she wrote it out on her phone and showed it to Ola which turned into the phone being handed directly to Jacqueline. It was hilarious and slightly embarrassing but also delightful. Jacqueline thought it was funny (I think) and I tried to say a coherent sentence, which I’m almost certain I failed at. Anyway, that’s the story of how I met Jacqueline Woodson and also how I decided Jet is one of my favorite people on the planet (I suspected this already but certainty is a gift!). I’m excited to go back next year.

  

• Celia turned 31 so we went bowling in Sunset Park. I’ve bowled twice in a month which is very frequent for me because I usually go once a year if at all. The alley was old school in the way that actually old stuff is. There’s the anachronistic updates alongside the things they didn’t bother to change. It was like going to your grandparents house where there’s a flat screen on top of the TV in a wooden box and vintage Happy Meal toys and photos of Obama (always in his first term). It was packed out and noisy and they ran out of shoes so I bowled in my Crocs. It was great. I also had my first dirty Shirley Temple, which I didn’t know was a real thing until Carrie told me she drinks them all the time.

• Sydney had her annual holiday party which is always one of my favorite events of the year. I got to talk books with Eliana, catch up with Olivia and Kayla and laugh with Madison U, who I don’t see often enough.

  

• A few days later, Taszie came up for her birthday (her and Celia have the same birthday!). She turned seven this year, to which my dad made a 6-7 joke by way of a South Park gif which feels very him. My stepmom took her to see Hamilton and then we met them at the American Girl Doll store . She chose a Bitty Baby. Then we walked over to see the Rockefeller tree, where we took some photos. From there we hopped on the subway to go to dinner with my dad. We went to Charlie Bird, an Italian spot that plays lots of old-school hiphop and has good food. It was pretty much fan service for my dad, who I knew would like the vibes, but also fulfilled Taszie’s request for pasta. After, my dad said, we could come here again, which is the ultimate sign that he enjoyed it.

• A couple days after that—I know and love lots of Sagittarius’s—we headed to Jersey for Jade’s surprise birthday party. We had the best time, so much so that we didn’t leave until almost 3AM. There was always another shot to sip, a song to sing or thing to talk about. We also met another couple we clicked with and the six of us are planning a triple date. We’re thinking of going bowling.

  

• Christmas was two days later. We always have a lot of stops—this year there were four. In the past year we’ve started driving down on Christmas Day because we get to wake up in our own bed wearing matching pajamas. It also usually means less traffic because everyone has been running around and traveling the day before. Our first stop was C’s aunt’s house, where we did a big breakfast with her parents and their siblings. We ate biscuits and potatoes and watched the Commanders v. Cowboys game. I also had her aunt’s carrot cake, which is very good. Next, we went to Lacey’s grandfather’s house. He lives down the street from my dad, so we popped over there to drop off a gift and then over to my grandmother’s where we ate and laughed and rehashed decades-old family drama. As my grandmother ages she’s become more unapologetic, which I’m obsessed with. We also celebrated my grandparent’s anniversary (63 years married). After we cut the cake, she told us about the three pieces of advice she received about how to choose a partner. Her teacher told her to marry for money, her great-aunt told her to marry for potential, and her mother told her to marry for love. I asked her which one she picked, and she told me not to worry about that. Finally, we went to Woodbridge to C’s grandma’s house. We spent time with our cousins, took family photos and hung out with my in-laws.

• The next day was my stepmom’s birthday. We went to brunch at First Watch with all the in-laws, which I loved. Ten years ago, I never imagined we’d be able to do anything even close to that so I’m grateful that we’ve made it to this place.

• Sophia and I had an impromptu hot chocolate date at Brooklyn Farmacy (the chai hot chocolate is incredible). We were hungry before so we wandered into Untable, a Thai spot down the street. It had dim lighting and great music, good food and a bartender with great recommendations and even better energy. We were pleasantly surprised and charmed by it. A reminder to walk-in and check reviews later.

• I’ve been driving a lot, which is different because most people would say I’m a passenger princess.

• Lou is in town from Mexico City so we got dinner at Fish Cheeks. We chatted until they made us give up our table and then drank tea at the bar.

• I used up a Barnes and Noble gift card during their big sale. I ended up buying two books.

• Alex and I went to dinner at Milly’s where we shared french fries and a prawn roti dish I’m still thinking about. During dinner asked me about how I want the novel to feel and I said like this. She said like two girls girling? And I said yes but I also meant that I want it to feel like conversations with someone you have a shared language with and can tell anything to: confessional, a little dishy, like being in a back room even in the middle of a crowded bar. We’ll see if I get there. I also told her about a realization I had recently—that I love how our friendship feels unique but not special. By that I mean I know I am not the first or only friend that she’s loved/loves well. I see it in the way people show up for her and the rooms she curates, the way people say her name. It’s an incredibly lucky thing to have an Alex, to be loved carefully and heard fully. I’m lucky to be part of that group and in the best company. To call her a sister-friend. I feel doubly blessed to be writing and thinking at the same time as her. She has put words to feelings and thoughts I’ve had but couldn’t articulate and been an example for how to show up as oneself and to be brave. I often learn through a processing of bearing witness and then incorporating. I need to see it done and I need to admire it. She is the best example. I am grateful to be led by it.

• C and I had a quiet New Year’s Eve in, which is my preferred way to enter the year. We went to the gym in the morning, did a little grocery shopping, watched a movie, ordered pizza (took a chance on a new spot and it was incredible, a new favorite), sipped a little champagne and were in bed well before midnight. I also wrote down my intentions for the following year, the things I’d like to prioritize and things I’d like to let go. I don’t journal, it’s not my thing, but this is the closest I’ve come to it in a long while. I tend to focus less on concrete things and more on concepts to return to. This year, my words are nurture, cultivate, and rigor. There are a lot of things I want to keep and other things I want to grow—relationships, projects, etc. Rigor though, that’s my highest ideal. It’s because it makes sense of the pursuit, less about the end product and more about process. It’s beyond instinct, though instinct isn’t totally divorced from rigor, but rigor values accuracy and precision, something I could stand to have more of. I’d like to go deeper this year and take more time with the things I care about. To keep asking questions, better questions. I’m fascinated with what makes a good question and so I’d like to get good at that this year. I want to follow my curiosity all the way down, wherever that leads. I’d love to know what you’re pursuing, if anything, so please tell me about it.

Reading

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Brathwaite

I was a My Sister The Serial Killer evangelist so I knew that I’d read Cursed Daughters when it came out. Brathwaite’s second novel follows a family grappling with a curse that unravels all their romantic relationships. To make things even more complicated, Ebun’s daughter Eniiyi, looks just like her dead cousin Monife, which has the family convinced that she may be her reincarnation. Even though there’s an element of the supernatural with the curse, Brathwaite resists focusing on whether it’s working or not. Instead, in an impressive show of restraint, the novel grapples with the space between fate and free will. Whether the curse is real or not is immaterial if everyone behaves as if it is. It makes a ghost story deeply human. It also led me to meditate on the way we construct reality and how the truth is in part shaped by its participants. It wasn’t a perfect novel, or even a favorite (when Siraad asked about it I told her it was a quick read but not necessarily a “good” one) but it achieved its goal successfully.

The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

I read The Sisters next, which I’d seen recommended by Hunter and a few other people. It’s about three sisters and their neighbor Jonas, who shares a name with the author. The decades-spanning family drama follows the girls from early adulthood to proper adulthood and dips back into their childhood by way of Jonas. It’s a chunky book but somehow moves quickly—the writing is precise and intimate and almost a little breezy. It’s my kind of book—family drama, imperfect, interesting people, a secret that could upend everyone’s lives. I liked it ultimately, even if it got a little less coherent toward the end. Would recommend!

Heart the Lover by Lily King

This was my last read of the year. I read it in two sittings over the course of a day—it has this propulsive structure that sort of holds you hostage until the end. It’s about a girl named Jordan (a pseudonym), who meets these two boys, Sam and Yash, and starts dating Sam while also building this friendship with Yash. Jordan makes a choice that changes the dynamic of their friend group, which reverberates in the ensuing years. I liked the first half best and found the back half to be melodramatic, but for some people (many people!) it worked. Mbiye started reading shortly after I did and said she really enjoyed.

Watching

Way less TV than normal!

Boarders - This is a Tubi original about a group of kids from South London who go to an expensive boarding school that launches a scholarship program to rehab their image after a PR crisis. I really like it. Very character driven and everyone feels distinct. Season one was really entertaining and I found myself rooting for all of them, even when they frustrate me. I’m excited to see how season two unfolds.

Eddington - Ari Aster’s latest, Eddington, is a thriller about a sheriff who decides to run for mayor and his campaign against the incumbent. It’s a sort-of dark comedy that explores the absurdity of the COVID-era, and explores the way information can be used to distort and exploit. I thought it was interesting if not good and it also begins to think about the incoherence of whiteness without exploring it outright. I can’t say I liked it, but there were moments I was entertained.

Caught Stealing - I don’t really know what anyone was talking about in this because I was staring at Austin Butler and Zoe Kravitz together. They look good. I kind of get why the girls like him now. All that said, this movie was fine.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t - C and I went to see this in theaters and I was deeply disappointed. I liked the first and second movie a lot. I understand generally that Now You See Me is sort-of silly. It’s about a secret society of Anonymous-esque magicians who are fighting inequality through sleight of hand. It’s ridiculous and I get that but at the very least it was entertaining and the tricks were fun to watch. So it’s not that I’m unable to enjoy the premise of the Now You See Me-verse but rather that the third movie was a total flop that at its core undermines the franchise. It tossed so much of the characterization and lore they built up in previous movies out the window and it also wasn’t well-told. The middle was saggy, and while they managed to pull it together a bit in the final third, it still fell super flat. I’m particularly sad because I decided to see this over Zootopia 2, which I now realize was a big mistake.

Wake Up Dead Man - Now this is how you do a third installment. I fear this might be my favorite of the Knives Out movies thus far. It follows a priest who is moved to a small parish helmed by a problematic priest in upstate New York after punching a fellow clergyman. In Knives Out fashion a murder happens and though the case seems impossible to solve, the answer is hiding in plain sight. Of all the movies, this one felt the least twisty but had the most heart. It’s the first where the side characters felt less important—less ensemble, more character study—but it really worked. As always, it gestures toward broader social archetypes and the issues de rigeur. Unlike Knives Out, which poked fun at the rich and Glass Onion, which took aim at the technocrat billionaires, Wake Up Dead Man was mostly interested in the cult of personality and how religion can be peverted to sow fear and distrust. I really enjoyed it, I would watch 101 more.

American Conspiracy: The Octopus - I love a conspiracy/cult documentary so when this came up in my recommended tab on Netflix, I put it on in the background while I worked. It’s about a possible government coverup that was discovered by a journalist who was later found dead. It’s less exposé and more primer about the nature of spycraft and the gray areas of intelligence. Interesting overall.

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story - This documentary focused on the psychologist/life coach Jodi Hildebrandt, who was Ruby Franke’s literal partner in crime and abuse. What I found most fascinating about the documentary was how many of the experts and witnesses they included were part of the Mormon church who were trying to wrap their minds around the church’s patriarchal culture being exploited to create an environment of abuse without criticizing the existing structure. The victims who felt empowered by Jodi’s teachings were in a situation where they were told they had no voice or control over their sexuality or choices. If there was no need for a Jodi-like figure to tell women it’s okay to push back, she wouldn’t have been as successful at getting so many women to sign on to her program. It was interesting to watch them skirt around it. Anyway, I’m glad she’s under the jail where she belongs.

Two for the Money - I’d never heard of this sports drama, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Robert DeNiro. It’s about an enigmatic gambler who runs a sports betting advisory firm and the hotshot he takes under his wing. It’s not a good movie but Matthew McConaughey looks good in it, which counts for something.

The Threesome - This movie reminds me that it’s not always the plot but also the tone and aesthetic of a film that determines how it’s received. It’s about a man who has a threesome with his dream girl who he’s not-yet-dating and a random girl they meet in a bar. Things happen and it’s the kind of plot that would be totally at home at Tyler Perry Studios. What I did like is that it shows the contrast between what it looks like when someone is interested and willing versus when there’s nothing exactly wrong but nothing quite right either. The film did a great job showing the difference.

One Battle After Another - I wasn’t moved! A lot of people have written intelligently about this film and its depiction of Black women so I won’t reiterate it. I will say the cinematography is good, I particularly liked the car chase scene.

Wish List

• A writing retreat—if there is a hotel in the world that would like to sponsor this, let me know. If there’s a beach involved, even better!

• I’m also manifesting a vacation so I’ve been window shopping in advance. I’m interested in this swimsuit. I also want these Aqua Turf water shoes

• A Simplehuman paper shredder—I have so much paper I would like to responsibly dispose of

• A coffee table. After five-ish years I’ve decided I want one. I like this burl one from Ferm Living, this square one from Lulu and Georgia (I like the legs), this other sculptural one from Lulu and Georgia (created in collaboration with Eny Lee Parker). I’m also open to a padded ottoman like the Dalia from Sixpenny or this one from Soho Home.

• I’m still thinking about trays and this one, which has feet, is very cute.

• A Dupray steam cleaner because I’m unoriginal

• A new kitchen island

• These barrel pants from Gap

• A beautiful candle from Pacha Soap

• A knit Adidas x Wales Bonner jacket because I saw Tahirah’s mom in a knit set when they went on vacation

• Also this Adidas Firebird zip up

• A black cherry Owala water bottle

• This Cadence makeup bag

• New nightstands with storage

Expense Report

• A stainless steel French press from Quince because the glass one dropped

• Technically I was gifted these but I got my second pair of Everybody.World Tubular pants and I’m very thrilled

• I tithed to AMC Stubs because I didn’t go to the movies much, though seeing the one movie, the subscription still basically paid for itself

• Lots of ASOS that went back

• A Roblox gift card for Taszie, an Uber gift card for Sharif

Read about our date below.

Can you state your name for the record?

Akwaeke Emezi.

I’ve been saying your name correctly and I’m so proud of myself.

You should be. A lot of people fuck it up.

What do you do?

I tell stories.

Where are you from?

Nigeria.

How did growing up there shape you?

My parents deeply encouraged reading. I read so much as a kid. We had a secondhand book market in the town I grew up in, where you didn’t need money, you just needed books. You could show up with 20 books and exchange them for 20 more books. It was this massive book swap. I would go all the time and get through 20 books in a week. My mom thought I was not reading that fast, and then I was, and she was like, oh, okay, we need to get you more books.

What books were you reading?

I read hundreds of books in my childhood. A lot of Enid Blyton. A lot of James Harriet. A lot of Nigerian writers, CS Lewis. Anything I could get. I read magazines. I read the labels on every product in the house. I read my dad’s Readers Digest condensed novels. I read everything I could get my hands on.

Were there any books that shaped you?

All of them did. I liked stuff that had magic in it. I was like, magic is real. I stand by that position.

How many books did you read last year or this year?

I don’t count. I read a lot. An average novel takes about two hours to read. I don’t track my reading. I read, return it to Libby, and push through. More than a hundred for sure.

A standout book?

The Paladin series by T Kingfisher. I’m a sucker for fantasies that involve Gods. Give me a fantasy that has Gods in it and I’m all in. This one involves a murdered God and the saints who used to serve that God who are left behind. Rebecca Roanhart did a fantasy series that’s about indigenous Americans and involves Gods as well. N.K. Jemisin. People be talking about the Broken Earth trilogy but there’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

So that should be my entry into Jemisin.

That was my entry. Broken Earth is really intense. I read that series once and I was like, this devastated me, and I do not think I’ll be reading it again.

If you had to give someone a book to understand you, what book would that be?

My memoir, Dear Senthuran and Freshwater. Here you go, Akwaeke starter pack.

Freshwater fucked me up.

Fucked me up to write it.

How would you describe your literary taste?

It definitely veers speculative. A lot of people think that I read literary fiction because I started in literary fiction, but that was actually just a marketing move. When I was a baby writer and I was looking at the industry I thought if I start writing speculative, I’m going to get stuck in speculative. Literary fiction is the “most respected” so no one questions if you’re good. I started there and kept detouring into YA, but speculative has always been my favorite genre. I primarily read fantasy and romance. People will tell me a literary fiction book came out and I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Who are your favorite fantasy and speculative authors?

Read more

Notes from November

• We started the month at Lacey’s dad’s 60th birthday party. His birthday is on Halloween so it was a properly spooky soiree. Lacey went all out—there was a balloon garland that wrapped the staircase, red lighting everywhere, a food truck with incredible fried fish and wings (will be booking them in the future). Connay and I dressed up as Bob and Linda, fitting because we own a food business. At 1AM, most-everyone had filed out, but we hung back to help clean and wind down, which culminated in my favorite moments of the night—us dancing to “Take Me Thru Dere” in the kitchen and Lacey’s dad telling us stories. He’s an incredible storyteller—I always end up laughing until my stomach hurts.

• The next morning, hungover, I somehow made it to the gym with my cousin Mohsen. I do think this working out after a night out thing is working—I did unfortunately feel better after. Post-gym, we had a long lunch and talked about the state of our family. We feel the ground shifting under our feet as our parents and grandparents age and we get to decide what to do with it. Luckily we’re on the same page about maintaining our foundation.

  

• The following week I dinner at Polo Bar (fancy!) with Caroline, two of her clients—the founder of Saint Supply and Noem, respectively, another beauty writer and a facialist who I regularly pester with questions about skincare. One of them was psychic. She told me some very spot-on things about my life and the people in it. Nothing shocking, but I love a moment of divine clarity and orientation.

• I had dinner with my friend Asiah at Trad Room in Bed Stuy, which Alex later explained to me is the “Wendy’s of Bed Stuy”. We sat knee to knee at the bar and spent the night laughing so hard i think we made the people next to us uncomfortable. We’re friends who instantly had a good feeling about each other and decided to make the friendship concrete later. We attended each other’s weddings maybe four months after knowing each other, and I’m glad we did. She’s become my girl and I look forward to our nights spent.

• I watched the most recent season of Selling Sunset and live-reacted to it in Madison M’s messages. We’re nine seasons deep in this thing now, and it’s one of my favorite traditions we have.

• Chamel and I have been going to the movies weekly and sending each other outfit picks in addition to reviews. What I wore to see Bugonia, below:

  

• Zohran won! I’m thrilled!

• We did date night at Jade and Nicole’s. C made her famous chicken soup and we drank too many Cutwaters.

• Carrie and I went back to Fish Cheeks because we couldn’t stop talking about it. This time, we brought C, who is allergic to shellfish but convinced it isn’t real. She had the wings, one of the few shellfish free things on the menu and she brings them up at least once a week.

• When we went to the Available Works Book Fair a few weeks ago we met a seller who told us about the WFMU record fair, which is exactly as it sounds. C collects records so we made it a priority to go. We ended up chatting with meeting donald byrd

• Spent a day browsing furniture in Industry City with Carrie, Ryan, and Allison. The West Elm outlet is actually quite good. I was less impressed by Design Within Reach, but I did sit on lots of office chairs, which narrowed my search considerably.

• One of my favorite performances of all time is Dorinda Clark-Cole singing Still Here. I’ve watched the Youtube video of it at least three times this month

• C doesn’t have a Twitter, or Threads, so sometimes she texts me things she would tweet. It’s the cutest thing.

• I worked in fits and starts on a piece. I sent it to Camille and we zoomed about it, at which point she said, please send me something you even remotely believe in. It floored me that she saw me and my work with such clarity—I’m grateful to have her as a sounding board.

• My friend Shay turned 35 and had a yearbook party. It was nostalgic in the best way. We posed for photos, ate Domino’s pizza and drank Caprisuns. After, a lot of us migrated to Aux, a karaoke bar in Bed Stuy, where we sang deep cut R&B songs and ate wings. At some point we sang gospel acapella because they didn’t have it in the song library.

  

• Tamara lives in Brazil, but one way we stay connected is swapping music. This month, she sent me a bunch two songs: all over u by Rowena Fysx and Your House by Steel Pulse. I sent three—Love, Love, Love by Donny Hathaway, Ribbon in the Sky by Elmiene (the entire live album is insane) and Continuum 1 by Nala Sinephro.

• Thanksgiving was busy as it always is. We had three stops this year. We started at my mom’s which is the closest to us, where we ate oxtail and macaroni pie and watched Stranger Things. My mom, on the phone with someone in Jamaica, making her rounds, referred to me and C as the girls, which I adored because it’s a reminder that she looks at the two of us and sees her kids. Then we went to C’s family’s house, where my in-laws squeezed me tight and we ate fried turkey (incredible) and carrot cake. We ended at my grandma’s house with my cousins, where we ate half a plate (we were stuffed by then) and talked until midnight, reminiscing on our lives together. I ended the night washing all the dishes (I didn’t cook anything, so this was my contribution) and listened to my grandma talk about how good her memory was when she was in the sixth grade.

• The next night, we went to Mohsen’s apartment for our newly-invented cousins night, where we drank wine, smoked hookah and played card games. We were up until late, which was inadvisable because we had to get up for my grandma’s brunch the next day. We made it, albeit later than originally planned. We said one and it ended up being two. We didn’t eat until five. My grandmother, in her silky mumu, refused to sit down even though we told her there was nothing for her to do. All of her kids, minus my uncle Timmy, were in attendance and almost all the cousins. My mom was there too. It was big and beautiful and blended. I drove back to New York thankful and deeply grateful that we can come together like this. It was like a deep exhale.

  

• In between all that we squeezed in a quick brunch at Mbiye’s, where we ate waffles and I revealed my inability to dance.

• The night sky at my dad’s. It’s a blanket of stars.

Reading

• I read one book this month, Palaver by Bryan Washington. It’s about a man living in Tokyo whose estranged mother shows up on his doorstep. It’s a classic Washington novel and I really enjoyed it. I reviewed it for Vulture’s Book Gossip newsletter, where I said something more coherent.

Watching

All the things!

• Sorry, Baby - This is a film about a woman navigating life after experiencing trauma that alters her life. I liked it okay. It was too short and not meditative enough but there were a few moments that really stuck with me, namely her finding the kitten and that man being very nice to her while she cried in the car. Her friend also had a very cute baby.

• The Chair Company - I watched three episodes of this. The premise is essentially, what if instead of you experiencing an embarrassing moment, it was actually a grand conspiracy that kicks off an adventure with lots of twists and turns. I couldn’t get into it, mostly because the main character is horrible to everyone and every projection he has turns out to be true.

• I Love LA - I saw a Thread that described it as what would happen if your roommate got her screenplay made, a pitch perfect way to describe it. I really disliked the first episode but I enjoyed the second. It’s growing on me, I’m still only laughing once per episode. Maybe twice. The more Tallulah we get, the more I like it. I also didn’t buy into the lesbian chef character but that rice moment made me blush a little, I won’t lie!

• Bugonia - Yorgos’s latest is about a man who decides to take justice into his own hands by kidnapping the CEO of the pharmaceutical company that hurt his mother. There’s an interesting question here: Does Michelle, played by Emma Stone, deserve to suffer on behalf of bureaucratic violence? By holding her solely responsible, it personalizes a largely faceless and often unaccountable institution. The film doesn’t spend much time here though, because, as I was saying to Martha when we discussed it, Yorgos is less interested in these topics and more invested in using these as entry points to do weirder shit. Not only is Michelle this CEO who has done evil things under the guise of research, Teddy, her kidnapper, believes she’s an alien. At first, she vehemently denies this, and he tortures her until she begins to play along. In the end, Teddy turns out to be right—she is the alien queen he believes her to be. While this ending made sense, it ended up sending the message that Michelle’s torture was justified because it ended up being what he thought, It also suggests that humanity’s savior is an unhinged, extreme white man who’s pretty much a serial killer—which, if feels like a weak case. Beyond all that, I thought the movie was quite funny and there were lots of moments where I was cackling in the theater, it’s my exact humor, so I enjoyed those parts of it, even if I didn’t like the movie overall.

• After the Hunt - You could go see this, or you could rewatch Tar. It’s about a tenure-track professor, Alma, who has a weirdly intimate relationship with another teacher, Hank, vying for a similar role. She also has a too-close relationship with her TA, who is clearly enamoured with her and wants to emulate the way she looks and moves. Things take a dark turn when the TA, Margaret (Ayo Edebri’s character) accuses Hank of assaulting her and Alma reacts poorly, questioning Margaret’s credibility and then practically abandoning her. Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield turn in great performances but the whole thing didn’t gel for me. There were notable moments—the hospital scene comes to mind—and it was beautifully shot. The clothes were great too. I just wish it was a romcom instead of whatever it was.

• The Roses - This comedy follows a British couple who meet in a kitchen and move to America. They settle in Northern California in a house by the sea. The husband is an architect and the wife is a homemaker who makes extravagant desserts for her family. That dynamic flips for reasons I won’t spoil and their dynamic erodes over the ensuing decade. I liked this up until the last third, where it got to levels of violence for me that largely spoiled it. Another thing, there does seem to be an emerging archetype where a man is undone by circumstances he would have no issue putting his wife in. Then, emasculated, he seeks to destroy or undermine her. Women are never depicted with this level of resentment toward motherhood or domesticity and if they are they turn into rabid animals or are riddled with impressive levels of guilt. In these, the men are present fathers and resentful husbands and even though they are exhausted by this task they revel in their suffering. It’s troubling, and stands in stark contrast to the proliferation of the “Mr. Mom” types who were active in the home and supportive of their empowered girlboss wives. It feels like an evolution of the archetype, that over time he grows resentful rather than adjusting and adapting to a different family structure. Spooky stuff!

• Anatomy of A Fall - I had similar thoughts watching Anatomy of a Fall, which is very tonally different from The Roses but explores some similar themes. In this, a man falls from a high point in his home and it evolves into a police investigation where the wife is the prime suspect. Really, it’s a taxonomy of a relationship in which one party can no longer speak for themselves. It’s a well-plotted story with great writing—I loved the fight between the couple in the kitchen. It’s hard to write conflict and this does it well. That one line “I see you very clearly I just don’t see you as a victim,” HIT. “You impose your solutions and they are for you only,” hit too. I have a lot of thoughts about romantic versus platonic love and while I maintain that they are both valuable and think that platonic love is particularly incredible due to it being entirely voluntary, I do think a big advantage of romantic love is that it is designed to contain conflict. Friendships have a harder time with this. Romantic love is also designed for mirroring—living in close proximity with someone who is expected to fulfill certain needs and meet expectations allows you to constantly examine and witness the intricacies of a person’s behavior, witness them passing and failing in ways both extraordinary and mundane. It allows for these rich reflections that cut to the shadow side of the self we present to the world. In the closest partnerships, there is almost nowhere to hide. But back to the film. When we view AOAF as a moratorium on Sandra’s worthiness as a wife and mother, a darker image emerges. The prosecutor is verbally abusive toward the main character, framing her as the dead husband saw her, selfish and an inattentive mother. The prosecutor is less interested in the facts of the case and more preoccupied with her role in her marriage—who she interacted with, their fight, the contours of their life. The fact that this woman, who exists outside of traditional gender roles is punished with her husband’s death and then becomes the main suspect, almost reifying that the consequence for existing outside of the boundaries is suspicion and public flogging. The ending pushes back on this a bit, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was being forced to watch a woman being put in her place so to speak for daring to be ambitious. With all that said I enjoyed it. The child actor is brilliant.

• Down Cemetery Road - I am contractually obligated to watch any and every British crime thriller, so I knew I would watch Down Cemetery Road. It’s about an art restorer who sort of stumbles upon a cover up and kidnapping when her neighbor goes missing. So far I don’t love this, even though there are lots of great actors in it like Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, who was brilliant in His Dark Materials.

• Kumare - I found this documentary while searching reddit for cult documentaries I haven’t seen. This was the only one I didn’t recognize. It’s about a filmmaker who becomes a fictional guru in an attempt to prove that anyone with the right look can do it. He invents false teachings rooted in everything being an illusion and comes up with phony yoga moves. He puts on his grandmother’s accent, grows his beard long, and enlists two friends to act as evangelists. The movement is small at first, but it grows, until he has a little over a dozen people who believe in him as a guru. Over time, he comes to believe in it too. It’s an interesting look at the power of persuasion and the nature of faith. It leads me to believe that some of the most skeptical people are really just looking for something to believe in.

• The Vince Staples Show - I’ve only seen one episode so far and will likely watch it while I work. The scene with the lesbians was funny.

• Stiller and Meara - In this documentary, Ben Stiller revisits his childhood home, which is being put on the market a few years after his parent’s passing. It’s part oral history and part love letter to the people that raised him. I hadn’t known that Ben Stiller’s parents were stars in their own right and I loved learning about their journey as a comedy duo and how they navigated being in entertainment with raising kids. I was moved!

• Memento - I watched this because it was recommended by the Sinners script supervisor in a podcast interview. He said it was the best script he’d ever read, which made me curious. It’s an early Christopher Nolan film and has this interesting structure—it moves backward and forward until, in the end, it creates a clear picture of the circumstances. I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it is interesting

• All Her Fault - I love a Big Little Lies/White Lotus-adjacent show, so All Her Fault should’ve worked for me. Unfortunately it had Tyler Perry-levels of melodrama and there was so many things that didn’t make sense. Why would Jay Ellis toss himself in front of a gun for a white family who just accused him of being a bad person? One of many wtf moments that took me out of the show.

• Knives Out - I rewatched this and forgot how fun it is. It’s fun!

• Beast in Me - This was fine. I think if it were better plotted, episode eight would have been episode 5. Alternatively, it could’ve had 10 more episodes so it didn’t end where it did.

• The Best Man - One of my favorite films of all time—no notes. I love how it consistently subverts expectations while always being in line with the characters. It’s good! Also, the reason why we electric slide to Candy is because of this movie, so we have to give the film its flowers.

• Call Me By Your Name - After someone on Threads commented on Timothee Chalamet’s latest fits, where he looks like an aspiring member of G-Unit, someone said he should twink again. It made me laugh so I decided to watch Call Me By Your Name (I’m late, I know!) It’s as good as everyone says it is. I never bought into the relationship, but I did love the main character’s coming of age which was in turns thrilling and heartbreaking.

• What’s Your Number? - Now this is broke man propaganda. And internalized misogyny made real. It follows a woman who decides to go back through her exes so she doesn’t acquire another body after reading an article that said women who have sex with more than 20 people are less likely to marry. She ends up teaming up with her fuckboy neighbor, who uses her as an escape hatch to avoid the women he has one night stands with. Eventually, she finds the first guy on her list, who seemed to be the most promising. He’s attractive and wealthy and fairly normal. She decides she would rather date the problematic man across the hall who decides she’s not like other girls *gag*. I hated it. It’s also almost the exact same thing as The Materialists with slightly different stakes.

• Friends With Kids - In this 2011 film, two best friends decide to raise a kid together after they realize they don’t want to go the traditional route of building a family. It’s interesting until they fall in love in the end, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

• Friends With Money - Different film, similar title! This one stars Jennifer Aniston, who is the only one in her friend group who hasn’t achieved financial stability. The film rotates between three families with differing class statuses as they navigate life. I liked it but it’s kind of quiet and maybe a little boring? I enjoyed it generally.

• Ocean’s 8 - A fun caper! No notes.

• IT: Welcome to Derry - This is about the town of Derry, where IT, the demented clown, haunts the sewers. The show gets into ITs origin story by way of the kids who are being tortured and killed. It has a distinctly Stranger Things feel—I kind of like it I think? I’ll keep watching.

• Oh, Hi! - This was bad!

• The Last Duel - Based on a true story, this is about the last duel on record in 14th century France, prompted by the assault of a man’s wife. The movie moves through three perspectives—the husband of the victim, the accused, and the victim. It’s a powerful examination of perspective and how we’re perceived versus who we believe ourselves to be. Dominion does this a little too, which I think is part of why I like it so much.

• Whiplash - White men can’t drum, apparently.

• Stranger Things - Eh.

• Kevin Hart: Acting My Age - Nace forced us to watch it. It wasn’t funny. At the end my grandma said, he’s crazy!

• Heated Rivalry - Writing this newsletter because I have nothing better to do until the next episode drops. I am simply obsessed.

Best Bites

• Everything at St. James

• A pork chasu bun from a stall in Industry City

• Goat cheese and jam toast from Milk and Pull

• Fish Cheeks

• Hello kitty strawberry marshmallows

• The chicken sandwich at Norma’s

• C’s chicken noodle soup

• My chef cousin’s pancake

• Steak at Polo Bar

• Funfetti cake at Doc’s Cake Shop

Wish List

• I decided I need a tray after seeing a random photo on Pinterest. I like this, these stacking ones from Schoolhouse, or this textured one from Hawkins New York.

• A wicker hamper for the bathroom. This one from The Basket Lady is nice-looking but pricy.

• This Hay crate in bordeaux

• On the hunt for new undies. I recently interviewed Adwoa and I told her I thought wearing one brand and color of underwear is incredibly chic. This kicked off a hunt for underwear that are black or white (or gray!), high cut (I like my belly button to be covered) and 100 percent cotton. My current contenders are these from Gap, these from Cuup and these from Oddobody, though my coworker Dom says the Oddobody aren’t at all elastic.

• Another pair of Tubular pants from Everybody.World. I waited too long and now the shade I want, Mulberry, is sold out. Also eyeing the hoodie.

• New side tables

• A storage bed. Deciding between this one from Article and the Captain’s Bed from Gothic Furniture. The latter has a showroom in Queens, so I’ll likely go see it IRL. Dreamy, but apparently poorly made, the Crate and Barrel x Jake Arnold collaboration.

• A dining bench

• This Yowie tote

• I recently decided I prefer my Lands End totes to the LL Bean ones because they have better built in organization. I want the navy and plain canvas ones next. I’d also point out that the small makes a great book bag. I fit four bags and a journal in there easy, but can’t fit a laptop, which I like.

Expense Report

• Lots of records from WFMU Record Fair

• Pointy boots

• Aritzia let us loose in their store and gifted us our entire cart. I got lots of stuff, including cashmere sweaters, a hoodie C keeps stealing, and gloves.

• An IKEA Fado lamp for the Strategist Secret Santa game at work

• A fresh set

Subscribe now

It’s an undeniable truth that Sula is everything and everything is Sula. I came to understand this about a month after reading the novel because one, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and two, everything I’d ever thought fit inside of it. In less than 200 pages, Morrison manages to animate a universe so complete, so total, that you could ask that book a question and it would offer an answer. The Bible takes much longer. What makes Sula special is that it is both fantastic and ordinary. I mean fantastic in that there are moments where the book is divorced from reality in the way we typically experience, but totally in line with reality if we consider the way we assign meanings to everyday things. Too many times seeing 222 must mean something is on the way. Missing a train is divine protection. That sort of thing. Morrison lets the signals and signs have meaning, so much that they rise to the level of symbolism. But Sula is also totally ordinary, in that we all love somebody complicated or been judged or done the judging or been wronged in a way that everybody agrees with you or been the villain that everybody talks about to the point that silence engulfs the room when you walk in. Like I said, it’s everything. But also it’s a story about Nel Wright and Sula Peace.

Subscribe now

Nel and Sula are daughters of The Bottom, a tight-knit Black community in the hills above Medallion, Ohio. Despite the close proximity, they come from starkly different backgrounds. Nel’s mother, Helene, is well-respected in the community and fashions herself an authority on propriety and piousness. She has an obsession with ritual and performance and quells any behavior from Nel she views as disobedient. Helene prizes a narrow view of beauty and imposes that on her daughter. The Peace women are the opposite. Sula’s grandmother, Eva, runs a boarding house and entertains a patter of gentleman callers. Hannah, Sula’s mother, behaves similarly and doesn’t see any man, married or otherwise, as off-limits. She has sex with who she pleases for the sake of pleasure, a motivation that’s perplexing to all of the women of The Bottom—from the “good” women to the “whores,” who see men as commodities and their relationships as extensions of their social status. Hannah is an unworthy opponent for the women because she refuses to play the game, treating everyone nicely. This approach to sex and pleasure has a profound impact on Sula, who learns that it is “pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable.” It shapes her understanding of the world and its rules, as well as her participation in the status quo.

When Sula and Nel meet, their connection is near-instantaneous, Morrison describes it as “intense as it is sudden.” She writes that they “find relief in each other’s personality,” and “in the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford to abandon the ways of other people and concentrate on their own perceptions of things.” They move through the world more confidently and are more sure of themselves because of their friendship. It reorders their inner lives: Nel begins to pull her nose half heartedly, and when Sula overhears her mother admitting that she loves her but doesn’t like her, it is Nel calling to her from a window that keeps her tethered. They are two halves of a whole. This relationship is tested and later fortified when Sula accidentally drowns a boy and Nel watches. They go to the funeral together, and there’s a brief moment where it seems like this might get between them, but it’s quickly bypassed. By the end of the funeral, their hands are linked again and it’s as if it never happened. There is such safety in their bond, but being that it is a world unto itself, it refuses everyone who comes near it. This is eventually the issue. These early days have the flavor of the all-consuming female friendships that are at the center of the literary novels people are reading these days. This obsession is totalizing and they mostly end the same—with girls becoming women and those relationships sacred and settled. Rarely do they both make it out alive.

When they’re young adults, Nel meets Jude, an attractive man in town. She is mostly flattered. His attention is amplified for Nel by Sula, who “seemed always to want Nel to shine.” But things change as Nel and Jude get closer. Under the weight of Jude’s attention, Nel blooms, shifting Sula’s importance in the hierarchy of her self-conception. Morrison writes, “greater than her friendship was this new feeling of being needed by someone who saw her singly.” When they marry, Sula plans the wedding and is the sole bridesmaid. It’s a rare event in the Bottom—most people just take up with each other—and the entire town comes out to celebrate. It is Nel’s initiation into a society where Sula and her family are outlaws, existing outside of a social hierarchy. The tension is there, but Morrison doesn’t play into it. In the final moments of the wedding, Nel looks to Jude for reassurance and instead sees Sula leaving, “gliding, with just a hint of a strut, down the path toward the road.” Even though Nel, or the reader, can’t see Sula’s face, Nel says she knows Sula is smiling, that “something deep down in that litheness was amused.” This becomes a defining moment for the two women, the event that separates them into two distinct entities. By marrying a respected member of the community, Nel becomes a “good” woman, stepping into the social inheritance that her mother has left for her. Sula’s inheritance is flight and subversive femininity, and by leaving The Bottom the moment Nel gets married, she embraces her fate too.

Sula returns to the Bottom ten years later accompanied by a “plague of robins,” and looking “as close to a movie star as anyone ever did see.” When she walks up the hill, people come out of their houses to see her, though few people speak. When she finally reaches Eva’s house, the two slip into an easy banter and have a First Corinthians conversation, with Eva essentially telling her she needs to put away childish things, grow up and join society by marrying and having a baby. Sula responds with “I don’t want to make somebody else, I want to make myself.” This is one of the most-quoted lines of the book, and while it’s profound out of context, it’s a gut punch when it sneaks up on page 92. Up until this point, Morrison has been setting the scene, schooling us on the rules of The Bottom, and Sula’s statement is a refusal of the norms of the place she returned to.

Sula’s resistance is powerful, because although Eva essentially warns her against continuing the legacy that defined their lives and social status—one of subversiveness and ultimately isolation—Sula is disinterested in adapting in order to live somebody else’s idea of a good life. This shifts the power balance, creating psychic sovereignty in an environment that demands adherence to the social contract in exchange for acceptance. I was also struck by Sula’s choice because she knows where this behavior leads—to living in a boarding house with wayward people, or self-immolation. There are no signs that this kind of life will bring her any kind of satisfaction, but she chooses it anyway, chooses truth over comfort and ease. If anything we see the world reward the opposite choice. By turning toward piety, Nel’s mother Helene was able to shake off her mother’s reputation and start anew. Sula, when presented with those same options—to move away and become someone else—decides to return. It’s a stunning decision of agency, an individualism that’s both inspiring and terrifying. I read this section with a sort of wonder. What does it say that Sula returned but with no interest in conforming? That she wants to inhabit this place as her full self? If Sula is the immovable object, that suggests that it is she who will change the environment.

Nel, on her part, is excited to have Sula home. She knows the change in the air is due to her friend’s return. She describes it as having the use of an eye back. “Talking to Sula,” she says, “had always been a conversation with herself.” Sula’s presence activates Nel like it always has, reinvigorating her relationship with Jude, making her softer to her children. It mollifies Nel too, releasing her from the pressure to be perfect, to keep a spotless house and presentable kids. Finally, she can be herself. In the ten years she’s been with Jude, a relationship that once provided her identity and personhood, has since cooled into familiarity and mundanity. It has offered her status but no companionship. All these years later, that still belongs to Sula.

The reunion is short lived. Shortly after Sula and Jude meet they have sex. He is drawn to her intellect and irreverence, less interested in her physicality. This speaks to the notion that Nel and Sula were one person, that Nel was the face and Sula the mind and soul. Jude has to taste all of it, the whole of NelSula, and in doing so it breaks them in two. It’s easy to condemn Sula for having sex with her best friend’s husband, but when viewed through the lens of Nel and Sula’s society, a place where the most important value is their isolation and togetherness, Sula’s choice to have sex with Jude is the natural next step. Their world is not designed for intrusion, evidenced by what happened to Chicken Little when he happens upon them earlier in the novel. In Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation, Dr. Trimiko Melancon argues that Chicken Little’s death is in direct response to his disruption of their intimacy. “As a male meddler intruding upon and threatening their female intimacy, his death, regardless of their intent, enables them to maintain their agency through the eradication, physically and metaphorically, of oppressive (and “masculinist”) forces that threaten, infringe upon, or restrict female sexuality, the homoerotic, and/or homosocial relationship,” (64). Decades later, Jude must face the same fate.

Nel and Sula are socialized now, separated by time and circumstance, but Sula still believes the same rules apply. An intrusion should result in removal. Nel no longer shares that view. It’s a betrayal of the highest order, one that goes undiscussed between them because the rules of society are on Nel’s side. I paused here and meditated on the mismatch between their relationship and the world. Intimate relationships, platonic or otherwise, often contain a shared emotional logic that can seem absurd to an onlooker. In the context of their bond I asked, why should her relationship with Jude come before her friendship with Sula when it’s clear he doesn’t offer her the same things? The only answer I could come up with that didn’t rely on social norms is that it hurts Nel. Jude is the one thing in their relationship that Nel has for herself. Sula chooses to take that from her, and we’re never sure why. Maybe Sula hopes they will return to a previous iteration of their relationship. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t see men as belonging to anyone, with every and any body being an option and Nel is a secondary consideration. All of these things could be true, but whatever the reason, hurting Nel isn’t enough of a deterrent. It’s a painful position for Nel, who loses her best friend and husband in one fell swoop. Little thought is given to Jude’s betrayal and subsequent choice to abandon his family, a reminder of the double-standard for men, but also that its the relationship between Nel and Sula that matters most.

Sula refuses the notion that romance is the highest form of intimacy, separating desire and sex from love. The intimacy Nel and Sula share is extra-societal, allows them to exist outside of the pressures of categories like woman, mother, wife. They are closest to their true selves with each other—vulnerable, messy, free, confident. But it isn’t without its sacrifices. For their relationship to work, they have to choose each other, even if that means keeping big secrets or never loving anyone else. It isn’t a relationship that makes room for other people. It’s a kind of devotion we relegate to the romantic sphere, which has established structures to make sense of that level of commitment. We call it marriage and we throw parties for it. People write think pieces about it, shame other people for not having it. We don’t shame people for not having a soul-friend. For not having a reflection so clear it terrifies.

Morrison doesn’t romanticize this. Instead, she reveals the brutality of loving someone like that in a society that doesn’t have language to explain it or frameworks to support its existence. In the absence of clear guideposts we rarely become imaginative. Instead we rely on old ways of working or look around us to see how we’re supposed to exist and move. There was nothing telling Nel to forgive Sula for her betrayal. There was no one who would’ve said to her that her relationship with Sula came before her marriage with Jude. For Sula, who grew up different, she saw it that way. Their relationship was evidence enough. How to gift someone with imagination they weren’t raised on? It makes their friendship tragic from the outset, doomed to fail because it’s illegible.

The relationship also no longer works for Nel because she changes and Sula does not. It’s mostly tragic because the love doesn’t go anywhere but neither does the resentment. In the end, Sula does not offer Nel some big apology because she doesn’t believe she’s done anything wrong. She’s acting as she always has, it’s Nel who no longer accepts it. The thing with friendship is that it requires lots of latitude and a little bit of luck. It requires blind faith that the two of you will grow and it will be complementary or that both of you remain the same. Or, that one of you grows and in a desire to keep the two of you together, says nothing so as to not rock the boat. In that case you slip into an old skin. Sometimes you fit into it just fine, other times you strain against it in your new, bigger, body pretending it isn’t a tight fit. But we do it anyway, because a friend, a real one, is a valuable thing. It’s why the early reunion feels like bliss and the reconnection often comes apart at the seams because one is quickly reminded that people put under pressure or made uncomfortable will often resort to the same things that help them survive.

After Jude, Nel and Sula are never close again. I interpreted this as the ultimate transition into their social inheritances. Nel is now a “good woman,” properly scorned, and Sula has become the women in her family, emotionally isolated but always full. With her connection to society snipped, Sula is declared a pariah in the Bottom, fucking husbands left and right. There is not a man that Sula will not touch, and to her credit, all of them are willing. There is heaps of vitriol directed toward Sula but none toward the men who are in commitments with their wives. It’s an astute commentary on accountability and the ways we envision women’s responsibility, both to other women and to themselves. Sula is fearsome to the women because she doesn’t adhere to social conventions that would keep her eyes averted and legs closed. Because of her outright rejection of these norms she’s ostracized and becomes a boogeyman—a void for other people to toss their fears into and to push up against. They know that they are good because Sula is bad. It’s a neat dichotomy that curtails uncertainty, and creates an organizing principle for the people of The Bottom to understand the world. There is no thought to Sula’s humanity because, the citizens of The Bottom reason, her perceived lack of morality suggests that she has none.

It’s a lonely existence for Sula, and as I read on I reconsidered Eva’s mandate, which now read like a warning. Despite charting different paths: one inside society and one on the margins of it, neither Nel or Sula escapes loneliness. When Sula finally falls in love, it is with a man who treats her as human. Ajax does not seek to own her but rather exist alongside her and shows his affection through careful attention. He finds her brilliant and she finds him entertaining. It’s playful and erotic and delightful to Sula, who is so consumed with herself that other people and their interests barely register. But it doesn’t last. Eventually, Sula begins to experience the desire to possess Ajax, which manifests as her caring about where he’s been and when she’ll see him again. She cleans up the house and starts to consider the way Ajax sees her. This compromises their dynamic, which is built on freedom and hinges on a sort of performance—one in which Sula needs nothing from him but company. The one person besides Nel who seemed to see her was looking at her through a foggy lens. In her heartbreak she thinks of Nel, and in the absence of their bond, Sula is truly alone.

The next time we see Sula she is on her deathbed with a mysterious illness. I take Sula as both allegorical and literal, and this giant of a woman, dispossessed by her community and guilty of existing in the duality of freedom and ownership, has no choice but to die. This movement of the novel took me back to my eighteenth century literature course (shoutout to Dr. Lubey) where every novel we read ended with the wanton woman’s untimely demise. Death was the punishment for social transgression, even when it isn’t meted out by the society directly. Sula cannot survive a life spent not playing by the rules.

Right before she dies, Nel appears at Sula’s bedside. Their final conversation isn’t a neat one. Nel wants accountability for Sula hurting her and Sula wants to understand why something as trivial as a man was able to separate them. It’s hard, because one expects the other to act differently, further proof they inhabited different worlds. When Sula dies, her last thought is that she wishes she could tell Nel that dying doesn’t hurt that bad. In the end it was still Nel. When Nel’s own sorrow catches up with her decades later in a “fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow, “ she realizes that all this time, it was Sula.

When I finished the novel, I thought of a friend I used to have. I can’t be sure that she is who I believed her to be, but maybe the slipperiness of her memory is the point. Weeks later, I bought her a copy of Sula, had it wrapped up nice and tight with navy paper. At that point, we hadn’t spoken in a year. I bought a card to go with it and planned to write something. I never sent it. I gave the book to my best friend’s cousin who graduated from college because Morrison makes a good gift. I still have the card, it’ll be relevant for somebody, someday. But I’d wanted her to read it because I needed her to see. I realized, later, that what offers me clarity won’t do the same for her, that I have my way of loving and surviving and she, hers. Trying to get her to see me won’t change the truth of that difference, but it’s the love, the grief, that sent me to the bookstore.

So what, then, does Sula teach us about love? Well for starters, there are no winners when two people who love each other come to the end of things. It’s sorrow all the way down, regardless of who is in the right. In the end, as Morrison points out, one is not good and the other bad, we’re all really working with what we’ve got and doing our best to continue on, pushing against social norms or falling in line with them. Morrison asks us to be expansive in our view of what shapes a perspective and a life, to resist dehumanizing people who behave in ways we believe we never would. The novel also reminds us that love has never been enough. The feeling might be unconditional but the conditions may very well pull it apart. And what to do when it is in pieces? There is no good answer. There’s grief all the same. Perhaps most importantly, the novel teaches us that the people closest to our heart are the ones who make us feel free, who see us for real. That might not look how we expect or how the world says it should. Honor it anyway.

Subscribe now

Anyway, onto the post!

Subscribe now

Notes from October

• I saw Liberation Play on Broadway with The Josie Club. It’s a play about a woman’s quest to understand her mother, which she attempts by learning about the women’s group she was part of. The group meets in a school basement to discuss the issues of women’s liberation and they talk about the material changes that would improve their lives. They become a support network, encouraging each other to push back and interrogating systems that have always existed but aren’t working for them. The women aren’t always on the same page—they have linked but competing interests and differing personalities—but I found it valuable that they took time out of their busy, competing lives to look out and consider the world around them. Many of the topics they discuss are still incredibly relevant—things like abortions, equal pay, divorce—and the main character often pretends to break the fourth wall to point that out to the audience. She posits that with all the time since we should have moved beyond these issues but I don’t totally agree. I was born into a world that had wrestled with these notions so I don’t have to do so for the first time. I have the privilege of continuing the work, of being complacent. Women are trying to sell traditional womanhood on the internet, which is as clear a sign as any that something different is in its place. I think white women tend to do this handwringing and shouting at the sky as if they aren’t full participants in the performance of womanhood, as if all this isn’t really at their behest, even as it limits and oppresses them. There are always choices to be made—I think what was frustrating about the play is that it is rooted in overwhelm, that it asks what to do rather than standing firm in what’s been done. It slyly asks how one can be a feminist fighting for a cause while also balancing the demands of motherhood and career and that gathering in a gym to discuss women’s liberation is for nought because we ended up somewhere less than perfect. But it’s much better than it could’ve been and women grappling with these ideas birthed free women who grew up knowing they’re equal and capable and due to their complacency are fantasizing about giving up their critical thinking skills in service of a soft life. All that said, the play was funny at points and the actors were great. I’d love to hear what y’all think if you’ve seen it.

• I want to paint my hallway a dusky, deep blue that isn’t navy but also isn’t too gray. I bought a bunch of paint samples from Farrow and Ball. I’m not sold on any of them, but the closest is Wine Dark, but it still might be too gray.

• We went to see Destin Conrad. Two things: One, it was my first time at Brooklyn Paramount and it’s a great venue. Two, I ended up being a few feet from Kehlani and kept saying to C throughout the night—do you think she’ll go on stage and sing Folded? She kept telling me no because it’s not her concert and that isn’t a song they have together, but I manifested it into happening because she did perform it and it was incredible.

• After, we went to a 25 and up wine night and I’m almost certain everyone was 24.8 or 26.5. The highlight of the night though was running into Uti and Cristal. We ended up hanging out all night and people-watching. It’s making me question my identity as a homebody.

• Our friends Jade and Nicole had a housewarming for their new place. We ate good and celebrated this next chapter of their lives. At some point the Hennessy shots came out. I drank three types of wine. The coolest part for me was getting to spend time in the world they’ve cultivated. I love meeting my friend’s friends!

• C, Allie, Celia, Carrie and I completed our yearly tradition of apple picking at Fishkill Farms. We’ve been going since 2018 and it’s one of my favorite parts of fall. This is probably the latest into the year we’ve gone thus far and it was the best leaf peeping.

  

• I spent five hours watching a Youtube video about the history of North Korean entertainment. It was fascinating. It’s also a great primer on media literacy and propaganda.

• Went to the Available Works Book Fair, where small presses and art collectors sell art books and posters and t-shirts. I bought a Glenn Ligon exhibition poster and ran into a bunch of people. I got a book recommendation from a guy about gold and recommended Yepoka Yeebo’s Anansi’s Gold in return.

• Then I went across the street to Kinfolk Tech, which they’re billing as a “festival of memory and imagination.” There was a cool exhibition featuring Nikki Giovanni who has only gotten more important to me since she’s passed. Black Market Vintage curated the gift shop and Teranga supplied the food. I bought Bissap (a drink similar to sorrel) and Ginger juice and mixed them together. It’s my favorite drink.

• D’Angelo died and it was a shock to the system. I spent the first part of the day hoping it wasn’t true. I listen to Send It On damn near everyday and it’s hard to grapple with the idea that I’m listening to the voice of someone who’s no longer here. I feel for his and Angie Stone’s son. I spent the day listening to his music and talking to my people about how much he soundtracked our lives.

• Went on a book date with Sasha Bonét at Liz’s Book Bar and we had the best time. As always, the music was immaculate. The Waterbearers is brilliant and she gave me incredible book recommendations, including We Survived The Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat.

• Eli Rallo released her second book Does Anyone Else Feel This Way? and I joined her during the DC leg of her tour at The Howard Theatre. We talked about life, love, and the endless grief of a friendship breakup. It was a beautiful night. Being on stage at such an iconic venue was also surreal. I spent my high school years and DC and my best friend lived on U St for most of those years. We passed the theatre often, I never imagined I’d be sitting on it all those years later with a writer I admire. Life is crazy!

  

• Also we rode Amtrak down, my favorite mode of transportation. It’s the one thing Joe Biden and I have in common.

• I wrote a review of Minor Black Figures for Vulture. It was my first time writing a piece of criticism for a publication—it stretched me intellectually and challenged me to prioritize clarity, a valuable lesson for my writing more generally. I hope to do more of it.

• C and I went down to Newport News for my brother-in-law’s wedding.

  

• That same weekend, my little sister came up to New York and spent the weekend with Allie, who is my former roommate but has really become my sister. The two of them have built such a deep bond over time, I loved getting updates from their weekend together—they ate sushi, went to the museum, got hot chocolate, and watched K-Pop Demon Hunters. When I say my friends are my family, this is what I mean.

• In more friends-are-family happenings, my dad ran into Adrienne’s boyfriend at Rutgers homecoming and they took a photo. It was the most wholesome thing in the world. Apparently my dad knows his. Told Adrienne we’re cousins now.

• We flew straight from Newport News to Arizona to celebrate Chamel’s 30th. We spent the days lounging in the hot tub, waking up late, eating food prepared by Madison M and C and getting tipsy off wine and Cutwaters. Perfect weekend!

• My dad texting me to ask me if I listen to MF Doom.

• Long three-way calls with my mom and sister. We were meant to be in Jamaica the weekend after Arizona for my cousin’s wedding and decided not to go because of the forecasted hurricane. A lot of my family went down prior to the hurricane warning so the ensuing days were spent liaising and worrying and watching the storm unfold. Everyone who traveled is okay thankfully, along with my family that still lives there. Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover it. Still, the road to recovery for Jamaica will be long and complicated.

• I had a very New York night with Carrie. We started at Away’s holiday party, where I had an incredible cocktail. On the way out we ran into Ellie the Elephant who has been busy in the offseason. From there, we met up with Alex at Eny’s afterparty to celebrate the opening of her solo show, A Soft Place to Land, at Hannah Traore Gallery, then we ended the night at Fish Cheeks. The meal was so good we kept texting each other the next day to say we were still thinking about the food. 10 out of 10.

• Went to Babe, my favorite queer wine event. Everyone there is beautiful. We met up with friends and I got drunker than I’ve been in many months. I blame Nicole because she bought two bottles of wine and we had to finish them. The night ended with us at a Chinese spot on the bottom floor of a mall in Downtown Brooklyn, passing around wine and having conversations I can’t recall.

• The next morning I was so hungover I was shaking. I had a session with my trainer so I took two Advil, drank a lot of water and slowly walked to the gym despite everything telling me to lay down. After I felt better, dare I say good, and now I’m wondering if we should all be in the gym the day after a night out.

• It’s finally cold enough for me to wear a hoodie around the house.

  

• I took the long way home on the subway because I like the transfer better, a reminder that I have free will.

• Signed up for AMC A-list so I can take myself to the movies once a week. Told Mel about it and she said she also enjoys a solo movie date, so we’ve decided to see the same movie in our respective cities within the same week and discuss it. A reminder we can always make new traditions.

Reading

Nothing to report here. I read most of one book and half of another, hopefully I finish those so I can come back in November with thoughts.

Watching

Watched less than usual, I been outside!

Law and Order: SVU - Watching this again from the top! Olivia and Stabler have this instant chemistry that flew over my head as a kid.

Coming to America - A classic film! This is about a prince who is encouraged to marry by his father, the king. Wanting to find his own wife he sets off to America to find his queen and ends up in Queens, New York. It’s such a fun movie. Eddie Murphy is great in this, as is Arsenio Hall. The colors are so stunning and I loved the costume design.

Idiocracy - This might be a documentary. Set far into the future, the world has become a trash heap and everything is corporatized and heavily surveilled. People have become so dumb they can barely speak in full sentences and are guided by impulse rather than logic. There’s some weird racialized undertones and a kind of pro-eugenics argument in this but there’s a broader idea that I think is useful—that idiocy begets idiocy and that a world shaped by anti-intellectualism will kill us all.

Supreme Team - I enjoyed this documentary about the Supreme Team, a Queens gang. Directed by Nas, it tracks the rise and fall of the crime syndicate, from local hustlers to a corporatized operation to their eventual demise. Watching this I learned so much about South Jamaica, Queens, how it went from a middle class suburb to a neighborhood characterized by violence, unrest and poverty. It was my first time learning of the murder of Clifford Glover, a ten-year old who was shot by a plainclothes police officer. Shocking no one, the officer was acquitted, which led to the residents rising up and seeking retribution. This had a huge impact on the young Black boys in the area, who saw Clifford and saw themselves. This included a young Prince and Preme, who would eventually turn to gang life. They were particularly violent, and even though they’d become legendary in the city, the community suffered the hands of the gang. The documentary also chronicled the evolution of policing, which went from the police being reticent to impinge on the drug operations to an all-out war. The big shift came with the election of Ed Koch, who declared a war on drugs after the murder of officer Edward Byrne, who was killed while on duty in South Jamaica. He created a new task force to dismantle drug operations in those neighborhoods, which on its face sounds benign but turned into a campaign of violence against many of the area’s Black youth. It was an early version of stop and frisk, which we know was largely racist and later deemed unconstitutional. It’s all connected! I scream into the void.

New Jack City - While watching Supreme Team I learned that New Jack City was based on Preme and Prince so I queued it up next. It’s about the Cash Money Brothers, a gang led by a duo of brothers, who have grown the operation into a multimillion dollar empire—much like the Supreme Team. It stars a young Chris Rock and Ice-T along with Wesley Snipes and Allen Payne. It was fine! It’s in the vein of movies like Belly, which I enjoy but don’t love like I love the romcoms of that era.

Shadow Force - In this action film, Kerry Washington plays an assassin who has abandoned her family to protect them from the shadowy government agency attempting to kill them. Her husband is played by Omar Sy and they have an adorable son who loves to sing the oldies. This was fine. I loved the chemistry between Method Man and Divine in this, I’d watch a romcom of them as a second chance divorced couple stuck on vacation with their kids in a heartbeat.

Murdaugh: Death in the Family - I watched the HBO documentary about this, so I know the beats, but I’ll watch whatever Patricia Arquette is doing so I’ve been tuning in. It’s interesting and well-done. Worthwhile for the true-crime heads.

Interview with the Vampire - I loved this when it first came out and fell off when season two came out. We decided to watch it after lamenting there was nothing on TV. I forgot how incredible it is. I can’t wait for season three.

Best Bites

• While in Arizona I discovered tiny, freeze dried marshmallows, the kind they put in those sachets of Swiss Miss. They taste like Lucky Charms marshmallows and are deeply addictive.

• My favorite slice is from New Park Pizza in Ozone Park. I love how doughy the crust is and the sauce to cheese ratio.

• Everything at Fish Cheeks but especially that crab fried rice

Wish List

• This UPF-protective sun shirt feels vaguely like something Altazurra or Dries would put out

• Black leather knee high boots with a pointed toe and a skinny heel. This runs counter to what’s feasible with my wide, flat foot, but a girl can dream.

• Ruched loafers. I like these Massimo Dutti ones and these from Tony Bianco because they have a teensy heel.

• A windbreaker. I love the color of this blue Lululemon one but really I want the Helsa one, which I saw on Bianca forever ago and loved.

• Staud has lots of cute stuff right now. This clutch! This dress! This dress too.

• A Queens Get the Money keychain

• A knit cardigan that zips

• An office chair

Expense report

• Ikea Aheim doors (I’m redecorating the bedroom)

• Paint samples

• This dress, which was served to me in an ad on Pinterest

• Glenn Ligon poster

• Tubular Pants from Everybody World, which have instantly become a favorite. Will likely buy another pair

• Lots of books, including

  • On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maria

  • Thereafter Johnnie by Carolivia Herron

  • Heart the Lover by Lily King

Subscribe now

We met up at Liz’s Book Bar in Park Slope, which has excellent wine, plays good music (I was Shazaming the whole time!) and is a good spot to post up and work or read. It’s the perfect way to spend an afternoon with an old friend or a new one. Sasha and I spent a few hours laughing, talking about books and D’Angelo (it was the day he passed and we were shocked and grieving), vowing to do it all again soon. Read about our date, below.

Can you state your name for the record?

.

What do you do?

I’m a writer and a critic.

Where are you from?

Houston, Texas.

How has it shaped you?

Maybe in every way. Houston has this beautiful, thriving Black community that is really special and singular. There’s an understanding of the range of blackness in Houston that I really appreciate. Blackness doesn’t have the limitations it has in other cities. When I go to other cities, I’m like, oh, this is not how Black people behave. I’m happy to come from that place of just a large imagination of how blackness can exist. Houston also has the largest Nigerian population, so there’s this overlapping of cultures. Then of course there’s the water. That holds a lot of memory. You’re moving with it in Houston and I feel like there’s this very thin veil between the living and the other realm. It feels like we’re in communication all the time.

When did you become a reader?

I started reading so young. My mom tells stories about them calling my name looking for me, and I would be in a corner, under a bed behind a curtain. I read a lot in my closet. I was reading before I was talking. That’s how young I was.

What were you reading?

I read a lot of books with horses. I remember being obsessed with cowgirls and Black beauty and these types of books. But I also remember being obsessed with Jane Austen. I also loved the Babysitters Club books. Usually they were books about a bunch of girls banding together for some cause. That was my favorite genre as a kid.

What books shaped you?

I remember when I found the African-American literature section at my library when I was a teenager. I remember this corner shelf. I took one out and I think the first one was an Iyanla Vanzant book. I read that, then I came back and discovered Toni Morrison. I discovered Maya Angelou in that corner. There’s so many more that I’m forgetting. Maybe authors that weren’t as popular as the ones I’m naming. Even Zane and Eric Jerome Dickey. Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou made me feel like there are books about me or about my family. That these lives are worth bearing witness to as well, not just the fantasy books I was reading before.

When you were writing The Waterbearers, what books were you reading?

I read a few books while I was writing. I read Leslie Jamison Splinters, which I really loved. I was reading Sadiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. I was rereading that. Something I always returned to is Hilton Als’s work because he really blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction. He kind of gives me permission to do that. Whenever I need to kind of tap into my courage, I’ll read that and understand I can do anything with these words. I’m not stuck just because I’m writing nonfiction. Maggie Nelson’s work does that for me, like Argonauts and Bluets. All the work I read, especially while I’m writing, is kind of blurring the line between what genre really means. I find genre to be really confining. I can sense that when I tell people my book is a memoir there’s an idea that comes to their mind, but it’s not exactly that.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Julian NoiseCat We Survived the Night. It’s nonfiction but it reads like a novel.

It brings in the political aspects of how policy impacts the most vulnerable, marginalized people. You can’t really tell a story about Native American people without talking about policy. I think the same for a Black family story. You can’t talk about it unless you’re talking about politics because it impacts the family home.

How many books did you read last year?

I don’t know, I don’t count my books. I’m always reading something.

Do you have any standout books you read last year?

I reread Tar Baby and what an experience. I love to reread something that I read a while ago. With Morrison, you almost have to reread many times to really get what she’s saying. Tar Baby is one of her most underrated books. It’s happening at this really pivotal time in her life where she’s leaving publishing and becoming a full-time author where she starts calling herself an author. It was in the writing of this book that she was like, oh, I’m actually an author. This is her She’s in between Song of Solomon and Beloved. It’s a bridge of a book. You can really see the way her mind is thinking about things. The book is really about the erosion and deterioration of the human soul, and she’s bearing witness to it, and kind of sending a warning to us. It was so good to read that while we’re also watching a genocide, because I’m like, oh, this is how it happens, that we can witness something like this and not be moved into a complete shutdown of everything until this stops. It’s also her only book with white people as major figures. It’s super interesting in that way. I’m like, why did she do it now? What made her think about this? But it’s almost like she had to provide that context. She’s talking about the forgetting of your soul when you’re trying to work so hard to be in proximity to whiteness. What you leave behind. She says you’ve forgotten your ancient properties,

A standout book from this year.

I really love Black Meme. It’s such a great book to read, but it’s also a great reference book, so even after you finish it, you’re going to keep coming back to it. I also loved Boyz N the Void: A Mixtape to My Brother. It’s a story collection. And Constructing A Nervous System by Margo Jefferson.

How would you describe your literary taste?

I love ambiguity. I love something that’s living in a liminal space. I love a book where you don’t know if it’s fiction or nonfiction or fantasy. I love the line of not being able to determine where this book lands. I find those are the hardest books to market, so they’re not always the most popular books, but to me, I love writers who think and write in this way.

Is there a book that exemplifies that?

White Girls by Hilton Als. Jamaica Kincaid. All her work is like, is this fiction? Is this her life? Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Zami by Audre Lorde.

Read more

Anyway—onto the post!

Subscribe now

Notes from September

• I spent the first day of September in LA. Noor drove out to Palm Springs for Lacey’s birthday so we drove back with her, taking the long way down. By that I mean we stopped at Desert Mills, an outlet mall with cheap Ganni and reasonably priced Loewe. It’s basically the west coast version of Woodbury Common. I generally dislike this drive, mostly because I don’t like large objects (open bodies of water, massive mountain ranges, windmills up close). It wasn’t so bad though, because we had deep chat the entire way. Then we stopped for In N Out, which Noor insisted we try (overhyped!). I have to admit though, as we got closer to LA, I started to see the appeal. The mohair-looking hills, the palm trees, and as the city slowly came into focus in the distance I felt a little thrill.. Once we got into the city we hung out at Noor’s very cute apartment before heading to Lacey’s for a little game night before getting on a red-eye. It was a perfect day and made me want to go back (not too soon though!)

• The following week, I went to dinner with Alex and her best friend at Karasu, a speakeasy restaurant in Fort Greene. Alex bullied me into trying cold noodles (never again) and we sipped wine and ate karaage. Toward the end of dinner, Alena joined us and then we went to a wine bar just minutes before it closed and split a bottle of orange wine.

• That same week, C bought me flowers to kick off the birthday month.

• Nace came to visit for a bit because she had a break from work. As always, it drove me crazy, but, predictably, I was sad when she left.

• Taszie did a school assignment where she had to name someone she admired and she listed me as one of the three people (the other two were our siblings). It made my month, if not my year.

• Madison has decided her birthday is in September now (I get it, it’s the best birthday month!), so we celebrated with dinner at Cervo’s and wine at Sauced. Madison is an expert at curating and connecting her people, so every event she had feels like a reunion with old friends.

• Then it was Alex’s birthday (so many Virgos) and the same sentiment applies. Both of them are incredible community builders and I’ve yet to meet a loved one of theirs that I didn’t also adore. They keep good people around them. Alex rented out Milly’s, a bar in Bed Stuy, and filled it with the coolest people in Brooklyn and beyond. The drinks were incredible, the sliders something I’m still missing and the highlight of the night was her aunt (who came in from Canada!) praying over all of us.

• Juicy J, of “Thinking With My Dick” fame, dropped a jazz album with Endea Owens, and it’s really good. I’ve been listening to it on repeat, specifically “I Miss You PJ,” which reminds me a little of Miles Davis. Other notable tracks: “Detroit Red Vibes” and “I’ll Tap Dance For Your Love”

• On the topic of jazz albums, I’ve been listening to the new Destin Conrad album, wHIMSY and it’s incredible. I typically start it from the top and let it play through.

• I’ve been putting my phone elsewhere after 9:30PM and my sleep has improved so much as a result. I also don’t let myself pick it up until after 9AM, which helps me to spend some time with myself before minding other people’s business.

• Camille was in town from Chicago for a bit and she invited me to the launch of Sasha Bonet’s book The Water Bearers at The Strand. The book is about black mothers and daughters, which is a topic I’ve been waiting for us to get into as a collective. I think this book will push that forward. The room was a who’s who of the Black literary scene. I ran into so many writers I admire, including Jessica Lynne and Tarisai Ngangura. Doreen St. Felix moderated. Should I go on? The highlight of my night though, was running into Jet. The Strand is our spot, it’s where we had our first date, and kicked off our friendship. After, Camille and I headed to dinner at Ruby’s with friends of hers and the book’s after party at WSA, where the sparsely decorated room, soaked in blue light, had the distinct feel of a Hype Williams movie turned down a few notches. Niara was DJing, so the music was pitch-perfect. I loved it. I want Hype to make another movie. If I ever make a movie, I’m asking him to light it. There’s no other way. I also ran into Yaminah and we had some quick chat before I hopped in a car home.

  

• Alex took me to a Liberty game as an early birthday gift, but it felt like our celebration because our birthdays are a week apart. It was so much fun even though our girls played incredibly poorly.

• C and I went to see The Brother’s Size, a play by Tarrell Alvin McCraney, whose work I adore (he also wrote High Flying Bird and co-wrote Moonlight). It’s about a family adjusting to life after incarceration, grappling with questions of freedom, flight, and what it means to be your brother’s keeper. I cried.

• My second book, Fresh Sets, was reviewed by the NYT Book Review!

  

• Noor was the first friend to land for the birthday weekend festivities, so we went to the Hera popup at Frog with her best friend Cameron, a sommelier who’s opening a wine bar on the Bowery called Crybaby. He knows the chef, Jay, so we ate many rounds of chicken thighs on pita and cauliflower and pork smash burgers and drank incredible wine. It was my last meal of 29 and some of the best food I’ve had in the past six months.

  

• The next day was my birthday. I’d originally wanted to do a party, mostly because I’d never done one, but pivoted last minute to a dinner and a movie situation that was so much fun I wish I could do it all again. My main thing was that I wanted to see the sun set on my 20s, so I invited an intimate group for a sunset dinner at Three Peaks on Governor’s Island, a hotel that’s mostly glamping tents and looks out at the Statue of the Liberty. They put us in a private tent and served us this incredible prix-fixe menu (I’m still thinking about the shrimp). Afterwards, we headed to Miss Barb’s in Flatbush for a private screening of Bringing Down the House, one of my favorite movies of all time. I was raised in Flatbush so it was a sort of homecoming too, which felt sacred and right. I was fully ready to go home after the screening but my little sister insisted on us going out. I’m glad we did. I ended up dancing drunk off my ass, until 3AM at one of the lounges on the block and singing at the top of my lungs. The next day, my dad drove up with my stepmom and my little sister and we had lunch with everyone who was still in town. It felt nostalgic, because I was seated at a table with friends I’ve had since high school, splitting food with my dad like I always do. But it was so rooted in the present, because next to me, my baby sister is playing slide with my wife and my dad is asking me what I want to drink (a French 75, if you’re curious).

• That Monday was C and I’s wedding anniversary (time flies!). We spent it with our couple friends, Jade and Nicole. We did dinner at Le Crocodile, my favorite spot for roast chicken and french fries and then drinks at Bar Madonna. Proud of us for staying up past our bedtime.

• I took the following week off work, but somehow I still had a lot to do. I visited James Cohan to do something fun (more on this soon) where I encountered a bookshelf situation I want to replicate in the apartment, got a facial with Medik8 which introduced me Edyta, an icon, moderated a talk with Erika Veurink at Warby Parker to celebrate the release of her book Exit Lane and then headed up to University of Albany for the Albany Book Festival, where I talked about the politics of beauty, specifically nails, with Chantal Fernandez, who co-wrote Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon. That same day, we drove back from Albany to celebrate O’s birthday at xGolf in Williamsburg, which was admittedly kind of a vibe. It was a busy week! I didn’t really rest. I think I have to leave the city for that

  

• Okay I did get a lazy Sunday where C and I watched movies all day. It was divine.

Reading

• The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

  This is about a group of students at a Midwestern college who are trying to grapple with the end of their academic careers and what comes next. It’s a kaleidoscopic novel populated with many characters who have various levels of safety in the social order in terms of what lies ahead. Despite the varying levels of risk, none are totally certain. They’re also grappling with their own mediocrity and what it means to get to the next level, when you’re decent at this thing you love. Taylor often deals with this in his work—his characters are never the best at anything—and it seems he’s asking what motivates people to continue with artmaking or dance or whatever, if it’s not immediately clear that they’ll succeed. Lots of characters doing it for the love of the game, so to speak.

• Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu

  I’ve said before that Lonely Crowds was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. It’s a coming of age story set in the ‘90s and follows Ruth, whose life is organized around her obsession with her best friend Maria. Their relationship, especially as children, is one that feels recognizable if you’ve ever been totally enamored with a friend who liked you a little less than you liked them. The relationship evolves as they age though the power dynamic remains intact, no matter how long they go without speaking, which I found compelling. Both Ruth and Maria are artists, and one of them makes it while the other is slower to bloom. There’s some interesting dynamics explored there too, which I appreciated. Wambugu has a very detached, almost clinical writing style, where big emotions are stated in a very straightforward way and things simply are. It works, mostly, but isn’t necessarily my preference, though I’ll be interested to see what she writes next.

• Exit Lane by Erika Veurink

  This starts off as an homage to When Harry Met Sally—there’s a post-college roadtrip to New York and the characters insist men and women can’t be friends—and ends up being a push-pull story that spans many years and many almosts. Despite the long stretch of time, it’s less than 200 pages and I zipped through it in two quick sittings.

• Heartburn by Nora Ephron -

  I’m a little more than halfway through this Nora Ephron novel, which I’ve heard is autofictional (I haven’t Googled to confirm). It is very voicey and fun and I see why she’s the OG of the modern romantic comedy. What I like about Ephron is that she understands that love is also social, so the book is as much a commentary on upper class society as it is about her getting through a breakup. She’s also very cognizant about all the reasons beyond love why we stay with people, and I loved that commitment to realism. I will say there’s a lot of off-color jokes and weird attitudes toward Black people, but I understand the book to be a product of its time (casual and structural racism abounded) and am able to enjoy it fully with that in mind.

Watching

• Bringing Down the House - I watched this movie with my family a lot growing up, so much that when my aunt heard I was screening this for my birthday she called to quote it. This stars Queen Latifah and Steve Martin, who form an unlikely alliance because they each have something the other needs. It’s hilarious and has some of the most iconic movie one-liners like no negro spoken here! and the cool points are out the window and you got me all twisted up in the game. Then there’s the dinner scene, which, when it came on, had us all singing. A younger Jean Smart is in this, and she looks fine as hell!

• Task - From the creators of Mare of Eastown (an all-time favorite!) comes Task, a small-town crime drama that stars Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey (he was incredible in Ozark). Set in the suburbs of Philly, it follows a couple groups—the FBI cell trying to put an end to a violent string of robberies, a biker gang that runs a crime syndicate, and the blue-collar, grieving family man who is responsible for the crimes. I’m liking it, but I’ll have to admit that I’ve rewatched it a bunch because I couldn’t get into it the first time around. Now that we’re a couple episodes in, I’m starting to like it more, but the first few episodes are a little slow. It’s also a show where you have to pay lots of attention, which I’m short on at the moment.

• The Great British Bake Off - A high-stakes, low-cortisol show about a group of bakers who are there to win the title of best home baker but also to have a good time. It’s something I put on at the end of the night when I want to be entertained but not overwhelmed. I always look forward to seeing who Paul Hollywood will give out a handshake too and hearing Prue describe things as “quite [insert adjective here].”

• Sleepers - This is about four friends who commit a crime as kids and then are sent off to a reform school where they’re horribly abused. When they grow up, they seek revenge. The movie is pretty good but what I liked more was that everyone in this grew up to be famous.

• Reasonable Doubt - Jax is back! Season three follows a new case and a new crop of problems in Jax’s personal life. I like that the case this season isn’t connected to her personal life and it’s nice to see her and Lewis in a better place after watching them in the trenches trying to rebuild their relationship in season two. I watch this soapy drama for the family dynamics more than the legal stuff (it’s not that well done) and where I think it shines is showing the good and the bad years of a relationship along with rupture and repair. Their relationship isn’t perfect but they choose each other, so you can’t help but root for them a little, even if it’s lowkey a mess.

• Cocaine Quarterback - This documentary is about a former USC football player who becomes an international drug smuggler for the cartel. It’s entertaining but a reminder of how certain people are allowed to fail their way into multi-part docuseries and others are criminalized and demonized. What I find interesting about American culture more broadly is the valorization of the maverick. We seem to be fascinated by people with agency who are willing to push against the structures to see if it breaks. This status is almost always conferred upon white men (sometimes given to white women, think Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey). What would generally be seen as deviance and criminality turns into fascination. Spooky shit!

• Alien: Earth - I never watched the Alien movies, but someone said this was good so I decided to give it a try. It’s gory and there are lots of bugs crawling and blood spewing, which freaks me out. There’s some interesting storylines about billionaires and their obsession with living forever, which I’m sure will become increasingly relevant.

• Mickey 17 - In a climate-ravaged and technologically-advanced future, there are missions to colonize other planets, appalling because of a quickly deteriorating planet. One of these is led by a failed, megalomaniac politician with a devoted following. A desperate man named Mickey signs up for one of these missions as an expendable, a person who is used as a test subject and continues to be reuploaded and printed so the process can begin again. When we meet Mickey, he’s on his 17th iteration and in the beginnings of an existential crisis. To say more would spoil it but overall I enjoyed it.

Wish List

• Freedom for oppressed people everywhere and an organized, people-led opposition

• This J Crew dress I saw on the model Imani Rudolph

• Also obsessed with this Toteme dress, and this Kwame Adusei skirt, which has a similar silhouette

• An office chair. I like this dupe of the Knoll one, but I’m also interested in an oversized side chair.

• Free People has lots of cute activewear, including these pants

• A new pair of workout sneakers. I loved my Nike Metcon 5s, but they’re discontinued, so my only option is the Metcon 6s, which I think are less cute (I don’t like the knit upper situation). Recommendations welcome but please don’t say Hokas or On.

• This Hoorsenbuh’s ring—my friend Telsha wears a stack and they are stunning

• A glossy plant pot

Expense Report

• An extra $400 because Enterprise charged for an extra day we didn’t use

• Birthday dresses that didn’t work out (I wore something in my closet)

• Chicken tenders and High Noon at Barclays for Alex and I

• A fresh set of lashes

• Tickets to see The Brother’s Size

• The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin

Until next time.

Subscribe now

Can you state your name for the record?

J. Wortham.

What do you do?

I’m a writer and author.

Where are you from?

I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia.

How has that shaped you?

I was very lucky to grow up steeped in so many different cultures, Black culture, but also Asian diasporic culture, Muslim culture, knowing when Ramadan was, having iftar with friends. I grew up with people from so many different places. We would go listen to gogo, and also go to quinceañeras. We would all go out dancing – going out clubbing in DC was really big when I was in high school – and one night we would all be dancing to cumbia, and the other night is hip hop. That was really special. That's me looking on the bright side. It was also so suburban and conformist and conservative and I felt like such a freak all the time.

I was coming from New York and coming from Brooklyn and growing up in Brooklyn and then moving out to the Hamptons and then moving to DC. DC represented stability for me in every single way. Growing up in New York is a lot. Being a teenager here is a lot. And so going to DC I was like, oh great, I love that. It was suburban and I really enjoyed that. Blackness became coupled with something different for me there. I was also in PG County, so it's a little different.

Oh yeah, very different.

Yeah. So Black and very firmly middle class. I loved it.

I have this very clear memory of getting a pair of silver AirWalks for Christmas and being so excited. I have older sisters, so they were always buying me Jordans, making sure I got fresh braids. Always making sure I was cute. I got these shoes and wore them to school and everybody was immediately like, wait, are you gay?

That's so funny.

That really shaped me in a way where I felt I was different, but I really wasn't that different.

What role did reading play in your life as a kid?

My mom loves to say that I started reading really young, maybe three or four, helping her read recipes to make dinner. We were a family of readers; everybody had glasses. I would take my comforter and put it in the bathtub and get in on a rainy Sunday with all my books. Or if we were out to dinner, I would have my little plate of spaghetti and a book. It was encouraged and a big part of my inner world from the time I was really small. Public libraries and school libraries were a huge and important part of my existence. When I was in middle school, and I did a book report on a Stephen King book or maybe a John Saul book – we were also very into grocery store lit – and and the teacher was like, it's amazing that you're so advanced, but this is not an age appropriate book for the class. My parents were so unbothered, they were like wake me up when there's a real problem.

My parents were like that too. The right to privacy was very real, but only within the home. My parents were, my mom especially, was very, outside of the house, I need to know where you're at, what you're doing, but when I was home, she was not worried about me. So I was reading a lot of stuff. I read The Color Purple when I was very young. I read Push.

I read Roots too young and I was just bereft, crying and so upset. I read Push when I was really young too.

I was probably 11.

That’s too young. Was it in the house?

Yeah. My mom had all these books and so I would read 'em.

Same.

What books do you remember reading as a kid? Were there any you loved?

I think the reason I like making books is because they end up in people's homes. The first library you have access to is whatever your family brings in the house. For me it was Stephen King, a lot of Terry McMillan. I read Beloved really young and didn't understand most of it, which is incredible because by now, I’ve read Beloved at so many different points in my life and it keeps opening itself to me. I loved The Babysitters Club. Christopher Pike. R.L. Stine. I loved a spooky read.

When I could start picking out books for myself, I was like, I'll read anything. I remember reading Coffee Will Make You Black when I was really young and loving that book. It's about this little girl growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the fifties or sixties, and her teacher's a lesbian. I think that's why I liked it.

What books would you say shaped you?

A lot of grocery store lit. When I was growing up, you’d get into the line for checkout and it would be full of candy and books by Judy Blume books, all the VC Andrews prequels and sequels. Flowers in the Attic. I read all of them, over and over and over again. They were so compelling, so gripping. Later on in high school and college, I didn't know that writing could be a career, but I took a lot of literature classes and I went to an IB high school.

My wife was also in an IB program. She said no one ever got their certificate.

No one ever got their certificate! But at least the classes were good. We read literature that addressed class, race and gender and literature, in ways I am grateful that I had access to in a public school in Virginia. The same was true in college. I went to UVA and we had a really good English department. I was reading James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison very early on.

If you needed someone to understand you, what book would you tell them to read?

I don’t know. What about you?

I'd probably say The Color Purple. Not because my life looks similar to that. But to understand the way that I conceive of queerness as liberation. That was my starting point of what understanding the self could do for another person and how loving another woman could free you. Then Heads of the Color People by Nafissa Thompson Spires. That one to understand the hilarity of race. That it functions both as comedy and horror. And then the ordinariness of Blackness. I'd also tell people they had to listen to Jill Scott. She's really my North star. I love her so bad. She's just freaky and unapologetic and loves real hard and it's messy as hell. I love that.

I think about The Color Purple a lot. The audacity and brilliance of starting that book with Dear God. It establishes this little girl's inner world as is so rich and profound and more deep and beautiful than you will ever fucking know. It is so affirming. Alice Walker's diaries also mean a lot to me. The Same River Twice is a book that talks about identity and being a writer and fame and the intersections of success.

I understand. Another book that people would have to read to understand me is Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Full stop. Full stop. Full stop.

I think to understand Janie is such a, she's so daring as a character. She perseveres but she does not necessarily come out unscathed.

Not at all. Not at all.

But she gets closer to herself. And I think there's something really beautiful about the fact that getting closer to herself does not free her of pain and heartbreak and loss and making bad decisions. But the last line of that book, she called her soul to come inside and see is one of the most beautiful lines in the world. It's crazy.

Well, we know about Zora in a lot of ways because of the work Alice did. The practice of Black feminist stewardship and archive building and legacy holding that I think about all the time. I also read that book really early and it moved me so much. I wish the movie was so much better. I would love a very good version of that movie.

How would you describe your literary taste?

Rangey, like omakase. Give me a little bit of everything. Now I'm really here for the craft. I want to be the best writer I can be. I really want to think about structure. I really want to push myself. I have so much room to grow. So my taste is who's doing something new and interesting and doing it well? Who’s surprising me?

Read more