Not me sending this out late…
Not me sending this out late…
It's 16:48 P.S.T., April 23rd, and there's a Full Moon in Scorpio
Dearest F@guettes,
Honestly, I wanted to write about the Rick Ross Rap Beef but I was a bit too bummed.
There’s a Full Moon in Scorpio (Hey, girl!) and I’m feeling the poisonous sting of it all. About a month and some change ago, I changed jobs (coffee shop to delicatessen) and am feeling meh about having done so. I hated serving coffee but was good at it, good at serving: the devil you know. Now, I’m bad at being a deli clerk: the devil you don’t. Maybe it’s because I’m vegetarian? I doubt it.
At any rate, I made a particularly noteworthy stride at work today only to be met with jaded shock. He’s usually so slow, their judgy eyes seemed to say, he actually finished something. If I had to depend on their vote of confidence, I wouldn’t have anything to depend on. And yet, I am determined to delight in my tiny bauble of success.
Cue Nadia! (She’s my Barbie.)
Nadia was a much needed reminder for a particularly tricky season of my life: no one else can believe in you like you can———so, believe in yourself goddamnit! Words to live by. As I climbed into my car after today’s spoiled shift, I saw her patent plastic heels poking out of my seat cushion.
Sincerely,
E.Y. Washington
Bookslut Caught Reading in the Wild:
Please ignore my chapped lips and third eye. Thanks ;)
Kaveh Akbar, a poet-turned-novelist, penned his debut novel Martyr, which I picked up, earlier this year. Cyrus, his protagonist, contemplates martyrdom which is to say dying a meaningful death. He decides to write elegies for history’s martyrs in the most poetic way possible. I am touched by Akbar’s work, touched by its ability to tune my readerly eye to his character’s exceptionally vivid feelings and experiences. I look forward to finishing it and giving you my fleshed out thoughts. I highly recommend it in the meantime.
Books with Pictures, Books with Words, Books that Captured My Eye and Attention:
Notes: After starting a new novel, I gravitate toward articles, essays, interviews, and podcasts featuring the author said new novel. Akbar is no exception. When I happened upon his episode on the podcast First Draft, I was ecstatic. To me, hearing an author’s speak enhances my reading of their voice on the page. Also, I loved the episode! Please go take a listen.
Kaveh Akbar on Questioning Goodness
from LitHub.com
Mitzi Rapkin: Your character was so interested in this idea of if he was a good person or not. You write that he believed he was a fundamentally bad person. And there were other points in the book where he was contemplating goodness. And I’m curious about that question for your character.
Kaveh Akbar: What contemporary American isn’t governed by that question, right? I mean, we’re all wincing as we order toothpaste from Amazon, or as we put gas into our car, or whatever, you know, I’m wearing a Nike hoodie right now fully aware of the harm that Nike has wrought across the world, right? I mean I’m living on stolen land fully aware that it’s stolen land, right? There’s no one who is not complicit in the violence of empire, or no one that I’ve met alive today. And I’m so much more, endlessly more interested in art that says, I’m complicit and so are you. What do we do about it? More interested than in art that says, I’m good and these people are bad, be more like me. And I think it’s very soothing to metabolize that latter type of art. I think it’s very soothing, in that it vents a kind of neoliberal guilt. If you read a book that says people like this are the bad ones, then you are tacitly a good one for reading that book, right? You’re sort of like inoculating yourself against the harm that it describes. Or you’re saying, well, since I have borne witness to this testimony, now I’m exonerated from the harm that it describes. And I’m interested in what that guilt might have otherwise applied itself towards had it not been vented in that way.