Today's edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham with First Second. |
Today’s Featured Deals
In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals
Previous Daily Deals
Copyright
© Book Riot
155 Hits
Boy, Warner Bros. has had a week, haven’t they?
First, they canceled Batgirl, the $90 million movie starring Leslie Grace, their first headlining Latina superhero. This decision, spurred by their merger with Discovery+, appears to be part of a strategy to eliminate mid-budget projects in favor of big budget theatrical blockbusters and cheaper streaming projects. You might wonder what the point is in wasting the $90 million already spent, but don’t worry! They’re taking a tax write-down instead. I hated typing that sentence.
Then, in a presentation to investors, CEO David Zaslav included a slide revealing that HBO Max and Discovery+ have genders now, apparently – HBO Max, home of superheroes, is “lean in” “appointment viewing” with a “male skew,” while Discovery+ has a “female skew” for their “lean back” “comfort” viewing of *checks notes* People Magazine Investigates.
Then, for some baffling reason, they changed the title of Season 3 of Pennyworth to Pennyworth: The Origin of Alfred’s Butler. I loved typing that sentence. I would type that sentence in every article I write if I could. I will never write a better joke.
Meanwhile, the merger has led to the rumored cancellations of the Strange Adventures series and a Supergirl movie set to spin off from the Flash movie (starring Sasha Calle, another Latina actress), and the confirmed axing of a Wonder Twins movie that had apparently already cast Riverdale’s KJ Apa as Zan, which is almost better than typing “The Origin of Batman’s Butler.” (“Form of…the highs and lows of high school football!”) Outlook is unclear for other announced projects such as a Ta-Nehisi Coates-scripted Superman movie and the Green Lantern TV show. The wretched-looking Gotham Knights seems to be moving forward unimpeded at the CW, though, so…yay? Plus the second Joker movie, with Lady Gaga as Harley, which is honestly pretty good casting but also kind of sounds like MadLibs.
Copyright
© Book Riot
161 Hits
How can you find like-minded people in your community to work with in ending censorship? It can certainly feel overwhelming and, in some instances, impossible, but now is the perfect time to find your allies and work together toward ensuring access to books and information for all.
The Florida Freedom to Read Project, helmed by Jen Cousins and Stephana Ferrell, began as two like-minded parents coming together after the Orange County Public School system removed Gender Queer. From there, they’ve grown their activism work in pushing back against book censorship across the state. Their work has been instrumental in Florida and is a model for how concerned citizens can build similar networks to protect intellectual freedom and the right to access books and information for all. Here’s how to do it (kudos to Cousins and Ferrell for sharing their tips with me).
How To Find People Who Care About Book Censorship
Connect with someone you know who cares deeply about access to books. This could be a best friend or someone you met by chance at a book club. Make a pact and hold one another accountable to one action that week, be it showing up to a board meeting or contacting the local library to let them know how much having queer books available means to you and your family. Find local parent groups on Facebook that align with your beliefs. You may find them labeled as “progressive” parent groups or you may find them via issues they champion. Much of the book banning movement emerged from anti-mask movements, so you may find like-minded people in pro-masking groups. Use these groups to see what topics are being discussed, and connect with those working on censorship issues. If no one is, that’s where you begin to solicit those eager to do that work. You may create a special project or a separate group (Moms For Liberty puts captains in charge of their projects within their chapters). Twitter and Instagram can be extremely useful. Use Twitter to follow anti-censorship groups and individuals, and then engage so you can wrap your head around the issues. You’ll be surprised how quick you connect with folks locally — and remember local might mean your town, your county, your region, or your state more broadly. Watch and read the previous recorded board meetings. You’ll know the names of everyone who shows up to speak at these meetings, and from there, you might find allies you can connect with immediately. In an era where most people are on social media, looking someone up locally is not hard, and sending them a private message of support can get the ball rolling. Wear something that highlights your values. A shirt or tote or pin against censorship will attract attention in the carpool line at school, when you walk with your kids to school, or a school board/library board meeting. This is your chance to connect with fellow like-minded individuals who are eager to do something about book bans. A FReadom shirt like this one, which supports the work of Texas Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Fund, can start a great conversation. Tap your networks. Maybe you are involved in a local animal shelter or drama group that feels removed from anti-censorship work. Wear your passion when you attend those things, and talk about them before/during/after meetings. This will get people curious.Building Your Anti-Censorship Work
Your group does not need to be big to be effective, and the more work you do, the more people will want to get involved. Here’s how to do work:
Get niche. You may be part of a big group, but getting specific in your issues will help you tackle them well. You are passionate about intellectual freedom, for example, but your group is focused on overturning book bans in schools and libraries. Ferrell likens it to being a business: you find your people and strengthen your work when you focus. You care about big issues, but your focus is on something more granular and measurable.Be yourself. Use your voice and speak up at meetings, in person, and online about the issues. You don’t need to be an expert. You need to be passionate and willing to try. Activism is an action, and the more you model that, the more people find comfort in joining you (it’s likely new to them — and you! — or something that creates anxiety since they’ve never done it before). Your words have value and power because you are a citizen in a democracy, but for parents, you have an especially vital voice in the decisions that affect your students. Identify yourself as that stakeholder. Speak at school and library board meetings. You will be seen by others as someone who is doing the work and who they can connect with to build their bravery muscles to do the same thing. Remember: even if you’re too nervous to talk at a board meeting, you can write a letter to them and send a copy to your local newspaper. This will get your name out there with stakeholders and people in your area. Research local teacher and librarian groups and get to know them. For Cousins, this meant getting to know FAME, Florida Association for Media in Education, a professional organization for school media specialists. She was able to connect with educators and learn what issues and challenges they were dealing with. You likely have a state or more local group similar to FAME. Talk with your local school library workers and get to know what their needs are. Introduce yourself as a citizen who is eager to support them and advocate on their behalf. You can build a parent network through championing their needs. Get to know your local school board and, if you have a specific individual representing your district, learn as much as you can about them. The more you get to know them, the more involved you’re able to get, and the more articulately you can speak on behalf of their needs and the needs of the broader community. Ask to talk with your board members one-on-one if talking in front of the whole board at a meeting is intimidating. They can do this, and it is an opportunity for you to voice concerns and/or ask what you can do to support their efforts against censorship. (On a personal note, I’ve sent more than one “heads up” email to a board member or administration member when I saw things happening in a community that they may not have — the gratitude is real, since they can’t have their eyes or ears on everything). When you speak, whether at a board meeting, individually with librarians or educators, or within your anti-censorship groups, emphasize that you support teachers and librarians and are their allies. Reiterate that you know their work is tough and that their passion and the pressures they face are real. Ferrell calls this knowing when to lay or pull the punch on their behalf. Befriend the teachers’ union. Teachers’ union members are often parents themselves. Support public education? You support their unions, too. As soon as educators know you have their backs, they will spread the word about your work and mission, which continues to grow your network. Bring two friends with you to the next board meeting. At the following meeting, ask them to each bring two friends. Now there are seven of you.Now What?
Resist the temptation to believe that once you’ve created a group or have shown up to a board meeting once or written a letter that you’re done. Activism is on-going work, and in an era of dismantling public education and libraries through actions such as book banning, it’s going to be a long, hard, ever-curving road. What began as complaints about a few books has blossomed out to now be a blatant attack on LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities, and it is a coordinated effort to defund and destroy public education and services.
This moment requires a lot more than a post or two. It requires doing that, plus getting five friends to do it, and then getting five more of their friends to do it. It’s something to put on the calendar and make time for regularly, even if it’s a monthly reminder to send that letter to the board or show up to a board meeting and support those talking in favor of book access for all (wear a shirt or tote with your beliefs on it, whether you speak or not!).
Copyright
© Book Riot
169 Hits
Audiobooks aren’t quite my favorite way of approaching the classics (that honor falls to print books, the older and more worn the better), but they’re a close second. For stories that are more often than not over a hundred years old, sometimes it can be easy to miss the nuance and humor in the old-fashioned language. There is a reason why the younger people are, the less likely it is that they’ll enjoy the classics at first read. A good audiobook narrator can change all that.
Think about it: the best audiobook narrators bring the classics’ nuance and humor right back to the forefront. Their tonal shifts and shows of emotion can make an older story more accessible, and even relatable, to readers today. If you have trouble getting into the classics, or if you’d like to experience your favorites in a new way, audiobooks are a fantastic choice.
Speaking of fantastic choices? The eight audiobooks below knock it out of the park, both in terms of content and performance. From audiobooks narrated by actors (Charles Dickens’ words in Richard Armitage’s voice? Yes please) to those narrated by the authors themselves (fair warning, Maya Angelou’s reading of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will wreck you), you can’t go wrong with these eight classics audiobooks. You’re welcome.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, narrated by Ben Barnes
Not content with portraying Dorian Gray in the 2009 film adaptation, Ben Barnes went ahead and narrated the entire book. The result? A rich performance that gives even more layers to this delightfully disturbing novel.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, narrated by Ruby Dee
Janie Crawford wishes for independence and true love. In her attempts to fulfill her dreams, she carves a life of her own. Ruby Dee’s extraordinary performance makes Janie’s growing determination all the more satisfying.
Copyright
© Book Riot
136 Hits
Michelle Yeoh, who turned 60 last week, is a Malaysian Chinese actress, former Miss Malaysia, martial artist, and so much more — she’s lived a very bookish life and is set to continue on that path. She has recently been in the public eye as the star of Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is not based on a book but has the multiverse vibes of Sal and Gabi Break The Universe, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and The Space Between Worlds.
Yeoh was born on August 6, 1962, in Ioph, Perak, Malaysia. She took ballet lessons beginning at age 4 and continued after her family moved to the UK when she was 15. A spinal injury while she was at the Royal Academy of Dance led her to switch majors to choreography, with a minor in drama. After a few years of beauty pageants, she appeared in a TV commercial with Jackie Chan, and began working in cinema, where she performed her own stunts.
She got her cinematic start in Hong Kong action movies, including Heroic Trio (one of my personal favorites) in 1993; the same year, she starred in Butterfly and Sword opposite Tony Leung, based on the novel Liuxing Hudie Jian by Gu Long. In 1997 she began making Hollywood movies, beginning with a starring role in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, the 18th in the series based on Ian Fleming’s novels and the second starring Pierce Brosnan.
In 2000, she starred opposite Chow Yun-fat in the internationally acclaimed, Mandarin-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an American-Chinese co-production based on Wang Dulu’s Iron Crane series. A native Malay speaker who also speaks Cantonese, Yeoh learned her Mandarin lines phonetically. The movie has since been adapted as a comic book, among other things. She continued to work in both Chinese and American cinema, and in 2004 starred in the titular role in Silver Hawk, based on the character from Huang Ying by Xiao Ping.
In 2005, Yeoh starred in the adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the best-selling novel by Arthur Golden. The film’s casting was controversial, as Yeoh is Malaysian and star Zhang Ziyi and co-star Gong Li are both Chinese, while the characters are Japanese. The film’s western box office was middling after a high opening week, and reviews were mixed; China banned the film entirely and the reception in Japan was mostly negative. It was nevertheless nominated for several awards.
Copyright
© Book Riot
153 Hits
If I wasn’t reading as a kid, I was playing with dolls. I still find dolls fascinating and beautiful. I love the variety of dolls, from baby dolls to fashion dolls to artist’s mannequins. I love the rich history of dolls and how entwined doll history is with culture. One of the world’s first and most popular dolls, the paper doll, continues to thrive in new ways with doll enthusiasts of all ages. Since paper is such a delicate art form, not many whole pieces have survived history. However, paper art and paper dolls can be traced back thousands of years.
Historical Paper Arts
The predecessors of the modern paper doll were different variations of paper art across the world.
In Japan, early origami took the shape of figures in kimono. Paper art and doll making are historically linked in Japan. Hinamatsuri, or Doll’s Day, is celebrated on March 3 with expensive heirloom dolls crafted from wood, paper, and clay. The wayang puppets of Java and Bali have been in use since ancient times. Made of leather, wood, or paper, these delicately carved puppets are used to tell the stories of Hindu folklore, local stories and legends, and historical events.
The first paper dolls of Europe appeared in Slavic countries, where paper crafts continue to thrive. Paper cutting folk art, or wycinaki in Polish, began to appear around the 15th century. As popularity rose, more figures began to appear in the art. Wycinaki is and was part of home decor, toys, furniture, and gifts.
French jointed puppets, called pantins, were first fashioned after famous 17th century figures. This satirical figures were among the first mechanical toys in the west. Other common pantin figures were Commedia dell ‘arte characters, like Harlequin, Pulcinella, and Pierrot, the clowns. The early hand painted pantins were simplistic, but as printing technology progressed, more detail could be added to mass production pantins. Printed pantins and paper dolls had the advantage of intricate detail over their manufactured porcelain cousins. Mass produced pantins were printed on a sheet, much like current paper dolls, with limbs separate from the bodies. Each piece was to be cut out separately, then strings, brads, or other fastenings attached to limbs to make the dolls jump and dance. Early paper toys share a similar look to contemporary paper dolls, but even pantins, dressed up like their contemporary counterparts did not come with an assortment of paper fashions and accessories.
Copyright
© Book Riot
153 Hits
Today’s edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by Early Bird Books. |
Today’s Featured Deals
In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals
Previous Daily Deals
Anchored Hearts by Priscilla Oliveras for $0.99
Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman for $1.99
The Color Master by Aimee Bender for $4.99
The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova for $1.99
Copyright
© Book Riot
155 Hits
Copyright
© Book Riot
208 Hits
Today’s edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by Early Bird Books. |
Today’s Featured Deals
In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals
Previous Daily Deals
American Sherlock by Kate Winkler Dawson for $1.99
A Body in the Garden by Katharine Schellman for $1.99
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth by Meryem Alaoui & Emma Ramadan (translator) for $4.99
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde for $1.99
Copyright
© Book Riot
152 Hits
School board elections are crucial. They have always been important, but in a time of increased censorship, with big money funding campaigns by right-wing activists at the local board level and newly-elected board members choosing to overreach in their power to remove books, there has never been a more vital time in American history to know who is representing your tax money and values.
While we know what school boards do, how do we know the rest of what is necessary to elect qualified, competent individuals for school boards? What if you happen to be a person interested in running for school board?
Enter The School Board Project.
Thanks to the help of volunteers and partners, we’re building a massive database of every school board, school board election, and related information for anyone to access. This simple database provides information that is challenging to find in isolation, let alone in a large, collective, searchable, and sortable way. Because this is the work of a small group of individuals with limited time, it is and will be a slow process, but we’ll release information in batches. The methodology for determining which states to prioritize is both an art and a science: these are states with high censorship rates, active censorship groups, and upcoming elections worth preparing for, either as a voter or a candidate.
The School Board Project allows anyone to download the spreadsheets and add any relevant information that helps them. For example: individuals or groups may include the names and stances of those running for boards in the sheet to help guide voters and/or as a means of tracking the kind of topics that are producing the most discussion in those districts. It can be useful for those considering a run for school board to collect information about what they need to do to become eligible or how long they have to prepare for a run. The possibilities here are wide open.
Copyright
© Book Riot
155 Hits
So you’ve seen Jordan Peele’s Nope and you’re looking for what to read next? Here are a few ideas. Warning: minor spoilers connected to the themes of the movie Nope to follow.
You’re probably here because, like me, you haven’t been able to stop thinking about Nope, the latest film from everyone’s favorite horror director Jordan Peele. There are a lot of moving pieces in Peele’s latest film that all add up to one thought-provoking and terrifying whole. It’s a surprising take on alien invasion/UFO horror. It’s a monster horror film that includes social commentary about media spectacles, exploitation, and more. It’s a horror film about the art of filmmaking. And of course, because it’s Jordan Peele, there are also plenty of moments that are funny.
Part of the reason Nope is living rent-free in our collective minds at the moment is because it is such a unique film. There’s nothing out there that’s exactly like it. However, there are lots of novels that you’re sure to love if you’re looking for fiction that contains certain elements of Nope. So if you’re looking for smart alien invasion/UFO fiction, monster horror with social commentary, or horror novels about filmmaking, I’ve got quite a few recommendations for you! Nothing will be quite the same experience as watching Nope for the first time, but these books come close. And they’re also just excellent in their own right. Read and see for yourself!
Smart Alien Invasion Fiction
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon is a genre-bending novel told from multiple points of view in Lagos, Nigeria. A large unidentified object has crashed into the ocean right off the coast of Bar Beach. And the sudden new alien presence in the water affects the lives of three people—marine biologist Adaora, soldier Agu, and Ghanaian rapper Anthony—who will bring change to Lagos and the world at large. This is a sci-fi alien invasion story that also finds inspiration from Nigerian mythology, superhero comics, and more.
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
If one of your favorite things about Nope was the sci-fi mixed with humor, then you’ll probably really enjoy Wesley Chu’s Tao series, starting with The Lives of Tao. Roen is an out-of-shape IT technician who is hearing voices in his head. Surely he must be losing grip on reality, right? Wrong. That voice inside his head is actually a passenger inside his brain—Tao, an alien whose race crashed on planet Earth billions of years ago. Tao’s people have been in the midst of a civil war for centuries, but ultimately both sides want the same thing—to find a way off the planet.
Copyright
© Book Riot
167 Hits
Should we still study Shakespeare? There isn’t a simple answer. For one thing, it depends what is meant by “study” — perhaps a better question, at least as far as answerability goes, is should we still read Shakespeare? Yes, read Shakespeare if you want to. Essay over.
Should academics still analyze and interpret and research Shakespeare? That is a little less easy to answer. Certainly there are not likely to be new discoveries made at this stage, but why limit new people from asking “Who was Shakespeare?” as if he didn’t write his own dang plays, as if we haven’t been down this road a million times. But why not, right? Academia does not inherently object to repetitiveness in subject. If anything, it thrives on it.
Should Shakespeare still be taught in high school? Now that is interesting. And the answer is: Maybe. But I would argue that the value of his writing is not as much its historical importance (though that exists) but its lasting influence. What can we learn from Shakespeare? Quite a lot, actually. Should we still read Shakespeare? Eh, whatever. Should we still learn from his work? Actually, I don’t think we can avoid it.
I truly cannot overstate the influence Shakespeare’s work has had on the English language. He invented — or is the first recorded usage of — over 1700 words, some of them compound words or verbed nouns, others wholly original; these include eyeball, bedroom, and…kissing? Was he the first person to call a dog pup a puppy? Apparently!
But he also invented common phrases and idioms. If you’ve seen better days, you’re quoting As You Like It. Haven’t slept a wink? Cymbeline. If what’s done is done, Macbeth, but if it was a foregone conclusion, Othello.
Copyright
© Book Riot
166 Hits
Many readers, when they hear about audiobooks for the first time, or when someone encourages them to try them out, often show concern about the medium. They worry that consuming a book in this manner will be something difficult to do, or not give them the same joy reading in print does.
I completely empathise with this worry, and I accept that audiobooks aren’t for everyone. While several readers rejoice about how audiobooks made it possible to have a reading life again by helping them focus on a story when print became too demanding, many others claim exactly the opposite: that they can’t seem to be able to focus on what they’re listening to.
Both experiences are valid, and although I am a massive audio fan, I can envision how and why it may not work for some.
In my own personal experience, listening to audiobooks wasn’t an entirely straight path either; I even wrote about that, and how I found ways to practice my focus, going from radio comedies and dramas to podcasts, all the way to audiobooks.
There is a reason why we at Book Riot have written several articles giving tips to those who wish to pick up audiobooks but don’t know how, or tried it and found out they couldn’t. Because, sometimes, it indeed requires practice and persistence.
Copyright
© Book Riot
161 Hits
Every year, a ton of queer books come out during Pride Month. I lost track of how many it was this year, but a quick glance at my new release spreadsheet (yes, I have one) reminded me that there were 10 queer releases on June 7th alone that I’d either read or was planning to read. And that was just one release day, and just the books that interested me, one reader.
All of these new queer books are very exciting, but, news flash: queer people exist year round. The deluge of queer books in June sometimes feels a little bit like publishers appeasing us — like as long as they release a ton of LGBTQ+ books in June, they can ignore us the rest of the year.
No, no, no, no. Around here, we read queer all year. And, happily, there are tons of amazing queer books coming out this summer and fall, even if they haven’t all gotten the buzz they deserve. These are 20 of the ones I’m most excited about. Some I have already read and fallen head-over-heels for, and some are at the top of my TBR. A few are already out (July 12 was a big day for queer books!) and the rest are ready and waiting for your preorders and library holds.
As always when I make lists like this, I am amazed and delighted at the breadth of queer lit we’re being treated to right now. From poignant family dramas and middle grade retellings to fantasy adventures and environmental essays — there is truly something for everyone.
Other Names for Love by Taymour Soomro
This is a moving, complicated father-son story about the places that shape us and the people we can’t let go of. Sixteen-year-old Fahad has a life-changing summer on his father’s farm in rural Pakistan. Years later, he leaves his life in London and returns to Pakistan to help his parents through some financial uncertainty. Both Fahad and his father finally have to confront the events of that long ago summer and the indelible impact it had on their lives.
Copyright
© Book Riot
562 Hits
Hopeful stories for kids are so necessary right now. After all, it isn’t an easy time to exist in the world. I feel perma-stressed, and it gets worse each time I check Twitter or look up the news. And I’m not alone. I see the tension in my friends’ hunched shoulders and dark-ringed eyes. Many of us aren’t having the easiest time coping with the world — dealing with the harsh realities of COVID, racism, and the environmental crisis, plus much more — and kids can feel that stress in us.
As a librarian, patrons constantly ask if I have any recommendations about books that can gently, intelligently, and honestly explain to kids about all the Big Scary Topics. You know, those big themes that we adults still barely comprehend. But the good news is that the answer is yes — there are hopeful stories about difficult topics and this list holds a few of my favourites.
Outside, Inside by LeUyen Pham (COVID)
I’ve long been a fan of Pham’s work as an author and illustrator, and this COVID-related picture book is no different from the rest of her exceptional body of work. It describes those early days of lockdown in a genuinely moving way that speaks plainly about how the experience affected everyone and, in some cases, brought people together even as they were isolated. In its afterword, Pham describes the book as a “time capsule of our moment in history, when the world came together as one to do the right thing.” And that is exactly what she has done, capturing both the best and worst of it in the process.
Thao by Thao Lam (Racism)
Using handwritten font, childhood photographs, and Lam’s signature papercut art, the author describes her experience of having her name misunderstood, misspelled, and mispronounced. I just love how simply she puts it, not shying away from the racism that it is connected to, and I think everyone will be able to understand the frustration she feels.
We Move Together by Kelly Fritsch, Anne McGuire, and Eduardo Trejos (Disability Justice)
An excellent primer about disability justice, equality, and equity, co-written by Fritsch, a disabled writer, educator, and parent. The vividly illustrated images connect to text that portrays how people of different abilities can move through the world together. I also love that the end pages contain more in-depth breakdowns of the concepts — introducing ableism, for instance. The book’s art depicts a super-inclusive community of queer, BIPOC, and disabled individuals.
Copyright
© Book Riot
154 Hits
Rison Thumboor from Thrissur, India, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}
I’m defeatist when it comes to taxes (meaning: I don’t understand deductions and pay whatever TurboTax tells me to), but I’m fascinated by those who aren’t. In 2001, for example, eighty thousand Black Americans filed for reparations with the IRS. Some made this their actual business. For $500, you could pay a self-taught financial advisor named Vernon James to apply on your behalf for a “Black Investment Tax Credit,” as he did for more than three hundred clients. James, who is Black, had a capacious “yes, and” attitude that bound together the case for reparations with workaday “Taxation is theft” libertarianism. Speaking to CBS in 2002, James asserted that Americans, whether Black or white, didn’t have to pay up come April. “The IRS took money from slaves. They are taking money from Americans. That is an investment. They have a right to get it back.” The IRS cut a number of claimants their requested checks, ranging from $40,000 to $100,000 per return and totaling more than $1 million. On realizing what had happened, the agency swiftly demanded their money back. James was sent to prison for six and a half years for tax fraud.
I discovered James in the midst of a depressive spell—that is, post my filing in 2015. It was a summer of right-wing memes about white slavery. After Dylann Roof’s attack on a church in Charleston renewed opprobrium of the Confederate flag’s public prominence, Southern Cross supporters began trotting out claims about Irish ancestors in American bondage. “At some point, you just have to get over it,” a Mississippi man told a Washington Post reporter at a rally in support of the banner of Dixie, the you being Black people, the it being slavery’s legacy.
It was also the summer of Rachel Dolezal. Sometimes, especially when you’re broke, your brain attempts a haphazard alchemy with the elements at hand: why not appropriate and invert James’s enterprise? One could set up a fake service, analogous to James’s: the White Inheritance Tax Credit, for which, for a mere $500, the supposed descendants of Irish slaves could apply—only, rather than filing their IRS Form-2439s on their behalf, one would just keep the service fee. The WITC has remained a speculative exercise. Every year after tax season—while recovering from the handover of my ill-begotten gains—I’ve found myself instead doing some ritual tinkering with a half-formed novella about a Vernon James figure serving white customers. (He’s usually white in this telling, for some reason, though he doesn’t have to be—perhaps it’s a nod to Dolezal.)
Over time, I’ve compiled a five-page document collating my research that I should probably retitle. This year, I made it through the reading list in SHIT ABOUT WHITE SLAVERY.docx to John Hersey’s 1964 novel White Lotus. Like many works of alternate history, the book concerns an American populace vanquished, the victor in this instance not Hitler’s Germany or Hirohito’s Japan but warlord-era China. The titular narrator recounts her experiences following the U.S. defeat in the “Yellow War,” beginning with her capture as a teenager in Arizona, where her village is ransacked by a group of white jazzbo musicians in a Packard touring car, blasting “Stormy Weather.” She’s marched to Los Angeles, where captured whites are billeted in abandoned film lots before being shipped across the Pacific. In Hollywood she sees a Chinese person for the first time, describing his skin as “the underside of the stretching foot of a desert snail” and “the color of curds.”
Copyright
© Book Riot
168 Hits
At my old job, I wrote descriptions of objects; at my new job, I write descriptions of talks, concerts, classes, Jewish holiday services, and other events.
Once I was in the business of selling matter. Now I am in the business of selling time.
But how to use it?
Copyright
© Book Riot
133 Hits
Krazy Kat by George Herriman.
.jpg){kind=link}
In 1910, a mouse named Ignatz first beaned Krazy Kat with a brick. The plot of this comic strip, centered on a “heppy go lucky kat,” is simple. Krazy Kat loves Ignatz Mouse. Officer Pup loves Krazy Kat. Ignatz Mouse hits Krazy over the head with a brick; Officer Pup pursues and usually arrests Ignatz Mouse; Krazy, to whom the brick seems to be a sign of love, is ecstatic. A small heart pops up above his head. The cartoonist, George Herriman, twisted and tangled the three-lover triad and cat-mouse-dog triad and spent thirty-one years retying the same surreal knot. You know what will happen in any strip of Krazy Kat—the same sequence reoccurs eternally—but somehow there is still room for unexpected delight.
E. E. Cummings was one of the Kat’s biggest fans. In 1922, he wrote from Paris to request clippings from friends in America. (“Thank you moreover for a Kat of indescribable beauty!” he wrote to an obliging friend.) In his 1946 introduction to the first edition of the collected strips, Cummings wrote that the brick unleashed joy within the “ultraprogressive game” of the real world, with its preestablished rules, of which it flouted the most sacred: “THOU SHALT NOT PLAY.” (Winnicott defines play as “the continuous evidence of creativity, which means aliveness.”) Herriman gives pleasure without the instant gratification of a punch line, undercutting the expected gag trajectory. The brick hurtling across the page doesn’t end the joke; games end, but play is infinite. There is no winner, and if there is, it is Krazy, who, for private reasons, interprets the brick as love.
The strips were published daily in Hearst newspapers between 1913 and 1944, but Herriman never repeated himself. Or at least, the strip didn’t look the same. The improbable landscape of Coconino County, Arizona, where the strip is set, seems almost to move on the page. Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes and a Herriman megafan, wrote, “Mountains are striped. Mesas are spotted … The horizon is a low wall the characters climb over … The moon is a melon wedge, suspended upside down.” Herriman juggled all the elements the form allowed: language (hyperbolic Creole, Spanish, Yiddish); comedy (existential, vaudevillian, burlesque); and gender—the Kat is neither he nor she, but rather, as Herriman put it, “a pixie,” whose pronouns switch within a strip and occasionally within a sentence, making the possible configurations and miscommunications of the comic infinite. Somehow, in this static form, nothing is inanimate. Only a killjoy would try to extract too much meaning from Krazy Kat, but it’s not surprising that Herriman created art that depended on fluid identities. Twenty-seven years after Herriman died, the sociologist Arthur Asa Berger published the birth certificate on which Herriman was registered as “col,” for “colored.” Herriman was born in New Orleans in 1880 to a mixed-race family that moved to Los Angeles ten years later and from then on passed as white. Herriman had plenty of reasons to keep it up, including his job at the Los Angeles Examiner, a publication that regularly outed people for their race, and the fact that he lived with his white wife in a neighborhood with racist housing covenants. Telling different stories at different times, Herriman explained his light brown skin as the result of years spent living under the Greek sun to some people and claimed various ancestries—often French—to others. (As Krazy tells Ignatz, “Lenguage is that we may mis-unda-stend each udda.”)
Copyright
© Book Riot
308 Hits
“For me as a kid,” writes Darryl Pinckney in a memoir in the Review’s Summer issue, “the film had everything I couldn’t have: cigarettes and train stations, late nights and drinking. Sex.” The film in question is Paris Blues (1961), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman. In honor of Pinckney’s essay, the Review and Metrograph cohosted a screening of the film on the evening of Sunday, July 10—the first in an ongoing series of cohosted evenings. Before a sold-out theater, Pinckney greeted the enthusiastic audience with a talk that spanned the glory of Sidney Poitier, the changing role of race in postwar cinema, and dreams of integration and artistic integrity. Today, we are publishing his remarks in full.
The black character entered mainstream postwar cinema as a social problem. This is the milieu of Sidney Poitier’s debut, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out in 1950. He is a doctor, and the black community beats off the white mob come for revenge on Poitier’s character after a bigot’s brother dies in his care. Two decades went by before a network television station was willing to air the film in prime time. In Richard Brooks’s Blackboard Jungle (1955), Poitier is thirty-one years old but completely convincing as a bright, ambivalent black student at a high school troubled by violent ethnic rivalries and nihilistic juvenile crime. In The Devil Finds Work (1976), James Baldwin recalls that Harlem audiences bayed at the Sidney Poitier character at the end of Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958). A black convict is suddenly free of the white convict he’s been chained to for more than an hour on-screen, but he falls off the train he hopped on to escape, because he extended his hand too far to the white convict, who had been giving him such an awful, racist time. Poitier found a film world opposed to the Hays Code, segregation, and McCarthyism by temperament as well as from principle. He fit right in. He worked with the best people right off. These films were made with studio commitment, if not entirely wanted by them. The black director Lloyd Richards made a Broadway hit of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, but he was passed over when it came to the making of the film, which featured the original cast, including Sidney Poitier. The film came out in 1961, a few months ahead of Paris Blues.
As the sixties went on, Poitier’s characters saved white women: a blind girl in A Patch of Blue (1965); a suicidal woman in The Slender Thread (1965); a rich girl who doesn’t need saving in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967); and the peace of mind of the widow of a murdered factory owner in In the Heat of the Night (1967). No wonder Poitier went in for comedies in the seventies, light detective fare, his version of the blaxploitation film that provided professional relief from social-problem dramas, not to mention a chance to project images of black characters formed by pressures not having to do with a white executive’s ability to accept them. But we identify Poitier with those daring social dramas. He embodied the moral superiority of—what to call it—blackness, black spirit, black people when in conflict with the dupes of their own white racism. His intelligence and good looks and poise and strength left race theorists on their own ground. Like Paul Robeson, Poitier didn’t have to be accounted for. He was box office magic.
Copyright
© Book Riot
222 Hits