“Watching the series, I was unable to ignore one central question: Why should we give a damn about the emotional life of a racist, sexist white woman?” Angelica Jade Bastien is typically brilliant on Mrs. America. (link)

Judith Butler is not having it. (link)

Maisy Card considers her memory of Nanny, leader of the Jamaica Maroons. (link)

Code Switch tries to figure out what kind of books we should be reading during quarantine, with the help of Farah Jasmine Griffin. (link)

A wonderful profile of romance and thriller novelist Alyssa Cole! (link)

Here is an oral history of Wishbone. I love Wishbone! (link)

How do people understand each other? Linguist David Adger discusses how language works. (link)

The James Beard Awards got canceled this year, and it’s all a big mess. Here’s your guide to what’s going on. (link)

“It’s a system that can construct a fiction with facts.” ZZ Packer discusses the facts that were raised by Kentucky’s attorney general in the Breonna Taylor case, and the facts that were obscured. (link)

Aisha Harris has created a pretty incredible taxonomy of modern American blackface. (link)

An open letter from the UK & Irish publishing community, in solidarity with trans and nonbinary people. (link)

“I’ve spent the past four months watching sex scenes to determine which seeming sex symbols actually, you know, have sex in movies.” (link)

Can we rethink how YA frames coming out? (link)

“To answer a glaring question: No, collab houses don’t really make any money. It is not a wise business decision, per se, for a management company to spend lavishly on rent solely because fans like seeing their favorite TikTokers hanging out together.” This is fascinating. (link)

Rejoice! Despite the meaninglessness of all time, it is nevertheless the weekend! Eat, drink, and be merry! As for me and my house, we are in intensive quarantine and shall have no pancakes this Sunday, but we will struggle to get by all the same.

The post Multiple Calebs: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Luckily, I read two terrific contemporary YA novels before my reading brain decided to go into low power mode, and I’m excited to share them with y’all! Though there are many bad things about the world these days, one things that makes me feel great is that these books exist in the world and the youth of America can read them. Thanks to Not Just Fiction and Words for Worms for recommending these books to me!

Felix Ever After, Kacen Callender

Felix Love has never been in love. On a good day, he’s proud of the Black trans artist that he is; but on bad days, he wonders secretly if he’s got one too many marginalizations to deserve a happily ever after. His dad can’t bring himself to use Felix’s name, and his mom left them years ago and hasn’t spoken to Felix since he came out as trans. Meanwhile, he’s staring down college applications and getting together a portfolio for a Brown scholarship he dearly needs, when someone at his school puts up a public gallery of photos of Felix pre-transition, all captioned with his deadname. As he’s navigating the transphobia of an unknown classmate, his yearning to find romance, and his ongoing questions about his gender identity, Felix has to confront who he is and who he wants to be.

Gosh, I’m glad this book exists. And on, like, a couple of fronts. It’s one of these YA contemporaries where I felt a keen sense of recognition for all the interpersonal relationship stuff. There’s a scene where a friendly acquaintance is helping Felix with a thing and he’s thinking “Geez, why aren’t we friends? We should be friends!” and I don’t know why it stuck out to me so much except that I used to think that all the time in high school, and then I would be too scared to do anything about it. Or one of the major plots of the book is that Felix kinda develops a crush on a character he formerly thought of as an Enemy, and a, it’s awkward, and b, it stays awkward. Apart from anything else, I loved that the book depicts the tooth-aching awkwardness of being a teenager (feral, inherently!) trying to navigate interpersonal relationships with other teenagers (also, inherently, feral!).

I am also glad it exists from a representation standpoint. At no point does the book yield any ground to ignorance. When Felix’s friends (and enemies) screw up and say the wrong thing about race, gender, sexuality, whatever, it’s clear they’re in the wrong. The book also grants Felix space to question who he is. He knows that he’s a boy, but maybe not always, and he’s not sure that “not always” is allowed, particularly since he’s already made a big fuss about being trans. By the end of the book, he’s found a term that fits him — demiboy — but the other queer characters in the book constantly affirm the validity of questioning identity and searching for the ones that fit you the best.

Maybe the loveliest thing about this book is Felix’s relationship with Ezra. I felt warm every time Ezra leapt to Felix’s defense — and it’s a keynote of his character that he always leaps to Felix’s defense. Even at moments when Felix doesn’t immediately think it’s worth the trouble of picking an argument on his own behalf, Ezra’s right there calling out their friends for transphobia, racism, whatever. I loved that whatever else was going on in Felix’s life, he always had this friend who was ready to go to the mat for him, and I hope every real trans kid in the US has a friend like that.

You Should See Me in a Crown, Leah Johnson

Liz Lighty has never given too much thought to prom. She’s got better things to focus on than the mean white girls of Campbell County — like, for instance, the music scholarship that’ll take her to Pennington College so her grandparents won’t try to sell their house to send her to college. But when the scholarship doesn’t come through, her only shot at getting enough money for college is to become prom queen.

Reese Witherspoon recently expanded her book club to include YA books (link), presumably just so that she could start her YA book club with You Should See Me in a Crown. It’s exactly the kind of contemporary YA book I yearn for! Netflix movie adaptation when? In particular, Leah Johnson strikes such a good balance between giving her protagonist enough independence from her family that she can get on with the plot of the book, while still very much grounding her in the love, support, and loyalty she shares with her brother and grandmother. (In particular, there’s a scene towards the end where she’s talking with her grandmother about the things she’s been struggling with, and it is so, so lovely and warm, as are all the scenes she shares with her family.)

Liz is also part of a friend group she loves but can’t always 100% depend on, which felt like the most relatable high school content ever. Her best friend Gabi is the foremost booster of her campaign to be prom queen, but Gabi isn’t always respectful of Liz’s identity and boundaries. She pushes Liz to be discreet about liking girls, while playing up her friendship with gorgeous football star Jordan Jennings, who stopped being Liz’s friend in freshman year. Meanwhile, Gabi herself isn’t sure how much of herself she wants to show to the school, which leads to her being not-completely-honest to her crush, new girl Amanda Mack. And, perhaps best of all — I am a sucker for this kind of thing — lots of the students whose measure Liz thought she had turn out to be more interesting, worthwhile people than she realized.

NETFLIX MOVIE ADAPTATION WHEN. You Should See Me in a Crown is warm and funny and kind. It meant the world to see a Black, queer, anxious teenager get her happy ending.

Have y’all read any good contemporary YA lately? It hasn’t historically been my favorite subgenre, but in the past few years I feel like it’s just exploded with books that call to me.

The post Kids Trying Their Best in Contemporary YA appeared first on Reading the End.

I never liked ironic detachment. Emily VanDer Werff goes in on why it fucking sucks and we should care about stuff. (link)

“You are not permitted to watch a police precinct erupt into flames under a canopy of fireworks and whisper to yourself, “good.”‘ Tochi Onyebuchi on the responsibility of Black writers in America. (link)

Michael Arceneaux makes the case against forgiveness. (link)

In order to fix our country, white women need to face a clear-eyed reckoning about the role we have historically played and continue to play in upholding white supremacy. (link)

Dear Holmes looks so fucking fun and I don’t even like Sherlock Holmes. (link)

Quarantine is a terrific time to rediscover The Westing Game, which is as cynical about capitalism as you are right now. (link)

“Someone at some point has to get down to the business of reading.” Lauren Michele Jackson on anti-racist reading lists. (link)

Angelica Jade Bastien is typically eloquent and brilliant on Michaela Coel’s new show, I May Destroy You. cw for sexual assault. (link)

What does K-pop owe to the Black Lives Matter movement? (link)

Here is a story about racism in NOW. (link)

White writers of crime fiction are complicit in the valorization of police in American culture. They can change how they write. (link)

Lauren Francis-Sharma hoped that quarantine would let her protect her children from American racism. It did not. (link)

A Letter From a Black Woman in Publishing on the Industry’s Cruel, Hypocritical Insistence That Words Matter, by Mariah Stovall (link)

Why we all turned on Glee. (link)

As we all wait breathlessly for the Millions second half of 2020 book preview, Lithub has used math to compile a list of the mathematically most anticipated books of summer. (link)

And now, the JK Rowling sucks links. Kacen Callender talks about staying alive for the Harry Potter books — and why JK Rowling’s transphobia is so deeply harmful. (link) Gabrielle Bellot writes about how JK Rowling betrayed the world and the readers she made. (link) Mallory Yu on why this is so personal. (link) Aja Romano on finding their nonbinary identity through Harry Potter, and realizing that had nothing to do with JK Rowling. (link) Emmet Asher-Perrin on saying goodbye. (link)

Do you think there’s any chance that JK Rowling being an asshole will save us from further Fantastic Beasts movies? The first one was Not good, and I heard the second one was even Not gooder. But maybe that will be the only two we have to suffer through.

The post Down with Forgiveness and Also Ironic Detachment: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.