Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi

Riot Baby felt terrifyingly topical when I read it in January of this year, and then it just got more and more and more topical somehow. It’s about two Black siblings, Ella and Kev, who each have special powers. Jumping around in time, Riot Baby shows us a dystopian America that’s functionally just… America, and Kev ends up incarcerated for living in the world while Black. Using their powers, Ella and Kev pay telepathic (?) visits to each other, as well as to a number of scenes in America’s racist history, and search for ways to bring the whole racist system down.

Tor’s novella line continues to publish absolute bangers, and Riot Baby felt like a gift in a year when America has felt even more like a dystopia than usual. Its leaps through time are deliberately disorienting, so that the reader is never quite allowed to settle into any certainty about what the book is going to be. Instead you’re carried through time and space in a sort of grand tour of American oppression. Riot Baby is imaginative, strange, dizzying, exhilarating.

Butterfly Yellow, Thanha Lai

I can’t remember who recommended Butterfly Yellow to me, but it was this wonderfully quiet and careful YA novel about a Vietnamese girl who comes to America in search of her little brother, from whom she was separated during the Vietnam War. She’s certain that he’ll be delighted to be reunited with her, but instead she finds that he’s comfortable in his new life with his adoptive parents. Hằng befriends a cowboy named LeeRoy and sticks around, patiently trying to rebuilt her relationship with her brother.

Because we see Hằng so much through LeeRoy’s eyes, I kept thinking that she was younger than she was, so it threw me off a bit when she develops a romance with LeeRoy. And overall I think Butterfly Yellow feels slightly more middle grade than YA. Aside from that small area of disorientation, though, it was a book with a great deal of emotional depth. No matter how much we want easy answers, such answers aren’t forthcoming. Instead, it’s a story about perseverance in love and finding joy in an imperfect world.

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

On a grim day in January, I opened my mail to find an ARC of Harrow the Ninth, upon which I shrieked like a banshee and dived into it with an enthusiasm. Gideon the Ninth, you’ll recall, was the lesbian necromancers in space book, and this is the middle book in the series. We follow Harrow as she struggles with her imperfect Lyctorhood and her fractured memories of what happened at Canaan House.

This book is bonkers. It is bonkers. Every choice that Tamsyn Muir makes in this book is bonkers. It is a symphony of what-the-fuck, with every instrument playing a perfect, terrifying what the fuck variation, and all I could do was let myself be swept along by it. I know that some folks have said they found this one a harder read than Gideon — in Gideon the Ninth you’re in Gideon’s head enjoying her irreverent take on all the horrifying blood and murder events, whereas in Harrow the Ninth you’re living with Harrow’s rage, grief, and self-loathing. So I hope it won’t make me sound like a callous monster when I say I don’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book. I was grinning from ear to ear every time I opened it. I cannot wait for the third one.

Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo

WHEW did somebody say “mastery of the novella form”? I got Empress of Salt and Fortune as an ARC and was not immediately sucked in after reading the first few pages. Then on a Saturday I was like “I’m going to dedicate some actual time to reading this bastard” and sat down and read it all in one sitting. It’s the story of cleric Chih, who is collecting stories on their travels through a country that has been shaped by a powerful empress. They encounter an old woman who used to serve in the royal palace, and settle in to hear her version of the empress’s rise.

Just, wow. I absolutely loved this book. I am not one for secondary world fantasy, usually, but Vo builds her world around material culture: the tooth that was part of the gown the empress wore when she came as a bride to the palace; the dice that she used to play games and cast lots; a map of pilgrimage shrines throughout the empire. The things are the hook into the story of this empress, and the story is about women’s rage. It’s about the refusal to accept the oppression and denial your life has given you, and the overlooked ways women use to communicate among themselves, using tools that powerful men can’t be bothered glancing at twice.

I still don’t quite know how Vo managed to pack so much worldbuilding, emotion, and plot into 118 pages, but I do know that I’m excited for her future career and inevitable superstardom in the world of SFF.

The Good Luck Girls, Charlotte Nicole Davis

ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE YA!!!

Every year for the last few years, there’s been at least one YA novel where I was like “this is just a good fucking adventure story, what a pleasure, what a dream,” and as I look back on them, they are all, one hundred percent of them, road trip adventures. So in case there was any lack of clarity about what I like and whether I am predictable, the answers are road trips and yes, I am very predictable.

The Good Luck Girls tells the story of a group of girls fleeing from the brothel to which they were sold as children, trying to escape the consequences of a patron’s death. They are seeking asylum in a place they’ve only heard about, a place that for all they know doesn’t even exist — but they have to try and get there, or else resign themselves to spending their lives being hunted by the raveners who have been tasked with finding them and punishing them.

As dark as this premise is, Davis does a terrific job of writing a book that doesn’t feel doomed, yet also doesn’t gloss over the genuine trauma these girls have been through in their lives. Aster is determined to get all her friends to safety, whatever the cost to her; she’s smart and resourceful and angry and driven, and I cherished her. There’s a slow build-up of grudging respect between her and the house favorite at their brothel, Violet, which of course I adored, and the stakes of their road trip escape remain high, high, high, so there’s this lovely release of tension any time they have the chance to stop and rest and be happy for even a short time. And the set-up for book two just really thrilled me. Can’t wait for more!

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Whoever decided to get Paul Lewin to do the cover for this book deserves a trophy. Also, I love Paul Lewin’s art. One of my goals for this year is to read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, not just because I need to read more of Octavia Butler’s work, but also because if I like it then I can maybe buy the editions that feature Paul Lewin’s fancy, gorgeous covers.

Anyway, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games digs deep into major fantasy properties to explore the ways Black characters in those franchises have been used and abused by both the stories themselves and the audiences who received them. Thomas is a terrific, insightful cultural critic, and her work is particularly notable for how clearly she loves these properties and wants better for them. Her readings of the texts and their audiences enriched my understanding of these books, movies, and TV shows, and I’m so excited for whatever this author plans to do next.

Norma Jean Baker of Troy, Anne Carson

Before *waves hands* all this, I attended a conference at which New Directions had a booth, and you just wouldn’t believe the shriek of joy I emitted when I realized that Anne Carson had a new book. Anne Carson is the translator, poet, and genius behind If Not, Winter (an amazing translation of Sappho) and Nox, a book-in-a-box I incepted myself into being able to afford the first year I lived in New York.

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy combines the story of Helen of Troy with the life of Marilyn Monroe, whose name before fame was Norma Jeane Baker. It’s expectedly strange and funny and devastating.

In ancient Greece you use the verb [I am too lazy to recreate this in WordPress], which comes over into Latin as rapio, rapere, raptus sum, and gives us English rapture and rape — words stained with the very early blood of girls, with the very late blood of cities, with the hysteria of the end of the world. Sometimes I think language should cover its own eyes when it speaks.

Anne Carson is a queen on etymology. If you liked the above quotation, I refer you to Nox, which does a lot of this kind of thing.

Realm of Ash, Tasha Suri

Remember when I was lowkey obsessed with Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri’s debut? Well, in an exciting twist, I loved Realm of Ash even more. It maintains the same Angry Girl / Soft Boy romance dynamic, but dials the anger and the softness up by several notches.

Even saying that feels like a disservice to Realm of Ash, because it ignores the absolutely wonderful worldbuilding and plot work that Tasha Suri is doing. It’s the kind of sequel that Diana Wynne Jones would write, where the book is set in the same world under (some of) the same set of assumptions, but it’s far more of a companion novel than the type of sequel where you’re like, aw, yeah, gonna get some answers now. Realm of Ash is about the crumbling Ambhan Empire, and the efforts of a widow and a prince to understand the limits of their forbidden magic.

I just… I loved this? Again I say that I tend to struggle with secondary world fantasy, but authors like Tasha Suri and Nghi Vo seem determined to undermine my carefully established opinions. Tasha Suri comes out of fanfic, and you can really tell by the way she makes relationships so central to her plotting. I loved this book, and I cannot wait for Suri’s 2021 book The Jasmine Throne. I love her.

Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch

This round-up includes three nonfiction books (unless you count the book of poetry; in which case, four), and I stand by all of them. Because Internet is a linguistics book about the language of the internet, and it’s 24-karat gold in my opinion. Gretchen McCulloch talks about all the things you’d expect, like the development of emojis and the reason why memes work or don’t, as well as a whole slew of things you wouldn’t, like how Arabic-speakers convey the Arabic alphabet on Twitter and why old people use so many ellipses in their emails.

If you’ve ever been like “I am extremely online, but why?”, I highly recommend that you read Because Internet. It won’t explain why you are so online (who could?), but it will describe your life in terrifyingly accurate terms.

The True Queen, Zen Cho

I could just as well have put The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water on this list, because Zen Cho blessed us with two new releases in the last two years, but The True Queen was the one that I really loved. This may reflect my general preference for the novel-length format. The True Queen is a follow-up to the 2015 Sorcerer to the Crown, and I loved it so so so so so much. It’s set in an alternate version of the nineteenth century, as Sorcerer to the Crown was, but it focuses much more on people who aren’t English. Yay!

I love Zen Cho for so consistently writing books that could have been dark and grim but are, in fact, funny and light-hearted. In these quarantimes, it feels like a particularly revolutionary writing choice. The True Queen deals with a lot of heavy themes (imperialism, family conflict, etc.) in a way that isn’t too grim but also doesn’t feel like a cop-out by the author. I just truly loved this book, as I have all her books to date. I had so much fucking fun reading it, and in a year where fun was few and far between, I value that so so so much. ZEN CHO.

The City We Became, NK Jemisin

Yes, I was furious at the offhand way in which NK Jemisin dismissed New Orleans in this book, and yes, it made me cry on podcast. But apart from that gripe, which while not minor to me was minor in terms of the space it occupied in the book, I really loved NK Jemisin’s latest novel. It’s about the city of New York becoming sentient, manifesting itself in the avatars for each borough, who must come together to fight against an evil white Lovecraftian tentacle creature.

In perhaps the clearest measure of success, The City We Became made me feel agonizingly homesick for New York City. I was supposed to visit it in 2020! Reading this reminded me so keenly of what the city is like, in all its boroughs, in every iteration, and I just got really fucking emoshe about it. NK Jemisin’s writing is typically beautiful, her plotting typically tense, and I was left with a mighty yearning for more of this series.

A Song Below Water, Bethany Morrow

It’s the misogynoir fantasy novel of your dreams! Tavia has known for years that she’s a siren, and she knows that she must be careful never to reveal what she is. Living in the city of Portland, she has plenty of opportunity to see the kind of oppression faced by other Black people, especially Black women, especially sirens. In the aftermath of a siren murder trial, Tavia learns that an idol of hers is also a siren, and she begins to understand that she has no alternative but to use her voice to pursue her values.

I loved the worldbuilding in A Song Below Water, and I dearly hope that Bethany Morrow has plans for more books in this universe. Though Tavia struggles mightily with understanding what it means to be a siren, sirens are not the only magical being in this world. I would love to see books that deal with other kinds of magic and their implications — not least because Tavia’s beloved sister Effie has secrets of her own that are uncovered in the course of the novel. I love sister stuff! I love it! And this book is about sisters who are absolutely ride-or-die for each other, which was great to see — I love a complicated sibling relationship, but I also love the kind of relationship that’s all about love and loyalty.

Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall

Mirabile, Janet Kagan

Okay, I confess that this one’s on me. My aunt has been trying to get me to read Mirabile for, like, six years, and every time I was like “oh yeah yeah I’ll get to it for sure” and then because I couldn’t easily access the book, I did not for sure get to it. Last year, my aunt totally got me by just lending me the mf book, so it was either I read it promptly or I became one of those people who borrows a book and never remembers to return it. And y’all know I refuse to be that person.

Mirabile, which was published in 1991, is about xenobiologist (?) / xenoecologist (??) Mama Jason, who is responsible for researching and keeping under control the many mutant life forms that inevitably arise on the planet colony of Mirabile. This is a novel in stories (not usually my favorite thing), most of which were published in Asimov’s Science Fiction before being collected in novel form, and each chapter deals with a specific life form, from the Kangaroo Rex to the Loch Moose Monster. It’s the kind of low-stakes SFF novel that I’m constantly searching for: Though Mama Jason is tasked in some ways with the survival of the colony, there’s never any real question that she’ll succeed in her endeavors. She has a funny, wry narrative voice, and it’s overall just great to see an older woman protagonist in SF. My aunt was right. I should have read this sooner.

Part two is coming your way soon! Probably!

The post All the Books that Blew My Mind in 2020, Part 1 appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 132

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!

1:20 – Quarantine media we’re consuming
25:45 – Summer Book Preview
42:11 – NK Jemisin’s The City We Became

And here’s a list of everything we talked about!

Claire Rousseau YouTube Channel
Radio Free Fandom
She-Ra (Netflix show)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson
The Great (Hulu show)
Vulture recaps of The Great
Catherine the Great on the Extra History Channel
DC’s Harley Quinn
The Extraordinaries, TJ Klune
The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune
The Great British Sewing Bee
Sweet Magnolias (Netflix)
Rick and Morty
A Song Below Water, Bethany Morrow (my review)
Hugo Finalists for 2020
Die, Kieran Gillen and Stephanie Hans
Dallas Art Fair
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho
Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin, trans. Megan McDowell
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin, trans. Megan McDowell
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, H. G. Parry
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, H. G. Parry
Take a Hint, Dani Brown, Talia Hibbert
Get a Life, Chloe Brown, Talia Hibbert
Party of Two, Jasmine Guillory
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, Roseanne Brown
Deal with the Devil, Kit Rocha
Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall
Seven Devils, Laura Lam and Elizabeth May
Toil and Trouble, edited by Tess Sharpe
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
Star Daughter, Shveta Thakrar
Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger, illustrated by Rovina Cai
The City We Became, NK Jemisin

You can find Claire on YouTube and Twitter, as well as at her podcast, Radio Free Fandom. You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post PODCAST – Episode 132 – Summer Book Preview and NK Jemisin’s The City We Became appeared first on Reading the End.

I miss Grantland all the time, but I’m so glad The Ringer exists. Here’s a terrific piece on how The Bachelor became a pipeline for social media influencers.

A wonderful profile of NK Jemisin, one of the most amazing SFF authors currently working.

Cancel culture is chaotic good (with some history and context).

“It’s like the Hunger Games, but dangerous.” How to not get murdered if you find yourself in an English murder village.

Here’s a guide to protecting your security online.

Myriam Gurba, on the death threats you’ll receive when you challenge white supremacy. And Patrice Caldwell on how publishing continues to shut out the voices of people of color, to the benefit of books like American Dirt. And David Bowles on the whiteness and brokenness of the publishing industry.

And yes, to answer your next question: The publishing industry remains very, very white.

The British royal family has a massive online fandom. It is now in turmoil.

Marginalized people can tell true authentic stories that in aggregate contribute to dominant cultural narratives that are harmful. This is because the culture chooses which marginalized voices and stories to uplift.

Men have talked us to death about the sex they’ve had with women, but they have said very little about the abortions they did or didn’t pay for.

Here’s Evette Dione on Kobe Bryant and his complicated legacy.

How did fingers get their names in all different languages? Today is a good day to find out! (Also, this is your semiannual reminder that if you are ever in a kidnapping situation and the bad guys are going to cut off one of your fingers to show your family that they mean business, and they let you choose which finger, you should choose the index finger on your nondominant hand. You need the other fingers for gripping stuff, but your middle finger makes a pretty good substitute index finger.)

Happy weekend, friends! I hope yours is calm and peaceful, or if not that then I hope it’s full of reading Gideon the Ninth and shrieking in giddy glee as you read.

The post Sacrifice Your Nondominant Hand’s Index Finger: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Patricia Highsmith’s diaries are going to be published in 2021. I still haven’t read The Price of Salt, and I am mad at myself about it. Maybe that will be one of my small goals for 2020.

The kids are frankly fucking inspiring.

I was super intrigued by this post about the sexist ways the Austens and Brontes are often portrayed in biographies and fiction.

“Most of us writing now were not educated by that expanded canon.” Alexander Chee on writing stories about people who are different than you.

Dahlia Lithwick hasn’t been back to the Supreme Court since Kavanaugh was confirmed. From the reporter who brought us the Chaos Muppet / Order Muppet theory as part of her Supreme Court reporting, this is devastating. It’s devastating anyway. Fuck the patriarchy.

Listen. Listen. Listen. I have no opinion about whether Jeffrey Epstein was murdered or died by suicide because I am not qualified to assess the evidence. But I do want to be able to depend on people who are qualified to assess the evidence, which, um.

Dialogue from the husbands in every haunted house movie.

Carmen Maria Machado wrote her memoir of surviving a queer abusive relationship because she could not find such books to support her when she was in the midst of the experience. Here’s also a review of her book that I thought was really good.

New English Canaan was a 1637 book that harshly critiqued the Puritan colonizers in America. Sounds fascinating, no?

The demise of Deadspin has been miserable to witness. Anna Merlan reports: Blogging is hard.

“Romance novels are social novels.” Adriana Herrera (an awesome writer!) on the possibilities that diverse romance novels offer.

Attention please, these are all the holiday movies. Brace for incoming.

Malka Older talks utopia, dystopia, and the necessity of imagining better futures for ourselves.

Feminist bookstores are having a renaissance in the South.

That’s all for today! Have a wonderful weekend, please topple the patriarchy responsibly, and I’ll see you back here on Monday, when we will all recommence weeping and tearing our hair over the future (slash, doom?) of the world.

The post I Really Need to Read The Price of Salt Already: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

The time Virgina Woolf wore blackface.

Kat Eschner wonders if it’s time to put aside the Little House books. (It’s a strong yes from me, but I was also never that into them. So.)

What does the nostalgia for old-school publishing actually want to return to? (Hint: white dudes.)

What does it mean when studios embargo reviews on a movie?

Emily Asher-Perrin rocks, and this take on gender fluidity and Steven Universe and She-Ra is very very good.

Why do so many books include the tagline “A Novel“?

Talking to strangers on the subway about books.

In case you somehow haven’t heard me raving about One Day at a Time yet, here are 19 things that are great about it. What a great show. Watch it now on Netflix so we can all get the fourth season we deserve.

Happy weekend!

The post Some thoughts on media I haven’t yet consumed: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Disney princesses reimagined as cement mixers.

Here’s what’s going on at Tumblr.

Period-tracking apps benefit men, and marketers, and medical companies–not women.

What it’s like hearing Anne Carson lecture.

This journalist went to a Scholastic book fair and didn’t find it as magical as she remembered — but somehow this article just made me feel MORE fond and MORE magical about Scholastic book fairs. So, win?

“The work of black public intellectuals is shaped by white gatekeepers….There is power lost when the oppressor serves as interlocutor.” Mychal Denzel Smith on what it means to be a black public intellectual.

Jezebel talks to a biographer of Queen Anne to find out the truth behind the new movie The Favourite.

Here’s all the money the American taxpayer is spending on Confederate monuments and iconography.

An excellent profile of NK Jemisin, who is an excellent writer. Yay!

What happens when a fic goes mainstream?

Another excellent piece about the missing mothers of SFF, this time by Aliette de Bodard, a writer I like more and more as time goes on.

Author Ijeoma Oluo unpacks a few of the ways systemic racism functions in this interview.

Let’s find a way to put to rest the idea that there are “male brains” and “female brains.” (Yay Cordelia Fine!)

Here are the stories of eight “token black actors” from 90s TV shows.

The post ‘Tis the season for NPR Book Concierge!: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Anyway, here are some other links.

So I’m feeling some kind of way about all the predictably sympathetic coverage of the Austin bomber, and here’s a thing Ijeoma Iluo wrote.

“Angels in America gentrifies blackness out of the American AIDS story”: Steven Thrasher on the most prominent AIDS story we continue to tell.

And now for some good news: Sales at feminist presses are up!

A meeting of the mutual admiration society between NK Jemisin and Neil Gaiman. How heartwarming.

Are we applying (yes) different standards to artists who are also mothers (yes)?

Accessibility at AWP, the country’s largest conference for creative writers, was — not great.

Gina Rodriguez is your Carmen Sandiego. What a blessing.

Constance Grady is here to explain why Ready Player One seemed like harmless fun when it came out, versus the toxic madness it seems like now.

Publishers and bookstores grapple with the recent revelations of harassment by kidlit authors.

We might — have a whole other organ that we didn’t know about before? Y’all, science is wild.

Roxane Gay enjoyed the first two episodes of the Roseanne reboot. She’s not watching any more of it.

Becky Albertalli has your list of queer YA books to enjoy!

There is a story about Dostoevsky meeting Dickens that you may have heard. It’s fiction. But that made-up story — first written about in an article for The Dickensian — is just the tip of an iceberg of scholarly fraud.

Alexandra Petri is a national treasure. “If male authors described men the way they describe women.”

Last but not least, there’s an incredible StoryBundle of world SF, and you can have it as your own for most of the month of April. Hop on it! Ten awesome books for fifteen dollars!

The post Never Will I Not Scream about Jesus Christ Superstar: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Emily Asher Perrin’s Tor.com piece on identifying with uncool characters spoke to my nerdy, rule-abiding heart.

Akwaeke Emezi talks about finding a path to a truer identity, through Nigerian spiritual beliefs and Western surgeries.

This interview with Jia Tolentino reminds me of so many reasons why I dig her. If you’re not familiar with her work, familiarize yourself! She’s got a book coming out!

Gabrielle Bellot writes brilliantly and eloquently on the colonial thinking that produces remarks about shithole countries, and how every country has “a grandeur in spirit worth fighting for.”

A defense of Book Five Capslock Harry.

Millennial culture is this Twitter thread. (Major spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi contained herein.)

Amal El-Mohtar is taking over for NK Jemisin writing an SFF column for the New York Times Book Review. Two excellent reviewers for an excellent column! What a world!

Some elements of the trailer for The Shape of Water made me suspicious, and I decided not to see it. Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (who did see it) explores the film’s failures of disability representation. (One amazingly easy improvement would have been to cast a disabled actress in the main role.)

On good guys and bad guys and how old-time stories didn’t really have them.

“While men weren’t looking, women built a genre that tackles love, sex, pleasure, class, money, feminism, masculinity, and equality.” Romance novels! (With lots of my fave romance authors being quoted, so hooray for that too.)

Mimi Mondal offers a brief history of South Asian science fiction and fantasy.

The grand jury prize at Sundance this year went to a YA adaptation, The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Woot!

A twitter thread about how to fight in a dress.

One of my 2018 goals is to read more SFF short fiction. Luckily, I have the writers at Lady Business backing me up, including this MASSIVE post of 2017 favorites. What a time to be alive.

Rebecca Traister is so sensible, even when she’s talking about Katie Roiphe who I find to be mostly nonsense.

This interview with the guy who gets Super Bowl halftime shows on the field in LITERALLY SIX MINUTES is really fascinating from a process perspective.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends, and if you’re a Mardi Gras celebrator, have a wonderful Mardi Gras!

The post Too Sleepy to Think of a Title for My Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

NK Jemisin

Nicole Chung

Mira Jacob

Masha Gessen

Vann R. Newkirk II

Rebecca Traister

Rembert Browne

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham

A whole bunch of writers of many genres

Stay safe, guys.

The post Post-Election Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

How to not be a dick to women who write comics criticism. (Good news: It ain’t even that hard.)

Yes, Lovecraft was a product of his times. That doesn’t mean we have to be okay with his racism.

A thoughtful response to the recent “I don’t want to be Black Spiderman” issue of the Miles Morales Spiderman comic (by Brian Michael Bendis, a white dude).

I’ve seen a couple of pieces lately arguing that Hamilton uncritically props up the American dream (as in opposition to, one of them really weirdly argued, Ta-Nehisi Coates? it was a strange article), and I think this NK Jemisin post about fantasy in Hamilton does a good job of explaining why that claim is kinda beside the point.

BUT WHAT WILL YOUR MOTHER SAY? The questions women (but not men) who write about sex get asked.

On JK Rowling and appropriation of Native American cultures.

Neila Orr on the myth of upward mobility. For best results, pair this with Gene Demby’s piece about the Republican party turning on its core voters.

Charlie Jane Anders sums up the storytelling lessons she learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And finally, because we live in a world run by a benevolent God, Anne Helen Peterson wrote a piece about Jennifer Garner’s transformation from sexy spy to ultimate soccer mom. Then, as we were basking in the glow of that, she wrote another piece about Sad Affleck. They’re both fire.

Have a fantastic weekend!!

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