Some Stuff to Read
Does social media make you feel terrible? It’s been making me feel terrible!
I have a hugehugehuge deadline on September 24, so I deactivated my Twitter account in August to decrease potential distractions. This week I had to quickly reactivate-then-deactivate it before the 30 days-to-deletion ended and immediately got heartburn after having eyeballs on my timeline for literally three seconds. I quit Facebook in July and now I’m seriously considering deleting my Twitter account by the end of this year if not never going back.
The only reason I can see fit not to quit is *gulp* self-promotion, which already makes me super itchy. It’s still a useful tool to make all of the various requests to the general public and writing communities I am a part of or want to be a part of to *stifles nervous vomit* pay attention to me. (lol it’s completely bananas that we have to, or are made to feel that we have to, do this!!) Is there another way? There has to be. I’m just not sure what it is. I do know that this newsletter is the most comfortable I’ve felt making media that is social in a long time.
Speaking of making this newsletter: this month I’m going to be looking at some novels I read in August that portray whiteness in a way I have not noticeably encountered before. Some of this is because I’m personally trying to navigate writing about hegemonic whiteness in a way that makes it inherent but not gimmicky. There is, otherwise, so much else to explore.
For now, here are three things I read in the last couple days that have stayed with me.
The Rap World Isn’t Anti-Carceral Enough For Me by Andre Gee (more fire.)
Another one from my current favorite rap writer. This one is on how “Fuck Tha Police” becoming “Playing a cop is kind of cool” does not compute.
Andre Gee was also interviewed in Music Journalism Insider this week, alongside Amanda Sewell, biographer of electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos. (If neither of those things are for you, it’s still worth a click for the Reading List which includes an incredible interactive piece by poet Harmony Holiday called The Black Catatonic Scream.)
This is a great little primer on the NBA’s relationship to and participation in the US labor movement on the occasion of the league’s wildcat strike in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake. From the 1954 organization of the National Basketball Players Union to the 2014 playoffs work stoppage of the Los Angeles Clippers in protest of racist owner Donald Sterling, the NBA has been on the forefront of fighting for their rights as workers—some standing up for the actual working-class people who make the whole package of IRL NBA games complete, e.g. Zion Williamson pledging to cover the arena staff at Smoothie King Center at the beginning of the pandemic—and I personally feel like that makes it the most American sports league in the country despite recent Ben Shapiro-approved criticism in The Athletic.
Some follow-up reads:
The reality of Black pain is breaking American sports' status quo by Howard Bryant (ESPN)
NBA Players Put America on Notice by the fearless Jemele Hill (The Atlantic)
Now, who can do some consciousness-raising about the Olympics so LeBron, Kawhi, and the rest of the league will get into the fight against the destruction and displacement to host cities these things cause before LA28?
Mariah After Midnight by Allison P. Davis (New York Magazine)
Allison Davis is so, so incredibly good at painting pop culture’s conversation-starters as human and whole. For example, I don’t get instantly aggravated when I hear about Lena Dunham anymore because of Allison’s measured profile of her in 2018, even though it’s dotted with so many insufferable Dunhamisms! For me, I like reading celebrity profiles that emphasize humanity over extravagance—without letting excessiveness slide—and I think Allison excels incredibly at it. She also writes about herself on the periphery, she doesn’t center her experience reporting as part of the story. For me, this makes for a way more intimate read than the many examples of first-person stories co-starring celebs that have been out there and salivated over in the last decade. (Not to be a hater or anything!!!!)
Anyway, if Allison taught a class on profile writing, I’d sign up on sight. (Someone please tell Allison to teach a profile writing class.)