2 New Book Riot Articles

Testing, testing WP's new block editor feature. . . looks pretty cool. I might want to play around and change my layout. 10 ECLECTIC BOOKS WITH BEATLES SONGS AS TITLES FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD’S BOLDWOOD: A 19TH CENTURY INCEL? In my 60th BR article within 2.5 years (link above), I still have a ton …

Essay, Archives, and Site Changes!

Coates’ Water Dancer and Peele’s Sunken Place Please read the note and trigger warnings. I kept getting this idea about Get Out and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ wonderful novel The Water Dancer while reading it last November. Seven months later, I was amazed that no one else had written about it yet, apparently, so I did. I also …

ICYMI: New Medium Essay

Ableism and Racism in Philosophy and Literature: Pandemic Edition Discussed here: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan;  Philip Roth's Nemesis. (I couldn't find anything on the ableism in  this last book in particular, but people are rereading this book because of the pandemic. So, I wrote about it!)

More Thoughts on JKR/Harry Potter

I recently published this on insincerity and ableist double standards on Glee: The Glee Problem. TW: JKR, ableism, transmisia, bathrooms, spoilers My Part 1 on the harmful stereotypes in HP is here: Diversity and Continuity, or Lack Thereof, in J. K. Rowling’s Work. In a fantasy world that removed all the structural barriers that exist in …

JKR Doubles Down on Bigotry

CN anti-trans bigotry, racism I'm proud to write for Book Riot, of our diversity and editorial standards, and of this decision the editors published on Monday: "In light of J.K. Rowling’s transphobic statements, we will no longer be covering her or any of her products." So, I've compiled some of my old HP Tweets into …

Ubi Sunt?

TW COVID-19, police brutality, historic language about race I wrote this about 10 days ago, about the inexpressibility of grief during a pandemic: Ubi Sunt? Of course, a lot has already changed since! Kristen Lopez interviewed me here about the inaccessibility of movie theaters. Black Lives Matter! Especially for anyone questioning protesters' methods more than police …

Second and Final Post on Amanda Palmer

TW suicide, drugs, abuse, ableism, racism Within the past day or two, thousands of people read my old post on Amanda Palmer, partly because it was quoted here. I wrote that blog post in November 2019, when AFP harassed a particular music journalist from The Guardian by name, asking her to cover AP's new music …

Disability, Fairy Tales, and Feminism

Some Thoughts on Disability and Fairy Tales Also, this was fun, free, and other panels are still upcoming: Fractured Fairytales from the FoLD in Canada I wrote and posted this essay last #ShakespeareSunday but forgot about the hashtag: The Lavinia Problem (It's Saturday right now.) GIF: Lady Violet from Downton Abbey, asking, "What is a weekend?"

The Lavinia Problem

The Lavinia Problem Trigger warnings: rape, murder, torture, ableism Thesis: "I’ll call this the Lavinia problem: an example of narrative prosthesis that specifically views disability as a metaphor for rape or trauma in general, eliding other, more literal, meanings." I also think there's a popular misconception that metaphors are MORE important than literal meanings. That a …

Quarantine Reading & Viewing

The Catch-22 of Ableism I'm very proud of this long literary crit/theory essay about how a favorite novel helped change my opinion of the US and the world. I've had these ideas for ages. "...Catch-22 also provided me with language to articulate the absurdities of bureaucracies and the ironies of ableism and systemic oppression in …