Whatever, whatever about me not getting to everything that I wanted to read. I still got four out of seven which is still impressive, considering how weighty all the books I ended up reading are. Not counting the two Animorphs book I read and this really cringe late 00s manga, first up is:
THE SALT EATERS by Toni Cade Bambara which I first tried to read in 2023 before giving it up because I wasn't at all in the right headspace to read it, nor could I really understand what was going on (I also wasn't trying...). I was much better equipped this time, and I was surprised to find this story about healing and community and the weight of activism, especially as a Black woman, which was oddly timely considering I was feeling really out of it. Cade Bambara also has this really wonderful prose that draws you in, and it's almost conversational and song-like, like listening to a sister tell you a story. Between the suicidal stresses of Velma and the unexpressed griefs of Fred Holt and Sophie Heywood, you leave the book feeling ... Not lighter than you came in, but like the weight's been redistributed. You're not fixed— Minnie (with the help of Old Wife) couldn't quite touch the thing that ailed you through the pages—but you feel like you can carry-on and maybe have the strength to find someone to help you touch the ache. You know?
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin was next, and if you have had the displeasure of being on Tumblr this month, you'd know there was this whole mess with some thirty-year old white person calling James Baldwin a pretentious cunt before admitting that they had no clue who he was, just that they were annoyed by a quote of his because it made them feel guilty. Take two seconds to seethe and simmer in your rage. When you're done return to this review, because my God, I love James Baldwin, he's so precise and exact with his words, and especially when he writes about religion, it feels so familiar, like the pictures he paints of saints and church folk are like scenes from my childhood. Never-guilty, always-accusatory Gabriel with downtrodden mother Elizabeth, and then this confused, roiling mass of young gay emotion in John! I mean, whomst among us former church kids didn't have their first crush on a member of the youth ministry? The book leaves you on a sort of uncertain footing; you don't know what'll happen next, but you know whatever it is will change the entire topography of the church and how many of the characters relate and react to religion. Or maybe it won't! Maybe it'll stay the same, maybe nothing will ever change. Ah!
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright tested me. It took the longest to read and it drained it, not because it's badly written or anything like that. It's just exhausting being confronted with the timelessness of anti-Blackness. You come online and you're faced with slurs and dismissal and hatred, and you think, 'Well, at least we've come so far', and you look back and you've maybe come two, three steps from where you were. Bigger depressed me, his defeatism and self-loathing and inability to see a future depressed me; Bessie and her death depressed me, how her body was used a weapon and a symbol and meant nothing to anyone depressed me; the whites depressed me, how they talked about Blackness depressed me. I'd also recommend this book to anyone who wants to Learn about being Black, though I literally despise the idea of Black fiction having to educate anyone. It's probably what Wright wanted. Um! Absolutely dreary and miserable, which is sometimes, not all the times, what the Black experience is. Damn!
IDOL, BURNING by Rin Usami was my lil' mind vacation. It was quick, only 128 pages, and I managed to finish it in a day. It's about fandom and idol culture, and I thought it was rather good. I saw a review that said they didn't think it went dark enough, but like, what part of the book promised you darkness? I especially liked it because it felt like the quickest, briefest glance into the mind of a depressed, disabled young girl who felt she didn't have much to offer the world but this one little beam of joy over this dude. And, as a Depressed Disabled Not-Girl who spent faer teenage years obsessing over random men and throwing faeself into fandom, I felt seen! I like that at the end you see her sort of piecing her life back together, like! She let it all fall apart for a dude who doesn't know her name, she spiraled, she's living in filth, and now the sun is coming out and she's cleaning her house. So real! You and me both Akari!
Last book of February (which I literally finished today, cutting it real close to the wire) is THE DOLORIAD by Missouri Williams. I'm not sure how I came across this book or where I found it. Maybe on Bookshop or through a rec on instagram, but I ended up buying it on Pangobooks. I just...Wow? I'm still sort of processing it and simmering in it because I only finished it maybe an hour or so ago. In lieu of a proper, drawn out review (I think in my Storygraph I described it as unwieldy and weird but fascinating, which yeah), I'm just gonna throw some keyboards and emotions at you. Brace yourself. Incestuous, ouroboros, decay, rot, horror, vomit, sickening, violent and vile, nature eats you, desolate, circular and claustrophobic. Yeah! So! Don't trust the Storygraph reviews, it's a lot of really boring people who are afraid of books that don't explain themselves. Trust me, a weirdo who likes fun and likes to be confused and likes coming away from books with headaches. Get into a headache!
WATCHED IN FEBRUARY
Getting better at expressing my thoughts about films, and it's easy when you're watching something like GREY GARDENS. Yes, I watched Grey Gardens again. YES, I forced another beloved friend to walk into the twisting, turning halls of the Bouvier-Beale family again, and I'll do it over and over until everyone on this planet appreciates the sickening, saddening plight of Little Edith Beale. This is my design, this is my moment. A perfect documentary, literally changed and rearranged me. Seven watches isn't enough. I need to inscribe the events into my brain with a brand, you know?
Literally the same day, said beloved friend made me watch BONES AND ALL, and I'm sort of mad that I let people influence my thoughts about it, because this movie was bomb as hell. It's got gore, it's got cannibalism as a metaphor for mother hunger, for love, for lust, for connection, for gayness. It's got obsession and passion, it's got outliers on the outside of society HUNGERING, literally, for connection and touch, to the point where it destroys them. Chloe Sevingy is there. Like? Literally wig. Ethel Cain was right.
Last was THE IRON CLAW which I've been desperate to see, and I'm so happy I finally got to watch it. It tore me up. Like, I didn't know a lot about the Von Erichs, but then I learned more, and it's literally such a tragic story about a father basically killing all of his sons in his pursuit of greatness. And then to learn that they cut a whole ass brother out of the story because showing us that three of the brothers died by suicide instead of two would've been too sad...I just. Also, give Zac Efron his Oscar, I'm tired of playing these games with the Academy.