Who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself to not feel angry?

 This isn't for the Read Harder Challenge, but I did have to talk for a minute about When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill because I read it for book club, and then had a genius moment and forgot when we met, so didn't get to flail at people about how DELIGHTFUL this book was.

The basic plot is that in the 1950s, several hundred thousand women suddenly became dragons and flew off, and how the people left behind dealt with (or didn't) their absence.  The book uses becoming a dragon as a shorthand for a lot of conditions, the most obvious of which was the sublimation of women's emotions under the patriarchy, but the second most obvious was as a metaphor for being gay.  It works either way, honestly, and as a woman who's frequently felt angry enough that I wanted to breathe fire and destroy buildings, I get it.

I know I'm not a child of the fifties (THANK GOD), but my parents were, and the societal tone reads  true.  A lot of admonitions to keep your head down (metaphorically IRL, but literally in the text), to conform, to make yourself smaller and more agreeable sound familiar, and the rationale still rings hollow.

Other things that I adored:

• The power of a well-funded librarian.
• Civil rights dragons!  GOD, how much further would we be as a society if we had giant stompy monsters to stare down bigots?  
• A lesbian love story that doesn't end in tragedy, but in change, and our POV character finds happiness and contentment!

I could rant about this book forever, go read the quotes, get this book in your brain. 
 

Everyone around me - but especially girls - seemed to have access to information I lacked.

Continuing with Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, I read Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe for "a book that’s been challenged recently in your school district/library OR read one of the most-challenged/banned books of the year by a queer and/or BIPOC author."  Gender Queer, as you might suspect, is an autobiographical comic of the author's coming to terms with eir gender identity and sexuality.  Especially relevant to me were the stories of eir childhood and feeling othered (hence the quote title of this post).

I feel like it's a common problem for little kids to feel strange and isolated from their peers, especially if they don't fit into one or more social boxes.  Everyone seems to be going one way and you're left to the side going, "That looks awful, why does everyone else like this?  What's wrong with me?"  Even with a supportive family structure, it's a lot to deal with when your peers expect you to have absorbed the same messages in the same ways.   

I couldn't help grinning at Maia's book collection and adolescence being defined by fanfic; I'm a decade older than em, but same.  I always think it's funny how many queer people I know that will point to Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage as a formative gay text.  I've tried to think back to the first positive portrayal of a gay relationship that I can remember in any form of media, and I can't really point to one.  But in fairness, being straight, it possibly never occurred to me to mark it as different.  "Oh, this character likes boys, aight."  

As to why this book was challenged so much, I'm honestly at a loss.  It seems to be a cute coming-into-yourself book, relatable, and there's a minimal amount of nudity, not used for titillation.  I know on a rational level that any level of queer content is too much for people who try to ban books, and it's always absurd.  Chances are just the title was enough to set off the homo/transphobes without ever having opened the book.  The idea that someone could be happy being in any way different is threatening to people who benefit from the status quo.

 And I also read a second queer comic, heyyyyyy.  For "a graphic novel/comic/manga if you haven’t before; or read one that is a different genre than you normally read," I read Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani.  I'd apparently had it on my TBR from waaaaay back under it's untranslated name (Shimanami Tasogare), but didn't realize it'd been localized.  It's a pretty manga with a teenager trying to come to terms with being gay, and finding a cool group of people to support him.  Especially liked the Drop-In Center and the renewal projects they do, looking forward to picking up the next volume.  It's definitely the first book in a series, so a bit rough, but I like where it's going, and I'm willing to come along for the ride.

And with that, I'm what, 8% of the way through the challenge and it's not even the end of January.  Nice!

Scholars don't usually sit gasping and sobbing in corners of the library stacks. But they should.

I, like many people, have cut my social media down significantly, so perhaps I'll return here to some longer-form blogging.  At any rate, hoping this will keep me on task for 2023's Read Harder Challenge.  The first book I knocked off the list was Joanna Russ' On Strike Against God for number 14, "a book with under 500 Goodreads ratings."

I was not familiar with Russ' work prior to a few years ago, which is a pity because this book was an excellent dive into feminism of a certain era (second-wave feminism from the 70s/early 80s).  It's full of references to burning one's bra, but then it will contain huge chunks of truth that could have come off any feminist feed today, which is heartening and sad.  

That not all men are piggy, only some; that not all men belittle me, only some; that not all men get mad if you won’t let them play Chivalry, only some; that not all men write books in which women are idiots, only most; that not all men pull rank on me, only some; that not all men pinch their secretaries’ asses, only some; that not all men make obscene remarks to me in the street, only some; that not all men make more money than I do, only some; that not all men make more money than all women, only most; that not all men are rapists, only some; that not all men are promiscuous killers, only some; that not all men control Congress, the Presidency, the police, the army, industry, agriculture, law, science, medicine, architecture, and local government, only some.

#notallmen, it predates Twitter by about 33 years, turns out. 

Life's a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death

 There's a list going around of 20 books to read in your 20s, posted by what has to be the most humorless, joyless person imaginable.  The list is a dreary march of mostly self-help tomes (the listmaker must presume everyone in their 20s is broken in some manner).  No fiction, and one lone woman that I noticed.  If the intention is to produce a boring, lonely human being by the time they're 30, then this list is f l a w l e s s.

 

As someone who reads a fair amount, I have a counteroffer if you will, take it or leave it.  Mine is, I think superior and it's not limited by age or language, sex or background.  It's a philosophy, and one I especially advocate for in this time of fascist book banning by small-minded cowards.

Read broadly, read fearlessly.

Read books by people like you, and read books by people as different from you as possible.  Read books by women, men, and non-binary people.  Read bestsellers and local works at your public libraries.  Read new releases and books a thousand years old.  Read translations and books you read as a child.  Read poetry and plays, histories, science books, biographies, and genre fiction. 

Every time I walk into a library, I feel overwhelmed by knowledge, wrapped in wonder, and spoiled for choice.  "I don't even know what language this is!"  "Oh, I've never read Persian poetry."  "Hey, Anais Nin, I should read her sometime."  "I wonder if this can help me with my French."  "A new translation of the Odyssey?  Huh."  "I haven't read Mary Downing Hahn since elementary school, I wonder if it holds up.  Wait, she kept writing?!"

The TBR is ever-growing and never-ending and it's glorious.