As y’all may or may not have noticed, my last few posts have vaguely mentioned the fact that I was working on my M.A. thesis and that it was consuming my life until it very suddenly wasn’t anymore.
Like most graduate students, I focused my research on a topic that was incredibly interesting to me. I hoped my topic would be something that would maintain my attention months into the actual project, spurring me toward completion even when I was burnt out by academic journals and archival digs.
Hoo boy. When I started the Year of She-roes in January, I knew I needed to add some uplifting stuff to my reading list. What I did not realize was that the world was going to go full-blown apocalypse/contagion and that the sort of “oh hopeful stuff is good,” turned into “absolutely cannot read anything at all realistic/depressing/sad.”
I did it y’all! I realize that reading one book for fun per month may not seem like a lot to many of you, but to this teacher/student/writer, one additional book per month was a HUGE accomplishment. So, this year I’m doing it again.
The beginning of 2019 seems a lightyear away. Yet, as we approach the beginning of a new year, of a new decade, I’m also struck by the quickness of time. Even though January feels like forever ago, I’m still not really sure how I made it all the way to December. In many ways, I feel like 2019 was a year that I navigated with my eyes mostly closed, blindly wandering through the final year of my twenties and hurtling toward the new decade that will herald my thirties.
For whatever reason, I seem to have missed the boat on romance stories. Whenever my friends in high school were reading Sarah Dessen novels, I was reading Dickens. The closest I ever got to romance was reading Jane Eyre when I was 16, a novel I would later reject due to the problematic, abusive relationship between Jane and Rochester.
I am an incredibly lucky teacher in that I have the distinct pleasure of teaching some students who are just as nerdy as I am. And, because they periodically Google search their teachers, one of them found out about my Women of the World writing project here.
Despite loving Halloween, I have always hated one particular, rather fundamental, aspect of this holiday—scary stuff. I hate it. All of it. I hate scary movies. I hate haunted houses. I hate people who hide in your bushes and jump out to get candy. (Who tf hides in bushes?! Murderers, that’s who. Don’t be a murderer. Don’t hide in bushes.)
Another month, another bit of rule-bending.
Over the summer, I listened to All Things Considered’s portrait of the newly appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, the first Native American to ever hold the position. And, last month, the arrival of her first book of poetry as Poet Laureate returned her to the spotlight.
For August’s Women of the World book, I specifically wanted to find a Latina author. Last month, I realized that though I’d done a pretty good job of finding female authors from far away places, I hadn’t found any from countries closer to home. Given the continuing immigrant crisis at the US southern border, I figured it was about time that I put more energy into finding an author that would represent the voices that our country seems so ready to reject.
Ok, guys. I have a confession to make. I cheated a lil’ bit this month. Just a bit. I promised that I would read a book by an immigrant woman of color for every month in 2019 and I sort of did that, but I also sort of didn’t. This month’s book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is all of those things, but it’s also not new to me. I first read Adichie’s Fifteen Suggestions last year after realizing that the constant damaging news cycle was often leaving me speechless when actually confronting people who were parroting “fake news.” I first read Adichie in an effort to help consolidate my own thoughts on feminism and as a sort of devotional text in the fight for equality.