This month’s Reading Round Up offers a collection of some of the best articles I read last month, covering topics including the Atlanta shooting, Lil Nas X, and evil Jeff Bezos. Plus a list of my own written work. Get those tabs ready!
My Writing
New YA: Sequels and Standalones: New Young Adult SFF for March and April 2021
Short fiction: Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: February 2021
Book review: A Complicated Revolution: The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
Book review: Fractured Reflections: The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore
Guest feature: “Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma” by R.S.A. Garcia
Book review: “Fugitive Telemetry” by Martha Wells
Other Works
“People think it’s too easy for trans kids to get treatment. My daughter’s experience says otherwise” by Noah Berlatsky for The Independent: “For my daughter, dysphoria is “something I am near-constantly struggling with,” she told me. “It waxes and wanes in intensity but is always something I am thinking about. It can make it difficult for me to speak, function, think clearly, or just get out of bed. The relief of getting rid of it would be something almost unimaginable to me. It is akin to imagining what I would do if I woke up tomorrow to find out I was a multi-billionaire.””
“In the Atlanta Shooting, We Can’t Ignore the Link Between Racism and Classism” by Sara Li for Teen Vogue: “Asians in America have been suffering in silence long before this year: from the imprisonment camps during World War II to the gentrification of Asian enclaves, there’s no shortage of how xenophobia has infiltrated every level of American culture and politics. When a huge number of AAPI folks are deprived of their humanity and existence through these means, it hurts the whole community. It is the insidious work of the model minority myth, which falsely asserts AAPIs as the most successful ethnic group due to their work ethic and respectability.”
“No Witness: “Warrior” and the Histories of Anti-Asian Violence” by Min Hyoung Song for LA Review of Books: “Bruce Lee had an inspired idea for a television show. It would focus on a Chinese man, skilled in kung fu, wandering the American West. When he pitched the idea, the studio said no one would be interested. A short time later, ABC began to air a show called Kung Fu about a Shaolin Monk who wanders the American West, using his martial arts skills to help people as he worked on some personal issues. The lead went to the white actor David Carradine, a casting choice that still galls many. It certainly galls me when I think of how confused I felt as a kid when I used to watch this show.”
“The Students are Watching” by Val Brown for The Center for Anti-Racist Education: “The other day I asked my two Black children if they ever had any antiracist teachers. They paused, unsure how to answer. After an extended silence, I asked them if their teachers ever did anything racist. “Definitely,” they said. They provided me with examples, such as the curriculum the teachers used, or the ways in which a teacher made them feel, or their ability to trust a teacher enough to talk to them about racism.”
“White People Keep Posing As People of Color for Clout” by Manisha Krishnan for Vice: “Krug’s story, like that of the former NAACP chapter leader Rachel Dolezal’s before her, went viral. She became a main character on Twitter for a few days; former colleagues and students spoke out about how her lies had impacted them, and how she had taken opportunities that could have gone to Black academics, including grants, scholarships, and a tenured position. While the widespread attention toward Dolezal was at least partially because she seemed like an outlier, Krug joins a growing league of outed racial impostors—typically white people who pretend to be Black, Indigenous, or otherwise racialized.”
“In Bezosworld” by Alexander Solomon for American Prospect: “What motivates Bezos? A Wall Streeter by trade, he moved into a house with a garage so he could claim to have started Amazon in a garage. He chose Seattle, because Washington was small, and no sales out of state would be subject to sales tax. He sold books, not because he cared about literature, but because there were a lot of them. His mission was not to deliver Eden, but to create an empire. “Right a social wrong? Are you fucking kidding me? Jeff Bezos is a straight-up libertarian,” was how early Amazon investor Nick Hanauer put it.”
Punk-Ass Book Jockey 