I wrote this story on trans beetles! and some other stuff.
It’s true, besties, I’m a writer who’s been writing and even doing some other things. Here are a few books I’ve read recently that I really liked:
LIFE CEREMONY
SAYAKA MURATA
PENGUIN & HOUSE
AKIHO AEDA
TENDER IS THE FLESH
AGUSTINA BAZTERRICA
CHLORINE
JADE SONG
Fiction
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“No,” he said. His mullet flapped under his bald spot as he paced around the eight-foot length of the peeling room. “They’re not your cramps. They’re someone else’s. There’s an energy cord here connecting you deeply to someone — a dark color, a very deep red. To be honest, I’ve never seen one this aggressive before.”
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In my dreams, when my mother drowns herself, she wades slowly into the river. She kneads its belly with her toes and is surprised by the warmth of the river’s bottom, how each grain of sand seems to suction and hold each toe.
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White savior fantasies, says McCabe, such as the one spun in the 2011 documentary film Somewhere Between, are “reassurance for white people that they’re doing the right thing by adopting.” The “horror” of adoption and foster care is that “we have these narratives of ‘making a family for you.’ But you can’t make these families without destroying another one.”
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This has been a big theme in my life: finding wholeness through reimaging loss. Now, I imagine my two selves—older and younger—meeting knee-deep in a muddy creek, my older self a refracted mirror. I give thanks. Our memory smells like springtime. We orbit each other like a frog and tadpole, like changing seasons, like ghosts.
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A chat with the University of Iowa Creative Writing department on writing praxis and identity.