Roxane Gay is pissing off a lot of people with a little bit of truth.

She published a critique of racial representation in the latest edition of “Best American Short Stories.” This got tons of comments, many of them managing to be defensive and condescending all at once (”Okay maybe you mentioned Toni Morrisson [sic], but we all went to college so that doesn’t count.”).

I haven’t read BASS 2010, so I can’t say how spot-on she is… but I can say that the REASON I haven’t read it is because it’s almost always boring as hell, and that’s due to the monotony of the stories being told… i.e. the lack of diversity not just in racial terms, but also in terms of the stories being told and the class background of the characters. I hope I won’t do Roxane’s thesis an injustice by summing it up with a direct quote that obviously leaves out much of the nuance of the full argument: “Almost every story in the anthology was about rich or nearly rich white people to the point where, by the end of reading the book, I was downright offended. I know people will disagree with my thoughts here and that’s fine, but I really think shit is fucked up in literary publishing.”

So what do I have to add to the conversation? Not much. I think Roxane’s a hundred percent right. All I’d say is this: I think the problem is just one part of literary fiction’s slow decline into irrelevancy.  On a long train ride recently, I gave my boyfriend an issue of a literary journal that shall remain nameless, and he was horrified at the frivolity and boringness of pretty much everything he read. And he was totally right. I keep buying and subscribing to literary journals, and checking them out of the library, and reading them in bookstores and then putting them back on the shelf, because of that one story in ten that really floors me - but I am not sure I would do so if I didn’t also have a personal commitment to supporting that corner of the literary ecosystem, because I too hope to publish my sh*t there. There’s too many great books out there.

I want literary fiction to be diversified in a lot of ways. I want more racial diversity, but I also want more narrative diversity. I want to feel that sense of risk. I want to be terrified for the characters, and I just can’t give a shit about one more wealthy person trying to find him- or herself. More and more I find myself reading young adult novels and genre fiction because that’s where the hard compelling edgy stories are - with lots of extra verve and energy and robots and clones and cutters.

“…These are books that are written over and over again and at a time when everyone is lamenting the death of publishing, you have to think, however ridiculous and overwrought those laments are, that publishing this one kind of story without accounting for the multitude of other experiences in the world, is not helping publishing stay alive.”

Oddly beautiful and adult and engaging, even for the one person on the planet (me) with absolutely no knowledge of the books or movies.

Comforting - or disturbing - to see Chinese kids match the cruelty and innate wickedness of American politicians. Great evidence that democracy’s probably a terrible idea.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/pleasevoteforme/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70Tqkm1lkQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Vote_for_Me

Paints mundane family life really well; spends too long doing so. Works its predecessor in interestingly. Last twenty minutes turn out to be pretty scary.

John Woo’s directing is annoying for most of the film, but the last third’s pretty satisfying. Rarely original. yet works. Tony Leung’s still damn fine.

Sad that the show’s canceled, but this worked excellently as an unintentional series finale. Will gets answers, bad guy gets confronted, things change but don’t.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/10/17/rubicon-finale/

Looking at this list now, I realize it’s pretty gay. AND I’M NOT SORRY.

It’s in no particular order.  And I don’t necessarily like all these songs; I just like Wii-Dancing to them…

The Weather Girls – “It’s Raining Men”

Sorcerer – “Dagomba”

Cher - “It’s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)”

Ike & Tina Turner – “Proud Mary”

Ke$ha – “TiK ToK”

Outkast – “Hey Ya!”

Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”

Last month, I posted about a vigil I attended, for an incredible young queer woman who was active with Picture the Homeless and many other organizations, who had taken her own life. Shortly after that vigil, I first saw her short film “Keisha Knows,” a truly amazing work that she co-produced and in which she played the lead role. Which just made me sadder, to think of what talent she had, what light she could have brought into this dark world. Produced with the amazing Global Action Project, who recently got an award from Ed Norton on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

This Saturday, PTH will be hosting a “Youth in the Struggle SPEAK OUT,” and we’ll be screening “Keisha Knows.” You can watch the film here, but it’ll be a great experience to see it on a big screen with a bunch of awesome youth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc0bX_xSIvo

Full details about the event are HERE, for Facebookers. And because I always forget that some folks aren’t into the Facebooks, it’s at the Rebel Diaz Art Collective, 478 Austin Place, Bronx, NY.

(Mosey is on the left, with PTH Youth Organizer Divad Durant at a “Youth in the Struggle” event that she MC’d in the South Bronx on September 18, 2010)

KEISHA KNOWS, 9 min, 2010
A SupaFriends Production
Produced by Global Action Project

Inspired by lesbian pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and the film noir genre, Keisha Knows addresses heteronormativity through not just any love story — but one that explores what is at stake when a community is divided.

The SupaFriends took a trip to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in the Spring and learned about lesbian pulp fictions novels, which inspired the group’s choice in film genre in the pre-production process. Learn more about the Lesbian Herstory Archives: lesbianherstoryarchives.org/

For more information about Global Action Project or to order a DVD copy of this film, please contact GAP: global-action.org

If you’ve enjoyed watching this film or would like to support our youth programs please consider making a secure online donation via Guidestar: partners.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_donateReport=1&partner=networkforgood&ein=11-3425000

Media Educators:
Jai Dulani
J. Macchiarelli

Right now I’m reading Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson.

And I’m reminded, in that visceral and overwhelming way I always am, that he really is the writer whose prose has the deepest impact on me - an impact that’s intellectual and physical all at once. The writing, and the ideas contained there, and the peculiar way we get inside the heads of these marvelous characters - it transforms me. The world feels different during the week or two it takes me to get through one of his books.

I’m riding home on the subway, which switches to express after 59th Street, and I see the perfect way he taps into how technology changes us, how we live with it, how it helps us make sense of the world, how it creates a secret set of shared thoughts, things many of us might think, in our heads, in certain situations, but never speak of, because we doubt it will have much meaning for anyone but us, until William Gibson shows us how and why:

“For most of her life, flying, she’d felt most vulnerable right here, suspending in a void, above trackless water, but now her conscious flying fears are about things that might be arranged to happen over populous human settlements, fears of ground-to-air, of scripted CNN moments.”

Or the way we think about things we see every day, and how it comes to life differently when William Gibson helps us think through all the thought that might have gone into it:

“The Hummer rounds a corner set with a pub of such quintessential pub-ness that she assumes it is only a few weeks old, or else recently reconfigured to attract a clientele its original builders could scarcely have comprehended. A terrifyingly perfect simulacrum, its bull’s-eye panes buffed to an optical clarity.”

Or a character’s allergy to Tommy Hilfiger:

“My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes, and doesn’t know, but suspects in her heart that this in fact is what accounts for his long ubiquity.”

All of which is why I don’t want to finish the book. And why I don’t let myself read more than one WIlliam Gibson book every six months, because I don’t ever want to dull the edge of what he fills me up with,

Still great, still compelling… but not doing as much fresh innovative stuff, and the characters - except his wife and his old partner - leave me meh.

Ab Fab might return.

Mary McDonnell is in the new Scream movie.

Grizzly bears chasing bison.

Giant otter emperors.

Documentary’s not great, but the subject matter is utterly fascinating. Iran is weirdly okay with transsexualism and trans surgery! Because the Koran doesn’t forbid it.

http://www.belikeothers.com/

When I learned last week that Caprica had been canceled, I thought to myself “Gee… that sucks… BUT it was pretty weak and slow and uncompelling, and I was getting very bored with those characters and their teeny-tiny ranges… now if it had only been more like Rubicon, where so much was at stake, where they didn’t hold back on the big beats, where the characters keep you guessing and keep surprising you in great ways… MAYBE it would have had a chance.”

And now I find out that Rubicon is canceled.

whatEVER. Just more confirmation that I know absolutely nothing about what audiences or executives value.

I realize now that it’s gone that I really did love this show. I mean, I knew I loved it before, but I was too caught up in nit-picking and the heat of the moment to realize just how unique it was among current television programs.

The silver lining is - that’s two more hours per week that I won’t be spending glued to the television, which might make me a little more able to keep my promise to blog and write more often. Maybe.

As I’ve blogged on more than one occasion, the film version of The Last Airbender was the most traumatic thing to happen to me in the summer of 2010 (which I suppose says something good about my life at that point). This horrific affront to one of the television shows that’s most dear to my heart spurred me and J. to watch the whole original series again, starting from the beginning. Pretty much every episode has some astonishing gem of  wisdom or aesthetic grace, and as they move me I’ll be blogging them.

Episode 18, Season 1: The Waterbending Master.

There’s a lot to love about this episode - all the lovely waterbending, the look and feel of the Northern Water Tribe stronghold, Sokka’s nascent love for Yue, Iroh singing, Iroh being sneaky, Zhao seeing Zuko’s broadswords and realizing he’s the Blue Spirit… but the most exciting thing about it for me was the gender politics.

In the Northern Water Tribe, women can’t learn water-bending. Master Pakku won’t teach Katara, and when Aang tries to pass his training on to her, Pakku flips out.

But it’s deeper than just bending. This is clearly a deeply patriarchal tribe, where women have no choice in matters of marriage - if they don’t want to marry the man their father picks out, they have to leave town altogether. Which is what Katara’s grandmother did.

At the end of the episode, Katara shames Master Pakku into fighting her. It’s a great fight, with both of them looking very beautiful and kick-ass all at the same time.

Now, the easy, simplified, crowd-pleaser resolution to this episode would be for Katara to dazzle Pakku with her incredible skills, and THAT would be enough to get him to change his mind. Mainstream Hollywood logic is funny that way - all it takes to change someone’s mind is to show them evidence that they’re wrong. But life doesn’t work like that. Anyone who’s ever argued with someone on a political issue (for example, global warming) knows that no matter how much evidence and information you provide, they’re not going to change their mind.

People change their mind when they see how an issue affects them. People let go of prejudices when they realize that their prejudices have harmed them - have ruined relationships, have caused them to make terrible mistakes, have crippled their ability to understand the world around them.

Master Pakku is impressed with Katara’s bending abilities, but that’s not what changes his mind about teaching women. But he finds Katara’s necklace, which was the betrothal necklace he had given to her grandmother so many years ago, and remembers how shocked he was that she refused to marry him, and left.

Katara connects the dots. “Your tribe’s stupid customs” are what made her grandmother flee. It’s why he’s spent his life alone. The discrimination that he accepted as normal, as positive - because it benefited him - has actually hurt him. Because it distorted his relationships with people. His whole life has been one of crankiness and anger, as a response to the pain of being abandoned by Kanna.

Buddha said “You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished BY your anger.” That’s the hard challenging truth that Western civilization, with its centuries-long domination by Christianity - and then by Hollywood - has distorted. You shouldn’t be good to other people because it’ll get you into heaven. You should be good to other people because it’s the only way to live a truly happy life and to really truly be celebrated by other people. Because at the end of the day, that’s all you have.

This is the kind of brilliance that makes this show move me so profoundly, which might be easy to miss while we’re wowed by the great fight scenes, elegant animation, humor, etc.

I’m a huge fan of the 101 Cookbooks blog, which not only has tons of awesome recipes, it includes a lot of really nice commentary and explanation about more general cooking-related concepts. Like different ways to use different things, staples it’s always important to have on hand, etc.

I’m also a huge fan of kale.

So I was really excited by this recipe last week, for Winter Pasta. And we had just gotten a load of gorgeous kale from our CSA at work that no one was doing anything with. The stars kinda came together for this recipe.

Working around what I had on hand, I adapted the recipe into a more straightforward pesto… I’m including my version here, but I definitely want to stress that this a very mild adaptation of a basic recipe that someone else made, so folks should definitely check out 101 Cookbooks. And bookmark it. And subscribe to its RSS feed. And so on.

• 1 bunch of kale, washed and cut into medium-sized pieces.
• 6 or more cloves of garlic
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 tablespoons of parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the garlic, finely chopped, and cook for two minutes. Add the chopped kale to the boiling water and cook for less than thirty seconds, stirring to ensure everything spends an equal amount of time submerged. Using a slotted spoon, take out the kale and garlic and put it into a food processor. Add olive oil and parmesan cheese and process until you get a decently creamy consistency. Taste - add more olive oil and parmesan cheese as needed. Mine came out fine with no salt, but it could definitely be added if necessary.

Bring the water back to a boil, add pasta, cook according to package directions. Toss with pesto and enjoy.