🔖🎭📚 Read It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama by Michael Paulson (NYT, gift link) via Book Riot’s Literary Activism newsletter.
When I was in Europe reading censorship news from the US, I kept thinking, “I just want to fight censorship and make theatre.” Turns out these two things are related.
Finished reading: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi 📚
I read this start-to-finish in about 8 hours. It’s a romance that illuminates grief and what can come after. It made me cry. It made me hungry. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin 📚
This is a beautiful homage to Pride & Prejudice, as well as to the Toronto Muslim community. A sweet love story with beautiful language. And so much tasty-sounding food and drink! Highly recommend.
📚 Me, reading Ayesha At Last: This is a Pride & Prejudice retelling, I know this, so when is Khalid going to go all Mr. Darcy?
Author Uzma Jalaluddin, on page 40: Here you go.
📚💬 “To me intellectual life is fundamentally different from academic careerism.” bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work
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It is precisely because common structures of evaluation and advancement in various academic jobs require homogenous thought and action… that academia is often less a site for open-minded creative study and more a space of repression that dissenting voices are so easily censored and silenced… it is dangerous for us to allow academic institutions to remain the primary site where our ideas are developed and engaged." bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work
📚💬 “Science fiction is the literature of social and technological change.” Nalo Hopkinson, “What is science fiction for?” in Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
Finished reading: The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller 📚
This is a lovely romance set in Gilded Age New York, where a scandalous society widow and a famous inventor fall in love as they try to exorcise a ghost from the Gothic mansion she just bought. Content warning: spousal abuse, neglectful parents, bad treatment in a mental health facility.
💬📚 “Real life is people leaning on each other when things are hard. It’s loving each other so much there’s no question about facing things together. It’s fighting for each other and with each other and being damned grateful for every morning you wake up together.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller
📚💬 “Love isn’t naïve, Alva. It’s hope, and it’s faith, and it can outlast buildings and wars and empires.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller
