This week was the full feelings buffet. Remember, you can always come back for more:
Celeste Ng called How to Make Yogurt in Manila by Grace Talusan ‘beautiful and moving’ (on the Twitter machine) so you don’t have to take our word for its awesomeness.
“Things That Are Meant To Make You Feel Safe And Comfortable In A Psych Ward That Just Make You Feel Crazier.” Episode by Naadeyah Haseeb will tear you up and make you LOL.
Jess Zimmerman is on fire and burning up the internet with her brilliance.
Genesis by K. DeHart is a haunting, deeply personal piece about religion and sexuality. “I called it hope; a prayer that queerness was a fluke and a fear that this might be the prayer god chose to make an appearance for.”
Food, family, memory. Subsistence by Christine Simek: “I never ate the sausages when they were served with pasta and tomato sauce on Christmas Eve, but secretly I loved the gamey smell they left on my fingers; entrails once filled with warm excrement and bile, pulsing with life deep inside an animal’s belly.”
Terese Marie Mailhot tells the story of a marriage in Bodies Without Malice: “The therapist looked disgusted when I told her Quentin’s idea of foreplay was an erection against my leg. I felt vindicated. Even she was repulsed by my husband. Our magnetic fields repelled each other on the loveseat.”
Kayla Haas’s new apartment is terrifying because every space women occupy with men is potentially dangerous. “You sit them on the free couch against the bannister of your current place and explain to them how most women are killed by men they know, or raped by men they know, and often in their own house; that the most dangerous place for yourself to be with a man is exactly where you are.”
Caitlin Mackenzie reviews Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, which everyone should read and love.
Loco Parentis: Not Sad: “In June, I gave birth to a baby boy. His father, his big brother and I all welcomed him home together. He is pink and perfect. And he’s my last baby.”
Kelly Kiehl gives us a history of power from the POV of the women (Helen, Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra). “All this for my hipbones and shoulderblades, all this for the way I looked at you and made you feel seen.”
Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Sidekick Edition This time it’s the sidekicks who get to kick some literary ass.
Siobhan Welch sums up all the reasons I would never want to be Twenty-two again, for anything. “Clint was short and bald and in his thirties. I wasn’t attracted to him, god no, but he was somebody in that scene so I didn’t totally blow him off. I flirted back. I had capital: he wanted to fuck me and I wasn’t interested. I was young enough to believe that this meant something.”
Bear is all about finding happiness, learning its language, and its playlist.
Keep buttering, you beautiful biscuits.
