Oops I started a newsletter one year ago and then I never came back to it. Maybe I can start a blog and hopefully come back to it. I wanted to document my time in graduate school, but then graduate school got busy and the Covid-19 hit and well you know the rest because you lived it too.
This past year I worked on two separate books that I drafted before I started the MFA program. I am now sitting with two drafts that are closer to being “finish.” Finished in quotes because a writer’s work is never truly finished, even after it’s published.
My goal was to publish some essays this year and I am happy to announce that in March 2021 I will be featured in the (Her)oics anthology.
Preorder here if you’re interested. It is a collection of multiple authors and their experiences through the pandemic.
Now I’ll talk about some of the books I read this year.
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebeca Solnit. Whoa this book will get you right away. If you’ve ever been a woman and had a man explain things to you that you already know then this book is for you. I identified right away because oh wow do men explain things to me!
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich I love this book so much. So so so so so much. I could tell you that it’s about a family who lives on an Indian reservation and that it is told through multiple points of view over multiple years, or you can just trust me and read it and then fall in love. I bought a used copy and it looks like a plain ole book. I kinda wish I bought a brand new one. I often open it up for inspiration.
In The Dream House By Carmen Maria Machado This book will haunt you in the best ways. It is innovative and wonderful and explains the term and the movie Gaslight so beautifully that you begin to question all the times you’ve been gaslit. Over all the structure of the book is genius.
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. This book will make you want to pick up falconry so badly. You’ll start talking to your family about hawks and birding and you’ll buy binoculars that you’ll never use. You will start to think about killing rabbits to feed the hawk you don’t even own. Absolutely brilliant.
Mean by Myriam Gruba. No other book has captured me the way Mean has. Myruim Gruba is my writing idol. I write things and often wonder what she would think of my work. I have DM’d her on Twitter on more than one occasion to tell her how brilliant she is. She has replied to each DM and for that I love her even more. Here Gruba goes into account when she was assaulted at age 19 but she does so poetically. She gives care to her reader and she writes like no other writer I’ve read. If I convince anyone to read any book it’s this one.
Excavation by Wendy Ortiz- Oh Wendy Ortiz is also one of my writer idols. This books is hands down one of the best books I’ve read this year. A tough memoir of Wendy Oriz’s account of having a relationship with her English teacher as a teen, but she writes with grace. She sucks you in the first chapter and you’re with her the whole time.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay- Roxane Gay is one of my favorite writers of all time. This book starts out with Gay admitting she’s a bad feminist and well I think I am too. (This book is not featured in the photo because I borrowed it from the library. I do wish I owned a copy.)
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz, Ordinary Girls is a book I think of often. I am in the process of editing an essay over my love for this book. Let’s hope one day it will be published and I can share it.
Did you read all that or just pretend?
If you want to purchase any of these books might I suggest you buy from an indie book store, or from Bookshop, a website that supports local bookstores. You can buy from Amazon, but in an effort to support all writers I try to buy from bookstores as much as possible. Yes you pay for shipping and yes it takes longer, but it puts money in someone else’s pocket that isn’t a trillionaire.
This next semester I will work on writing essays so watch out for that. Or watch for me to cry from all the rejections.
See ya next month for all the books I’ll read in January, or see ya next year if I abandon this blog.