Hello sweet paradox, logical dreamer

Ask the Brindled

No'u Revilla 

Ask the Brindled, selected by Rick Barot as a winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series, bares everything that breaks between "seed" and "summit" of a life-the body, a people, their language. It is an intergenerational reclamation of the narratives foisted upon Indigenous and queer Hawaiians--and it does not let readers look away.

In this debut collection, No'u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo'o, ma'i. She grips language like a fistful of wet guts and inks the page red--for desire, for love, for generations of blood spilled by colonizers. She hides knives in her hair "the way my grandmother--not god-- / the way my grandmother intended," and we heed; before her, "we stunned insects dangle." Wedding the history of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi with contemporary experiences of queer love and queer grief, Revilla writes toward sovereignty: linguistic, erotic, civic. Through the medium of formal dynamism and the material of ʻŌiwi culture and mythos, this living decolonial text both condemns and creates.

Ask the Brindled is a song from the shattered throat that refuses to be silenced. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women who carry baskets of names and stories, "still sacred." It is a vow to those yet to come: "the ea of enough is our daughters / our daughters need to believe they are enough."

2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."

here's the intro

Hanahaki, but it's someone whose friends have started ghosting them.

Hanahaki, someone's wife is cheating on them.

I deal with chronic pain and fatigue, executive dysfunction, brain fog, and mobility issues. I have been a professional author sinve 2021.

1. Write what YOU want to write, not what the world needs or what people say you should write.

You don't owe the world representation or inspiring words on the subject of your pain or disability. Write what moves you and that YOU feel passionate about. You don't have to JUST write about disability.

2. Let daily goals motivate you, not shame or frustrate you

It's great to write or work daily if you can, but if you need a rest day or time to decompress, it's better to let yourself do that than power through and set yourself up for exhaustion, pain, or a flare-up. Give your body grace.

3. Let it take time

When you're disabled, it feels like time is constantly being stolen from you - by your fatigue or accessibility issues, by administrative burden, by the amount of time it takes to communicate things, etc.

Writing will take more time too, and that's okay.

4. Swap Between Projects

If you struggle to focus on one project at a time, it's not cheating or abandonment or undisciplined to swap between multiple drafts and ideas. Let yourself enjoy the process. Let things marinate and come back to them months later. Follow your passion in the moment.

5. Feed the tank

People say that good writers need to read, and sure, if they can, that's great - but "reading" doesn't just mean reading a book. You're engaging with the text from a craftsman's perspective: how did they write it? Why does it work or not work? What can you learn from it?

If you can't focus on text right now or can't hold a book, you can still apply those questions and skills to other media: to videogames, movies, TV, the news, to art, to music. You're taking apart in your head or in conversation, seeing how it works, and taking lessons for yourself.

A compilation of Bipoc lead fantasy series made by my mutual themightyzo on Instagram

Where to watch the ones available

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