I am trying my best to not be a lizzo hater, but...

I doubt myself a lot; I probably always will.

I think a lot about the time a (female) interviewer told me straight out that she chose a (male) candidate over me because he had more confidence. Interviewers have told me I lack confidence multiple times.

I think a lot about the (Black female) recruiter who boasted of lowballing her client because her client didn't think to ask for more. "I just offered a candidate $85,000 for a job that had a budget of $130,000. I offered her that because that’s what she asked for and I personally don’t have the bandwidth to give lessons on salary negotiation." She said, and tagged it #beconfident.

Not all skinfolk are kinfolk, I know. But if it's feminist to use the “insecure” or “ignorant” as lessons in this way, then I want none of it.

I'm alive only because of the softness of others.

The people who claim the world is a cold cruel place and no one’s going to hold your hand or coddle you are 100% the people making the world cold and cruel in the first place lmao

I also apologize a lot; it's ingrained in me by now.

I think a lot about the time a white woman coworker told me to apologize less and to say "thank you" more, "You should try that." I distinctly remember how certain she was as she told me—not suggesting, but commanding with an air of annoyance.

I think a lot about the time Lizzo, one of the music world’s loudest drumbeaters for self-esteem, angrily condemned music writers to unemployment because a (fellow Black female) music reviewer gave Lizzo a very critical review.

If that is what confidence looks like, I'd rather remain apologetic. I will apologize for apologizing, again and again.

i remain wary of unkinfolk, and devote my mind to the women, the black women, the black men, and the others who upheld my watery, airy self in interviews, as supervisors, as colleagues, and role models. i want to thank every one—gratitude inflates me & i no longer need to apologize once i am allowed to.


still, my brain returns to that ex-coworker and all the other shapes she may take. i wonder if she, in another body, told tell bell hooks to capitalize her name so that she doesn't look like she's downplaying herself.

i wonder if she told bell hooks to write her name in all caps: “other wise the world won’t take you seriously. otherwise, the world/i will can’t support you. Other wise I (the world) will eat you alive.”

What’s So Good About Anime Anyway? [Part 1!]

I want to talk about the accidental properties of anime that were lacking in American cartoons as the time that anime exploded, the things Nickelodeon and Hanna-Barbera could have leaned into even before anime inspired them to do so.

I want to think explicitly about the things I try to apply in my own work even only under the surface.

I want to focus on craft and considerations that go deeper than “big eyes and blue hair.” I want to dig deeper than style.

I want to talk about what’s so good about anime.

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Bending English with J-Pop: FictionJunction YUUKA

But yeah, to be more explicitly pro-Asian in a way that fits National Poetry Month, I want to talk about what non-Native and bilingual speakers of English taught me about how to use the language. Some people call it “broken English” or even worse “Engrish,” but I’d like to think of it as bending English, a language which was a flexible mongrel. I mean, as a fan of AAVE/Ebonics and skin-official siblings of the coiner of “based” and “bling,” I should know a thing or two about the extra-boxilar possibilities of English.

The non-Native and bilingual speakers in this case are all J-Pop and J-Rock artists, hence the blog title.

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Don't Call it A Comeback?

Hello Blog,

It’s been a while.

I take breaks from you in order to prioritize fiction, I know; and I should be writing more often. I actually have the rest of my current novel’s plot arc beside me on a small handheld notebook page.

I take breaks from you in order to write things that I sell, yes, but sometimes I want to write for free, for myself. I do plan to detonate this website if I get published for kids, or at least develop some other place the <18s can find and research me.

I take breaks from you from in fear that my students may look me up and judge me for sharing all my Queer Black Geek traumas. I’m a grad student now, a TA.

I’ve also been assuming that nobody reads this blog. Sure, people have reached out through my contact form, but nobody reads my blog.

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Quotidian Speculation on the Other Side of Revolution

When I am not finishing my read of A People’s Future Of The United States., I have been trying to watch Angela Davis lectures with my minimal Internet. I began reading A People’s Future as part of Harmony Neal’s “Making The Future Irresistible” a class designed to get us thinking about what the future could look like once freed of biased expectations of who should be in the future, who should be centered, and who should shape it.

I am still wondering how to create an Irresistible Future.

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my search for the great homeschooled novel

Back around 2011, when I bought an up-to-date Guide to Literary Agents and did market research while sincerely believing I could sell a middle grade book despite my utter distance from the literary market, I read that there was a gap in the market for book about homeschooled kids.

As a homeschooling grad, I thought (and still think) I could fill that gap. But not right now; right now, I don't know what the Great Homeschooled Novel looks like. I'll probably be fumbling towards that as I continue to write, for adults as well as for kids.

There are a couple of things that resonated with me as a homeschooled grad, and I feel like these influences will bring me closer to figuring out how to portray the experience:

  • Where the Red Fern Grows, which struck me as a kid as familiar and vivid and adventurous, same as it would strike any other kid, right? There is a scene where the wild boy protagonist comes face-to-face with a normal schoolboy from town, and someting in that scene make me realize that I was the wild boy and not the schoolboy.
  • Captain Fantastic, which I had been dying to see since it came out but have watched only recently. Based on the childhood of the director Matt Ross, the family in the movie has a particularly White Anarchist back-to-nature philosophy, but so much of it rings so true to my life. It would be easier to list the differences:
    • That we were seven siblings, not six
    • That my dad plays flute and drums, never bagpipes
    • That our mobile home wasn't a renovated bus named Steve, but a brougham of some sort
    • That my dad doesn't make fun of christians, not that much
    • That my dad would never buy us knives (wth?)
    • That we didn't celebrate Santa OR Noam but Ramadan
    • Oh, and my mom is still alive
  • The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which I haven't seen yet. I know the show covers themes of innocence/shelteredness that I am afraid I will relate too strongly. In my mind, the set-up is too close to the narratively-ironic innocence of Room, which gets way into the darker side of seculsion from society, way into abuse and neglect. I haven't seen that either, and don't really want to...
  • Similarly, Dancer in the Dark, and the rest of Lars Von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy. The sweetness/darkness of Dancer in the Dark resulted in it being the only movie that's ever made me cry. Having Bjork portray an immigrant who believes in Broadway musicals but gets screwed over by America is just too cruel. I haven't seen the others in this trilogy, but I got into his unfinished American Trilogy through Dogville, which smacked the martyr out of me and also killed me a bit. (It was a good idea to watch them both entering the nonprofit world! 🙂)
  • On a lighter note, I loved The Wild Thornberries, or anything else where the kids live in an RV and learn from books and nature but not teachers. That show gets special bonus points because Nigel Thornberry's job is the one I once wanted. (RIP Steven Irwin, forever love and admiration for you and your wife and your kid 💙) This was one of the few kids cartoons I could watch not set in a school, but there should be more. I like to think the lack is what drove me to anime like Pokemon, which featured preteens running wild, free of all institutions, and learning about fauna and flora.
  • I occasionally read up about the Quiverfull movement, although I have been shy of watching or reading too much about the Duggars or Jon + Kate, because of all the hate aimed at them. A lot of the homeschool movement is Christian, though, so I'm obligated to know about them as well as the anti-establishment hippies, I guess.
  • Speaking of hippies, Sufjan Stevens, but also anything related to Wardorf schools, Montessori schools, or other kinds of alternative education. Since I really don't know how to portray school in fiction, I really have no choice but to set my child characters in settings where they have more choice, freedom, or democracy in how they learn. Oh well.
  • Anything Jaden And Willow Do Or Say Or Think Or Make Or Sing, on a similar weird-schooling note.
  • And last but not least, J. D. Salinger's Glass family stories. I can't and won't say too much about how this series affected me for fear of spoiling an upcoming project, but I know me and my siblings bonded over this series. It's already providing me a roadmap for how to write my life.