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But also because it was a childhood dream of the Maya who picked up that those in my intersecting social categories were often dehumanized, who realized that she was good at school, who yearned for meritocracy to be a real deciding factor in the world, and who believed that education was the path to a successful and prosperous future.
Read moreYou ever have an epiphany, forget you had it, and rerealize it?
I recently rerealized that some people who think they like me actually like who they think I would be if I magically stopped having social anxiety and became more confident. People don't like "Bad Vibes" so having a mental illness that makes you permanently a bit neurotic makes you less appealing, less attractive.
Read moreI spend a lot of time wondering what it would look like if Facebook were rooted in the science of relationships and positive psychology instead of capitalism and the science of addiction.
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Rather than the whiplash of seeing newborn announcements, police assault videos, global crises in headline, and metaironic memes with a mayfly lifespan all colliding into each other; maybe Grammarly-style tone detectors could suggest post categorizations that people could either accept or insert their own. Those categories could be used to filter the timeline: I may want only to see pet photos today, but tomorrow I may review which of my queer friends in crisis are holding GoFundMes. If I’m well enough the day after, I will review everyone’s achievements and life updates with only compersion without envy.
Read moreI 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.
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.”
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.
Read moreBut 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.
Read moreHello 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.
Read moreWhen 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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