To my Subscribers and Supporters:
Yes, it has been a very long while since I posted an update! The short story is that a friend and benefactor helped me get my own place, and I moved in …September 2020. The search for a new place took all of that summer, in the beginning of the pandemic. It took over five months to actually and finally settle into my place (and in truth, I’m still settling in) because USPS “lost” all my furniture and it took a long while for me to recover it all (and involved a lot of yelling and shouting on the phone). I ended up with seven tables, after having ordered only two, and I was without places to keep most of my stuff and lived out of boxes for a long while. I am the only person I know who gained weight during a long move that required much physical labour—I think that’s because I ended up eating so much outside food (the kitchen couldn’t be set up properly either for reasons I’ll explain) and I’m now working on shedding the many surplus pounds. The story of the whole fracas is a piece unto itself. As with so much else, it’s also a tale of neoliberalism and the economy of surplus, but more on that later.
More to the point: my new place is lovely, I’m very happy here, and it’s mine and mine alone through September/October (I will figure out the next steps soon). I have been at work on several projects and below is only a partial list (I will confess I’ve been lousy at keeping records). I’m still catching up on older projects for very patient editors and in about a month, I should be done with them all while continuing on several exciting new ones. I’ll share details about those in the coming months.
I am gutted about the effects of the pandemic, and I don’t think we’re in a second wave, at all: the crisis is ongoing (more on that later). I’m fully vaccinated (no thanks to the deeply incompetent “system” in Illinois) but I’m still going around masked because, frankly, I don’t trust other people. I will also admit that while I hate what the pandemic continues to do to the world, social isolation and distancing have been among my favourite parts of it.
My mandate here is to write, which is all I really want to do, and it took me a while to understand how to get more of that done with a completely different kind of life and schedule. I went on Facebook and asked for help, and people responded generously as always: you might find these tips very useful as well. I’m holed up, writing and re-learning how to cook, something I’ve always loved to do, and only seeing very few people on particular days few and far between. I’m fine with being mostly isolated for many months more (I still haven’t been downtown, but I hope to change that soon).
Below is a numbered list of (most of) the work I’ve produced these last many months: they include podcasts, which are a lot of work (which I enjoy) because the ones I do often involve a lot of research on all our parts. I apologise if a couple of links are repeated from my last update (I’ve been terrible at keeping records). Below that is a list of forthcoming projects. I’ll add more in the next update. I’m also going to try really, really hard to send out updates to my listserv at least every fortnight: if you’d like to be added to that, let me know! I’m so sorry to everyone who might have been wondering what I was up to, but it took forever to set up here and I had to finish up assignments in the meantime, so I’ve just been working at breakneck speed without updating you more formally. I continue to appreciate everyone’s patience and support!
WRITING
2.The Politics of Publishing: Fixing the publishing industry will require eliminating exploitation, not just improving representation. Includes a bit on the controversy surrounding American Dirt.
3. A Better Son Or Daughter: Donald Trump, amnesia, and a capitalist fable. (A review of Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough.
4.“On Kink at Pride.”
5. “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene: On Blackness in Queen’s Gambit.”
6. “The Publishing World Is Like Fyre Fest.”
7. “Zombie Breasts.”
8. “On Adam Toledo As A Child.”
9. “Adoption and the Burden of Whiteness.”
10. “On Israel Killing Children.”
11. “Against Humanity: On Ma’Khia Bryant and George Floyd.”
12. “On Guilt and Vaccinations.”
13. “WeWork Or, Give People Money.”
14. No, Neera Tanden Was Not Cancelled over Her Tweets.”
15. “What Does Your Politician Mean to You?”
16. “Buy That Book!”
17. “On Jane Austen’s Frederic and Elfrida.”
18. “Sad.”
19. “On Mary Wollstonecraft and Public/Pubic Art.
20. “Elections Have Consequences”: Why We Should Scrap The Current System.
21.“Should You Vote?”
PODCASTS
22. I’ve been on a number of podcasts, and here is a list I found online of some of my appearances.
23. I spoke with Adam Goodman of Plan A about Celebrity Adoptions.
24. I spoke with Nashwa Lina Khan of Habibti Please, about matters raised by my piece on the Dancing Girls of Lahore. You can hear a teaser here.
25. I spoke with Dale Peck at my beloved Evergreen Review about a range of issues.
26. I talked to David Parsons at Nostalgia Trap about bodies and power, and more.
27. I talked to David Parsons at Nostalgia Trap about Money vs. Wealth.
28. I spoke to Alison Lirish Dean at Ear to the Pavement about Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill.
29. I spoke to Lyta Gold of Current Affairs about publishing, feminism, and more.
30. I spoke to Alison Lirish Dean about Know My Name, Chanel Miller’s memoir about her sexual assault and the aftermath.
31. I spoke to Lyta Gold of Current Affairs about “The Arts” and funding and the writing world and related topics. We had such a great time that we spoke for longer than we anticipated so it’s in two parts. The first part is here and the second is here.
32. I spoke to Alison Lirish Dean about the book She Said, the New York Times account (through two of its reporters) about the #MeToo movement.
FORTHCOMING
“My Two Marilyns.”
“Black Lives, Brown Guilt.”
“Amanda Gorman and That Poem.”
“Star Trek, Alpha and Omega.”
“On Indian Matchmaking.”
“A Saga, In Seven Tables.”
“On Foucault.”
“Andrea Smith and Native American Identity.”
“What Is Soft Plagiarism?”
“Cornel West, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Concept of Tenure.”
“The Long, Strange Journey of Glenn Greenwald.”
“Megan Markle and Blackness” (may be merged in some way with the Gorman piece).
These are the major pieces I’ve been plotting — like the piece on Queen’s Gambit or AOC, they sometimes take a couple of months to get done. I’ll have lots of short pieces out as well, in between these (like the one on Kink at Pride, for instance).
Image: John Singer Sargent, Morning Walk, 1888.