@mourningmaybells / mourningmaybells.tumblr.com
just learned today that there was a german monk who was obsessed with witches and women having sex so he wrote an entire book called the hammer of witches where in one part he describes in detail that witches have the ability to make people’s penises disappear and they keep the penises as pets and feed them oats
i’m serious
my personal favorite example of literary artistic “plagiarism” is when Laurence Sterne stole verbatim a passage from The Anatomy of Melancholy about how contemporary writers don’t even write anything new, they just go back to old books and take whole passages and no one knows (the anatomy was out of print at the time, so critics didn’t get this joke for something like at least 100+ years)
Read more queer books 📚🌈
designed new covers for books i read this summer (+ a podcast)
PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here
Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn
If anyone has any recommendations give them to me please!
Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.
Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:
Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.
Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun
Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am
Don't forget Aliette de Bodard! Especially her Xuya and Dominion of the Fallen series.
Zen Cho is my other favorite - Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, and also Black Water Sister.
Great list! I will also recommend anything by Samuel R. Delany.
Also reccing P. Djèlí Clark's books, especially Ring Shout, which is like "what if Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a black woman and the KKK was still the KKK but now they're literal horrifying monsters as well as figuratively so". It's SO BADASS.
others to add!!
The Unbroken by CL Clark
ANYTHING by Nghi Vo, not just Empress of Salt and Fortune; When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain and the rest of the Singing Hills cycle, which EoSaF starts, are incredible as well as The Chosen and the Beautiful (an adaptation of the Great Gatsby).
Mexican Gothic and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, both by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Song of Silver, Flame like Night like Amelie Wen Zhao
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
ANYTHING by Tasha Suri but especially The Jasmine Throne and its sequel The Oleander Sword
THE LIST KEEPS GOING YOU GUYS
there are such things on heaven and earth
Re the don Giovanni post you made in October, I would like to read those shitty essays you're talking about if you got em
OH yes! Don Giovanni essays!
In order of least favourite to favourite:
The Operas of Mozart - William Mann. I hated this book and the one chapter I read. He basically says listen I don't think Anna was raped but I think it would've been good for her if he did. 0/10, misogynistic asshole.
Mozart's Operas, a critical study - Edward Dent. Really not much better. Ignores Anna's pain and grief to just paint her as a cold, naive socialite. 1/10.
I got these two from physical books so I don't have any links for them. The rest, I do!
Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart’s Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte - Charles Ford. I couldn't find much about Anna here but it does talk about Elvira and Zerlina. Not very kind to them, the gist is that they behave kind of in spite of themselves? 3/10, not exactly what I was looking for.
The Problem of Donna Anna: 'Risk-free identification?" - Catherine Laws. I got a lot from this about how the women of Don Giovanni fit or defy stereotypes. It also talks about how romanticized the opera has become, and issues that stem from not looking at the work in a critical light. 7/10, love a work by a female scholar.
The sexual politics of teaching Don Giovanni - Liane Curtis (couldn't make this one show up as a big link for some reason). This was an Interesting read. She talks about Don Giovanni's place in the classroom, and how it's been perceived in the courses she's taught. There's a lot about how student's reactions to the work are informed by rape culture and how the work could be quite triggering to those who have experienced SA, and argues that teachers really need to dedicate time to understanding the whole of the opera instead of glossing over it and allowing harmful ideas to perpetuate. 9/10, incredibly interesting, i think all music history profs should read it.
And Finally!
Understanding the Women of Mozart's Operas - Kritsi Brown-Montesano. Now this is a full book that I only read the first chapter of. But WOW was that first chapter eye-opening. It discusses Donna Anna from the first Don Juan story until now, gives scathing critiques of the victim-blamey scholars at the top of my list, and makes a well-researched case for Anna and her quest for vengeance/justice. I love it. I want to read the whole book. It took me quite some time to get through, the text is quite dense, but it's well worth reading. 10/10 I want to write her a thank-you note.
I was able to access these papers/books through my university, so I can't guarantee how accessible they are if you don't have a connection to a library or academic institution, but I know this is the website of getting around things like that. I won't be posting my actual paper bc 1) it's not actually done yet, still needs a final draft, 2)it's an undergrad summary paper and 3) it does have my personal information attached to it. Basically imagine it as all these papers and my opinions of them combined.
Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?
Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds.), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
Elizabeth Hinton, America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
Colin Kaepernick (ed.), Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons
Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Victoria Law, "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
i do think theres something sad about how largely only the literature that's considered especially good or important is intentionally preserved. i want to read stuff that ancient people thought sucked enormous balls
Time to take this post entirely too seriously:
Langston Hughes, The First Book of Rhythm, Illustration by Robin King, Franklin Watts, New York, NY, 1954, pp. 6-7
Had to collect more of these in one place. First seen at @garadinervi.
The above image is an excerpt of pages 172-173 from Kate Bornstein’s book Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws. New York: Seven Stories, 2006.
I’d describe it as a survival handbook particularly meant for queer teens and other people who don’t fit in and so are fighting for their lives in a hostile, bigoted society. Some of the book’s suggestions for things to do that are better than destroying yourself seem strange or scary. Throughout, though, the book’s one rule is “Don’t be mean.” That’s important context, because that shows this excerpt about being a frightening monster is NOT saying to be cruel or harm others.
I recommend the book to anyone who thinks that sounds useful. Here is the book’s WorldCat listing, which you can use to see if a copy is available at a library near you. Or you can buy it as a print book or eBook directly from the publisher’s site. Or from whatever bookstore you like; bonus points if you can support a small local bookstore that’s worker-owned, feminist, or queer, since those are good community spaces to keep around. I’m not affiliated.
Transcript of the excerpt:
The heading says
“52. BECOME A MORE FRIGHTENING MONSTER THAN THE ONE THEY THINK YOU ARE.”
The icons under the heading indicate that this 52nd alternative to suicide has:
“Keywords: mischief, delight, magic”
For decoration, there’s an antique illustration of a costumed dancer wearing a horse tail and mane.
The body text says:
“If people knew the real you, would they run screaming from the room? Well, whatever kind of monster they think you are, it’s probably safe to say, you’re really much more terrifying. Sometimes we like to look freaky. Sometimes we like to blend in. It’s our choice. But shifting from one to another keeps people from figuring out who or what we are.
“The cultural monster here at the turn of the century is the shape-shifter. Being an outsider isn’t what makes us monstrous. We are monsters because we’re so good at either revealing our monstrosity, or keeping it hidden when we want to.
“It’s when we become something the über-culture can’t quite put its finger on that we know we’re being a worse monster than the one they think we are. In this culture, that’s a crime. You have to match your photo ID. So, go ahead. Be a chameleon. Enjoy yourself. Play safe, and try not to scare the little children.
“EXTRA CREDIT: Write an essay, poem, recipe, film or performance piece on this question: if a culture’s monsters reflect its greatest fears, what does it say about über-American culture that its monsters are for the most part shape-shifters and mutants?”
Image description ends.
I cant do this anymore
My favorites from the replies
“For other men death appears as a limit set in advance on the future; for the soldier death is the future, the future his profession assigns him.” (Simone Weil, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force”)
