Volume 3, No. 3: We Are All Living In An Unfixed State + Blue Cheese Scones

Greetings, book-eaters and treat lovers! The trees around my house have turned into glistening, curvy, snow-covered statues of winter beauty, there’s over a foot of snow on the ground, and a resident pair of mourning doves has been roosting in the branches. In other words: I am surrounded by joy.

Some exciting news: I got a PO box! If you’re so inclined, you can write to me at: PO Box 299, Leyden, MA 01337. I am a very fun correspondent!

I’ll be doing the first Queer Your Year raffle at the end of the month, which means it’s time to submit your game cards! You’ll find all the details, including this month’s winning prompts, in the Queer Your Year section.

Ever since finishing Inciting Joy, I’ve been thinking about what it means to unfix, to live in an unfixed state, to encounter that which unfixes, and to strive toward unfixing. I’ll let Ross Gay explain it, because he’s more eloquent than I am:

And the final definition of fix I’ll trouble you with is this: “to pin down or stick a pin through or hold in place,” which is also a kind of killing. Because isn’t the point of beautiful art—again, like a person, like a life—that it is unfixable and unfixing? That it changes as we change? And that it unmoors us, calls into question what we thought we knew, and who we thought we were? Don’t we often need and love, some of us anyway, that art asks more than we could ever answer—or this, or this, or this, or this, it says; no, no, there’s more, it tells us, go deeper, and come back again, it asks; and this, and this, and this, and this, it interrupts—and in so doing, unfixes those of us who encounter it?

Here are three books about unfixing and its possibilities, books that have unfixed me.

A caveat: two of these are not out in the U.S. and are therefore not easy to get in the U.S. I’ve linked the titles to Blackwell’s, which ships to the U.S., and you can also buy them directly from the publishers. Sadly, I suspect they’ll be hard to get via the library. They are both so, so good. I can only hope they’ll be published here eventually!

The Books

None of the Above by Travis Alabanza (Nonfiction, 2022)

This brilliant book is a beautiful ode to living in an unfixed state, as well as a smart and scathing condemnation of the systemic injustices that are constantly trying to “fix” (so many layers of meaning here) people who do not “fit” (especially trans people of color and trans femmes). Another way to think about it: the gender binary (which is a tool of white supremacy and patriarchy—Alabanza delves into all the ways this manifests) wants us to believe that being unfixed is dangerous, that to live between, to believe in infinite possibilities, to murk the depths, is not only unwanted, but impossible. Binaries (the gender binary, yes, but there are many others) are one of the ways that whiteness holds on to power. I am not as smart about this as Alabanza and even though I underlined a hundred passages, I doubt I’ll be able to do their thinking justice here. I need everyone to read this book, please. It is so illuminating.

Alabanza is a trans nonbinary writer, artist, and performer. The book is divided into seven sections, each one structured around a phrase that has been spoken to them, sometimes many times. These phrases—some transphobic and hurtful, some careless and ignorant, some deeply affirming—come from friends, lovers, and strangers. Each one becomes the spark for far-ranging, masterfully crafted essays about queer and trans history, transphobia in the UK, queer culture, the intersections of race and gender and performance, the language we use to talk about trans identity, and so much more. Every essay complicates, interrogates, explodes. Alabanza does not stay between the lines, or in the safe places. They have an incredible talent for writing directly and honestly, with a lot of intimacy, about what is most thorny, most tangled. It reminded me a lot of Eli Clare’s work (especially Brilliant Imperfection) in this way. Both of these writers know how to grapple beautifully. Their work is question-oriented. Their prose, on the sentence level, is gorgeous, and their thinking is not only rigorous, but expansive.

One thing (among so many) that hit me right in the heart is Alabanza’s insight into the harmful ways that queer communities often adopt the tools of whiteness and patriarchy. When we create our own binaries (ex. between ‘binary’ and ‘nonbinary’ trans identities) and speak of them as if they are in opposition to each other, we are merely giving more power to the binary that traps all of us. Alabanza isn’t saying that there aren’t differences in the ways that trans people identify, or that nonbinary identities (or so-called ‘binary’ trans identities) aren’t valid. Instead, they expose the violence of rigid and fixed rhetoric, and the ways that prevalent and often internalized ideas about “proper trans” (one of the phrases spoken to them) often lead to real and material suffering. I want everyone to read this book, but I want my fellow cis queers to read it most of all, because it is full of so much nuanced and generous wisdom. It is an astounding gift.

I’ll leave you with this:

My gender, like all of ours, does not exist in a silo away from everyone else’s. Much like a boy believes he should not cry because he has never seen his father do it, or a man throws punches because that is what he has seen his brothers do, gender and our experience of it only comes into knowing around other people. Why must our transness be exempt from that? Why does it have to be something we are born into, in order to make it valid and settling to you? Why must empirical proof be a prerequisite for care?

What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle (Fiction, 2021)

This is a quiet love song of a novel, a beautiful meditation on trees and language and open space, bogs and rocks and frogs, bodies and the ways they become words. It’s about a grandmother and her Deaf granddaughter, who live together in a small Irish town, each of them dealing with their own challenges and griefs. It’s written from the POV of the (unnamed) grandmother, in a series of entries, each of which begin with the wind (i.e. “calm”), weather, (i.e. “grey skies, far from green”), and outlook (i.e. “noise”). The narrative is meandering and poetic, woven through with Irish mythology, memories of the grandmother’s past, detailed descriptions of current events (a Christmas party, school drop-off, seeing a hearing specialist), and gorgeous nature writing. It is not straightforward. Sometimes it feels dreamlike. Sometimes it is deeply physical, the sentences so vivid they immediately transport you into the scene.

Mostly, it’s about language. The grandmother and her granddaughter express their love for each other through language. They use their own home signs, which they are continually inventing, written and spoken English, and standard sign language (presumably Irish Sign Language, although it’s not stated in the text). They talk with their bodies, and with the ways their bodies interact with the world around them—with trees and streams and patches of dirt. It’s hard to explain how complex and beautiful this is. Reading this book felt like being immersed in a new language, a language rooted in emotional resonances and the whims of willow trees; in dance and movement and facial expressions; in subtext; in the scents and colors of the landscape; in shared history and laughter.

We had tried explaining to the specialist her many ways of listening and talking. How arms become branches and dance to her emotions, and how trees copy these and all the ways we communicate, making-up our own signals and conversations. That what she has is beautiful.

This language often flows easily between granddaughter and grandmother, but sometimes they are at odds, and have trouble understanding each other. Their relationship is loving and gentle, but it is not perfect. Buckle’s disabled characters, in contrast to the worst disabled tropes in fiction, are not fixed. They are messy and flawed, full of beauty and anger, constantly changing.

This book disrupts ideas about language as something fixed and static. Buckle’s understanding of communication and connection is creative and expansive, extending outward like networks of mycelium, infinite and ever-changing. We create language as we move through the world. Language can be a force that opens and unfixes.

Between us, we have so many ways to describe everything. Combining, altering, and adding layers of sophistication depending on the company we keep. We expand our vocabularies. Verbal forms spill into paint and plaster, dance, mime, and sign; our bodies transporting the emotion of information. Along with the lexicon written in our landscapes of rupture, dissonance, disease, invasion of ecologies, diminishing bio-diversities, and trees waving histories.

Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones (YA Fiction, 2018)

There’s a line at the end of this novel, during one of the most moving and poignant scenes, that I can’t stop thinking about: “The pain is part of bearing witness.”

This is a bleak and sometimes devastating novel. It’s set on a reservation in Northern Ontario, and it’s about Shane, a queer Anishinaabe teenager, who’s dealing with a lot. He’s grieving his younger sister, who recently died by suicide. He’s in love, but afraid to come out, so he dates his boyfriend David in secret and his friend Tara in public. The roof of his house is literally falling in; his mother is unable to care for him since his sister’s death; and he doesn’t have the money he needs for university in Toronto in the fall, which is the one thing he desperately wants: to get away.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about pain being a part of bearing witness, because there is so much pain in this novel. A lot of terrible things happen to Shane and his community—it doesn’t really let up. It often gets worse in ways I was not expecting and that tore my heart open. All of these pains are real issues that Indigenous teenagers and communities face. So I wonder what my role is, as an outsider and a white reader, in bearing witness. I don’t have an answer to this question. I know this book felt like too much at times, and I know that the tenderness and love in it were also overflowing. There’s this conversation we seem to always be having, about “representation” in stories about marginalized communities, about queer suffering and racial trauma, about the role of bleak stories vs. lighthearted ones. I don’t know. Adam Garnet Jones is a queer Cree writer and filmmaker, and this is the story he wrote. More and more, I’m inclined to believe that bearing witness means bearing witness to all of it: the pain, the soaring joy, the contradictions, the layers. I think it means rejecting simple stories and single stories. I think it means understanding that no story can ever encompass a person, a life, a culture, a people.

In any case, this novel is not without joy. It’s based on a film—Jones wrote and directed Fire Song in 2015, and then wrote this novel adaptation several years later. I watched the film after reading the book, thinking perhaps I’d like it better, but I liked the book much more. The film is a lot bleaker, mostly because we don’t get Shane’s internal monologue, which give his character depth. His love for David feels much more grounded in reality in the book; it’s written more explicitly onto the page. Their relationship is tumultuous—of course it is, they’re two teenage boys grieving, they’re sacred and confused and under so much pressure and they don’t know how to talk about any of it. They fight a lot. But there’s a lot of sweetness in the way Shane thinks about David in the book, a lot of care. There’s a lot going on in his brain that he doesn’t always find the words for.

What I love most about the novel, and what comes through more in the book, is that it’s not so much a story about healing as it is about admitting that things are not okay. Shane is so desperate to escape, to get away from his hometown, his family, his community, his grief. It’s all he can think about—getting to Toronto. He puts himself in danger to get the money to make it happen. But the emotional heart of the book isn’t about Shane realizing this dream. It’s about him realizing that he is, in fact, unfixed, that he doesn’t know what he wants, that he’s hurting and scared and unsure about everything. It’s about him realizing that he doesn’t have to sever himself in two to be whole, that being Indigenous and living on the rez doesn’t mean he can’t be gay. It’s about him coming home to himself and his relationships—to David, to his mother, to his dead sister, to the elders in his community. It’s not a story about escape. It’s a story about finding the courage to grieve.

Throughout the book, Shane wrestles with his feelings about his cultural traditions and their place in his life. In the same scene during which he reflects on the pain of bearing witness, he ponders what it means to pray. “But all prayers can have their place, if they come from a feeling that’s real and comes with good intentions.”

So perhaps this book is a kind of prayer, too. Not an easy prayer, or a perfect prayer, or even a prayer that everybody should read, but a messy and true prayer.

The Bake

I spent most of last week thinking about what it might mean to bake in an unfixed state. I have not come to a satisfactory answer. I haven’t been feeling inspired to bake recently (maybe it’s because I’m still eating cookies from Cookie Extravaganza), and, even worse, I’ve been struggling to imagine what I even want to bake. I ended up making these scones on Tuesday morning as the sun rose. The scones are delicious, buttery and salty, and they made a perfect breakfast. Were they exactly what I wanted? Not really. Perhaps this is what it means to bake—or do anything—in an unfixed state. To simply mix the dough, go on the walk, put the pen to the page, even when it doesn’t feel right, and definitely when it doesn’t feel perfect—and see what happens.

Blue Cheese & Black Pepper Scones

Adapted from Yossy Arefi via NYT Cooking

Ingredients

• 256 grams (2 cups) all-purpose flour

• 1 Tbs sugar

• 1 Tbs baking powder

• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 8 Tbs (1 stick or 113 grams) cold unsalted butter, cubed

• 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces) blue cheese, crumbled (or use Gruyère, like the original recipe calls for, or goat cheese, or cheddar, or literally any other cheese you like)

• 65 grams (3/4 cup) toasted walnuts, chopped

• 1 cup (105 grams) buttermilk

• Flaky salt for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400. Line a baking tray with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, black pepper, and salt. Add the cubed butter and combine with your fingertips until the butter is mostly pea-sized. Add the cheese and walnuts and mix to combine. Make a well in the center and add the buttermilk. Give it a few mixes with a wooden spoon, then turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Pat it into an oval, about 1” thick. Cut into eight triangular wedges and transfer to the prepared pan. Brush each scone with the dregs of buttermilk left in the measuring cup. Sprinkle with flaky salt. Bake for 20-23 minutes, until golden brown on top.

The Bowl & The Beat

The Bowl: Roasted Chickpeas & Feta with Lemon and Dried Tomatoes

I have a slow cooker, and a lot of beans and grains on my pantry shelves. One of my goals this winter is to spend less money on food, and when it comes to budget cooking, beans are your best friend! They’re cheap, and you can turn them into so many things. Last weekend I cooked a big batch of garbanzos, and made this deliciousness with half of them. I’m thinking I’ll make a simple curry with the rest.

Spread some cooked chickpeas on a single layer on a baking tray. I used somewhere between 4 and 6 cups. Pat them dry with a dish towel if you want. Slice a block of feta into small rectangles. Slice a lemon into half-moons. Add them to the tray. Rehydrate some dried tomatoes in boiling water and add them. Or you can use tomatoes packed in oil. Drizzle the whole tray with olive oil and 1-2 tablespoons of honey. Sprinkle with salt, Aleppo pepper, and za’atar (or whatever spices you want). Mix well, making sure the feta blocks are nicely coated. Bake at 450 for 25-35 minutes, until the chickpeas have crisped up and the feta is soft but not disintegrated. I ate it with rice and it was a perfect meal.

The Beat: Dirtbag, Massachusetts written and read by Isaac Fitzgerald

I’m almost done with this, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Isaac Fitzgerald has a very blunt, straightforward style, which I appreciate. I also appreciate his honesty and his willingness to write openly about his past, mistakes and all. I loathe this idea that we’re all supposed to emerge without flaws, and, even worse, that once we learn how to do better (i.e. unlearn the racism/homophobia/ableism/transphobia/etc. that we all swim in) we shouldn’t talk about all those times we didn’t get it right. Fitzgerald does the opposite, and he does it well. He also writes beautifully about bars.

The Bookshelf

A Portal

I shared this big stack of hefty nonfiction on Instagram earlier this week, and I’m sharing it again here (I know some of you hang out there, too) because I’m so excited about these books! I’ve bought them all over the last 3+ years and haven’t read them yet, mostly because, to be honest, they are a bit intimidating. I want to take my time with them. So I made myself a yearly schedule, starting in February with Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. The plan is to read one each month.

I’m actively looking for buddy readers and discussion partners, so if you’re interested in reading any of these books with me, please reach out. I’ll happily send you the month-by-month calendar. I’d also love to hear about how you tackle hefty nonfiction!

Around the Internet

My review of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is up on BookPage.

Now Out / Can’t Wait!

Now Out

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane (Catapult): Loved it, loved, loved it. Go forth and get yourself a copy, it is something special.

This Unlikely Soil by Andrea Routley (Caitlin Press): I haven’t read this yet, but I’m excited about it—queer stories set in rural Canada!

Can’t Wait!

Black on Black by Daniel Black (January 31, Hanover Square Press): I loved Don’t Cry For Me and have been meaning to read more of Black’s fiction, but I’m also eager to get my hands on this essay collection about race, pop culture, and queerness. (This is published by a Harper imprint, so the link will take you to the HarperCollins Union Bookshop.)

Queer Your Year

News & Announcements: It’s time for the January raffle!

We’re a month into the year and that means I’ll be doing the first raffle drawing of 2023. Here’s what you need to know:

• This month’s prize is the gorgeous Fertile Futures calendar by queer artist Molly Costello.

• While only one person will win a calendar, anyone who has completed any of the winning prompts will receive a prize pack! Prize packs ship worldwide. The raffle prize, unfortunately, is U.S. only. If you want a prize pack, please remember to enter your mailing address on the form.

• If you haven’t already downloaded your game card, you can do so here. This is also where you’ll find the link to submit your game card. Feel free to print it out, write on it, and take a photo, or edit the PDF, whatever works for you. Further details are here.

• I’m not going to be policing anyone’s choices. If it’s on your game game card, I’ll assume it’s a queer book that fits the prompt! You do need to be a newsletter subscriber (free or paid) to enter the raffle—you can subscribe here.

• You have until January 31st to submit your game cards. Technically, you could read a bunch of books that fit the winning prompts between now and then. Please respect the spirit of the challenge, which is to savor and celebrate queer lit, not to be competitive about prizes!

• And now, the winning prompts! They are: 2, 8, 31, 21, 19, 14, 29, and 24.

Recs!

We still have a whole year of queer books ahead of us, so I have more recs, of course!

Prompt 47: Nonbinary protagonist 

These characters identify in many different ways. Some are explicitly nonbinary, some are genderqueer or agender, and some don’t name their gender identity in the text, but fall somewhere under the nonbinary umbrella.

• And Then the Gray Heaven by R.E. Katz: A stunning book about art, grief, and queer family.

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers: The softest, most openhearted, most quietly tender friendship novel.

• The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta: Joyful queer YA with a side of magical baking.

• When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar: A poetic novel about sisterhood and loss.

Prompt 48: A book you’ve been longing to reread

I know I can’t recommend books that you’ve been longing to reread. Instead, I’m going to share a few of the books that are on my list for this prompt—chances are, even if you haven’t been wanting to reread any of these, they’ll work for a different prompt! Here we go: Edinburgh by Alexander Chee; Brother Alive by Zain Khalid; Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej; Lote by Shola von Reinhold; All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews; and Peter Darling by S.A. Chant.

The Boost

Book Giveaways for a Cause!

Last week, I sent a check for $65 to the Harper Collins Union Strike Fund! Thanks so much to everyone who donated. You can now donate to the fund electronically, and if you’re able, I encourage you to do so. The union has been on strike for 55 days.

I have eight books to give away this week! In case you missed it, here’s the deal: In each free newsletter, I’ll be giving away books in exchange for donations. Drop a comment indicating which book you want. The first commenter for each title will get that book; I’ll email you with instructions on how to pay. Once I’ve received payment, I’ll mail your book to you. All the money, minus the cost of shipping, will go to the week’s chosen organization. As always, if you’re able to donate more than the cost of the book, I encourage you to do so. Additional details about how it works are here.

This Week’s Money Goes To…

…Lavender Phoenix. Lavender Phoenix is a queer and trans Asian and Pacific Islander-led community organization that “builds queer and transgender Asian and Pacific Islander power to amplify our voices and increase the visibility of our communities.” Based in the Bay Area, they “inspire and train grassroots leaders, transform our values from scarcity to abundance, and partner with organizations to sustain a vibrant movement ecosystem.”

I don’t know what to say about the shooting in Monterey Park, which is what many of us say after something like this happens. Words feel so small and the violence feels so big. It goes on and on and on and it feels impossible. Chanel Miller and Chen Chen make words that are big and bright, sharp and tender, and so I read them over and over. We are not going to end systemic racism and gun violence by throwing around little handfuls of money, but there are people in this world doing thoughtful, powerful, vital work, and sometimes little handfuls of money help them, a little bit, so we do what we can. We do what we can.

Ready? Check out This Week’s Books!

This week’s theme is: Queer Your Year! All of these books will work for various challenge prompts.

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Hardcover, $15): A very creative sci-fi novel with a slow-burn sapphic romance and fascinating world-building.

• Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, tr. Darryl Sterk (ARC, $8): A haunting, multi-POV novel about a Taiwanese family and their secrets.

• Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes (Paperback, $10): Weird and funny queer sci-fi, according to people I trust!

• Choosing Family by Francesca T. Royster (ARC, $8): One of the best books I read last year! It’s out next week, and you can read my review here.

• Burning Sugar by Cicely Belle Blain (Paperback, $10): Queer Black poetry.

• Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel (ARC, $8): One of my all-time favorite novels. Stunning! I reviewed it here.

• The Future Is Disabled by Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (ARC, $8): I haven’t read it yet, but it’s very high on my list. I loved Care Work.

• The Four Profound Weaves by R.B Lemberg (Paperback, $10): A quiet, fable-like trans fantasy.

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: It snowed about 16” earlier this week, and my heart came alive. Winter is retreating, and so I revel in each blue snow shadow and every frigid day.

Catch you next week, bookish friends! Next week’s essay will be about Alexis (which I recently read and love more than I can say), queer lit throughout history, and queer literary ancestors. If you want to read it, you can subscribe here.