Volume 4, No. 3: I Choose Earnestness

Books for Defiant Aliveness

Greetings, book and treat people! I had a newsletter planned for today that is not this newsletter. I was going to share some reflections on the two fantastic books we read in January for the Queer Your Year book club (Indigiqueerness and Haruko / Love Poems). But my day yesterday was derailed by a series of small things—a bad sleep the night before, a late start, a forgotten deadline, an expected but exhausting backache (it’s wonderful being a person who menstruates), a flat tire in a Staples parking lot that took 3+ hours to deal with.

I am trying to give myself grace. I am trying to give myself the same grace I give the people I love: the grace to ask for help, the grace to say no, the grace to not Do The Thing. I am trying to be less rigid and more human. So instead of trying to do the newsletter, when I finally made it home last night, I took a hot shower, put on my pajamas, and curled up with my pup and my current comfort audiobook (I’m rereading Anne of Green Gables).

However, I finished Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar on Sunday night and it is my favorite book of the year so far. It’s a perfect novel. I love it with the fire of a thousand suns. As soon as I finished it, I wrote over 2000 words about its earnest brilliance, its beautiful heart. I’m looking forward to transforming them from an excited jumble into something that I can share with all of you. I wasn’t planning to review Martyr! here until then.

But: a derailed day, my human capacity. So here’s a pre-review, an alternate review, another way of looking at it. I wrote these words on Monday night and shared them on Instagram yesterday. Honestly, I could spend the rest of the year writing newsletters about Martyr! so this makes sense. I will never be done with it.

Much gratitude to my wonderful book friends Rosamond and Surabhi for talking so curiously and generously with me about this book, and to Surabhi also for the idea of defiant aliveness, something I cannot stop thinking about.

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Oh, this living song of a book, this now of a book, this bit of miraculous and complicated art. I love this novel with everything I am, with all my rootedness, in all my brokenhearted places, with every scrap of my aliveness. I have a lot more to say about it (it’s an endless conversation), but right now, I just want to tell you—no caveats, no explanations, no edges—I love this book.

Here’s the thing: I think we are afraid of earnestness. I think, as readers, we don’t trust earnestness. I believe in earnestness with my whole being and still, there was a moment in the second to last scene of this novel (perhaps the most perfect scene I’ve ever read in fiction), where I thought: “We can’t have this, can we? We can’t.”

We can, says Cyrus, the earnest, seeking, striving, struggling protagonist of this hard and hurting book. We can, says Akbar. Be earnest. Be earnest. Love wildly and loudly. Tell your people they are your people. Let the world transform you. Speak about it. Let love transform you. Speak about it. Be moved. Be dramatic. You know what is outrageously dramatic? LOVE. All the kinds. All the ways. All the infinities. Love in the midst of. Love despite. Despite despite despite. You know what is absolutely incomprehensibly wild? The grace of aliveness.

This is a book about choosing life. It is not easy. It is not pretty. It is not about fixing and healing and conquering the things that sometimes make life impossible to choose. It is about choosing. About nowness. Nowness despite. Nowness, yes, even now, now in the midst of so much devastation, now in these days of watching the brutal destruction of precious life after life after life in Palestine—yes, even now, always now: defiant aliveness.

If you are raging over this genocide, if you are full of grief, if you are using your voice or your hands, if you are trying, however imperfectly, to pour your love and anger and hope and despair and conviction out into the world in a way that transforms—what you are doing is choosing life. You are choosing what this book celebrates so earnestly, so sweetly, without edges, without caveats: aliveness, rumpled and soft. Aliveness, the most beautiful singing. Aliveness, received as grace. Aliveness, a feeling and a knowing we can give to each other. Defiant aliveness.

Be hurt. Be earnest. Speak about it. We can have this. In the midst of. Despite despite despite.

What books fill you with defiant aliveness? What books have made you choose life? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.