Not So Little Monsters

Okay, first things first they'll eat our brains.

Well, we survived Pride Month, but barely! The fact that the end of the Supreme Court term coincides with end of Pride month always feels a smidge homophobic, but especially this year. I wouldn’t call what we just experienced “ideal for democracy.” And it all kind of comes down to 6 monsters, mostly appointed by other monsters who didn’t even win their popular vote.

These particular monsters in robes have granted themselves the authority to govern as a mini-legislature no one asked for. In the span of a week, we’ve said goodbye to affirmative action and student loan relief and hello to a new vanguard of permissible LGBTQ+ discrimination (via a fabricated case.) This is, of course, building on their work of obliterating abortion rights last year. Rough times.

Pride Month was also full of queer joy, but the days of “love is love” are well over. Pride Month may have officially ended, but the work does not and cannot. This year, more than ever, we must focus on Pride beyond just the celebration. With more than 500+ legislative anti-LGBTQ+ bills, largely centered on the attack of transgender and non-binary people, our communities are in need of ACTION. Our allies must find meaningful ways to ensure Pride Month momentum continues year round.

Monsters were also the through-line in the most recent books I’ve read - one of them is actually literally called Monsters. Some fictional, some too real. How do we stand up to them? How can we appreciate their art? How do we survive the world they’re building?

We fight back.

THE LIBRARY IS OPEN

The Guest

by Emma Cline (2023)

This book rules. It’s such a breath of fresh air when a highly anticipated and buzzed about book lives up to expectations. I loved Cline’s The Girls, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one, especially since so many reader friends of mine seemed to love it. This author does delicate-and-pretty-but-creepy better than anyone, and the set up for this novel is delicious. It’s one of the best books I’ve read lately that tells the story of how we live right now.

Summer is coming to a close, and Alex is in trouble. Kicked out of her apartment and on the run, she’s seemingly been able to ingratiate herself in to the life of her latest conquest, a wealthy man twice her age who summers in the Hamptons. When her time with that man, her latest client, unceremoniously comes to an end, like it always does, she’s forced to find a way to stay on the island for days, floating like a ghost from place to place. One brilliant stroke is that we never fully figure out the specifics of what kind of trouble lead her to where she is, and we’re left to piece together her situation ourselves. With nowhere to go, she attaches herself to families who vaguely recognize her as someone she’s not or to young rich men below the age of consent who are drawn to her beauty and desperation. Is she the monster, or is it everyone else around her? Yes!

This is a deep identity sketch that reads as a tense thriller. It’s an indictment on the way society treats women as interchangeable and how the rich treat the ones that serve them, whether that relationship is formal or not. (The only folks who ever clock Alex for who she is are the domestic and hourly wage workers.) It felt like we were careening towards disaster the whole time, and I guess we were, but The Guest is also a masterful, simultaneous character study of both one damaged person and the whole messed up country. It’s one of the best of the year.

Read it if you like: suspense, societal critiques, anti-heroines, a cavalcade of bad decisions, the Eat the Rich genre.

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

by Claire Dederer (2023)

My problem with nonfiction books is that they often feel like they could have been articles, the “this meeting could have been an email” of literature. This particular book actually is the extended remix of an article - Claire Dederer’s Paris Review essay, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” I need not have worried about being bored, though, because the entire book is incredibly thought provoking and timely. Who among us that engages with pop culture hasn’t asked ourselves how to consume and enjoy art when it’s made by monsters?

This book asks and attempts to answer so many questions. What makes a monster these days? What does one have to do to leave a stain on the the legacy of their art? Can we engage with the works of people like Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Pablo Picasso, and Miles Davis? Should we? When does our engagement with art cross over to hypocrisy? Does beauty matter when we decide how art by bad people comes into and stays in our lives? Does male monstrosity differ from female monstrosity, and does it matter? Do we still get to say we’re part of House Ravenclaw? Why is JK Rowling doing this to us?!

I loved the way Dederer doesn’t provide easy answers. She still loves many of the works of the artists mentioned above but really digs into the stain of their monstrosity. (I do too. I miss watching The Cosby Show, and I’m self-conscious about people seeing me listen to Michael Jackson on Spotify. In an ideal world, I’d love my niece and nephew to have the Harry Potter experience that I did.)

She’s frank about the way she’s had to deal with this difficult questions monsters force in ways that her male colleagues never have to. I’ve thought about this book just about every day since I’ve read it, and I bring it up way too often - my own foray into monsterdom. I highly recommend reading this and setting up a time to chat with friends who care deeply about dissecting art and celebrating what aligns - or doesn’t - with your values.

Read it if you like: pop culture criticism, feminism, hard questions, few answers, being able to bring up interesting things at parties.

Chain-Gang All-Stars

by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2023)

It’s the non-too-distant future, and the prison industrial complex has naturally progressed into an expected form: a reality show competition. The flagship show of this enterprise CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a gladiatorial showdown that pits prisoners against one another in a literal fight to the death. If you win enough matches over 3 years, you gain your freedom. If you lose…well, you publicly die in America’s most sought after sporting venue. It’s highly popular and highly controversial and just a part of the horrors of the private prison industry of America’s future.

This is the highly anticipated first novel from Adjei-Brenyah who previously released the excellent, Afro-futuristic short story collection Friday Black. The monsters in this novel abound, whether they’re guarding and/or torturing the prisoners, making the decisions about the violent, reality programming from the boardroom, or watching the proceedings from home in all their complicity. The book is, pretty obviously, a take down of our current prison system, and therefore most of the folks affected are BIPOC and cogs in a system stacked against them.

Things get complicated with our protagonists, two queer women of color who share time on the same chain gang. They’re both fierce fighters, and they’re extremely popular with the viewing public. One of them, in particular, started her journey on the circuit as a huge underdog, and now she’s poised to gain her freedom after a couple more fights. The women and their chain gang compatriots are secure knowing that no one from the same chain gang is allowed to fight one another, but in a world like this, built on the capricious whims of reality producers, rules like that can change at any moment. It’s a horror show, and it’s hard not to find yourself aligned with the protest movement trying to end this barbaric practice. At once feeling outlandish and a less than remote possibility, this book makes a compelling case for prison abolition.

Read it if you like: Network, American Gladiators, variations of queer love stories, cool names, glimpses of the future.

LIGHTNING ROUND - Let’s watch something!

Maybe you’re in the mood to check out one of the more important programs on television right now, showing how queer people are everywhere - every part of the country - and deserve love and community wherever we are.

Ruh roh, looks like monsters behind the scenes were informing just how insane their main characters got on the funny third and final season of this private joke-filled gem that I’ll miss dearly.

Maybe you’re wondering why I walk around saying “Yes Chef!” everywhere I go and need to check out a beautiful show about art and purpose and Michelin starts. The way we care for ourselves and the way we go after our ambitions are so often at odds with one another.

Finally, I want to dedicate this newsletter to my partner in crime who watched me read countless books before and after our walks. We said goodbye to our buddy Parker and giving 15 years of a good life to each other. I was never a pet person before him, but he came as part of the husband package about a decade ago, and we became inseparable. The opposite of a monster, he was an angel in every way, and I’ll miss him so much.

Until next time…happy reading!