Monday Miscellany: Her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant
Notes from March 2 - 8
Good evening and welcome to another week! I hope that despite (hands flapping wildly) everything, you’re doing okay. Today’s newsletter features a very mixed bag of books, some extreme excitement about upcoming releases, and a few signs of the changing season, among other things. Let’s go! 🌸
Read this week
Okay, we know that I’m not a huge historical fiction person by nature, and for that matter, not a huge romance person either—or, more accurately: I can enjoy both of these genres, and have indeed even loved them, I’m just picky. So take my comments about Indigo by Beverly Jenkins, the Stacks book club pick for February, a classic work of historical romance that unfortunately turned out to be a miss for me, with a grain of salt.
This is the story of Hester Wyatt, a free Black woman in Michigan who works on the Underground Railroad. She is charged at the beginning of the story with hiding and caring for an injured fellow conductor, known mysteriously as the Black Daniel. Though he is uncooperative and rude at first, the two quickly develop a physical and emotional attraction to each other, and from there, the romance tropes do what they do. What I liked most about the story was the historical element, which was well-researched and informative; it was particularly fun to encounter a reference to Ellen and William Craft, whom I learned about in detail from a previous The Stacks nonfiction pick, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. What didn’t work as well for me were the completely cringey sex scenes and body part euphemisms, which, combined with the novel being much too long, had me wanting to throw it across the room by the end. If I never in my life read about any more nipples that are “hard as jewels,” it will be too soon.
It felt extra awesome, then, to pick up Awake by Jen Hatmaker directly afterward and read the entire thing in a day. Hatmaker has been a huge name in the evangelical Christian community for many years and this is her memoir about finding out in 2020 that her husband was cheating on her, then divorcing him, drifting away from the church, and figuring out who she really was deep down as she rebuilt her life in the wake of all of this. It is a quick, compelling read, maybe verging on woo-woo in places but beautiful and affirming on the whole.
I can’t wait for better timing or better circumstances. I won’t wait for anything that depends on someone else, because that is neutralizing my power. I’m done sleepwalking through my own story.
The Good Life is now, and I am its co-creator. So I will create it. (224)
Though it would’ve been easy to blame the crumbling of her marriage solely on her ex’s infidelity, I appreciated that Hatmaker takes a long look at herself, too, and thoroughly addresses her own behavioral patterns and tendencies. Having grown up in the Baptist world myself before separating from it as an adult and maintaining complicated feelings about that to this day, I deeply related to a lot of her struggles and thought processes. Going through all of it with her in these pages, seeing how she worked so doggedly to heal and grow despite the intense pain, was an emotional, cathartic, and ultimately joyous experience.
The week’s reading wrapped up with a return to a classic that I remember as formative in my baby feminist high school years—The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This was my March selection from my older unread shelf, a copy I’d bought at Politics & Prose on a trip to DC back in 2017. It tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a 28-year-old wife and mother who slowly realizes that she feels trapped inside her marriage and her role in society. After returning to the city after a summer spent at the shore, she decides to stop receiving the customary Tuesday callers at her home, to go out when she wants to, and to follow her own whims, expectations and conventions be damned.
She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. (66)
For the first half or so, I was very much like “girl, hell yeah, your twelve-years-older-than-you husband sucks, leave his ass.” You’re deeply unhappy, you’re being crushed under the constraints of your rigid existence. Get outta there. But as the narrative continued, I felt myself sinking into frustration and boredom. The action really drops off as Edna’s life narrows; her two kids go off to live with their grandmother and, seemingly free, she spends all her time pining after Robert, the younger man she had befriended over the summer, before he went off to Mexico for vague reasons relating to business (question mark). While she’s missing Robert, she’s also casually hooking up (another question mark) with this other, known womanizer-type guy, Alcée. It’s all so ennui, so pending, so unsatisfying. By the final scene (which I won’t spoil but which I will say is tragic), I was simply done with her. Did she really break free of a stifling marriage just to run into the arms of another man (or two)? Are men the only option here? Can we not dream bigger?? Sad!
But on the other hand, maybe that was the point? Is Kate Chopin highlighting a woman’s internal feminist uprising, her urge to escape her oppression, only to then illustrate that such an escape is impossible? Perhaps.1 This short novel was originally published in 1899, so I have to give it props for its subversion, even though the conclusion it draws is bleak as hell. If you haven’t read this one before and enjoy a Virginia Woolf-esque style of hazy, stream-of-conscious writing, it’s worth checking out. Some of the sentences are gorgeous, true knockouts. Just brace yourself for it to drag a bit as it goes, and don’t expect a happy ending.
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Seen and heard this week
On Friday I chose Bring It On (2000) to keep me company while I was at home doing some design work. It had been a while, but I could still recite the entire opening sequence2 and despite many moments that don’t hold up a quarter century later, the rest was just as nostalgic as I remembered. Hell yeah to earnestly embracing something that you were initially snobbish toward. Hell yeah to originality even when it’s hard, even when pleading ignorance of plagiarism would be easier and demand less of you. And HELL yeah to a final competition montage.
Last night some friends and I watched Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), but I use the word “watched” very loosely here. My eyes and ears took it in (I think?) and yet nothing about the plot or the acting choices made any logical sense. There are horrible accents, so much talk about “slums,” an unexpected and very jarring “birth” scene, a sExY LaDy dEteCtiVe, some unexplained illness, and a fully unnecessary shoot-out in a nightclub. Also Chris Kline is there, squinting a lot and being the worst Interpol agent I’ve ever seen depicted onscreen. We love a bad movie in this family, but wow, this one was a doozy—the longest ninety minutes and most thorough live roast I’ve experienced in quite a while.
In music news: Metric released another single, “Time is a Bomb,” from their upcoming album, Romanticize the Dive! I pretty much love everything Emily Haines does, so I’m probably biased, but I think it’s great.
I am always up, and I am always down Any time I hear your voice I fall in love with the sound
Metric is so good at driving beats, at dancey hooks, at building energy and seamlessly switching between sections of a song. One of my favorite parts of this one comes at the end, when everything drops out and it’s just Emily is singing over the piano, yeah yeahhh, airy and pure. It’s been stuck in my head for the last several days and I’m extremely okay with that.
Anticipation station
If you’ve been here a while, you might remember me being very into a Francis of Delirium album called Lighthouse a year or two ago.
Well I am overjoyed to tell you that the band has just announced a NEW ALBUM coming at the end of May!! It’s called Run, Run Pure Beauty, and a new single, “It’s a Beautiful Life” is out now (don’t be surprised if/when I talk about it more next week). Run, Run will also include the song “Little Black Dress” from last September, which I wrote about here:
Speaking of beloved creators announcing upcoming work, WE’RE GETTING A NEW BECKY CHAMBERS NOVEL IN OCTOBER! This is not a drill. It’s called As You Wake, Break the Shell and you can preorder the ebook here. I’ve read and loved everything she has published thus far, so to say I am excited for this is an understatement.
Haiku round-up
This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:
Monday, March 2
Racing the sunset but words won’t come fast enough I can’t halt this night
Tuesday, March 3
Voices raised over the sizzling of meat in oil: a new family
Wednesday, March 4
Sharp call in the dark as I read by twinklelight clear, resounding hoots
Thursday, March 5
Your absence looming, I speak worries through my feet, leave them on the trail
Friday, March 6
Awaken smiling dust off your independence and sit down to work
Saturday, March 7
Overnight, this change pink velvet petals open to greet the season
Sunday, March 8
Soft couch, hot pizza A gathering of like minds to laugh and talk shit
Until next time
It’s 7:30pm and I’m on the front porch doing a last read-through before I send this letter off into the evening. The sun has set but the sky is not yet dark. Birds are chirping and kids are playing somewhere nearby—I can hear their happy squeals and shouts over the hum of traffic. As much as I love sunshine in the mornings, being a person who opens a coffee shop a few days per week, this extra evening light isn’t so bad either. Welcome, early spring.
See you next Monday, and until then, you gotta stay doinking, man.3
♥︎ Emily
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Sad!
“Hate us ‘cause we’re beautiful but WE DON’T LIKE YOU EITHER! We’re cheerleaders! We! Are! Cheerleaders!” etc.
Thank you to Caleb for sharing this video with me. 😂