What’s on my Nightstand: July 2019

Nonfiction

From Dictatorship to Democracy / Gene Sharp

The Politics of Nonviolent Action / Gene Sharp

The Climate Report: National Climate Assessment-Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States / U.S. Global Change Research Program

Essay / Memoir

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating / Elisabeth Tova Bailey

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel / Alexander Chee

Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History / Camille T. Dungy

Heavy / Kiese Laymon

The Benevolent Bee / Stephanie Bruneau
“Capture the Bounty of the Hive through Science, History, Home Remedies, and Craft

Fiction

Green Girl / Kate Zambreno

Short Fiction

Cougar, Maria Anderson / The Iowa Review

Boys Go to Jupiter / Danielle Evans / The Sewanee Review

Child’s Play / Gloria Mwaniga Minage / Johannesburg Review of Books

What Terrible Thing it Was / Esmé Weijun Wang / Granta

She Said, He Said / By Hanif Kureishi / The New Yorker

Poetry

Sentence / Tadeusz Dąbrowski, The New Yorker (listen)

Split / Teow Lim Goh / Rigorous

To Tell of Bodies Changed / Jana Prikryl / The Poetry Foundation

Be Free / Barbara Eikner Thompson / A Room of Her Own Foundation

For My Daughter / Mark Yakich / Literary Hub

Essay (Selected)

Between Four and Six / Katharine Coldiron / Rhythm and Bone

On Eve’s Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women / Nina Coomes

I’m Done With Cautionary Tales About Women and Power / Lilly Dancyger / Catapult

Art Monsters (The Thread) / Marissa Korbel / The Rumpus

The Sorrowful Mysteries, or, Reasons I’m No Longer Catholic / Kathleen McKitty Harris / Longreads

The Tree With Matchmaking Powers / Jeff Maysh / The Atlantic

Whole 60 / Laura Lippman / Longreads

Trudging Down Death Road / Tega Oghenechovwen / The Rumpus

The Way Home / Jane Ratfliffe / The Sun Magazine

What It Was Like to Recover in the 1980s — And Now / Kelly Thompson / The Temper

The Brazilian Healer and the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes
Leigh Hopkins / Longreads

Interview / OpEd / Review

Voices on Addiction: A Conversation with Amber van de Bunt / Kristen Casey / The Rumpus

Trump campaign plunges into brawl to control Pennsylvania GOP / Holly Otterbein / POLITICO

Elizabeth Warren on a Wealth Tax / Matt Stevens / The New York Times

Magazine / Newspaper

Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), May/June 2019 issue

The New Yorker

The Week

TIME

Vanity Fair

Random

Babo Botanicals Daily Sheer Non-Nano Zinc SPF 40 Fragrance Free Mineral Sunscreen

Booda Butter lipbalm

Pixel glasses

What’s on my Nightstand: June 2019

Nonfiction / Memoir

City of Dreams, by Tyler Anbinder

The Electric Woman, by Tessa Fontaine

On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening HardOn Being Human, by Jennifer Pastiloff

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp

Fiction

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff

Quiet Creature on the Corner, by João Gilberto Noll

Short Fiction

The Rule, by Frances Donnelly

Brawler, by Lauren Groff (The New Yorker)

When the Tide of Misfortune Hits, Even Jelly Will Break Your Teeth, by Porochista Khakpour (Gulf Coast)

Poetry

Still Life with Oysters and Lemons: On Objects and Intimacy, by Mark Doty

Call Me by My True Names, by Thich Nhat Hanh

In Full Velvet, by Jenny Johnson

Essay (Selected)

I am Coming for You, by Tammy Delatorre / Winning Writers

What does it mean to be a “real” mother? by Tanya Friedman / Motherwell

SHRINES. BONES. RELICS. by Anne Gudger / Equinox Poetry and Prose

The Sorrowful Mysteries, or Reasons I’m No Longer Catholic, by Kathleen McKitty Harris / Longreads

The Thread: On Justice by Marissa Korbel (The Rumpus)

I’ve Got Dreams He’ll Never Take Away; or, I Know My Childhood Molester Is Reading This. He Has Read Everything I’ve Ever Written. He’s Always Looking For His Name: It Starts with a B, by C. Russell Price

Graphic Novel

Pitch Black, by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton

“[Landowne and Horton] collaborate here to bring Horton’s story of perseverance and hope to print, and the fluid black-and-white sequential panels tell it well. The horrors attendant on homelessness are not sugarcoated, and the language is as raw and gritty as one might expect. Powerful.”—Kirkus Reviews

On the subway, do ever notice that people are always looking, but they only see what they want to? Things can be sitting right in front of them and still they can’t see it.

Interview / OpEd (Selected)

WHY WE NEED STORIES: A PEN TEN INTERVIEW WITH SOPHIA SHALMIYEV, by Camilla Bober

Meet the power couple taking over Seattle sports (and the World Cup): Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird, by Stefanie Loh / Seattle Times

Voices on Addiction: A Conversation with Amber Van de Bunt, by Kristen Casey / Curated by Kelly Thompson / The Rumpus

18 Questions. 21 Democrats. Here’s What They Said. The New York Times

How a Young Joe Biden Turned Liberals Against Integration, by Jason Sokol / Politico

Magazine / Newspaper

Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), May/June 2019 issue

The New Yorker

The Week

TIME

The Normal School: A Literary Magazine

Random

Babo Botanicals Daily Sheer Non-Nano Zinc SPF 40 Fragrance Free Mineral Sunscreen

hydrangea blossoms

HURRAW! moonbalm

organic peach pit

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May 15, 2019May 15, 2019

What’s on my Nightstand: May 2019

Nonfiction / Memoir

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, by Francisco Cantú

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, by T Kira Madden

California Calling, by Natalie Singer

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp

Fiction

Girls Burn Brighter, by Shobha Rao

Short Fiction

Large Animals, by Jess Arndt

Brawler, by Lauren Groff (The New Yorker)

When the Tide of Misfortune Hits, Even Jelly Will Break Your Teeth, by Porochista Khakpour (Gulf Coast)

Breeding Season, by Amanda Niehaus

Poetry / Chapbook

Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems: 1927 – 1979

The Economy of Nostalgia, by Cooper Lee Bombardier

Naked, by Nastashia Minto

Essay (Selected)

Don’t Use My Family for Your True Crime Stories , by Lilly Dancyger (Crime Reads)

Percolations, by Daniel Elder (Entropy)

Is Masculinity a Terrorist Ideology? by Lacy M. Johnson (LitHub)

The Thread: The Stories We’ve Been Told by Marissa Korbel (The Rumpus)

Voices on Addiction: Fault Lines, by Lauren Marker (The Rumpus)

Interview / OpEd (Selected)

How Trump has already changed immigration policy, by Joshua Barajas (PBS News Hour)

Psychogeography of Abandonment: An Interview with Sophia Shalmiyev, by Cooper Lee Bombardier (BOMB Magazine)

What Can the U.S. Learn From How Other Countries Handle Immigration? by QUOCTRUNG BUI and CAITLIN DICKERSON (The New York Times)

Interview: Nastashia Minto, editor Katie Collins Guinn (NAILED)

This Gen X Mess, by Lisa Frank (The New York Times)

Why Aren’t the Democratic Presidential Candidates Talking About Immigration More? by Onita Nwanevu (The New Yorker)

Letters to Mothers: Crones, Hags, Witches, and Killjoys, by Sophia Shalmiyev and Leni Zumas (Guernica)

How ‘I got a plan’ became a thing: Warren nerds out and the crowds go crazy, by Alex Thompson (Politico)

Magazine / Newspaper

Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), January/February 2019 issue

The New Yorker

The Week

TIME

SIERRA Magazine

Random

Rosebud Lip Salve

seed packets, pea shoots and mixed sprouts

ceramic bowl, Paula Winokur

foxglove blossoms

robin’s egg

HURRAW! moonbalm

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March 22, 2019March 22, 2019

What’s on my Nightstand: March 2019

Nonfiction

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, by Pam Houston

The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton

Era of Ignition, by Amber Tamblyn

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp

The Methods of Nonviolent Action, by Gene Sharp

Occasional Magic – The Moth (True Stories About Defying the Impossible)

Fiction

The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee

Before She Was Harriet, by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Short Fiction

‘The Office of Missing Persons’ by Akil Kumaraswamy (Lit Hub)

‘The Frog King,’ by Garth Greenwell (The New Yorker)

‘Motherland,’ by Min Jin Lee (The Missouri Review)

Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems: 1927 – 1979

Enough Music, by Dorianne Laux

Goodbye to Tolerance, by Denise Levertov

Essay / Interview / OpEd (Selected)

The Phenom: ‘Change Is Closer Than We Think.’ Inside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Unlikely Rise,’ by Charlotte Alter

8 Short Kids’ Films Every Mini-Feminist Should See, by Emma Davey

Thesomorphia, by Melissa Febos

The Thread: Down Girl (The Rumpus) by Marissa Korbel

Against Catharsis: Writing is Not Therapy, by T Kira Madden

Voices of Addiction: All the Ways to Save Your Life,(The Rumpus) by David M. Olsen

Patti Smith discusses activism in the age of Trump: ‘I’m not going down with the ship, that’s for certain’ by Randall Roberts

AACK! Cathy Guisewite made a wildly successful comic strip by and for women. But to her critics, she’s just another example of compromised feminism by Rachel Syme

Magazine / Newspaper

Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), January/February 2019 issue

The New Yorker

The Week

TIME

SIERRA Magazine

Random

booda butter – naked lip balm

El Sueño Americano (The American Dream) – exhibition card, Tom Kiefer

abalone shell, palo santo wood, dried rose buds

Chill Pill – Aura Cacia Essential Oil Blend

necklace (shells, leather suede), Little Green Apple Jewelry

beach stones

Mexican tile (coaster)

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February 22, 2019March 5, 2019

Method 28: Symbolic Sounds

NOTE: Today’s post comes with a challenge, so feel free to skip to the hashtag at the end.

Way back in July 2018, Trump returned to the White House after a summit with Putin during which he refused to denounce any Russian interference in the 2016 election. Former Clinton advisor Adam Parkhomenko took to Twitter in protest.

In less than 30 minutes, a crowdfund campaign covered the costs for a mariachi band to play outside the White House during a night when Trump was already jet lagged. The concert went on to become part of a multi-day protest called Occupy Lafayette Park:

Is it me, or do the mariachi days of July seem cheerfully naive in light of this week’s reports that migrant children are being handcuffed and transferred to adult detention centers on their 18th birthdays? While “weaponizing” mariachi bands, opera singers and bagpipers may seem harmless, the use of oral or mechanical sounds has been used throughout history to convey a message during oppressive regimes.

In May 1917, the French army had already staged mutinies against the government, but when some units were forced to return to the trenches, the soldiers began “baaing” in protest, to signify that they were lambs to the slaughter. “The officers were helpless to prevent it.” (Source: The Methods of Nonviolent Action, Part Two, Gene Sharp.)

In 1968, in protest of forcible occupation, Czechoslovakian bishops called on churches to ring funeral bells. Soon, the city filled with the sound of sirens, car horns and train whistles. Soviet troops were so unnerved that they drew their pistols, terrified that an attack was about to begin.

#InternationalMargaritaDay

Today, on what is apparently #InternationalMargaritaDay, imagine what would happen if we used that hashtag to enlist the resistance to blare our car horns in time to “Impeach the President” on the hour, every hour for the next week? Or month? Or until 2020?

As my beloved Lidia Yuknavitch says, “we are nothing without each other.”

“Impeach the President” is a single by funk band The Honey Drippers, released on Alaga Records in 1973 and re-released to iTunes by Tuff City Records in 2017, after being sampled many times. The protest song advocates the impeachment of then president Richard Nixon.

“Impeach the President”

Ladies and gentlemen
We have the Honey Drippers in the house tonight
They just got back from Washington, DC
I think they got somethin’ they want to say

[Verse 1]
Some people say that he’s guilty (that he’s guilty)
Some people say I don’t know (I don’t know)
Some people say, give him a chance (give him a chance)
Aw, some people say, wait till he’s convicted (till he’s convicted)

[Chorus]
Impeach the President
Impeach the President
Impeach the President
Impeach the President

[Interlude]
Impeach the President
(Aw nah, we can’t do that, man—nah, nah)
Impeach the President (Shut up, fool!)
Impeach the President
Impeach the President
Impeach the President
Impeach the President

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February 11, 2019

Method 27: New Signs and Names

Before I move on to Method 27, two words:

Brandy Carlile.

61st Annual Grammy Awards, Show, Los Angeles, USA - 10 Feb 2019 — Photo by Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock (10095018ic) Brandi Carlile 61st Annual Grammy Awards, Show, Los Angeles, USA – 10 Feb 2019

Carlile’s performance of “The Joke” at last night’s Grammy awards has been on repeat all day. It’s one of the most powerful, timely performances I’ve seen, and I just can’t get it out of my head. Watch the performance.

They come to kick dirt in your face
To call you weak and then displace you
After carrying your baby on your back across the desert
I saw your eyes behind your hair
And you’re looking tired, but you don’t look scared

Artists are leading the revolution.

Method 27: New Signs and Names

Method 27 can take many forms, but the approach is to take signs that have been used against people and to turn them into something new. The signs can be repurposed, they can disappear or be replaced with something new.

When I was researching this method, I came across today’s LA Times, “Last of iconic illegal immigration crossing signs has vanished in California.” After years of debate, the last of 10 yellow “immigrants crossing” signs that once stood on either side of the 5 and 805 freeways near the U.S.-Mexico border disappeared. The department of transportation stopped making the signs and constructed fences to prevent people from crossing highways instead. (See slideshow, below.)

Method 27 was used in 1942 in occupied Poland by a group of young resistors who called themselves “The Little Wolves.” They stole the signs reading “Nur Für Deutsche” (FOR GERMANS ONLY), signs that were posted in front of Warsaw’s best cafes, hotels and theaters. One morning, hundreds of the signs reappeared on city’s lamp posts and trees where the Germans often hung Polish patriots. Overnight, street signs, placards and inscriptions throughout the city were replaced with the names of the heroes of the revolution.

I featured the artist Banksy in Method 26: “Paint as Protest,” and he’s back again today. A warning that the images in the slideshow below are triggering, but they end on a note we can all live by. I recommend listening to Brandi Carlile as you watch. [Listen.]

Let ’em live while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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“Researchers used to say that no government can survive if just 5% of its population rose up against it, but what the research showed is that no single campaigns failed during the time period after they’d achieved the active sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population.” – Erica Chenoweth

February 7, 2019

Method 26: Paint as Protest

Tuesday night’s State of the Union was a gorgeous example of the effectiveness of Nonviolent Method 18. The sea of Congresswomen in white couldn’t be overlooked – not by the viewing audience and especially not from the podium.

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The rest of the SOTU caused me to flip between CNN and old episodes of Survivor after my partner asked, “Are you really going to curse at the screen every fifteen seconds?” (Answer: “F*&K YES … the likes of which has never been seen!!!”)

Former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent critic of 45, said this of the State of the Union address: “I think Donald Trump raised to a new level,” he said, “the demagoguery, the hyperbole, the chauvinism, and even the misrepresentation on a lot of the issues, including on the foreign policy and national security front.”

For more on how how the rhetoric of dictators can bring down democracies, check out this article.

Method 26: Paint as Protest

Paint as a tool of nonviolent resistance can take many forms – as graffiti, on buildings, walls, or bodies, or symbols drawn on official portraits. In August 2017, graffiti resembling the work of the illusive artist Banksy appeared on Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

In June 2018, six new murals appeared in Paris to protest the French government’s anti-refugee policies. The first image in the slideshow below depicts a young girl spraying a pink wallpaper pattern over a swastika on a wall next to her sleeping bag and teddy bear in an attempt to make her patch of pavement more homelike.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Art historian Paul Ardenne said it does not matter if the murals are by Banksy, but they do “show that the Banksy effect, and its ability to manipulate the media, works.”

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“Researchers used to say that no government can survive if just 5% of its population rose up against it, but what the research showed is that no single campaigns failed during the time period after they’d achieved the active sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population.” – Erica Chenoweth

February 1, 2019February 2, 2019

What’s on my Nightstand: January 2019

Nonfiction

Riot Days, by Maria Alyokhina

Brazil, by Elizabeth Bishop and LIFE Magazine (1962)

Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution, by Ben Fountain

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp *

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel A. van der Volk

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, by Jose Antonio Vargas

* NOTE: on Wednesday, January 31, Gene Sharp passed away peacefully in his home at the age of 90. Professor Sharp is the author of the research and works that sparked the 3.5% Project.

Fiction

Florida, by Lauren Groff

Short Fiction

“Death Constant Beyond Love,” by Gabriel García Márquez

“Cream,” Haruki Murakami

Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems: 1927 – 1979

“Resignation,” by Nikki Giovanni

“Knots,” by RD Laing

“Good Bones,” by Maggie Smith

Journal

Granta

The Paris Review, No. 227, Winter 2018

Essay / Interview / OpEd

“The Quiet American,” by Janine Di Giovanni, The New York Times

The Racist, Homophobic Attack on Jussie Smollett Is Far-Right America’s Endgame, by Joshua Rivera, GQ Magazine

“The Thread: Fatherless,” by Marissa Korbel, The Rumpus

“Teaching my daughter that love is love,” by Vanessa Martir, The Washington Post

“The Radicalization of Bedtime Stories,” by Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic

Catalogue

Mt. Airy Learning Tree Winter 2019 Course Catalogue

Magazine / Newspaper

Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), January/February 2019 issue

The New Yorker

The Week

Random

HURRAW! moonbalm

worry stone, glass

Mexican tile (coaster)

Pixel computer glasses

Smith’s Rosebud Salve

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July 18, 2018November 15, 2021

About the 3.5% Project

The purpose of “The 3.5% Project” is to provide an ongoing context for Harvard professor Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action––a blueprint for nonviolent resistance. Each of the 198 methods can be used at any time, in any order, by anyone. (Read the blog for the most recent post.) If you’re part of the 3.5%, feel free to subscribe at the top right to receive your weekly method, and please share liberally.

“Researchers used to say that no government can survive if just 5% of its population rose up against it, but what the research showed is that no single campaigns failed during the time period after they’d achieved the active sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population.” – Erica Chenoweth

198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION

from the Albert Einstein Institute:

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION

Formal Statements
1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
4. Signed public statements
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions