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raven_cromwellYes, I still do occasionally haunt these dustiest of blog-regions, and even hope to haunt them more frequently. Things are remarkably, delightfully good, and I feel like I have a shocking assortment of things from which to chose being joyous about. Not least of which is that I finally, after enough hurtles to make myself a fine modern fairytale--dean's aides standing in for witches, and painfully inaccessible tech and course materials making the finest thorn hedges--I've finally breached community college's gates. I start end of this month, y'all, and I'm incandescent with wonder and delight.
But late on a Friday, I wanna talk Ivan Coyote's Rebent Sinner. Specifically, my delight at finding it free on spotify as narrated by the author themself. Caveat that I don't know if it's available outside the USA, and I've no idea how long it will last.
But for right now, you can hop right over here and listen to its nigh on four hours of gloriousness.
The connections between essays in this collection are subtle and thought-provoking, highlighting the raw places in armor even as we try so very hard to be strong. We open with an antidote about the smoking habits of the ladies of Coyote's family, led by her formidable grandmother who possessed a machine for making homemade cigarettes, and would buy the cheapest, vilest ones when she couldn't get the tobacco for it. All this was in service of justifying an expensive habit with corner-cutting, even as she and the other women knew they were spinning a fiction.
Late in that piece, Coyote promises an older family member that even as their gender may be confusing, they can recognize the blood that flows through Coyote's veins. And then, the essay simply...ceases; for a moment, I sat, baffled, before deciding to continue. And then! And then, later in the book, a piece opened, where Coyote was trying to explain to a college kid how to build up some skin against the myriad microaggressions, reaching for words, even as they hoped that one day, they could tell a story in which their transness wasn't at the center. They fantasize wistfully about being just another elder, whose worst trouble was struggling to get a gravy boat down from a cupboard. Even as they were trying to emphasize the need for resilience, to say that the microaggressions had practically stopped mattering at this late date, a toll was felt. It was the same sort of fiction necessary to get through the day their Granny had deployed with her cigarettes.
And I just sat, stunned; at how much was said via the unsaid as the words on paper; by the juxtaposition of pieces, and the courage to embrace ambiguity and contradiction.
I haven't finished it all, but I can't rec it highly enough for a weekend listen.
But late on a Friday, I wanna talk Ivan Coyote's Rebent Sinner. Specifically, my delight at finding it free on spotify as narrated by the author themself. Caveat that I don't know if it's available outside the USA, and I've no idea how long it will last.
But for right now, you can hop right over here and listen to its nigh on four hours of gloriousness.
The connections between essays in this collection are subtle and thought-provoking, highlighting the raw places in armor even as we try so very hard to be strong. We open with an antidote about the smoking habits of the ladies of Coyote's family, led by her formidable grandmother who possessed a machine for making homemade cigarettes, and would buy the cheapest, vilest ones when she couldn't get the tobacco for it. All this was in service of justifying an expensive habit with corner-cutting, even as she and the other women knew they were spinning a fiction.
Late in that piece, Coyote promises an older family member that even as their gender may be confusing, they can recognize the blood that flows through Coyote's veins. And then, the essay simply...ceases; for a moment, I sat, baffled, before deciding to continue. And then! And then, later in the book, a piece opened, where Coyote was trying to explain to a college kid how to build up some skin against the myriad microaggressions, reaching for words, even as they hoped that one day, they could tell a story in which their transness wasn't at the center. They fantasize wistfully about being just another elder, whose worst trouble was struggling to get a gravy boat down from a cupboard. Even as they were trying to emphasize the need for resilience, to say that the microaggressions had practically stopped mattering at this late date, a toll was felt. It was the same sort of fiction necessary to get through the day their Granny had deployed with her cigarettes.
And I just sat, stunned; at how much was said via the unsaid as the words on paper; by the juxtaposition of pieces, and the courage to embrace ambiguity and contradiction.
I haven't finished it all, but I can't rec it highly enough for a weekend listen.
