I can remember being in college, looking around at the eclectic group of people joined together to learn from a single professor, and thinking that perhaps we were finally getting to a point where we could stop focusing on our differences and start realizing just how much we have in common. It wasn’t until I was riding around San Diego with a very dear friend who happens to be black and drive a BMW, being tailed by a cop for miles and miles that I realized just how wrong I was. And it wasn’t until much later that I realized how flawed my melting pot fantasy was to begin with. Read More I Am Not Trayvon Martin and I’m Not His Mother, Either
Home
Right now I’m on Southwest flight #923 from LAX to Oakland with a final destination of Portland, Oregon. A dear friend of mine from college hails from the Bay area. He is a proud A’s fan and a very sweet man who will undoubtedly scoff at that adjective. Sitting on the tarmac in his city makes me think about home. The idea of it and its actualization. Read More Home
A Feminist’s Defense of Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift. It seems like you either love her or hate her; there isn’t a whole lot of in between. Many feminists scoff at her. One listen through of White Horse has some women, many of whom are both readers and writers of this bookish and clever magazine, rushing to their local Target to stage an album burning, but let’s take a step back for just a moment. Read More A Feminist’s Defense of Taylor Swift
Judging a Book by the Cover: The Dogs Stars Edition
Sometimes we judge books by their covers. It’s true. We can’t avoid it unless we walk around book stores and libraries and second hand shops with our eyes closed, but really that would just be a disaster, so instead we must accept that sometimes it happens. We are drawn to the interesting, the colorful, the abstract. We fall in love with the idea of what could be inside of that beautiful outside.
Read More Judging a Book by the Cover: The Dogs Stars Edition
A Soundtrack for Thursdays
We take Fridays really seriously in our house. I know we’ve been trying to embrace Mondays, but let’s not pretend that as this Thursday starts to wind down we aren’t all looking forward to knowing that we’ll wake up to a little extra end of the week magic in the air. To celebrate, here are some of my favorite songs to move to at a Tomorrow’s Friday Dance Party. Don’t like my choices or want to keep the party going? Add your own recommendations in the comments. Read More A Soundtrack for Thursdays
The Fault in Our Stars: The View from Inside the Clubhouse
If you Google The Fault in Our Stars, you will be gifted with literally thousands of pages of reviews. As a New York Times best seller, John Green’s latest YA novel is pretty much the opposite of an indie hidden gem but that’s not stopping me from telling the world why I kind of love it. I think Hazel Grace said it best when she said, “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” This is one of those books for me. Let’s be clear. This is a cancer book and if that’s not your thing I will not be offended if you turn around and make a quick exit but if you don’t hit the back button on your browser, I’ll explain why this one is worth putting on your “To Read” list. Read More The Fault in Our Stars: The View from Inside the Clubhouse