Hi Dear Readers,
I’ll say a quick lil hello and we’ll get right to the leftovers!
Just recorded the third podcast episode today, which will be published for paid subscribers next Wednesday (2/9). I hope you will like it. I had a lot to talk about in this one (Sister Corita Kent, friendships, and exercise stuff), so it’s my longest thus far at over 16 minutes!
I try to make the first issue of Leftovers’ each month a little lighter than the last issue, since they come out back-to-back, so I hope you all are okay with that and are not feeling overwhelmed! I want this space to feel cozy and informative and kind and authentic. That’s my aim.
Wishing you a very lovely Friday (and weekend).
Enjoy this week’s Leftovers,
xL<3
Reading List 🔖
There Is No Punk Without Black Women - Vanessa Willoughby
The history of music has rarely been kind to Black women, who are often omitted from the discourse or treated as footnotes in their own stories.
Feminism and Crisis - Edna Bonhomme
In her latest book, A Decolonial Feminism (translated by Ashley J. Bohrer in an edition from Pluto Press), the French political scientist Françoise Vergès points out that “billions of women take care of cleaning the world every day, tirelessly.” She invites readers to consider a moment when such workers withheld their labor and stopped cleaning, taking us to Paris, where a strike among cleaners brought up questions about the racialized and gendered nature of cleaning jobs in France.
Routine Care - Anabelle Johnston
Care doesn’t need to be volunteered or demonstrably empathetic so much as it needs to be reliable, routine.
The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism - Sophia Giovannitti
The difference is this: My friends’ and my loved ones’ relationships to porn are largely mediated through the lenses of labor and money, and the feminists’ positions on porn are rarely mediated as such.
Child Care: The Radical is Popular - Bryce Covert
Given our current approach to this problem, you’d hardly know that child care was once a key demand of a multiracial, cross-class feminist movement that wanted 24-hour government-funded child care centers and nearly got a version of universal child care passed in 1971. In recent years, the terrain has been dominated by policy wonks producing a raft of white papers and very little action.
Searching For Suzy Thunder - Claire L. Evans
Hackers are folkloric figures. They’re tricksters, bathed in the blue light of glowing screens and green mists of binary code. For 30 years, they’ve been romanticized in films, mashing keyboards, pounding soda, racing progress bars, shouting, “I’m in!” In the cultural imagination, they’re often antisocial, malevolent figures — usually male — whose obsession with the technical minutiae of computer systems leaves them wholly under-equipped for human interaction.
Librarianship 🌻
A Mississippi mayor is withholding over $100,000 from library over LGBTQ+ books - Brooke Migdon
Books of Note 📚
Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind - Fariha Roisin (nonfiction)
When We Were Birds - Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (fiction)
Anatomy: A Love Story - Dana Schwartz (young adult)
I Am Golden - Eva Chen (children’s book)
Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems - Louise Glück (poetry)
The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection Through Embodied Living - Hillary L. McBride (self-help)
[If you order any of the books above or any listed on my Bookshop site, a percentage goes to local bookstores and I get a small commission. Thank you for not ordering from Amazon!]
Be Witchy 🔮
Catalonia Pardons Women Executed For Witchcraft - BBC News
Playlist 🎵
“Sweat” - ALASKALASKA
”Hannah Sun” - Lomelda
”Muscle” - Issy Wood
”The Best” - Erica Banks
”Mount Everest” - Labrinth
Mood Board 💓
Self-Care + Good Things ☕
My almost 10-month-old nephew made a new friend at a park (the pics are super cute). Cold temps. Working on things I believe in. Using Notion—seriously, I love it. Baklava.