Short N’ Snappy Thoughts for Birthday Week because I’m mixing up the format
Are you reading about the genocide happening right now? Follow @decolonize_the_classroom (and other Palestinian activists) and understand the settler colonialism happening which is currently happening/occurred during Ramadan, Palestinians living in occupied Palestine are being persecuted and it’s disgusting. Read up.
Four people texted me at the same time about JLo and Ben Affleck allegedly dating- I don’t believe it, I don’t want to believe it. Am I projecting that I don’t want this badass stunning woman of color to settle for a mediocre white man? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OF COURSE, the caveat is I don’t know their love life or either of them personally, maybe they’re in love if they are in fact together or maybe a PR stunt...
I love sending and receiving flowers, WHAT A TREAT. Science has proven it positively impacts your mood. :)
The Cut podcast is inside my brain sometimes. This week’s episode is “How Do I Know If I Want Kids”- if you’re asking yourself the same question, listen to this episode and read this. One of the lines from the podcast is, “is it scarier to know exactly what you want or be a drift” GREAT QUESTION.
Check in on your people; you have no idea what someone is going through until you ask and continue to ask. When you feel like this, let it out girlfriend
Celebrate yourself today and every day.
I love these small businesses owned and/or operated by WOC and feel the need to spotlight them: Purple Sky by Kime, Sip Society, Asian American Girl Club, Aavrani, prints by @lamboflemila, prints from @lovelyearlthlings, earrings from @RadyToCreate, Collective A DEI Lab/consultancy
Not everyone deserves to know your story and that’s MORE THAN OK ya’ll
When’s the last time you REALLY belly laughed with people who know your soul? Friends meeting friends and seeing your life physically overlap is a cool thing.
XOXO, actively take care of yourself--whatever that means to you.
Books I wish Read in High School
The Right to Maim, Jasbir Puar: As I’m writing this, it’s Nakba day and there is another round of intense ethnic cleansing happening in Palestine. So, this formative book is here because I wish some world history class had me read it instead of providing an orientalized and western gaze of the “rest of the world” or instead of learning about Christopher Columbus for the umpteenth time. Puar examines the relationship between life, debility and death in the context of Israel Palestine with a specific look at how the Israeli state creates a cycle of dependence through maiming and disability that forces those impacted to rely on the state for resources. It also gives an interesting perspective on #pinkwashing.
Read if: You follow Ahmed, Nour and Maryam on insta and see them blasting Palestine content and you like but won’t reshare or you post content without having the facts you need to equip you in a debate or you think it's #bad but don’t really know why or that shit makes you uncomfortable. Education is a resistance so people so read up.
Books Where You Save Yourself
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help you find and Keep Love, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller: Tall order and they deliver. Attachment theory-the Brené Brown of love theories in the universe that everyone-snatched, partnered or single AF should get their hands on. If your boyfriend likes to make some solo plans without keeping you in the loop and your chest gets all fuzzy but you don’t know why because you know solo time is normal-you may have an anxious attachment style. Always feeling like a lone walk? You are an avoidant bitch. Know when to dive deep and pull away? Parents got you locked down in a secure attachment style. Best thing about this book is it gives you tools to work through your DRAMA :)
Read if: Can’t afford or find a therapist (Too real in the US of A) but want to find love. I'm throwing away my megaphone on this one & say we all are better if we understand not just our own but our partner’s attachment styles.
On Trend
A Theory of Birds: Poems Book by Zaina Alsous, a collection of poetry about history, geography, language, feminism, and colonization all wrapped into a beautiful metaphor of birds mixed with ecological references, and the outlining of the unsurprising disproportionate impact of colonization and violence on women.
Read if: this line speaks to you: ‘While invading the New World, Columbus writes of sirens in / his notebooks, evoking the half-women, half-birds of Jason’s / Argonauts. Every time I look for women, I become more bird.’
Not Your Typical Eat, Pray, Love
Pop Song by Larissa Pham, a collection of thoughts on love, but love in every sense of the word when you fall in and out of love with a place, a painting or a person, the freaking vulnerability that is hard as shit, connecting or disconnecting from a place, and of course the I word--intimacy.
Read if: You’re restless and find love, vulnerability, and intimacy NOT THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD, CAN YOU RELATE?
Decolonize Your Mind
Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots by Morgan Jerkins, this book is about how Morgan grapples with her identities and the diaspora of Black folks across the US through thorough research, oral histories, interviews, and pure curiosity
Read if: you enjoyed reading This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and you’re seeking to learn more about the journey of complexity of identity especially for a Black woman in the US
Independent Bookstore Map:
Now Serving on N. Broadway in Los Angeles, CA. Now Serving is a cookbook and culinary shop in Los Angeles (that proudly has no dieting books)! They also host virtual and in-person events like Dream First, Details Later with Ellen Marie Bennett and Everyone’s Table with Gregory Gourdet. In 2019, it was LA’s only cookbook shop. The store owners are Michele Mungcal and Ken Concepcion who started the biz in September 2017.