godzilla-reads

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Yi Lei, tr. by Tracy K. Smith, from My Name Will Grow Wild Like a Tree: Selected Poems; “I don’t want to be restored to reason”

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Zhu Xiang, from a poem titled "Reply to a Dream," featured in Modern Chinese Poetry: An Anthology

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Dragon Kings of the Four Seas

Renowned Shanghai painter’s Dai Dunbang (戴敦邦) 20th century illustration for the Chinese Ming dynasty classic “Journey to the West” (《西遊記》) attributed to Wu Cheng'en (吳承恩).

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Charma and the Lighter by Xiao Maxian　　 tr. Fan Jinghua

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Sandara Tang • “Dragon and Sparrow”

Digital Illustrator

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Watership Down - Vietnam (2008)

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Then, as if breathing, the sea swelled beneath us. If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.

Ocean Vuong, Immigrant Haibun

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A flower is seen only toward the end of its life, just-bloomed and already on its way to being brown paper. And maybe all names are illusions. How often do we name something after its briefest form? Rose bush, rain, butterfly, snapping turtle, firing squad, childhood, death, mother tongue, me, you.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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Funny how a house can be more than just four walls: the center of the universe, the one place your father is happy, an obsession.

Trang Thanh Tran, She is a Haunting

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Reading Together 🙌

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Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is a memoir, biography, and exploration. Sycamore, a genderqueer writer, learned how to make art from her grandmother, a contemporary artist in Baltimore. And yet, once Mattilda grew up, to her disappointment, her queerness and her open confrontation of her father, who abused her at a young age, came between them, obscuring them from one another. Now, after the grandmother's death, Mattilda tries to do what her grandmother taught her, and make art by not just looking, but looking ever-closer, digging in. She writes about her grandmother's life and art, tries to unpack her grandmother's psyche, and tries to access a closure that she's not sure is possible.

Sycamore's writing is vivid and evocative, and I felt pulled into the scenes she described, felt like I too grew to know her grandmother in all her complexity. Some of the work Sycamore did about Baltimore the city, certain museums, could feel like tangents. At other times, things repeated, or felt somewhat circular. But that's because Sycamore is circling around something she can never truly access: the mind of a woman she knew intimately but could never fully understand. Every once in a while, the writing could become a little confusing grammatically, as if it was written down as notes or stream-of-consciousness, which was distracting. But overall this was an emotional, deep story of a person trying to find their place in the world, from family history to the artist legacy that helped raise them.

Content warnings for incest, sexual assault, homophobia/transphobia, racism, disordered eating.

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It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, edited by Joe Vallese 5/5 stars | 📖 | Read 7/10 - 7/26, 2023

When I randomly saw it came from the closet at my library, I remembered having read a wonderfully positive review on Instagram and I knew I had to check it out and read it ASAP. And I’m so glad I did! I don’t read nearly as many books about pop culture as I should (and want to), but It Came From the Closet was a great start, full of essays by queer writers reflecting on what specific horror movies and the genre as a whole means to them.

While I certainly had favorites, all of these essays were strong and the throughline was clear— these queer writers have found comfort, and themselves, in the horror genre. While some may embrace it and others resent it, that doesn’t change that they have felt outcasted and out of place in life, seeing themselves in the monsters on screen. This essay collection is important— it puts a name to a shared feeling among queer people that can often otherwise go unnoticed.

I am not a huge horror movie fan myself and I haven’t seen most of the movies mentioned, but that didn’t take away from my understanding or enjoyment of these essays. The writers provided enough synopsis and context for understanding, at times weaving in anecdotes of their own viewing experiences, that it was easy to follow along. Whether you’re a horror fan or not, queer or not, this essay collection has a lot to offer and learn from.

These were some of the stand-out essays: - “Both Ways” by Carmen Maria Machado - “Imprint” by Joe Vallese - “Loving Annie Hayworth” by Laura Maw - “Black Body Snatchers” by Samuel Autman - “Notes on Sleepaway Camp” by Viet Dinh

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I’m really enjoying the illustrated edition of Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life”. It’s so beautiful and pulls you in, not to mention that Merlin Sheldrake writes so eloquently.

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One of my coworkers pulled this book aside for me yesterday after talking about beavers for a bit and I got so excited it’s unreal.

Anyway, I’ll be reading “Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America” by Leila Philip.

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And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts is heartbreaking, frustrating, and just plain high-quality nonfiction. From its early days as a mysterious form of ‘cancer’ to it finally being addressed as a public health disaster, Shilts tracks the story of AIDS and the incredible failure of the U.S. and state governments to respond to it appropriately, writing how bureaucracy, scientific competition, homophobia, sidelining of ‘anecdotal’ data in research, and failure of the media to investigate and ask questions, all came together to create an epidemic of a disease that was already a nasty killer, but that was allowed to run free thanks to a lack of funding and attention.

Where can I even begin? I grew up more aware than most kids about HIV and AIDS. My parents had participated in advocacy around the disease, and my uncle was HIV positive. But this book laid it all out, and shocked and hurt and twisted me through its pages. It outlined the story of AIDS in vivid, rich color. Shilts’s skill with foreshadowing is indicting on so many levels—the cowardice of too many people, the failure in vision. It at times reads like a political tragedy. At other times, it reads like pure, utter plague horror, suspenseful and so frustrating I had to put it down and take a walk or rant to my partner several times. Gaslighting, bureaucratic battles, mind-numbingly ridiculous hold-ups, mistakes, cover-ups, silences.

There is a lot of resonance with Covid. The desire not to ‘panic’ people, or to enforce normality, and how that allows disease to run rampant. Avoidance of harm reduction due to ‘civil rights’ arguments that too often turn out to be people wanting to continue to make money. People acting with utter denial, insisting they can’t spread it, saying they’re tired of being weighed down by warnings and fear. To how much of a role the media plays, and how necessary it is for reporters to question, follow leads, and ask tough questions to hold governments and institutions accountable.

But also hopeful notes. Out of the failure of just about everyone to help, a gay community was formed, a new one, rooted in harm reduction, safe sex, and social services run by and for queer people. I see clean air groups, mutual aid accounts, rising out of the ashes of the neglect and hate around us now. Shilts also highlights the heroes of the pandemic. Spoiler alert: they aren’t people who accepted easy answers or easy paths. They went rogue, leaked documents, went on the record when they weren’t supposed to, went around their universities’ backs for funds, forced funding through the back channels of Congress, heckled, demanded, threatened, and raged. It was a hopeful and bittersweet reminder that we will get nowhere by telling our friends what’s wrong, or journaling it after a day of minding your own business. Our heroes will be the non-compliant, and every hero will have a group of community members at their back.

Content warnings for suicide, suicidal ideation, medical trauma/dismissal, death/grief, homophobia.

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21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act - Canada

Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussion on generations of Indigenous Peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer.

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The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone's Legendary Druid Pack by Rick McIntyre

"The wolf takes care of the pack, and the pack takes care of the wolf."

Me reading a non-fiction book—especially one that's not a memoir/autobiography by an actor/musician whom I love—is an extremely rare occurrence. However, when my parents returned from a trip to Yellowstone and gifted me this book, I had to dive in immediately because A, I love wolves, and B, I really didn't want it to get lost in the disaster zone that is my TBR.

Rick McIntyre's The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack is the second book in his Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone Series, and covers Wolf 21's time as Alpha of Yellowstone's Druid Pack, which spanned from 2000-2004. McIntyre's prose can be a bit dry at times, often reading like compiled trail notes more than anything else. But his dedication, insight and heartfelt care for these animals shines through enough throughout the book that it's never too sterile a read.

Rick McIntyre's love for these animals is contagious, and the way he writes about the main wolves in this three-and-a-half year story brings them to life in a way that makes it impossible for you not to fall for them yourself. I'm not going to lie, he had me crying over wolves who've been dead for ~20 years. The Druid Alphas, 21 & 42 (as well as the astonishing 253), were truly amazing animals; animals that so purely exhibited the strength and ideals of what wolves as a species represent.

I figured that every time I helped someone see wolves, it would be one more person on the side of wolves.

Overall, The Reign of Wolf 21 can often be repetitive, as it focuses heavily on this pack's hunting, mating and pup rearing habits, but it's never boring. The repetitive nature throughout only ever lends more detailed insight into the behavioral patterns of not only these individual wolves, but of wolf packs in general, giving us an enlightening (if biased) look at these animals and their role within the Yellowstone ecosystem. And it succeeds not only as an informative science book about the importance of wolves in Yellowstone, but also as an exciting adventure story about leadership and love, dedication and bravery, and the resounding effect of our actions on the world around us.

It was a time of legends, a time when giants strode the land. It was the time of 21 and 42.

7.5/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.