#Melissa Lozada Oliva

[ecc-poetry]

Sometimes you remember a poem exists that perfectly encapsulates your feelings about changes your white boss asked you to make to a WOC's direct quotes and it's like

[adamcgrathwithfinger]

Like Totally Whatever

by Melissa Lozada Oliva

Like Totally Whatever after Taylor Mali

In case you haven’t realized it is somehow become necessary for old white men to tell me how to speak They like, interrupt a conversation that isn’t even theirs, and are like “Speak like you mean it.” and like the internet is ruining the english language and they like put my parentheticals, my likes, and uhms and you-knows on a wait list

Tell them no one would take them seriously in a frilly pink dress or that make up Tell them they have a confidence problem That they should learn to speak up like the hyper masculine words were always the first to raise their hands

Invisible red pens and college degrees have been making their way into the middle of my sentences, I’ve been crossing things out every time I take a moment to think. Declarative sentences, so called because they declare themselves to be the loudest, truest, most taking up the most space most totally white men sentences Have always told me that being angry has never helped like anybody, has only gotten in the way of helping them declare more shit about how they will never be forgotten like ever

It’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were geniuses for turning women into question marks It’s like rapes happen all the time on campuses but as soon as John Krakauer writes about it, suddenly it’s like innovative nonfiction and not like something girls are like making up for like attention and it’s like maybe I am always speaking in question because I’m so used to being cut off It’s like maybe this is defense mechanism Maybe everything girls do is evolution of defense mechanism Like this is protection like our likes are our kneepads our uhms are our knives we tuck into our boots at night our you-knows are the best friends we call when we’re walking down a dark alley Like this is how we breathe easier But I guess feelings never helped anybody I guess like tears never made change I guess like everything girls do is a waste of time

So welcome to the bandwagon of my own uncertainty watch as I stick flowers in your punctuation mark guns ’cause you can’t just challenge authority You gotta take it to the mall too teach you to do the bend and snap paint its nails braid its hair Tell its looks like really good today and in that moment you murder it with all the poison in your like softness you let it know that like this like this moment it’s like, uhm, you know me using my voice

[marialuisavegas]

There is much pressure in a white dress

The thing is life gets in the pits,

all yellow, all used. Get out of here

with your dog-eared under-arms, baby.

You have to pretend to be dead

or wear it for a good reason. So I wore it

to the movies & I cried at the previews.

I wore it to the cafe & I asked for some alternative milk.

I wore it to the protest & they took a picture of me

without my permission. I spilled beer on it

at the punk show. I took the train

going the wrong way. I learned my lesson & I took it back,

tucked it into a box & then under my bed.

I wore it to space. I tried to be a star-fucker

but I forgot protection. I wore it to a brand new city. I tried to live

in the moment but my bank account overdrew.

I listened to “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” & it got stuck

in the zipper. I hopped up & down & it didn’t come off.

I went to the park & I pretended to read a classic on a bench.

I held flowers then I put them in my hair. I went to parades.

I said “Woo!” because I’m a “Woo!” girl. I had a few drinks

& I said “Esooo!” instead. I walked under the archways.

I threw pennies into the fountains.

I went to the readings. I wrote down my favorite lines.

I passed by all the mirrors.

I touched all of the sandals on sale.

And it still got colder. And the leaves still

changed color. And you still couldn’t see me.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

[sarahmaclean]

My favorite poem. Like, ever.

[wordsthatmattered]

I think about the most womanly thing we've ever done and it's live anyway.

- Peluda by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

[ratboyslim]

tbh a lot of online positivity reminds me of when i went to buy face razors at target for my mustache and chin hair and my sister, who is naturally hairless and has been her entire life, said "why, they're so unnecessary" in one of those condescending "you poor victim of the eurocentric patriarchy, still removing your natural hair" tones. lady if like, sophia hadjipanteli told me to throw out my tweezers id do so in a heartbeat, but the sentiment hits a little different coming from a sphinx cat yknow.

[onewordshy]

“Will We Ever Stop Crying About the Dead Star” from Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

[alias-archives]

My favourite poems:

The Glass Essay by Anne Carson

What you missed that day you were absent from fourth grade by Brad Aaron Modlin

The Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin

The Orange by Wendy Cope

Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg

America by Allen Ginsberg

The Years by Alex Dimitrov

Stop All The Clocks by W.H. Auden

The More Loving One by W.H.Auden

For Grace, after a Party by Frank O’Hara

Want by Joan Larkin

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

Like Totally Whatever by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

You are Jeff by Richard Siken

[onlyalittlebookworm]

2023 Reading Thread

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy (★★★★★)

The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien (★★★★★)

Darkness on the Edge of Town - Adam Christopher (★★★★☆)

The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien (★★★★★)

Madly, Deeply - The Diaries of Alan Rickman (★★★★☆)

Malibu Rising - Taylor Jenkins Reid (★★★★☆)

Catherine, Called Birdy - Karen Cushman (★★★★☆)

Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo (★★★★★)

Bronze Drum: A Novel of Sisters and War - Phong Nguyen (★★★★☆)

Persuasion - Jane Austen (★★★★★)

Book Lovers - Emily Henry (★★★★☆)

Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn (★★★★★)

The Blue Castle - L.M. Montgomery (★★★★★)

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen (★★★☆☆)

Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury - Lesley-Ann Jones (★★★★☆)

Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty (★★★★★)

Ariadne - Jennifer Saint (★★★★☆)

Emma - Jane Austen (★★★★★)

Home Body - Rupi Kaur (★★★☆☆)

Dreaming of You - Melissa Lozada-Oliva (★★★★☆)

Happy Place - Emily Henry (★★★★☆)

Sad Birds Still Sing - Faraway (★★★☆☆)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins (★★★★★)

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (★★★★★)

Neon Gods - Katee Robert (★★★★☆)

[sixtyfivehundredinvisiblebirds]

what I read in 2022

2022 We Ride Upon Sticks- Quan Barry How to Not Be Afraid of Everything- Jane Wong Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories- Hilma Wolitzer The Rabbit Hutch- Tess Gunty The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams- Jonathan Ned Katz AND Lesbian Love- Eve Adams (in same volume) Thistlefoot- GennaRose Nethercott Bluest Nude- Ama Codjoe The Master Letters- Lucy Brock-Broido (reread) Family Lexicon- Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Jenny McPhee) The Whole Story- Ali Smith The Rupture Tense- Jenny Xie Bad Rabbi: And other strange but true stories from the Yiddish press- Eddie Portnoy A Tale for the Time Being- Ruth Ozeki Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands- Kate Beaton Wandering Stars- Sholem Aleichem (tr. Aliza Shevrin)   Moldy Strawberries- Caio Fernando Abreu (tr. Bruna Dantas Lobato) Sarahland- Sam Cohen Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency- Chen Chen Elephant- Soren Stockman Craft in the Real World- Matthew Salesses Life of the Garment- Deborah Gorlin Olio- Tyehimba Jess In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen- Devin Kelly The Wild Fox of Yemen- Threa Almontaser Song- Brigit Pegeen Kelly Qorbanot- Alisha Kaplan w/ art by Tobi Kahn Gold that Frames the Mirror- Brandon Melendez Foreign Bodies- Kimiko Hahn A Little Devil in America- Hanif Abdurraqib Muscle Memory- Kyle Carrero Lopez not without small joys- Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah Too Bright To See & Alma- Linda Gregg Borne- Jeff VanderMeer Harvard Square- André Aciman What We Talk About When We Talk About Fat- Aubrey Gordon The City We Became- N.K. Jemison Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints- Joan Acocella Vladimir-Julia May Jonas Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch- Rivka Galchen Lessons in Being Tender-Headed- Janae Johnson Against Heaven- Kemi Alabi How The Word Is Passed- Clint Smith Earth Room- Rachel Mannheimer True Biz- Sara Nović Motherhood- Sheila Heti The Fire Next Time- James Baldwin Diary of a lonely girl or the battle against free love- Miriam Karpilove tr. Jessica Kirzane Mezzanine- Matthew Olzmann Customs- Solmaz Sharif Edge of House- Dzvinia Orlowsky Only as the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems- Dorianne Laux DMZ Colony- Don Mee Choi Stay Safe- Emma Hine Spring Tides- Jacques Poulin, trn. Shira Fleishman (reread) No One Is Talking About This- Patricia Lockwood Unaccompanied- Javier Zamora Where I Was From- Joan Didion Air Raid- Polina Barskova tr. Valtzina Mort Dispatch- Cam Awkward-Rich Bury It- sam sax A Cruelty Special to Our Species- Emily Jungmin Yoon Homie- Danez Smith Dreaming of You- Melissa Lozada-Oliva

[bookclub4m]

Episode 161 - Hate Reads

This episode we’re talking about Hate Reads! We discuss annoyance reading, hate reading vs reading something you hate, completionism, experiencing bad media as a social bonding experience, and 1-star reviews of books. Plus: Books about women murdering!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jam Edwards

Media We Mentioned

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Wikipedia)

"A spectre is haunting Europe”

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Game of Thrones (Wikipedia)

Divergent by Veronica Roth

“Divergent might have been sloppy in places, but in a bizarre continuity error, both Tris’ disabling trauma around guns and an actual gun appears and disappears as is convenient in the final chapters… This violates both Chekhov’s Gun and some corollary: if you introduce a gun, it must exist.” (from Jam’s review; see also “I’m not reading another YA trilogy unless someone guarantees me no queer people die in the second act”)

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

“reading this book felt like having to eat three bags of raw spinach before I was allowed the ice cream sundae I'd been promised” (from Matthew’s review)

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Links, Articles, and Things

161 (number) (Wikipedia)

Schadenfreude (Wikipedia)

Mark Oshiro (who Jam mentioned) appears to have deleted their YouTube channel? Or Something? You can still go to their website and the Mark Reads website.

Hazel & Katniss & Harry & Starr Podcast

Episode on Ready Player One

A recent(ish) episode of Watch+Play (there’s a lot of them!)

There’s also this playlist of shorter, edited videos if you don’t want to commit

Hark (Jam’s holiday music podcast)

Hot take (Wikipedia)

Hate-watching (Wikipedia)

Episode 011 - Religious Fiction (the one in which Anna read the book she hated)

BookTok (Wikipedia)

Matthew can’t find the specific X-Men review he mentioned, but it’s buried in this site somewhere (that link specifically is to a scathing review of the final issue of Mutant X)

Show, don't tell (Wikipedia)

Questions

What Romance genres do you want us to read?

What comic would you use to introduce superhero comics to adults (who haven't read them before)?

Twitter thread

15 works of Experimental Fiction by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy

Big City by Marream Krollos

Search History by Eugene Lim

Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli

This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale: Two Anti-Novels by  Subimal Misra, translated by V. Ramaswamy

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

Oreo by Fran Ross

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I was the President's Mistress!! by Miguel Syjuco

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, November 1st we’ll be discussing the genre of Investigative Journalism!

Then on Tuesday, November 15th we’ll be talking about Podcasts!

[adamcgrathwithfinger]

Like Totally Whatever

by Melissa Lozada Oliva

En caso de que no te hayas dado cuenta

de alguna manera se ha vuelto necesario

que ancianos blancos me digan cómo hablar

Les gusta, interrumpir una conversación que

ni siquiera es suya, y son como

"Habla como si lo dijeras en serio"

y es como si internet estuviera

arruinando el idioma Inglés

y les gusta poner mis

paréntesis, mis gustos, y uhms

y you-knows en una lista de espera

Dicen que nadie

te va a tomar en serio en un

vestido rosa con volantes o con ese maquillaje

Dicen que tienes un problema de confianza

Que debería aprender a hablar alto

como lo hacían los hiper masculinos

esos que son siempre los primeros en levantar la mano.

Los bolígrafos rojos invisibles y los títulos universitarios

se han ido abriendo paso en medio

de mis frases, he estado tachando cosas

cada vez que me tomo un momento para pensar.

Las frases declarativas, llamadas así porque

se declaran las más fuertes, las más verdaderas,

las que ocupan más espacio

las frases que son totalmente de hombres blancos.

Siempre me han dicho que estar enfadado

nunca ha ayudado a nadie

sólo es un obstáculo en el camino de ayuda.

Luego declaran más mierda acerca de cómo

nunca jamás serán olvidados

Es como si F. Scott Fitzgerald y Ernest Hemingway

fueran genios por convertir a las mujeres en signos de interrogación

Como esa violaciones que ocurren todo el tiempo en los campus

pero tan pronto como John Krakauer

escribe sobre ello, de repente es como

no ficción innovadora y no como

algo que las chicas inventan

para llamar la atención.

Es como si la razón por la que siempre hablo en preguntas

es porque estoy tan acostumbrada a que me corten.

Es como si esto fuera un mecanismo de defensa.

Tal vez todo lo que hacen las chicas es parte de la evolución

de un mecanismo de defensa

Esto es una protección

nuestros likes son como nuestras rodilleras

nuestros uhms son los cuchillos que metemos en nuestras botas por la noche

nuestros you-knows  son nuestro mejores amigos que llamamos

cuando caminamos por un callejón oscuro

Así es como respiramos mejor

Pero supongo que los sentimientos nunca ayudaron a nadie

Supongo que las lágrimas nunca cambiaron nada

Supongo que todo lo que hacen las chicas es una pérdida de tiempo

Así que bienvenido al vagón de mi propia incertidumbre

mira como clavo flores en tus pistolas llenas de signos de puntuación

porque “no puedes” desafiar a la autoridad

hay que llevarla al centro comercial también

enseñarla a hacer la curva y el chasquido

pintarle las uñas

trenzarle el pelo

Decirle que hoy se ve muy bien

y en ese momento

la asesinas con todo el veneno

de tu suavidad

le haces saber que así

como este momento

es como, “uhm”

un tú sabes

un uso de mi voz

[andyjwaldron]

ANDY LED A CAMPAIGN THAT EARNED ~$7k IN BOOK SALES FOR A RECORD STORE

Graphics by Olivia Cross (x)

As book buyer at Rough Trade's sole location at 30 Rock, Andy was able to build upon all that good music and literature education and experience (from his degrees in Music & Technology and Literature to a very fond employment at Little City Books) in nabbing some great authors and their titles for sale at Jimmy Fallon's office building.

This culminated in the record store's 2022 Books of the Year Campaign, which not only consisted of a wide-ranging collection of titles (managing both the company's asks and being able to highlight small publishers spanning memoir, fiction, poetry and musicology; from the canonization of a hip hop pioneer, to verses touching on cultural labor), but also earn some pretty impressive coin in the process for the company.

From launch through the end of Q4, these efforts earned around $7,000 in profit alone for Rough Trade NYC through this promotion, acquiring signed stock, ordering and receiving inventory, submitting invoices, all the way up to putting together the store display on launch date.

Below is all the copy Andy wrote about these amazing authors and their incredible work, including books by Sadie Dupuis, Patti Smith, Nick Cave, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva:

During a year of bumpy restarts, where our feet feel a bit closer to the ground and our heads starting to look skyward, the stories we share have become more than sources of escape – they've become documentations of how we got to this point and where we're going from here.

The top literary titles we've compiled from 2022 span memoir, fiction, poetry and musicology; from the canonization of a hip hop pioneer, to verses touching on contemporary music work, the chronicles of artists' ascent, and in the case of our top choice, a loving inventory of time passing.

As Nick Cave relates in one of our picks, "You have to be patient and alert to the little miracles nestled in the ordinary." Here are our favorite little miracles we've found:

Patti Smith - "A Book of Days"

We all took stock of the past few years in our own ways; the weight of loss we carried, the pings of video calls when we couldn't meet in-person, the moments of levity we shared with each other to keep us above water. The New York institution that is Patti Smith has collected snapshots of these uncertain times inspired by her newest medium, Instagram – continuing her practice of reflecting and refracting the artful, casual, personal, political, and profound. With a distinctive lens and a careful pen, our top pick for 2022, A Book of Days hands us 366 (leap year-inclusive) reasons to keep moving forward.

Nick Cave & Sean O'Hagan - "Faith, Hope, and Carnage"

"Who wants to do an interview? Interviews, in general, suck. Really. They eat you up. I hate them."

In light of the blunt observation that begins Faith, Hope and Carnage, let's make sure to call Nick Cave's newest book what it is: a wide-ranging conversation between the Australian multi-hyphenate rocker and the Irish journalist, Sean O'Hagan. From the transcripts of about forty hours of dialogue, a revelation emerges – transforming the specifics of the authors' experiences into larger insights on life, grief, and devotion.

Dan Charnas - "Dilla Time"

Record exec, The Source journalist, NYU professor, and all-around good listener, Dan Charnas explores the history and influence of hip hop pioneer J Dilla with the same level of meticulousness that his subject committed to production. After four years of research and nearly 200 interviews, Dilla Time amasses an accessible archive on all things Jay Dee, from teaching moments on his out-of-this-world rhythms to first-hand accounts that ground the human behind the beats.

Margo Price - "Maybe We'll Make It"

Margo Price's memoir of grit and resilience is one of our favorites to come out on University of Texas Press's consistently quality American Music Series. The Nashville-based, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter relates the twenty years since she dropped out of college to become a musician with a keenly illustrative narrative voice and invokes a storyteller who "quit trying to change the past" in order to share the lessons for "the recent future."

Sadie Dupuis - "Cry Perfume"

The Speedy Ortiz and Sad13 frontdemon's second collection of nimble poetry is all at once darkness and levity, pop and punk, hopeful and realistic. Reading from Cry Perfume at our store back in September, Sadie Dupuis's pieces on grief, music work, the encroachment of tech, and harm reduction became vividly instructive on how to both coexist with these pervasive subjects and, like other titles that her publisher Black Ocean offers, experience a more vital way of operating in a haunted world.

Stuart Braithwaite - "Spaceships Over Glasgow"

From Scotland to New York to all over the globe, the post-rock sage, Stuart Braithwaite chronicles his passionate abandon in the throes of alternative music. The sharp, detailed, and cheeky stories in Spaceships Over Glasgow relate his ascent from fandom to artistry in a fashion much like the Mogwai catalog: always expansive, always out-of-this-world.

Greg Graffin - "Punk Paradox"

In his mission to not be "a sample of carbon-based wastage," Greg Graffin has lived many lives: the lead vocalist and songwriter of Bad Religion, the college professor with degrees in Zoology and Ecology, and the husband and father who wants to leave a better world for his kids. From zeroing in on the great punk songs to zooming out for lessons on endurance, Punk Paradox becomes an engrossing history.

Nabil Ayers - "My Life in the Sunshine"

Digging through the racks of his record store for the next sale, the nonstop grind of touring globally as a seasoned drummer, building a varied repertoire of the most exciting independent artists with 4AD and, now, Beggars Group… Nabil Ayers has always been searching. Now, in My Life in the Sunshine, – which we got to preview back in June – you can trace the origins of his drive; Nabil's narrative finds the author learning how to traverse the overcast of his father's familial and musical legacy, navigate his biracial upbringing, and manifest his own daybreak in creating new and remarkable connections.

Cosey Fanni Tutti - "Re-Sisters"

Collapsing the dialectic and the diaristic, Re-Sisters documents Cosey Fanni Tutti’s discovery of a through-line between her, the contemporary avant-garde artist formerly of Throbbing Gristle, the electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, and the Christian mystic and first English autobiographist, Margery Kempe. The three broke their respective molds – a common, innovative spirit spanning individual and shared histories – and figured out, against societal, artistic, and gender-driven odds, "what's important is that we do it at all."

Melissa Lozada-Oliva - "Dreaming of You"

Dreaming of You is a prism in which the resurrection of the Tejano pop icon Selena Quintanilla reflects loss, love, tenderness, and karaoke. As a cultural moment where the revaluation of fans' relationships with celebrities is becoming more of a reckoning – when the phrase "parasocial" emerged to facilitate expectations of give and take from the artists we adore – Melissa Lozada-Oliva has written a surreal, funny, and moving novel-in-verse about what happens when obsession turns macabre. (x)

[paulsemel]

If there's one person who always saves the world in stories, it's grandma. But while she's at it again in Melissa Lozada-Oliva's new novel "Candelaria," there's actually more to this story, as Lozada-Oliva explains in this exclusive interview. 📖👵🇬🇹

[dreamep]

what's your favorite book? if you don't have one, what's the book you read most recently?

Peluda by Melissa lozada oliva!! It’s a poetry book and she is one of my favorite writers I DEF recommend :D