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xmanicpanicx · 4 years

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Mammoth List of Feminist/Girl Power Books (200 + Books)

Lists of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World by Ann Shen

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu, Montana Kane (Translator)

Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath

Tough Mothers: Amazing Stories of History’s Mightiest Matriarchs by Jason Porath

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky

Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World by Mackenzi Lee

Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History by Sam Maggs

The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont

Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History by Kate Schatz

Warrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism by Robin Cross & Rosalind Miles

Women Who Dared: 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils, Adventurers, and Rebels by Linda Skeers & Livi Gosling

100 Nasty Women of History by Hannah Jewell

The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World by Jane Yolen

The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Chelsea Clinton

Fight Like a Girl: 50 Feminists Who Changed the World by Laura Barcella

Samurai Women 1184–1877 by Stephen Turnbull

A Black Woman Did That by Malaika Adero

Tales from Behind the Window by Edanur Kuntman

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall

Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100 by Max Dashu

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency by Bea Koch

Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History by Blair Imani

Individual and Group Portraits of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment by Deborah Kops

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life by Jane Sherron De Hart

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott

I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb

Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox

Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir by Cherríe L. Moraga

The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: The Female Gang That Terrorised London by Brian McDonald

Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment by Joyce Chapman Lebra

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

The Women of WWII (Non-Fiction)

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear (Translation), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translation)

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation by Anne Sebba

To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American Wacs Stationed Overseas During World War II by Brenda L. Moore

Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisters and Spies: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne by Susan Ottaway

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

The White Mouse by Nancy Wake

Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

Tomorrow to be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion by Susan Travers & Wendy Holden

Pure Grit: How WWII Nurses in the Pacific Survived Combat and Prison Camp by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisterhood of Spies by Elizabeth P. McIntosh

Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu

Women in the Holocaust by Dalia Ofer

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion

Night Witches: The Untold Story of Soviet Women in Combat by Bruce Myles

The Soviet Night Witches: Brave Women Bomber Pilots of World War II by Pamela Jain Dell

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by Elizabeth Wein

A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle

Avenging Angels: The Young Women of the Soviet Union's WWII Sniper Corps by Lyuba Vinogradova

The Women of WWII (Fiction)

Among the Red Stars by Gwen C. Katz

Night Witches by Kathryn Lasky

Night Witches by Mirren Hogan

Night Witch by S.J. McCormack

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

Code Name Verity series by Elizabeth Wein

Front Lines trilogy by Michael Grant

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

All-Girl Teams (Fiction)

The Seafire trilogy by Natalie C. Parker

Elysium Girls by Kate Pentecost

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

The Effigies trilogy by Sarah Raughley

Guardians of the Dawn series by S. Jae-Jones

Wolf-Light by Yaba Badoe

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

Burned and Buried by Nino Cipri

This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow

The Wild Ones: A Broken Anthem for a Girl Nation by Nafiza Azad

We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

Kamikaze Girls by Novala Takemoto, Akemi Wegmüller (Translator)

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke

Sisters in Sanity by Gayle Forman

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl

Hell's Belles series by Sarah MacLean

Jackdaws by Ken Follett

The Farmerettes by Gisela Tobien Sherman

A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions by Sheena Boekweg

Feminist Retellings

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea by Axie Oh

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

Doomed by Laura Pohl

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Seven Endless Forests by April Genevieve Tucholke

The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

Kate Crackernuts by Katharine M. Briggs

Legendborn series by Tracy Deonn

One for All by Lillie Lainoff

Feminist Dystopian and Horror Fiction

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

Women and Girls in Comedy

Crying Laughing by Lance Rubin

Stand Up, Yumi Chung by Jessica Kim

This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry

Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer

Pretty Funny for a Girl by Rebecca Elliot

Bossypants by Tina Fey

We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy by Yael Kohen

The Girl in the Show: Three Generations of Comedy, Culture, and Feminism by Anna Fields

Trans Women

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

Nemesis series by April Daniels

American Transgirl by Faith DaBrooke

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt

George by Alex Gino

The Witch Boy series by Molly Ostertag

Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman by Laura Kate Dale

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan

An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color by Ellyn Peña

Wandering Son by Takako Shimura

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Feminist Poetry

Women Are Some Kind of Magic trilogy by Amanda Lovelace

Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty by Nikita Gill

Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill

Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill

The Girl and the Goddess by Nikita Gill

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by DaMaris B. Hill

Feminist Philosophy and Facts

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy by Gerda Lerner

Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism by Bushra Rehman

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World by Kelly Jensen

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard

White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates

I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout & Jenn Abelson

Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea Ritchie

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, Barbara Smith Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe L. Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDinn

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

Power Shift: The Longest Revolution by Sally Armstrong

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Had It Coming: What's Fair in the Age of #MeToo? by Robyn Doolittle

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jody Kantor & Megan Twohey

#Notyourprincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy

Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time by Tanya Lee Stone

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Sady Doyle

Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement by Robin Morgan (Editor)

Girls Make Media by Mary Celeste Kearney

Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap by Evelyn McDonnell (Editor)

You Play the Girl: And Other Vexing Stories That Tell Women Who They Are by Carina Chocano

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir by Jeannie Vanasco

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Hollis Robbins (Editor)

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics by Dionne Brand

Other General Girl Power/Feminist Awesomeness

The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Kat and Meg Conquer the World by Anna Priemaza

Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg

The Female of the Species by Mandy McGinnis

Pulp by Robin Talley

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti

The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

American Girls by Alison Umminger

Don't Think Twice by Ruth Pennebaker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker

You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories by Alice Walker

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

Sula by Toni Morrison

Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Rules for Being a Girl by Candace Bushnell & Katie Cotugno

None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Everything Must Go by Jenny Fran Davis

The House on Olive Street by Robyn Carr

Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

Lady Luck's Map of Vegas by Barbara Samuel

Fan the Fame by Anna Priemaza

Puddin' by Julie Murphy

A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti

Gravity Brings Me Down by Natale Ghent

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

The Summer of Impossibilities by Rachael Allen

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alender

Don't Tell a Soul by Kirsten Miller

After the Ink Dries by Cassie Gustafson Girl, Unframed by Deb Caletti

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire by Joy McCullough

Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee

Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone

The Prettiest by Brigit Young

Don't Judge Me by Lisa Schroeder

The Roommate by Rosie Danan

Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Paper Girls comic series by Brian K. Vaughan

Heavy Vinyl comic series by Carly Usdin

Please feel free to reblog with more!

#book list #feminism #girl power

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stusbunker · 4 years

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A Gentlemen’s Agreement Epilogue

A Supernatural Denny AU Fan-fiction Series

Featuring: Dean Winchester/ Benny Lafitte

Other characters: Pamela, Jesse, Caesar, Crowley, Balthazar, Meg, Jo, Lee, Lisa, Sam (mentioned), Drea OFC, Robbie and SJ OMCs, Deanna OFC

Word count: 2340

A/N: Enjoy! xoxo Stu

Brunch

The sun was bright, but the air was crisp. The remnants of the early snowstorm had left soggy lawns and damp sidewalks. Benny pulled up to the restaurant and parked on the curb, smiling over at Dean. He waited patiently.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Dean squinted in the midday light.

“Been dying to meet ya. Figured it’s only fair, I met your folks, you can meet my people too,” Benny said simply. “But I’m not gonna force ya.”

“I just, I’m not used to being out in public. In numbers,” Dean sputtered.

Benny raised a single eyebrow at him. “Well, I guess this is your best shot to try it out, dontcha think?”

“What if they don’t like me? I don’t want you to have to choose between me and your friends,” Dean explained the root of the problem.

“I like you, they will too. Just relax, be your charming self and if you don’t know what to say, you can just keep eating.” Benny put his hand on Dean’s thigh, squeezing just so.

Dean growled out a sigh. “Fine. But you’re paying.”

Like that could make an uncomfortable situation worth it. Benny smirked at Dean’s logic, waiting for his face to soften from grouchy to amiable. Once Dean relaxed, Benny kissed him, just long enough to keep him flustered and climbed out of the truck.

They approached a large round table midway along the heated patio, where four people were already seated.

A raven haired woman waved them over. “My good Benjamin, did you bring a straight boy to brunch, just for me?!”

“Pammy!” Benny leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Hate to disappoint ya darlin', but ain't nothing straight about this'n."

“Hey, now! Can’t a guy speak for himself?!” Dean snipped defensively as he sat in the spot beside Benny.

Everyone laughed. Pamela raised her eyebrow in question.

Dean licked his lips and put on the smolder, “Sorry sweetheart, but I’m taken.”

“Wait, this--- THIS is your sassy mechanic?!” Crowley leaned forward, extending his hand, his English brogue gruff and pandering. “Nice to finally meet you, handsome.”

Dean gave Benny the side eye and all Benny could do was shrug coyly. Dean shook the man’s hand, trying not to show his discomfort from his lingering glances. Benny made the rest of the introductions, Jesse and Cesar were also a couple, but had been married for a few years. They seemed to be waiting on someone before they ordered. The group sipped their cocktails with a fresh pitcher of Bloody Mary in the center of the kitsch tablecloth.

Benny poured Dean a generous portion of the red drink and slipped seamlessly into the conversation. Dean sucked the palmeto out of an olive and listened casually, not too sure where he fit in this part of Benny’s life.

Twenty minutes later a rail of a guy swaggered in, with oversized aviators and a black linen suit.

“Oh, thank Christ for booze,” he huffed, grabbing Dean’s glass without even acknowledging Dean was there. The blonde chugged the entire drink, before breaking for air. “I just had the worst hook up of my life, no, well, the year at least. He took me to his mother’s house. She tried to make me breakfast. I was simply mortified. I just left. What could I even do at that point, honestly?!”

Now that his audience had his attention back, the man gawked at Dean. He even pulled down his sunglasses for a better look. “Now who the fuck is this? Is it show and tell?! Because I am not prepared in the least.”

He casually patted at his hair and eyed Dean from top to toe. Benny chuckled, but Pamela was the one to make the introduction.

“Balthazar, our regular hangover diva. Meet Dean, Benny’s boy toy,” she deadpanned, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Oh you can’t be serious,” Balthazar lamented, looking from Pam to Benny to Crowley and finally at Dean. “Fuck you southerners and your goddamn accents--- always gets the hotter ones,” he muttered defensively as he threw himself against the armrest of the chair, crossing his legs.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Cesar ended the dramatics concisely. “Maybe somebody should find our waitress?”

Dean looked at Benny confused. “We’re always here for a while, she doesn’t bother us until we’re actually ready to order. Tend to annoy her otherwise.”

Crowley volunteered as he needed to head to the men’s room anyhow. Five minutes later he arrived with an obviously surly waitress.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Meg’s smokey voice broke through Balthazar's latest story. She centered herself between Cesar and Crowley’s seat and cocked her hip, tongue firmly in cheek as she waited for Dean to take her bait.

“Heya, Meg,” Dean sighed. The inevitable caught up with him after all, they just had to run into someone he knew.

“Oh, this has got to be good, now, pray tell, how do you two know each other?” Crowley probed.

“Oh me and this schmuck? We go way back.” Meg smiled without teeth.

“Is that so?” Benny tested the waters.

“Not like that,” Dean grumbled. “Meg, here, took my little brother Sammy out for a few spins, back in the day. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, well, what can I say? It was high school.” Meg let her indifference coat her entire being until curiosity sparked to life in her eyes. “So what are you doing with this crowd, or did they bring you in just to add a new level of torture to my Sunday shifts?”

“Well---.” Dean swallowed, looked at Benny for clarification and got mild amusement instead. “I think you’re stuck with me now.”

“Joy,” Meg bristled before taking their orders, knowing most of the table’s usuals before they even opened their mouths.

News

Benny rushed into the customer entrance of the shop, the wet October air had kept the service doors closed for the past week. He leaned against the counter, decorated in local business cards and charity fliers, anxiously waiting for someone to talk to. His chest was so tight he worried he’d pass out from excitement. He just needed to see him was all, once he saw Dean it would be easier.

Lee sauntered in from the service bay, they both had drawn the short straw it seemed.

“Hey, mind getting Dean for me? It’s important,” Benny asked, unable to keep the burning smile from his face.

Lee eyed him curiously but nodded and headed back the way he came. He didn’t shout, not really. “Dean-o, your boyfriend’s looking for ya.”

Dean unfurled himself from the engine he had been tinkering with all morning and glared at Lee.

“Husband, whatever, seems urgent,” Lee acquiesced. Dean nodded and wiped his hands off on the closest rag. Dean pulled his wedding band out from his undershirt out of habit more than anything. He couldn’t wear it on his hands at work, but he didn’t want to lose it so Benny made him a braided leather necklace once they got back from their honeymoon.

Dean ignored formality and walked straight into the waiting room. Once he saw the look on Benny’s face he knew what was happening.

“It’s go time?” He asked, shock and exhilaration sparking his instinct to move.

“It’s go time, cher. Lisa called me on the way to the hospital. Sam’s driving her from the office. Her water broke about 9:30,” Benny explained, the nervousness slipping into his cadence.

“Alright, I’m gonna clean up, you want me to drive?” Dean asked, gauging the unsteadiness in his usually stalwart husband.

“That’s probably best, yeah,” Benny agreed.

Dean leaned in and kissed him firmly, resting his forehead against Benny’s temple before pulling away.“Hey, we got this, alright? That kid is gonna be so spoiled having you for a daddy, you know that?”

“Look who’s talking, gonna have you wrapped around their finger before they can even crawl,” Benny teased back, inhaling with contentment.

Dean headed back to warn his coworkers that he had a baby on the way and to clean up enough to be allowed into a hospital. Jo followed Dean out into the lobby. Quickly, she hugged Benny before demanding regular updates to the group chat.

“Alright, get out of here, we’ve got you covered for the rest of the week. Let me know and I will put in paternity leave as soon as everyone’s home, okay?” Jo got all professional about things as Dean left.

“Oh, right, shit. Well, I guess I’ll let you know when you can come over and---,” Dean started before Benny pulled him by his elbow.

“We should be goin’” Benny urged. Dean looked at Jo one last time and nodded.

This was it.

Dean held Benny’s hand the whole way to the hospital, their grip tightening every so often, grounding them both. Because Lisa was a friend and the surrogacy was looser than most circumstances, both Benny and Dean were allowed in the delivery room. They were the best cheerleaders a birth mom could have ever asked for. Seven hours later, one chubby baby girl entered the world screaming to high heaven and splitting her fathers’ hearts open for an entirely new level of love and devotion.

Mary Andrea Lafitte-Winchester, or Drea for short, was a happy and healthy little girl. And an overprotective big sister to her twin brothers, Samuel Joel and Robert Fergus, who came along four years later.

Sunset

They’re old men now. Dean is five years retired, while Benny works the register for their sons on the weekends. Both of their hands aren’t what they used to be. But they keep busy. Drea is bringing the kids round tomorrow, it’s the start of summer break and Dean’s been dying to teach her kids to fish.

Dean went grey after he turned fifty, but it hasn’t changed since, in color at least. Benny’s beard is as white as Santa Claus and he hides what little hair he has left under a cap. They’re both a little rounder, a little lower to the ground, but they got that way together and neither of them notice it on one another anyhow.

Every year they visit Jesse and Cesar in Arizona for New Year's. Though they fly more than make the drive these days.

They still take turns cooking the meals and the movie nights from their early days resurfaced into movie afternoons when their kids moved out. Dean can’t hear for shit anymore and, naturally, Benny makes fun of him for it. But Dean’ll put in his hearing aids if company is over.

It’s early evening in the beginning of June and the bugs are orchestrating quite the soundtrack to their time on the porch. Dean pours his whiskey. Benny’s already sipping his sweet tea, his medications don’t let him drink much anymore. Jo’ll come by on Sunday, along with SJ and his wife and Robbie. Sam and Jess usually make it to every other dinner or so.

“Hey there, handsome. Mind if I join you?” Dean teases, once a flirt always a flirt.

“Not at all, cher. It’s a helluva view,” Benny glances at his husband, watches Dean take in the peaches and pinks kissing the slopes of the fields. They sit like that for an hour, until the dark is too thick to see through. Groaning and creaking they stand in turn. Dean keeps his hand on the small of Benny’s back as they head inside for the night, steadying them both.

They moved their bedroom to the ground floor after Dean’s heart attack, a lot less worry about making it upstairs that way. After being married forty years, Dean still makes jokes about it being Benny’s place. But it’s always been his home. He kisses Benny goodnight, makes it a little saucy because he can. He’s the first to close his eyes.

In the morning Benny makes waffles and tofu bacon. Dean pretends he can’t taste the difference, fooling no one. They make out while the sink fills for the dishes, too few to run the machine. Benny gets handsy first and Dean tries to squirm into the upperhand. They’re interrupted by a car pulling in the drive.

“Busted,” Benny whispers.

“You’re the one who wanted kids,” Dean grumbles against Benny’s neck, an old, unfounded retort.

“Yeah, but the grandkids---,” Benny starts.

“Were made to be spoiled,” Dean finishes and kisses Benny once more. Drea’s yelling at her kids to slow down before her dads even make it outside to greet them. Her eyes, blue as her daddy’s are tired. They don’t envy her the school aged years. Dean bends down as baby Deanna, who’s nearly four, comes crashing into his arms. He pulls her up and holds her tight, reminds him of her mama and he can’t help but get a little weepy over the passing years.

“It’s so good to see you, baby girl.” Benny pulls his daughter into a hug before helping with their bags. The older kids don’t come inside until it’s time to eat, climbing through the barn and splashing in the creek until they’re soaked. But Deanna sticks with her Grandpa on a simple stroll, while Pappy and Mama catch up.

Dean still has the jacket he bought from Benny, though the pants are long gone. He’ll leave it to Robbie when the time comes, when his son finds himself a stud that’s worth settling down for. If that’s what he chooses.

For now, Dean lets his granddaughter pick up every rock and stick she finds and examines it to the nth degree. He explains what he can about each one. She’s very curious. He even lets her wipe her chubby little hands on his pants’ leg when she needs to. They get back to the house just in time to start dinner, but before they go inside Dean takes a mental picture of his husband on the porch, their daughter beside him and his granddaughter running past him.

It is a helluva view after all.

Tell me what you think?

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SPN Masterlist

Tagging: @flamencodiva @dolphincliffs @dontshootmespence @fookinghelljensensthighs @fangirlxwritesx67 @dawnie1988 @mrswhozeewhatsis @cosicas-cuquis @foxyjwls007 @tumbler-tidbits @wingedcatninja @defenderrosetyler @ericaprice2008 @crashdevlin @mylovelydame21 @cajunquandary @itmighthavebeenintentional @thoughtslikeaminefield @there-must-be-a-lock @tatted-trina6 @lyarr24

#supernatural #supernatural au #spn fanfic #spn au #dean/benny #dean winchester x benny lafitte #bi!dean #aga: epilogue #A Gentlemen's Agreement #childbirth #meeting the friends #found family #aging #mortality #love of a lifetime #grandpa and pappy #health issues #Joel is for Jo and Ellen

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citylightsbooks · 3 years

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5 Questions with Matthew Specktor, Author of Always Crashing in the Same Car

Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound; a nonfiction book, The Sting; and the forthcoming memoir The Golden Hour (Ecco/HarperCollins). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Paris Review, The Believer, Tin House, Vogue, GQ, Black Clock, and Open City. He has been a MacDowell fellow, and is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He resides in Los Angeles. His newest book is Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California, published by Tin House. Matthew Specktor will be in conversation with Adam Pfahler (of Jawbreaker!) in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Wednesday, July 28th, 2021!

*****

Where are you writing to us from?

Los Angeles, which I often think is a condition of the spirit as much as it is a geography. I know people in the Bay Area have, erm, mixed feelings about LA (who threw that tomato that just whistled by my ear?), but, alas, here I am.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Nobody told me I was supposed to remain sane! Perhaps I should have planned it differently. But—my wife, our dog (an incredibly neurotic Schnauzer/Wheaten mix whose sanity is questionable, herself), our subscription to the Criterion Channel, and very carefully measured amounts of tequila-with-lime have all helped.

What books are you reading right now? Which books to you return to?

Right now I’m on an absolute bender with the books published by a collective called Deluge. One of their founders, Emily Segal, wrote a novel called Mercury Retrograde that came out in late 2020 and just knocked me flat. It combines a DeLillo-grade intelligence—a way of slicing experience very, very fine—with a kind of wild humor and a sharp, feminist perspective. It’s amazing.

As for books I return to, well, there are far too many of those to keep count, but I’ll mention Henry James’s The Golden Bowl, Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus, and James Baldwin’s Another Country as touchstones for me. But there are so many!

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

Leaving aside that this book is, in some sense, a catalogue of its own influences—Thomas McGuane, Renata Adler, Hal Ashby, Carole Eastman: I mean, the book is explicitly about a number of people who’ve influenced me—I would say again that there are far too many to count.

Some recent-ish books that influenced the writing of this one include Hilton Als’s The Women, Heidi Julavits’s The Folded Clock: A Diary, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, and Leslie Jameson’s The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath. These are all books that combine memoir with criticism or with other forms of observation.

Some writers, both contemporary and otherwise, who’ve influenced me include Jonathan Lethem, James Salter, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Cusk, Yiyun Li, Elizabeth Hardwick, Philip Roth, Ivan Turgenev, and Paul Beatty. I mean, some of those people are friends; others I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting as a Vintage paperback or an NYRB classic; some are in vogue, others slightly less so, and I don’t think, alas, I sound like any of them. But I’m a big tent person when it comes to influence. You read as much and as widely as you can and you invite it all in.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

Ah. Now we get to the serious question. It would be in West LA. I would build it over the bones of what used to be Dutton’s Books, in Brentwood, because that was the bookstore I grew up with and every time I drive past the location—it used to be a coffee shop before the pandemic; right now it’s just a boarded-up storefront—I get sad. I’d name it after The Transit of Venus (“Transit Books?” I dunno), because that book changed my life about as forcefully as any book can: it launched my career as a screenwriter, led me to my first literary agent, and to a friendship with Shirley; above all, it changed my life as a reader, and my sense of what fiction could do.

But my bestseller would inevitably be something I feel has been overlooked or ill-served by the marketplace in recent years. Maybe Jarett Kobek’s The Future Won’t Be Long, a knockout of a novel that sold (if Jarett’s own tabulation in his subsequent book is correct) fewer than five hundred copies, or a great, great book by Sam Sweet called Hadley Lee Lightcap, which is a wonderful, melancholy poem about Southern California geography masquerading as a book about a band most people have never heard of. Or—maybe it would be Don Carpenter’s Fridays at Enrico’s! That’s one of my favorite novels, by one of my favorite Bay Area writers. With apologies to both Balzac’s Lost Illusions and George Gissing’s New Grub Street, it’s also the single greatest book about the writing life I’ve ever encountered. Because it pays homage to a now vanished North Beach institution that was almost as venerable as City Lights, I’m gonna say that one.

#matthew specktor #tin house #5 questions #author interviews #nonfiction #fiction #novels #currently reading

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Ian Mathers’ 2020: We’re stuck inside our own machines

I’ve had a song I loved in high school and haven’t thought much about since stuck in my head. The song “Apparitions” by the Matthew Good Band is a fine example of the alt rock of the late 90s; if you grew up then but somewhere down in the states (or elsewhere) instead of my southern Ontario you may well have your regional equivalents, and like this one they may not resonate terribly strongly outside of their time and place. It popped back into my head after a long time recently and of course 2020 has changed it a little. A song that as a teen I felt keenly as about loneliness (albeit also about how technology can feed into that) of course now plays on my nerves as another small piece of art about the way that most of us (those scared and/or responsible anyway) have only that relatively narrow, technologically mediated connection to the people we love. All of us, artists and listeners alike, are trying to fit our feelings and art and selves down these little connections, with some success.

On a personal level, 2020 wound up being stressful in ways we couldn’t have predicted even after the pandemic hit. In circumstances that could have seen governments on this continent support those unable to work (and those who shouldn’t have to), support those workers who are truly essential, support workers and renters and even landlords and small businesses, instead we got a near-total abeyance of those governments using the resources we provide them with to save any of us. On a personal level my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to work from home (not that it didn’t come with its own forms of stress, and now that I’m off until January I have several work/stress-related illnesses to recover from) but still saw friends and loved ones lose good, used-to-be-sustainable livings overnight, saw family businesses succumb to a near-total absence of effective government support after months of trying to keep above water, etc.

It is probably no surprise that this is not a situation conducive to listening to music, let alone writing about it; I have deliberately and happily kept busy on behind the scenes stuff at Dusted that I could still manage but looking, at the end of the year, at the amount I managed to actually create is demoralizing if not at all shocking. I’m not sure I think next year will be ‘better’ in many important ways, although at our job there is a growing feeling among coworkers that next year has to have some work/life balance because 2020 was, maybe more than anything else, unsustainable.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time and emotion on music this year, and if nothing else constant sleep deprivation, stress, and panic meant I was probably open to being deeply moved by all sorts of art even more than normally (it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even read a sad or moving twitter thread out loud to my wife without getting teary, which is kind of… nice?). Funnily enough the band that did the most to keep me sane didn’t really put out anything in 2020. Personal favorite, Low, instead started, in early April, getting on Instagram with something they called on whim “It’s Friday I’m in Low.” With one brief break they have now done by my count at least 35 shows (catalogued here, by the way), every Friday at about 4 my time.

Admittedly it’s easier for Low to pull this off than some bands, since the 2/3 of the trio that sing are a married couple (they’ve had a couple of socially-distanced backyard shows with bassist Steve Garrington, but he’s mostly been isolating elsewhere). These shows have seen the band’s Alan Sparhawk take a mid-set break to do follow-up phone interviews with the acts featured in the COVID-curtailed touring bands series Vansplainingthat they started on YouTube, or just to give a tour round their vegetable garden and talk tips. It’s seen Alan and Mimi Parker draw on their impressive, 25+ year body of work (averaging 4-5 songs a set, I don’t think they’ve repeated themselves yet) and talk a bit between songs about pandemics, politics, song choices, and whether Alan should grab his bike helmet this time.

They’re not the only musicians out there speaking love and sanity (and playing music) into the strange digital interzone filled with hate and disinformation where we’ve all been forced to gather while locked down, but they were and the most consistent and steady signal being emitted each week. No matter how tired I was from work or what new symptoms I’d developed or what horrific thing I read into the news, even if I had to take an emergency nap while it was actually airing, every Friday the show was there. Once things do return to something more like normal, it’s one of the few things I’ll unambiguously miss about this weird-ass year.

So if that makes an argument for Low as my band of the year (admittedly again… it’s not like Double Negative has aged poorly, either), that does a disservice to those 2020 records I did connect with; even if there are still literally dozens I have to go through, many of which I expect to love, my top picks this year (if as unrankable by me as always) hit me as hard as any top pick in recent years did. So here I present a quick and informal top 5, which the rest of my top 20 following in alphabetical order. Here’s hoping for more time and space in 2021 for music, and even more than that, for more support for those who need it from those who could have been providing it all this time. (The Matthew Good Band, incidentally, always did best with their ballads. “Strange Days” is another I’ve had in my head these days; the image of moving “backwards, into a wall of fire” has stuck with me since the 90s and it’s never felt more grimly appropriate.)

Greet Death — New Hell

New Hell by Greet Death

This one is, in some sense, cheating; it came out November 2019. But that just means it’s the latest winner of my personal Torres Prize for Ian Being Late to the Party (so named because becoming slightly obsessed with Torres’ Sprinter just after I sent in my 2015 list was the first time I noticed that one of my favorite records of each year tends to get picked up by me just after I call it quits on the year, no matter how long I try to wait). This very doom and gloom slowcore/metal/(whatever, just know it’s heavy) trio at first felt very much like my beloved Cloakroom (whose Time Well has also won a Torres Prize) but sure enough nuances revealed themselves. Back in February it felt almost a little too negative, but then the rest of 2020 happened. And the extended burns of “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” and the title track remain searing.

Holy Fuck — Deleter

youtube

Probably the record I’ve been trying to write about the longest in 2020, and the one I’m most disappointed in myself that I just couldn’t get the requisite paragraphs together. It’s a wonderful effort from the consistently great Toronto resolutely human-created (and —mediated) dance music quartet, one that both feels like a summation of everything they do well, and with the addition of some outside voices (including strong turns from the singers of both Hot Chip and Liars) a step forward at the same time.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone

Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs

As the year got worse, this roar of defiance only got more crucial for me to hear every so often; I was a big enough fan of it, even after writing it up for Dusted, that when they solicited fan footage for a subsequent music video you may just be able to get a glimpse of me in it. (I’m the one in a “No Tories” t-shirt.) My punk rock-loving twin brother was the one who introduced me to Spanish Love Songs and we were supposed to spend an evening in June screaming along to them live in a packed, sweaty room. I need that in my life again.

Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle

Healing Is A Miracle by Julianna Barwick

It’s a sign of what 2020 has been like here that even just this album title leaves bruises, and while I privately worried Barwick would have a hard time following up 2016’s sublime Will (probably my favorite record that year), it seems that continuing to take whatever downtime she needs to keep focusing and refining her particular muse has once again yielded amazing results. Anyone who thinks they know what a Barwick track sounds like should really check out, say, “Flowers”, but much of this record absolutely sounds like Barwick, just even better than before. She also boasted my wife and I's favorite streaming concert of 2020, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of this album with Mary Lattimore showing up.

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

I joked on Twitter recently that I have far too nice a dad (and far too good a relationship with him) to be as obsessed as I am with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto”, but here we are. Like most of her generation, Bridgers’ social media presence ranges from shit-posting to inscrutable, but even though things are often just as hard to figure out in her beautiful songs (as they often are in life), there’s an emotional clarity to them that can just grab you deep down. Couple that with seriously impressive songcraft and the progress from her already astounding debut Stranger in the Alps and more than anyone else in 2020 I’m excited to see just where the hell Phoebe Bridgers is going to go, because it feels like she’s talented and hardworking enough to go just about anywhere and drag a lot of our hearts with her.

Other Favorites

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II

Anastasia Minster — Father

Deftones — Ohms

Hum — Inlet

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song

Mesarthim — The Degenerate Era

Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today

Rachel Kiel — Dream Logic

The Ridiculous Trio — The Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges

Sam Amidon — Sam Amidon

Shabason, Krgovich & Harris — Philadelphia

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead

Yves Tumour — Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Five Reissues/Compilations/etc.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm

Bardo Pond — Adrop/Circuit VIII

Charles Curtis — Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Coil — Musick to Play in the Dark

Hot Chip — LateNightTales

Ian Mathers

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quicksiluers · 4 years

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By the time he entered West Point, “Pete” Longstreet was over six feet tall, well built and handsome. “Sam” Grant, when he arrived a year later, stood just an inch over five feet, and was slight, scrappy and silent – “A plodding enigma,” as one of his biographers described him. And yet, somehow, Sam and Pete became good friends.

After graduation both were posted to Jefferson Barracks, Mo. Longstreet’s West Point roommate and cousin, Fred Dent, was from nearby, and a visit to the Dent house led to a meeting between Fred’s sister, Julia, and Grant. The two married in 1848, with the newlywed Longstreets in attendance and, according to some accounts, with Longstreet himself as groomsman.

Both men then went their separate ways. Sometime later they ran into each other in St. Louis when Grant, having left the Army, “had been unfortunate,” and, in Longstreet’s recollection, “really in needy circumstances.” They joined a few other Army men in “an old time game of brag.” Later, Grant insisted on repaying a 15-year-old debt of $5 to Longstreet. The latter refused but Grant insisted: “You must take it. I cannot live with anything in my possession that is not mine.” So he took it. [...]

The two friends would finally meet again following the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House. It was Longstreet, according to various accounts, who persuaded Lee that Grant would offer generous terms there. When Grant did just that, the mood in the room was one of stiff relief. It was the same when Grant met a few Southern officers shortly after. But as soon as he saw Longstreet in the group, he approached him warmly, grabbed his hand and said, “Pete, let us have another game of brag, to recall the days that were so pleasant.”

Longstreet was overcome: “Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?” (x)

#ulysses s grant #james longstreet #american civil war #civil war #acw #look ok i'm having a moment i just...i think about these two a lot #it's been debated if longstreet was grant's groomsman but i have a feeling he would have been at the wedding #which is!! techinically they are cousins since grant married into the family since longstreet is julia's cousin...that's how that works righ

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thoughtslikeaminefield · 5 years

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Leaving Heaven

CHAPTER ONE

PLEASE HEED WARNINGS

Summary: Tazi is a bounty hunter of mostly human things, but she’s familiar enough with the supernatural world that she’s recruited by an old friend of John Winchester’s to capture and deliver a brief acquaintance of her own.

Characters: Demon/ Knight of Hell Dean, original female character - Taziana (Tazi) Smith, Lee Webb (flashback), original male character - Mike Clemons, mentions Sam Winchester

Chapter Warnings: this is not your mother’s Dean Winchester, sexual intimidation, brief dub-con

Words: 3000

c.1 | c.2 | c.3 | c.4 | c.5 | c.6

“‘Sup, Mikey?” I walk through Mike’s back door into his kitchen.

It’s a small space, cluttered but not dirty, and always smells like coffee and cigarettes.

“Got a job for ya,” he replies as he pours me a cup. “Have a seat.”

Mike Clemons is an old cowboy. He’s stocky with sun-worn leather for skin and a white handlebar mustache, bright blue eyes, and thick, white hair.

He acted as my guardian when I fled from the foster system at the age of 16. He’s like the uncle who teaches you how to pee outside and handle a firearm just because.

“‘Member Dean Winchester?” he asks, his voice measured and his usually warm tone guarded.

He hands me a mug of coffee then crosses the room to retrieve a thick folder from his filing cabinet.

Mike’s also the kinda guy who keeps his filing cabinet in his tiny kitchen.

I met Dean Winchester 13 years ago. I was just out of jail and the only gig I could find that would keep me out of relative trouble was at Mike’s cousin’s strip club. The security was tight and the money was great, and Mike gave me a place to sleep and food on the table until I could get my feet under me again.

That’s also when I learned about what Mike did on his hunting trips — he hunted monsters, demons, and ghosts. It was all so fucking wild.

Mike takes a seat across from me, shaking two cigarettes from a soft pack and sliding the file across the table. I open the folder to several images of Dean past and present.

“What’d Dean Winchester do now?” I ask, flipping the file open.

“Take a look,” Mike answers as he lights both cigarettes then hands me one.

I accept the smoke and take a drag as I peruse the images. Then one image in the folder, in particular, knocks me back in time.

“Hey, darlin’,” a warm, smiling voice called for my attention as I walked to the back of the bar after my set.

When I turned, I saw two boys — not really boys, but younger than the typical patron — both handsome and bright, definitely tipsy but not sloppy.

I turned to fully appreciate them, slowly dragging my eyes up and down their respective frames.

They looked like trouble, the fun kind, and hot — just the right combination to entice a girl like me. I had to remind myself of three very important things: one, my therapist had advised that I take a break from romantic entanglements of any kind; two, the club did not (officially) recommend fraternizing with the clientele; and, three, my probation officer would absolutely not approve of the unauthorized kind of fraternizing that generally happened with clients here.

“Darlin’,” I repeated the greeting with a nod, garnering wider and even brighter grins from both blue and green eyes.

Blue Eyes approached me first, but I couldn’t stop parting my gaze between the two.

“My buddy Dean and I were wonderin’ if ya’d like to join us for a game of poker and a beer or two when you’re done,” he said.

I flicked my eyes to Dean and saw a blush darken his cheeks. He didn’t drop his eyes, though. I liked that. I liked that he was nervous, maybe even intimidated, but he didn’t look away.

I dragged my attention back to Blue Eyes. “Sure,” I answered. “What’s your name?”

“Lee,” he answered, showing off those pearly whites again and offering his hand to shake.

I shook my head with a huff of laughter as I accepted. “Gotta love a southern boy,” I said.

Lee laughed, genuine and deep. Then Dean swaggered forward, and I felt something move in my chest. For a second, I thought I’d lost my breath.

“How ‘bout a midwestern boy?” Dean asked, his voice just as smooth as he looked — open, inviting, eyes sparkling in the constant strobe of lights.

I was afraid of what I felt but didn’t let on. I had already learned how to hide those feelings, and I was working on my boundaries. That boy could not have come along at a worse time in my life

I joined them along with the bartender, and one of the bouncers for after-closing beers and a game of poker, strip, and I won.

I never forgot, though, the way his proximity, his smile, and his cockysweet demeanor made me feel — like a normal girl with a normal life who could have something.

Fast forward to now, looking at images of that boy, all grown up, his arrest records — nothing shocking for a hunter (which I learned not the night I met him but over the years and through the grapevine) — and personal accounts of other hunters who’ve crossed his path and/or worked a case with him and his younger brother, Sam.

Then a more recent image catches my eye and I freeze — security footage from a convenience store. It’s grainy, but the eyes are unmistakable.

“Whoa, I thought the Winchesters were unpossessable.”

“Yeah, well, guess not,” Mike answers with a cloud of smoke. “Regard, I owe it to John to take care of this.”

“Ok, but why me?” I ask, looking up at Mike.

“I seem to recall you had a certain simpatico,” Mike answers with an arch of his brow and a drag off his smoke. “Desire’s one of those things that transfer from a human to their more beastly counterparts.”

“Got it,” I reply, looking back at the image from the night I met Dean.

“Thanks for playin’, folks!” I crowed as I pushed away from the table.

My coworkers rolled their eyes and grumbled as they dressed. They were used to me winning at poker, I didn’t know why they continued to agree to play with me.

“That’s some crafty shit, girl,” Lee said, as he and Dean both chuckled, stepping into their jeans.

“Hey, you all already saw me naked,” I laughed back, helping the bartender wipe down the table we were using and hoist the chairs on top.

Dean shuffled closer to me as Lee shifted away like a choreographed dance.

“You, uhh,” Dean started to speak quietly as he scooped his t-shirt from the floor. “You wanna... I dunno...”

He ran his hand through his hair. I was stunned that such a beautiful, smart, funny boy would be so bashful.

“I do, but...” I answered.

I wanted so much to touch him — imagining how smooth his skin would be, freckled and pulled taut over well-developed muscle — but the thought of it seized my breath again.

His eyelids fluttered and his brow furrowed. “Yeah, no, that’s cool,” he answered, pulling his t-shirt over his head. It was inside out and ruffled his hair. “I totally get it.”

He smiled again and it felt like my heart and lungs were being squeezed by a vice grip behind my rib cage.

“It’s not you, Dean,” I said, stepping into him a bit, trying to catch his eye as he looked anywhere but at me.

He nodded, reaching for his too-big leather jacket. He shrugged into the jacket and stood up straight, shoulders back as he towered over me. Then his expression closed off completely and my heart dropped into my stomach.

He shook his head, pursed his lips, and said, “No big deal, sweetheart.”

As he turned to follow Lee out the door, he muttered something like “see ya around” but I couldn’t hear much more than ringing in my ears.

“Bring him in alive, Tazi,” Mike says, startling me from my reverie. “Don’t try to exorcise him.”

I shift in my seat and clear my throat. “Yeah, well, I’m a bounty hunter, Mikey, not a priest, so…”

Mike eyes me cautiously before standing to get us both more coffee.

“Exactly,” he says. “Just one more reason you’re perfect for the job.”

Right now, I’m not so sure I agree with him.

~~~~~~~

I find Dean at a podunk, smoke-stained bar in the middle of Nebraska. There’re two flat-screen TVs tuned into some pro-sport that I don’t care about. After three hours and many, many shots of whiskey consumed by the demon, we’re the only two patrons left in the joint just five seats apart.

“Hit me,” Dean says to the bartender. “And leave the bottle.”

The bartender does as he’s told before muttering over his shoulder about closing soon. Then he disappears somewhere in the depths of the backroom or cooler or wherever he’s escaping from this obvious predator.

“Gonna just sit there and stare at me all night, or’re we gonna have it out?” Dean drawls, turning his gaze to me, eyes blinking from warm moss to shiny onyx.

I thought baby-face Dean was breathtaking. Turns out, weathered, eye-crinkley Dean is otherworldly in his beauty. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that I find his body attractive even possessed, but my therapist tells me it’s healthy to do the acknowledging thing.

“You do that just for funsies, or is that your pick-up game?” I reply steadily, unmoving from my barstool.

I’m trying to gauge whether or not he remembers me. He doesn’t seem to, so Mike’s idea that desire as a hold-over will give me an advantage is kind of fucked. Then again, considering my potential weakness for him, maybe him not remembering me is just as well.

“Guess we’re playin’ 20 Questions,” Dean sighs, pulling his gaze from mine and tossing back his umpteenth shot of the night. “Awesome.”

He licks his lips as he empties the rest of the bottle, which isn’t very much, into his glass with a tsk.

“You’d think when I said, ‘leave the bottle’ he’d’ve realized I wanted more than this.” He shakes his head.

This demon is so much chattier than Dean was. He looks similar, sure, older but still handsome. His eyes are dead, though, and not just because they’re black. The stark contrast makes my mind wave and flutter.

But I stay cool.

“Why d’you even bother with a glass?” I ask, wondering why I’m bantering with Dean Winchester’s demon over bar etiquette.

“It makes me feel more civilized – I dunno,” he says with a shrug before downing the shot. He narrows his gaze and I feel it in my gut. “Do we know each other?”

I keep my expression neutral with a non-answer, the skill that helps me win at things like strip poker.

Dean brushes it off pretty quickly, though, before swiveling his chair to face me.

“There a Matrix LARP thing in town, or... ?” he asks, dragging his eyes down and up my form, nostrils flaring, warming my skin and making my heart pound. “All that… leather.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I answer.

It’s a lie. I fucking love The Matrix and am totally into cosplay – but Dean doesn’t need to know that.

It sucks that I remember so much about Dean and that he’s so pretty and authentically charming; because he’s also possessed by a demon. All of these facts swim in my brain and fuck with my intuition.

Maybe I should’ve brought back-up.

He shrugs again as he stands out of his chair. “I’m gonna help myself, you want a nip?” he asks casually, stretching.

I shrug – it seems to be the theme for the night, shrugging. “Sure,” I answer, swiveling out of my own chair.

Dean strolls behind the bar, and I follow. The bartender is long forgotten by both of us. Honestly, he probably bailed. I could see his skin prickle every time the demon said a word or moved at all.

“Johnnie, Jack, Jim,” he says turning lazy eyes on me, dragging his gaze over me again. “Somethin’ else?”

God, he’s stupid hot, and this all feels frighteningly familiar. Hanging out with a demon should not be this enjoyable, but here we are.

I glance beyond where he’s standing and see the red wax cap of my favorite whiskey. “Maker’s,” I reply, snagging his gaze and his lazy eyes perk up.

“Nice choice,” he says, then turns his back to me to reach for the bottle.

So I buckle up and fly through that window of opportunity.

I jump like I’m going to take him for a piggyback ride, chokehold his neck, and wrap my legs around his middle. But he’s a demon, and he’s Dean Winchester, and I’m a fucking idiot because then he’s got me on my back on the bar top.

“This’s more like it,” he says with a delighted sneer, tongue running the ridge of his white teeth as his hand clamps around my throat. “Knew you had it in you.”

He looks down at me with those pretty, pretty eyes - yet, there’s nothing there now. No recognition, no warmth, no joy.

I steel myself to jack him in the face, pure adrenaline giving me the strength to lunge up under the weight of his upper body pressing his hand around my throat. As he rubs his jaw, I sit up and spin to kick him in the mouth.

Man, it’s a shame to hurt that face – but, demon healing and all that.

Dean’s hunched over and laughing as I hop down from the bar. Just as he recovers from the kick, unfolding to stand to his full height, I grab a handful of that soft, thick hair and yank.

His green eyes glaze over and he drops to his knees at my feet, bliss smoothing his features and filling his voice. He literally groans in satisfaction.

“Fuck,” he breathes, his shoulders slumping.

I stare down at him in disbelief then twist my fist. He hisses through a wide grin.

“Oooh,” he moans with a low chuckle. “Don’t stop, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart.

Cold, detached, calculating.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do, but my belly flips.

And then he’s sweeping my feet out from under me.

“Oof!” I hit the ground, face first, wind knocked from my lungs once again by this man.

Before I can register a coherent thought, he’s on top of me. His full-length, pinning me as I gasp for air.

“Relax,” he whispers, his breath brushing the shell of my ear. “Tiny breaths, you’ll get it back.”

He swipes my hair to the side, pushes his knees between mine and spreads my legs open as he inhales deeply from my neck and shoulder and grinds into me from behind. I’m trembling under him – terrified, confused, sweating, and on the verge of tears.

“Shh,” he says, nuzzling into my neck, darting his tongue out for a taste.

I must taste like salt and fear. He must love it. He doesn’t make an attempt to really hurt me.

He’s just playing with me.

“Don’t cry,” he coos.

I hate that he senses my tears coming, hate that he can read that from me, hate that we have history, however brief, but thankful he doesn’t remember.

He keeps grinding against me, hot and hard as he works to pin my arms behind my back, just above my ass.

I gasp again, not as shallow as last time and can sort of breathe. What he’s doing is sending my mind reeling. I’m just as hot between my legs as his body is - he has to feel it - and I’m getting so wet.

“Got your breath back, that’s good,” he says, stretching out over me again, languidly sliding one scorching hand under my shirt and up along my ribs.

He brushes his lips over the exposed nape of my neck, takes his time smelling and tasting me.

He’s hot as any demon I’ve ever known, maybe hotter, like he’s just walked out of the fires of Hell. It’s mesmerizing and I curse myself for being so turned on; but, so far, it’s pretty clear that Dean has no intention of doing more than teasing me.

“You give a demon all sorts of nasty ideas,” he says, licking a long, scalding strip up the side of my neck.

I start to melt under his words and his power.

Then, just as quickly as he pinned me, I feel a rush of air and the absence of warmth.

When I roll to my back, he’s gone, leaving me utterly bewildered and cold.

CHAPTER TWO

Fic Masterlist

If you like what you’ve read, please let me know and/or buy me a coffee!

#demon dean fic #dean winchester fic #dean winchester x ofc

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brookstonalmanac · 4 years

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Events 1.23

393 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his eight-year-old son Honorius co-emperor. 971 – Using crossbows, Song dynasty troops soundly defeat a war elephant corps of the Southern Han at Shao. 1264 – In the conflict between King Henry III of England and his rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, King Louis IX of France issues the Mise of Amiens, a one-sided decision in favour of Henry that later leads to the Second Barons' War. 1368 – In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries. 1546 – Having published nothing for eleven years, François Rabelais publishes the Tiers Livre, his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel. 1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000. 1570 – James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such. 1571 – The Royal Exchange opens in London. 1579 – The Union of Utrecht forms a Protestant republic in the Netherlands. 1656 – Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his Lettres provinciales. 1719 – The Principality of Liechtenstein is created within the Holy Roman Empire. 1789 – Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.). 1793 – Second Partition of Poland. 1795 – After an extraordinary charge across the frozen Zuiderzee, the French cavalry captured 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns, in a rare occurrence of a battle between ships and cavalry. 1846 – Slavery in Tunisia is abolished. 1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor. 1870 – In Montana, U.S. cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what becomes known as the Marias Massacre. 1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: The Battle of Rorke's Drift ends. 1899 – The Malolos Constitution is inaugurated, establishing the First Philippine Republic. Emilio Aguinaldo is sworn in as its first President. 1900 – Second Boer War: The Battle of Spion Kop between the forces of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State and British forces ends in a British defeat. 1904 – Ålesund Fire: The Norwegian coastal town Ålesund is devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless and one person dead. Kaiser Wilhelm II funds the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style. 1909 – RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, becomes the first ship to use the CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that kills six people. The Republic sinks the next day. 1912 – The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague. 1920 – The Netherlands refuses to surrender the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies. 1937 – The trial of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center sees seventeen mid-level Communists accused of sympathizing with Leon Trotsky and plotting to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime. 1941 – Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Rabaul commences Japan's invasion of Australia's Territory of New Guinea. 1943 – World War II: Troops of the British Eighth Army capture Tripoli in Libya from the German–Italian Panzer Army. 1945 – World War II: German admiral Karl Dönitz launches Operation Hannibal. 1950 – The Knesset resolves that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. 1957 – American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the "Frisbee". 1958 – After a general uprising and rioting in the streets, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez leaves Venezuela. 1960 – The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean. 1961 – The Portuguese luxury cruise ship Santa Maria is hijacked by opponents of the Estado Novo regime with the intention of waging war until dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is overthrown. 1963 – The Guinea-Bissau War of Independence officially begins when PAIGC guerrilla fighters attack the Portuguese army stationed in Tite. 1964 – The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified. 1967 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Ivory Coast are established. 1967 – Milton Keynes (England) is founded as a new town by Order in Council, with a planning brief to become a city of 250,000 people. Its initial designated area enclosed three existing towns and twenty-one villages. The area to be developed was largely farmland, with evidence of continuous settlement dating back to the Bronze Age. 1968 – USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is attacked and seized by naval forces of North Korea. 1986 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. 1987 – Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan sends a "letter of death" to the president of Somalia, proposing the genocide of the Isaaq people. 1997 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. 1998 – Netscape announced Mozilla, with the intention to release Communicator code as open source. 2001 – Five people attempt to set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, an act that many people later claim is staged by the Communist Party of China to frame Falun Gong and thus escalate their persecution. 2002 – U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered. 2003 – A very weak signal from Pioneer 10 is detected for the last time, but no usable data can be extracted. 2018 – A 7.9 Mw  earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities. 2018 – A double car bombing in Benghazi, Libya, kills at least 33 people and wounds "dozens" of others. The victims include both military personnel and civilians, according to local officials.

#Events

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thefilmsnob · 4 years

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The New Mutants: *** out of 5

Has there ever been a movie as destined to fail as The New Mutants? The latest superhero film from 20th Century Fox is based on an X-Men comic book spin-off launched in 1983, not well known by the general public. Even if ‘X-Men’ were added to the film title, it still would be associated with a dwindling movie franchise whose assets have just been absorbed by Disney. The film’s suffered from a lackluster marketing campaign and poor reviews, and oh, we’re also in the midst of a pandemic; folks aren’t exactly rushing to theaters and if they do muster the courage, they’re surely seeing Tenet or the third Bill and Ted adventure.

True, it’s hard to shed many tears over the misfortune of a big studio production or pretend it’s some sort of game-changer…but, it’s actually not terrible. That is to say, considering everything going on in the world right now, it’ll do.

Don’t expect to see any A-listers that you’ve come to know and love like Wolverine, Storm or Professor X. Here, we’re introduced to an entirely new batch of young mutants navigating puberty along with the angst and superpowers that accompany that crucial life stage. You won’t find the typical Marvel template here either, at least with respect to tone. Instead of a light action-adventure with heroes battling villains for the fate of the world, writer-director Josh Boone and co-writer Knate Lee have gambled on a horror story set in a confined space where our heroes battle (mostly) internal demons.

Danielle ‘Dani’ Moonstar (Blu Hunt) acts as our surrogate for this pocket of the Marvel Universe. We’re introduced to the young Cheyenne Native American as she flees the destruction of her reservation to find shelter during a tornado. After being knocked unconscious, she awakens in an eerie hospital run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga, an odd choice for an even odder character adaptation) who informs Dani that she’s a mutant and suggests she stay put until she discovers and controls her power. The doctor also introduces her to the other young mutants who have been brought to the hospital with similar baggage.

This all sound familiar? I did say it was an X-Men spin-off; the patients even think they’re being trained as the next generation of the iconic team. Well, they’re not and although Dr. Reyes tells them they’re to remain in the facility for the protection of themselves and others, she may be omitting some important details. That’s where the narrative diverges from the typical X-Men film. So, besides the appeal of a superhero tale mixed with horror elements, the other major selling point is the idea of a group of impressionable young mutants being discovered by actors much less benevolent than the great Charles Xavier.

The filmmakers are on to something here, but the short 94-minute run time and all-but-certain interference from studio execs don’t leave the artists much room to juggle a horror film, superhero film and coming-of-age story all at once. There are moments throughout when the various genre elements do work—alone or in conjunction—but they never coalesce into something that transcends their potential. It’s not scary enough, the action is sparce and the character arcs are unremarkable. It’s a shame; the X-Men franchise has always worked as an allegory for the anxieties and struggles that accompany puberty and the additional horror element could’ve really amplified this idea had the film dared to dig deeper.

It’s not as if the movie’s devoid of interesting characters with which to explore these issues. In fact, the core mutants and their interactions arguably are more compelling than those in the original X-Men from 2000, where some iconic superheroes like Cyclops and Storm felt like afterthoughts.

That said, the quality of character and performance on display is still inconsistent. Maisie Williams gives the best performance as the earnest Rahne Sinclair whose power of lycanthropy is at odds with her religion. This kind soul quickly befriends the alienated Dani. Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlie Heaton are fine as Illyana Rasputin and Sam Guthrie; the former can summon magical swords, armour and portals while the latter blasts through the air like a cannonball, becoming invulnerable mid-flight. They’re skilled actors but lay it on a bit thick with her Russian accent and his southern drawl; though, you have to respect Taylor-Joy’s charisma and her amusingly hostile attitude toward Dani. Henry Zaga plays Roberto da Costa, the typical cocky playboy who can manipulate solar energy. He has his moments.

Unfortunately, Hunt gives the weakest performance as Dani whose powers are as hard to pin down here as they are in the comics (something about creating illusions based on emotions). She’s the one with whom you’re supposed to empathise the most, but it’s challenging when the pain and vulnerability on display rarely feel authentic.

Kudos to the production team, though, for following the lead of comic book icon Chris Claremont and including several females and people of colour in the film while adding a same-sex relationship. Kudos to them, as well, for staying faithful to the mutants’ cool powers from the comics despite them being exhibited so sparingly. It would’ve been nice to see Sam blasting around a bit more or Rahne in full ‘beast mode’. This goes for the action in general. It’s refreshing to see a superhero film that doesn’t bombard our senses for 2.5 hours, but in The New Mutants, the pendulum swings too far the other way. The final battle practically ends before it begins, but at least a certain purple creature makes a most welcome appearance.

It’s hard being too critical toward a comic book film with a relatively small budget whose creators really tried to do something different. You almost feel bad that it’ll be lost amidst Disney’s acquisition of Fox and their incorporation of the X-Men properties into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Honestly, the restructure is for the best; the famously inconsistent franchise could use the MCU makeover. And, yet, when the credits started rolling and I realized I might not see these five individuals again, imperfections and all…I felt a little bummed out. That’s gotta count for something, right?

#new mutants #marvel #movie review #comic books

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stingysbitch · 5 years

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February 2020 Film Festival

Late as ever.

1917

Directed by Sam Mendes

10 out of 10.

Everything about this movie was stunning. The score was beautiful and resounding. The cast was far from underwhelming. The cinematography was a sight to behold. The film was something almost impossible to take in at once, but too intimidating to go in and see a second time. It was just.... breathtaking, in every way imaginable. I walked out the theater in shock.

I’m not a huge fan of war movies. They all seem to promote the wrong ideas. This one, however, had an extremely cautionary, however hopeful, nature. I think it did wonders to promote the true colors of war. It didn’t glorify war—in fact, quite the contrary. There isn’t much more to say. This film speaks for itself.

Shutter Island

Directed by Martin Scorsese

9 out of 10.

This scoring is a bit elevated after my initial reaction of the film. It was the scoring only after I learned about the carefully placed cinematic tools scattered throughout the film that helped illuminate the final twist... if you’d call it that much of a twist.

The minute the main premise was introduced, I guessed the twist. I don’t fancy myself much of a genius, I just think it’s a pretty predictable storyline. Great, engaging movie, but not infallible.

Green Book

Directed by Peter Farrelly

8 out of 10.

I really appreciated this movie. It was a fun ride to go along with. The humor was generally on point, both Vigo and Mahershala’s performances were beautiful, and it carried an easily understood plot.

After the end, there was something that didn’t quite settle. I failed to get a deeper meaning other than what was presented at the surface level. Still, I definitely recommend Green Book for all it’s worth.

BlackKklansman

Directed by Spike Lee

9 out of 10.

This was a really good watch. I enjoyed the humor as well as the cast and the very intellectual undertones. Plus, the premise itself was very engaging. A black man and a Jew get together to unravel a chapter of the KKK. Very captivating.

Knives Out

Directed by Rian Johnson

7 out of 10.

This was a highly entertaining film. The plot was easy to follow and very captivating. And, can I just say that Daniel Craig’s deep Southern accent kept me up at night?

I felt like the very prevalent message was laid out a little too clearly in this movie. I get that the American moviegoing public isn’t a bunch of rocket scientists or remotely close, but it wasn’t at all hard to find what Rian was trying to say.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

7 out of 10.

This movie was certainly made for a very,, niche audience and Tarantino delivered in that way. It was Tarantino-esque enough for you to reach the end to ask yourself what the fuck you just watched and what the point of that was.

But yeah stan Leo

Parasite

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

10 out of 10.

This is a STRANGE movie, and it took a while to get where it did in the end, but it left me satisfied in its various messages about class divides and human nature. I don’t have enough time to spell it all out right here, so I’m just going to have to tell you all to watch it as soon as you can.

#movies #film #cinema

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protectblackchildren · 6 years

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OVERLOOKED

These remarkable black men and women never received obituaries in The New York Times — until now. We’re adding their stories to our project about prominent people whose deaths were not reported by the newspaper.

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries, capturing the lives and legacies of people who have influenced the world in which we live.

But many important figures were left out.

Overlooked reveals the stories of some of those remarkable people.

We started the series last year by focusing on women like Sylvia Plath, the postwar poet; Emma Gatewood, the hiking grandmother who captivated a nation; and Ana Mendieta, the Cuban artist whose work was bold, raw and sometimes violent. We added to that collection each week.

Now, this special edition of Overlooked highlights a prominent group of black men and women whose lives we did not examine at the time of their deaths.

Many of them were a generation removed from slavery. They often attempted to break the same barriers again and again. Sometimes they made myth out of a painful history, misrepresenting their past to gain a better footing in their future. Some managed to achieve success in their lifetimes, only to die penniless, buried in unmarked graves. But all were pioneers, shaping our world and making paths for future generations.

We hope you’ll spread the word about Overlooked — and tell us who else we missed.

Read about the project’s first year, and use this form to nominate a candidate for future Overlooked obits.

1907-1960

Gladys Bentley

A gender-bending blues performer who became 1920s Harlem royalty.

BY GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

When it comes to loosening social mores, progress that isn’t made in private has often taken place onstage.

That was certainly the case at the Clam House, a Prohibition-era speakeasy in Harlem, where Gladys Bentley, one of the boldest performers of her era, held court.

1867-1917

Scott Joplin

A pianist and ragtime master who wrote “The Entertainer” and the groundbreaking opera “Treemonisha.”

BY WIL HAYGOOD

When Scott Joplin’s father left the North Carolina plantation where he had been born a slave, there was one thing he wanted to hold on to: the echoes of the Negro spirituals he had heard in the fields. In those songs he found a sense of uplift, hope and possibility.

In the post-Civil War era, the cruel breath of slavery and the aborted plan of Reconstruction still hung over the American South. But in the Joplin home, banjo and fiddle music filled the family’s evenings, giving the children — Scott in particular — a sense of music’s power to move.

1834-1858

Margaret Garner

In one soul-chilling moment, she killed her own daughter rather than return her to the horrors of slavery.

BY REBECCA CARROLL

Margaret garner, who was born as an enslaved girl, almost certainly did not plan to kill her child when she grew up and became an enslaved mother.

But she also couldn’t yet know that the physical, emotional and psychological violence of slavery, relentless and horrific, would one day conspire to force her maternal judgment in a moment already fraught with grave imperative.

1878-1932

Major Taylor

A world champion bicycle racer whose fame was undermined by prejudice.

BY RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

More than 100 years ago, one of the most popular spectator sports in the world was bicycle racing, and one of the most popular racers was a squat, strapping man with bulging thighs named Major Taylor.

He set records in his teens and was a world champion at 20. He traveled the globe, racing as far away as Australia, and amassed wealth among the greatest of any athlete of his time. Thousands of people flocked to see him; newspapers fawned over him.

1905-2001

Zelda Wynn Valdes

A fashion designer who outfitted the glittery stars of screen and stage.

BY TANISHA C. FORD

More than a half century before a “curvy” model made the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and before hashtags like #allbodiesaregoodbodies, there was a designer who knew that it was the job of clothes to fit the woman, not vice versa.

Zelda Wynn Valdes was a designer to the stars who could fit a dress to a body of any size — even if she had to do so just by looking at the client. “I only fit her once in 12 years,” Valdes told The New York Times in 1994 of her long-time client Ella Fitzgerald, “I had to do everything by imagination for her.” Valdes would simply look at Fitzgerald in the latest paper, noting any changes in her full-figured body, and would design the elaborate gowns — with beads and appliques — that she knew Fitzgerald loved.

1941-1970

Alfred Hair

A charismatic businessman who created a movement for Florida’s black artists.

BY GORDON K. HURD

“Well-Known Artist Alfred Hair Slain,” read the headline in The Fort Pierce News Tribune newspaper in Florida.

But before he was killed in a barroom brawl on Aug. 9, 1970, at just 29, Hair had become more than just an artist. With his drive, charisma and business acumen, he helped start a collective of Floridian artists, all African-American, who painted vibrant landscapes of their home state. They would later come to be known as The Florida Highwaymen, or more simply The Highwaymen.

1912-1967

Nina Mae McKinney

An actress who defied the barrier of race to find stardom in Europe.

BY ANITA GATES

About 20 minutes into “Hallelujah,” Hollywood’s first all-sound feature with an all-black cast, Nina Mae McKinney appeared on screen as Chick, a singer and dancer, in a sexy flapper dress.

She had flashing eyes, an armful of jangly bracelets, and no qualms about cheating a handsome young cotton farmer out of the money he had just gotten for his family’s crop.

1856-1910

Granville T. Woods

An inventor known as the ‘Black Edison.’ He found that recognition came at a hefty price.

BY AMISHA PADNANI

He carefully sealed the drawings in a mailing tube and quietly placed them out of sight from his business partner, then went to a meeting.

But when he returned, Granville T. Woods found that his drawings — a design for a novel invention that held the potential to revolutionize transportation around the world — were gone.

1884-1951

Oscar Micheaux

A pioneering filmmaker prefiguring independent directors like Spike Lee and Tyler Perry.

BY MONICA DRAKE

Almost as soon as you settle in to watch the 1939 melodrama “Lying Lips,” you can figure out who is the victim, who is the villain and who is the hero. And even if you know how it all will end, you want to watch anyway.

That was the beauty of the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. He made you want to soak up the exuberance he clearly felt in delivering a whole new way of telling stories.

1814-1907

Mary Ellen Pleasant

Born into slavery, she became a Gold Rush-era millionaire and a powerful abolitionist.

BY VERONICA CHAMBERS

When the abolitionist John Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read, “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown’s attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. No one suspected that the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant.

In 1901, an elderly Pleasant dictated her autobiography to the journalist Sam Davis. As Lynn Hudson writes in the book “The Making of ‘Mammy Pleasant’: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco,” Pleasant told Davis, “Before I pass away, I wish to clear the identity of the party who furnished John Brown with most of his money to start the fight at Harpers Ferry and who signed the letter found on him when he was arrested.” The sum she donated was $30,000 — almost $900,000 in today’s dollars.

1827-1901

Elizabeth Jennings

Life experiences primed her to fight for racial equality. Her moment came on a streetcar ride to church.

BY SAM ROBERTS

Because she was running behind one Sunday morning, Elizabeth Jennings turned out to be a century ahead of her time.

She was a teacher in her 20s, on her way to the First Colored American Congregational Church in Lower Manhattan, where she was the regular organist, when a conductor ordered her off a horse-drawn Third Avenue trolley and told her to wait for a car reserved for black passengers.

1876-1917

Philip A. Payton Jr.

A real estate magnate who turned Harlem into a black mecca.

BY ADEEL HASSAN

“Human hives, honeycombed with little rooms thick with human beings,” is how a white journalist and co-founder of the N.A.A.C.P., Mary White Ovington, described the filthy tenements that black New Yorkers were relegated to at the turn of the 20th century.

As more rural Southerners arrived in the city, the teeming Manhattan slums in which African-Americans were living had become the most densely populated streets in the city, nearly 5,000 people per block, according to one count, as landlords rented almost exclusively to white tenants.

1857-1924

Moses Fleetwood Walker

The first black baseball player in the big leagues, even before Jackie Robinson.

BY RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

When Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, becoming the first African-American player in modern major league baseball, he was not only a trailblazer in the sports world, but an inspiring figure in the modern civil rights movement.

But Robinson was not the first ballplayer in the long history of big league baseball known to be an African-American. That distinction belongs to Moses Fleetwood Walker.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/black-history-month-overlooked.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

#Emma Gatewood #Gladys Bentley #Scott Joplin #Margaret Garner #Major Taylor #Zelda Wynn Valdes #Alfred Hair #Nina Mae McKinney #Granville T. Woods #Oscar Micheaux #Mary Ellen Pleasant #Elizabeth Jennings #Philip A. Payton Jr.#Moses Fleetwood Walker #Ana Mendieta #NYT

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waynebomberger · 6 years

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A Work of Street Art: The Best Murals in Nashville

As Nashville continues to grow, so does its street art scene. And the more I deviate from my normal route in Nashville—thanks, traffic!—the more I see bold, new murals popping up daily. I absolutely love it. They’re unavoidable, they’re stunning, and they really dress the place us.

I’ve spent the past several years photographing every mural I’ve found. This is an exhaustive list of murals we’ve tracked down in every corner of Nashville, but my no means all of them, as street artists are adding to Music City’s cultural fabric daily thanks in part to creative pioneers like the Nashville Walls Project, which has been connecting both local and international artists with building owners for a handful of years.

Still, whether you’re a local looking for a Spring Break staycation idea or traveling around Music City’s many neighborhoods on your next weekend getaway, I hope you’ll use this handy map as your guide—and drop descriptions of any murals you find that I may have missed in the comments so I can add them accordingly.

Note: This post was last updated in March 2019.

Germantown

The neighborhood I spend most of my time in thanks to my yoga studio’s location is also one that’s quite walkable and boasts a growing number of restaurants. Park your car near Werthan Lofts and hit up these walls and murals by foot.

Rolf & Daughters wall, artist: Shantell Martin

700 Taylor St. at 7th Avenue North

Waves mural, artists: Eastside Murals

5th Avenue North and Monroe Street

Nashville scenes, artist: unknown

Rosa L Parks Boulevard and Taylor Street, across from Werthan Lofts

Saint Stephen (previously Mop | Broom), artist: Nathan Brown

1300 3rd Ave. N

Kindness Is, artist: Rebekah & Sarah

1120 4th Ave. N (on the side of Juice Bar Germantown)

Beethoven graffiti, artist: Blek Le Rat

(on the side of Barista Parlor x Germantown)

Marathon Village

My friend Adrien Saporiti (formerly of DCXV Industries) is the brains behind the iconic “I Believe in Nashville” mural, which has been posted more than one million times from seven different continents and which you can now see in Marathon Village, Riverside Village and in 12South. I prefer the Marathon Village location as it’s usually devoid of large crowds (though parking is tricky), plus you can visit Nelson’s Greenbrier and Corsair distilleries while there.

I Believe in Nashville murals, artist: Adrien Saporiti

Clinton Street, 625 Main St. and 2702 12th Ave. S

Jefferson Street Corridor

For those interested in Civil Rights history, there are some fascinating pieces along Jefferson near the Tennessee State University campus, particularly beneath the I-40 underpass.

Green Fleet Bicycle Shop mural, artist: Dough Joe/Yusef Hubb

934 Jefferson St.

Gateway to Heritage murals, artists: various

Jefferson Street beneath I-40

blues singers mural, artist: unknown

Jefferson Street between 26th and 27th Avenues

Elks Lodge mural, artist: Dough Joe/Yusef Hubb

2614 Jefferson St.

The Gulch

The “Wings mural” as many call it became the first conversation starter in the Gulch, but a number of bright, splashy creations have joined the fray this year so it’s worth strolling down 11th Avenue South to see else what you may find.

#WhatLiftsYou Nashville Wings mural, artist: Kelsey Montague

11th Avenue South (near Biscuit Love/behind Taziki’s)

Google Fiber mural in the Gulch, artist: Chris Zidek

118 12th Ave. N (on the side of Whiskey Kitchen)

The Nashville Walls Project, artists: Ian Ross, Jason Woodside

11th Avenue South and Laurel Street

12th and Porter mural, artist: Kim Kennedy

114 12th Ave. N

Patagonia mural, artist: Nathan Brown

601 Overton St. (side of Patagonia)

Note: The addition of Patagonia replaced this mural, which was one of my all-time favorites and a collaboration between Nathan Brown and Chris Zidek. I am happy, however, that Patagonia kept the general theme of the mural and also hired the same artist to do it!

Plaza Artist Materials mural, artist: Maggie Sanger

633 Middleton St.

Country music icon murals (Dolly, Johnny, Loretta, etc.), artist: unknown

711 6th Ave. S (on the back of Ed’s Supply Company)

8th Avenue South + Wedgewood Houston

I predict this area rife in artist galleries and studios will be the next big neighborhood for murals if zoning codes don’t prevent them, but for now, you really have to go hunting to find them.

Pastel geometrics mural, artist: unknown

429B Houston St. (patio of Jackalope Brewing Company’s Ranch)

#OleAllDay Tennessee Tristar mural, artist: unknown

462 Humphreys St. (on the side of Ole Rights Management)

Life Can Be Sweet mural, artist: Susanna Chapman

1512 8th Ave. S (side of Baked on 8th)

Hillsboro Village

Hillsboro Village is changing dramatically; it’s now easier to arrive on foot than find parking. But if you can nab a coveted spot, there’s a paid lot behind Pancake Pantry just off Belcourt Avenue (be sure and get a ticket before you leave your car as meter maids here are brutal!). An hour is all you need to wander this small area on the Vanderbilt campus and snap a couple shots of its walls.

Hillsboro Village dragon mural, artists: David Glick, Adam Randolph

2102 Belcourt Ave. (across from the Belcourt Theatre)

Drippy Lips mural, artist: Donald “Drawbertson” Robertson

1814 21st Ave. S (on the side of UAL)

12South

12South is another one of those highly walkable ‘hoods with murals tucked around every corner. Park on one of the side streets—just make sure it’s not a residential-only parking area, as you will get a ticket—and walk from one length at Sevier Park to the other at 12South Flats.

Nashville at Heart rainbow mural (former), artists: Eastside Murals

2705 12th Ave. S

Note: This has now been replaced with this Nashville #PeaceLoveGoodDeeds mural instead.

Draper James wall, artist: unknown

2608 12th Ave. S

12South flowers mural, artist: unknown

2900 12th Ave. S (the side of Green Pea Salon)

Make Music Not War mural, artist: Relax Max

2902 12th Ave. S (the side of Epice, across from Green Pea Salon)

Halycon Bike Shop mural, artist: Aaron Martin

2802 12th Ave. S

Rivive! 12South, artist: Mobe Oner

2814 12th Ave. S

12South graffiti, artist: unknown

12th Avenue South and Elmwood Avenue (photo credit: Joe Hendricks)

Charlotte Ave./Sylvan Park

Many of the murals along Charlotte Avenue are located along one stretch installed by Off the Wall Charlotte, a project backed by the Greater Nashville Arts & Business Council with several corporate sponsors. They’re a bit tricky to reach by foot, so I recommend parking in the lot in front of AVO and crossing the street at the traffic light with your photographer poised on the other side of the busy road.

Avocado mural, artist: unknown

3 City Ave. (side of AVO)