#zoe's library

[discoidal]

kim addonizio

[fairydrowning]

Zoë Lianne, "Erasure"

Mary Oliver, "Felicity"

Emily Bronte, "Wuthering Heights"

[theysangastheyslew]

Trying to work out some kinks with the dialogue in my WIPs so in the meantime have the rest of the old AoT x Parks and Rec crossover I never posted :x

[uispeccoll]

Past and Present: Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman

Last year, Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries acquired items to form a new collection: the Black Film and Television Collection. In honor of Black History Month, we’re shining a spotlight on a different item from this collection each week.

In yesterday’s post, we discussed the original script for 1971’s Shaft, a defining entry in the Blaxploitation genre. Our final spotlight shines on a unique photo book from 1996, when Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman attempted to excavate the history of queer Black women on screen.

Cheryl Dunye and New Queer Cinema

With The Watermelon Woman, Dunye became the first Black lesbian to direct a feature film. This movie belongs to a genre that came to be called New Queer Cinema, a movement in independent film during the 1990s that placed queer characters at the center.

The film was critically acclaimed and regarded as one of the foundational films of the genre, and it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2021.

It also gave new momentum to Dunye’s career in film and television, which continues to this day. Her recent directing credits include The Umbrella Academy, Bridgerton, and Queen Sugar.

Unnamed & Uncredited

The Watermelon Woman stars writer and director Cheryl Dunye as an aspiring documentarian who works at a video rental store. Dunye’s fictional proxy, also named Cheryl, is fascinated by the history of Black women in film, particularly those who went unnamed and uncredited for roles portraying the racist archetypes that were common in the cinema of the 1930s and 40s.

In the movie, Cheryl embarks on a journey to discover the name of Black actress only identified as “The Watermelon Woman.” She eventually uncovers the woman’s real name, Fae Richards, and discovers that she, too, was a queer woman.

A Supplementary Archive

Fae Richards may be a fictional character, but she stands for countless queer Black people whose stories have been omitted from the record. Artist Zoe Leonard, in collaboration with Cheryl Dunye, created The Fae Richards Photo Archive, a series of 82 images that document the life of this fictional character. From candid shots, family photos, and publicity pictures, every image matches a time and place of this character. As the Whitney Museum of American Art explains, “Leonard acknowledges the project’s artifice, encouraging the viewer to recognize that she had to create a story that is fictional, but rings true, because the real life counterparts of such stories went undocumented.”

This statement demonstrates exactly why many archives are, or need to, work to fix the mistakes of the past. As a school with a rich screenwriting history, it is why the University of Iowa Libraries is actively working to collect more stories from Black cinema.

A Century of Black Film

During this series, we’ve looked at four iconic examples of Black filmmaking. But that’s not to say that the work of Black filmmakers can be reduced to four eras, or that the films we discussed are more important than those that didn’t make this list. There’s so much more to discover in the Black Film and Television Collection, and if you’ve enjoyed this blog series, we encourage you to check out what’s available online. As The Watermelon Woman attests, the preservation of these stories, and the names and lives behind them, is vital and rewarding work.

--Natalee Dawson, Communication Coordinator at UIowa Libraries, with assistance from Liz Riordan, Anne Bassett, and Jerome Kirby

[lovers-instead]

somehow, there is new Ms. Marvel (2015) content by the same creators (Wilson/Miyazawa/Herring) in 2023

[even-if-in-another-time]

“her lips brush my ear, and mine part, and i think to myself please please please—why would i pray to the gods when she’s right here-” zoe what the fuck. what the fuck. you don’t get to write this line right before you break them. ZOE

[zoeintheskywclouds]

my notes app is filled with some of the most gut-wrenching, pain-inducing poetry that has ever graced this vulnerable earth

[officialbabayaga]

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Sometimes a Girl Needs a Firefly Fix. Was It Worth It?

Off the top: I do not endorse Whedon's behavior. Frankly, I'm not going to mention him at all in the rest of this post. I also don't endorse the "great man creator" myth. Lots of people were involved in making Firefly, and we can honor their contributions while holding that hard boundary against predatory and abusive behavior.

Sometimes a girl needs a Firefly fix. Growing up, my TV and movie access was pretty restricted, but never in my life did my parents say no to a book, so novelizations and spinoff novels were often how I first engaged with media and narratives (see my two and a half tubs of just Star Wars books). So when I was missing Firefly and couldn't access it, I dived into the books. My results were decidedly mixed.

I made the eminently logical decision to start with the first of the Firefly books, Big Damn Hero. I'm pretty confident that space western isn't common enough as a genre to have generic space western story issues, but honestly if you had changed all the names and take the Firefly branding off this book, it would have still been aggressively mediocre, just without the familiar characters that made me pick up the book in the first place.

Frankly, I don't have much at all to say about this book. It was fine. The plot was fine, if a bit on the generic side. The characters were fine, I didn't feel like anything contradicted the show. There was nothing particularly memorable about it, it was a fine way to kill a couple of hours on a rainy weekend afternoon.

Novelizations and tie-in novels, in my experience, can vary wildly in quality, so the violently mediocre first experience did not turn me off the Firefly novels in and of itself. I made sure to do a little more research before I picked up the next one, though. These books do technically have an order, but I went full chaos goblin mode and fully just ignored order. Instead, I looked at the focus characters and basic plots (spoilers were also not something I cared about, because c'mon).

I am an unabashed Mal and Inara shipper, and frankly the fact that Inara living with a terminal illness was deprioritized in the show (I know, there was a ton of drama with getting cancelled, this is an opinion and feeling, not a criticism) was wildly disappointing for me, so when I read the blurb for Life Signs, I had hope that we might actually get some Mal/Inara and some illness rep, which we just do not get enough of (massive shoutout to One for All for anyone who wants some incredible chronic illness rep that isn't John Green).

So, objectively, this book was better than Big Damn Hero. And with the benefit of hindsight, I would even call the book good. But if I'm being totally honest, when I was reading the book, I felt LIED TO. Inara shows up in the first two and last chapters, and the rest of the book is Zoe having an existential crisis about Mal's judgement and turning around a pulling another woman up behind her (which honestly I can get behind, Zoe is awesome). I was actually furious because Inara had basically zero agency or opinion about anything, and the framing wasn't Inara's voice and experience, it was Mal's man pain. Literally, the framing was patriarchal and infuriating.

The being lied to and shitty framing aside, the plot was intriguing and carried me through the book in one sitting (that was admittedly part rage as well, but the plot overall was solid), and the character work was solid. As long as you know what you're actually in for with this book, I think readers would genuinely enjoy it. I plan on giving it a second try once I've gotten some distance from the rage and the disappointment, but it definitely landed in the "this says it has illness rep but actually no, this is patriarchal man pain and the actual person experiencing the illness could be seamlessly swapped out for a table lamp without materially changing the story" category.

What Makes Us Mighty was my "third strike, you're out" book, and actually I was really impressed with this one. This felt more like Firefly than the other two books had, and there was some incredible work in it. The highlights include:

Mal going absolutely feral on a toxic, predatory rich guy

Jayne having some actual character growth and nuance beaten into his head

Simon Tam getting to do his doctoring thing

Zoe being an absolute QUEEN

The absolutely most horrifying SFF weapon I have ever read (this is a disputable claim, but even if you're not putting it at the top of the horrifying weapon list, it PLACES)

The Sereneity crew doing what has to be done with compassion and mercy and absolutely making me sob while reading

This book single-handedly redeemed my Firefly novel experience, and honestly I would actively recommend this one to Firefly fans. Not so much Big Damn Hero, and maybe not Life Signs (would depend on the reader), but hell yes, read What Makes Us Mighty.

[discoidal]

franny choi

[adhd-mess]

Sona after she sees Eris for the first time:

Eris after talking to her for a few chapters:

[hangesidechick]

❍⌇─➭ welcome ﹀﹀ ︵↷ ˗ˏˋ꒰ 🐚🪷꒱

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

i love hange zoe ! ┊ they/she/he ~ !

-ˏ͛⑅　‧̥̥͙‧̥̥ ̥ ̮ ̥ ⊹ ‧̫‧ ⊹ ̥ ̮ ̥ ‧̥̥‧̥̥͙ -ˏ͛⑅　‧̥̥͙‧̥̥ ̥ ̮ ̥ ⊹ ‧̫‧ ⊹ ̥ ̮ ̥ ‧̥̥‧̥̥͙

↳˗ˏˋsocial media accounts!ˊˎ˗ ↴

spotify ; https://open.spotify.com/user/314xfbkaucsnekbqmtj7ymdov27i?si=xiQOdrftQhWcFLLTvNHwKw

pinterest ; pissboyzeke

tiktok ; @hanjiluvluv

●～●～●～●～●～●～●～●～

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼ ✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼ ✼　 ҉ 　✼　

》* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ * 。° 。 • ˚《

# facts about me !!

⇢ ˗ˏˋ favorite animes

- attack on titan, nana, fairy tail, kimi ni todoke, & deathmote

⇢ ˗ˏˋ favorite anime characters

- hange zoe, maki zenin, nana komtasu, rei ayanami, ryuzaki hideki, & erza scarlet

⇢ ˗ˏˋfavorite movies and series

- stranger things, carol, alice in borderland & umbrella academy !

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰ ─ ─✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰ ───

[hawkinadovecote]

“my anger is not an entity that burns, like it does for so many others.

but it is just as devastating.”

- zoe hana mikuta

[lovelybarnes]

Thought of you

OH MY GOS DHSJS THEYRE SO CUTE

[sunflowergirl522]

hiiii zoe, how's everything going?

Hiii Angie!!! Everything’s going alright, stressed about waiting to hear from any of the jobs I applied for but other than that good. How’s everything going for you?

[fromthestacks]

That Dirty Black Bag season 1