The Other Black Girl
 
This poppy-yet-literary novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris is a satire of diversity in the book publishing industry. Harris, who is the sister of Aiesha Harris, a reporter with National Public Radio, worked in book publishing for several years before taking time off to write the novel. It sold for over $1 million and is now a Hulu series (I haven’t watched it). Basically, Nella, the main character, is the only Black employee at the publisher where she works, until Hazel is hired. Hazel is everything Nella, who grew up in white suburban Connecticut, is not – she’s from Harlem, wears long flowing locks, and embraces her family’s activist heritage. Nella, who is quietly trying to push diversity in the workplace without losing her job, is at first excited that there’s another Black girl she can bond with. But something’s up with Hazel. I didn’t love everything about this novel, whose plot can get a little meandering at times, but the descriptions of white fragility and the moral dilemmas of speaking up in the workplace seemed pretty spot on.
Listen to Zakiyah Harris on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. 
 
Michael Stipe’s slow reinvention
 
REM, one of the greatest bands of all time, disbanded in 2011. Since then, frontman and singer Michael Stipe has published books of photography, exhibited visual art, and performed at a few concerts and rallies. He hasn’t, however, as a recent article in the New York Times by Jon Mooallem points out, done the thing fans most want him to do – make music. That could change soon – or not. Stipe has been working on an album of solo material for nearly five years, but he hasn’t released anything yet beyond a single. It was supposed to be out in early 2023, but it’s been delayed multiple times. “I’m in no rush,” Stipe said, while at the same time remarking, “I’m at the age where I’m realizing, OK: All these ideas I want to focus on, I’m not going to have the life span to be able to complete all of them.” I liked this article for how much the author got in the subject’s head – from giving us anecdotes of Stipe’s childhood, to demonstrating how his uniquely creative brain pings from one thing to the next, to giving us a scene where he is in the same studio as Taylor Swift and runs into Jack Healy of the 1975, who cites REM as a big influence. Mooallem shows us what it’s like to be an aging rock star whose influence looms large but who is out of step with pop culture, where rock music is for old people. I think anyone who’s had to reinvent themselves will be able to relate. Read the article. 
 
Brandy Clark
 
In 2020, the New Yorker published an article with the headline, “No one is writing better country songs than Brandy Clark is.” This month, David Remnick did an interview with Clark about her 2023 self-titled album. She wanted to call the album North West, after a song she wrote about growing up in that part of the country, but when she told people this, they immediately associated the words with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s child, so she changed it. Clark, a lesbian who has written songs for country artists, leans into Americana, which she calls “country music for Democrats,” amidst the culture wars that continue to rage in country music. Her simple songs exhibit many of the things I love about folk and country music – its lyric poetry, its storytelling, its emotional truths. Standouts are “Buried,” an achy love song, “Northwest,” about the pull of home when you’re away all the time, and “She Smoked in the House,” about her old-school grandmother (“lipstick-circled butts in the ashtray” is one of many good images). 
 
Allison Russell
 
This is someone I just discovered this month after Terry Gross interviewed her on "Fresh Air." Allison Russell released an album of powerful, redemptive songs this year, “The Returner,” that grapples with freeing herself from sexual abuse by her racist father. These are powerful, redemptive songs. Check out the interview here.
 
Dan Savage’s love and sex advice for the new year
 
I first started reading Dan Savage when I was in my 20s, young and trying to figure out my own attitude towards sexuality and relationships. Savage, a gay man, is best known as a sex advice columnist, and he and his partner have been in a committed-yet-open relationship for more than 30 years. I’ve always found Savage’s words to be powerful and insightful and to offer something for all of us. And, frankly, these are perspectives about monogamy, commitment, sex, marriage, and relationship tradeoffs of relationships you don't often hear in the media. One of the fascinating statistics he cites is the growing number of people who identify as queer (20% of Generation Z, according to Savage, compared with 10% of Millenials and 2% of baby boomers – how typical, ha, that the statisticians have skipped over Generation X, my generation, as Katherine pointed out). This interview with Ezra Klein is long, but worth a listen. 

A week and a half ago, The New York Times published an essay called "Rebuilding myself after brain injury, sentence by sentence" by writer Kelly Barnhill about her experiences with a traumatic brain injury. Barnhill, who writes children's literature, fantasy and science fiction, fell down the stairs and got a concussion that left her deprived of the ability to do her job writing fiction or even remember words and their meanings.

"Healing a brain injury is the process of rebuilding not only tissues and cells and the connections between those cells, but also memory, thoughts, imagination, and the fundamentals of language and our very concept of ourselves," writes Barnhill, an author of children's literature, fantasy, and science fiction. "I am rebuilding myself, you see. Right now. Sentence by sentence." She goes on to cite the fact that "1.5 million Americans experience a traumatic brain injury each year," and that "many more suffer neurological symptoms from other issues, including long Covid, and experience the same kinds of cognitive unraveling that I have learned to live with over the past two years."

It's a tough, moving piece, as she details with excruciating vulnerability all of the things she's lost in the wake of her brain injury and is trying to rebuild, such as remembering the word for "sock" and "stripes" and going to doctor after doctor seeking answers. The essay itself took her months to write, she says, and lately she's been jotting a few sentences at a time down on notecards in an effort to get her strength back, but that's about all she can manage. She goes on to ruminate on the relationship between memory, story and creativity, and to suggest that without these things, we're not fully ourselves. "Am I still me?" she asks. "Will I ever be me again?"

I taught this essay in my Creative Nonfiction class at the Siegal Lifelong Learning center, because it's an example of a public essay that's also incredibly personal, and one that weaves the public and personal together quite effectively and powerfully. I think I related to this essay so strongly because of my own experiences with creative loss. I've never had a traumatic brain injury, but I've struggled with the inability to write in recent years and I've often wondered, just as Barnhill does, if I'll ever write again. But no matter what I go through or what happens to me, not only does my desire to write never go away, but my ability to write stays with me. Maybe this is because even when the brain endures trauma, it often has the ability to heal.

"Cognition requires rest," a doctor tells Barnhill, when she asks when she's going to get better. "Some of us need more rest than others. But your brain is learning. It doesn't know how to stop learning. Give yourself a break and let your brain do its job." 

'Tis the season for watching movies, and over the Thanksgiving break I caught the French independent film "Full Time" by writer/director Eric Gravel starring Laure Calamy, which is available to stream on Prime. I don't think I've ever seen a film that manages to be both a thriller, complete with fast-paced, heart-racing scenes, and a simple yet effective story about a single mom trying to make it work, but this film adeptly does both. The main character, Julie, lives on the outskirts of Paris where it's cheaper and more family-friendly and has to commute into the city to work at her job as head maid at a 5-star hotel, where she supervises and trains other maids, inspects bedsheets to make sure they're perfect, and even cleans shit off bathroom walls with a power washer. She has a master's degree in business but was laid off four years ago and took lower-level work to make ends meet. Her job is high pressure (hmmm, I didn't intend that pun, but I think it somehow works) and demanding, yet even as she's interviewing for another job that's ain her field, the Paris metro workers strike and she can't get to work. When the trains stop running, she resorts to creative, dire measures, from bumming a ride with a neighbor she barely knows to hitchhiking to renting a cargo van for a few days, all while trying to keep her kids safe with an increasingly frazzled older neighbor who babysits them. There are so many small, great moments in this film that showcase the main character's resilience and creativity in the face of an almost impossibly crushing situation. Calamy's acting as she flirts with men to try to score rides, does whatever she can for her kids, and somehow holds it all together with a smile, is powerful. Her husband is away and hasn't paid alimony, which makes her situation dire, with the bank calling her to warn her that her mortgage is late and she needs to meet with them. Meanwhile, unable to get to work on time, slipping out to interview for another, better position, her job as head maid is also on the line. The tense soundtrack and sounds of ambulances and other city noises throughout the film add to the sense of emergency, both in terms of the work-life balance that Parisians have being threatened by capitalism run amok as well as the fraught situation of a single mom having to balance a tough job and the brunt of raising her children. A powerful, effective film.