welcome to the azalea garden!

I’ve started this year off pretty strong, reading-wise. I forgot how much reading I can do when I don’t have to worry about having a job or trying to find one. And I definitely do miss working, but it’s really nice to have basically all the time in the world to read and write most days. (And it’s also nice to not have to be actively in the work force when the only jobs I’m considered qualified for that I find enjoyable enough to not be utterly miserable while doing are all ones that are really hard on my body, and therefore have extremely negative health-related repercussions.) I was happy with everything I read throughout January, which is a kind of groundbreaking realization, since I can’t remember the last time I was able to go a month without picking up something that absolutely sucks, either on purpose or, much more often, accidentally.

In total, I read seven books—I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall; Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood; Sky Daddy by Kate Folk; The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones; salt slow by Julia Armfield; and volumes 9-11 of Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama.

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I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is a book that, based on the reviews, is divisive. Interestingly, the divide between positive and negative opinions has a heavy racial component to it, from what I’ve seen. There were people who found it to be a meaningless, unnecessary, and largely uninteresting detailing of two women with a highly toxic friendship spiraling with eating disorders, interspersed with pretentious, over-the-top references to punk bands (mainly white people or people whose race was indiscernible from profile pictures or bio pages); and there were people who found it to be a deep, compelling exploration of a toxic relationship between two women with severe mental health issues—chief among them, eating disorders—that realistically explores the rich inner world of the main character (primarily Black people, typically women). I was, of course, more inclined to trust the perspectives of Black readers, and wasn’t disappointed in doing so.

One of the biggest criticisms was about the narrator’s involvement in the punk subculture, which did have me a little apprehensive despite the glowing reviews from the only voices I was inclined to trust. Despite whatever excellent character exploration I was promised in all positive reviews I saw, I was bracing myself for endless meaningless namedrops of obscure bands in a clear demonstration of the author’s desperation to convey her personal interest in, and elitism about, punk. But all that is totally absent, actually. Khaki roots a lot of her identity in punk in a way that feels real and solid. Punk isn’t for me and I was unfamiliar with every band mentioned save for a small handful that aren’t punk. Her investment in the genre and ability to name countless artists within the genre very effectively drew me closer to her. Khaki is invested in this thing I know nothing about in a way that’s extensive and multi-dimensional, which helped me feel like I understood her better as a person, not just as a character.

The eating disorder element was a key piece of the story, and is implemented interestingly and very realistically. Khaki is a social outcast in high school who appears to be as unaware, as everyone else around her is, of her mental health issues; Fiona, a deeply mentally unstable girl struggling with various mental illnesses but most noticeably a restrictive eating disorder, becomes her one friend; their friendship is turbulent due to their respective traumas, issues, and lack of reference for what healthy connections look like; Fiona’s endless cycle of becoming better with her ED, relapsing, ending up in her hospital, and so on becomes exhausting to Khaki, leading Khaki to cease really caring about her struggles despite still loving her; and though Khaki managed to go quite a while without developing her own ED despite her strong, unhealthy attachment to Fiona—a mutually intense and toxic attachment—she develops one a few years into their friendship. Khaki grows to resent Fiona for her ED because she’s unable to comprehend how a person could be willing to go so far over an illness, then develops one so all-encompassing that readers quickly get a sense of how badly it’s warped her perception of reality. And it’s not just implemented in a fascinating way, but it’s also the single most effective and responsible depiction of restrictive ED I’ve encountered. It’s an immersive portrayal of restrictive ED that reminded me, with impressively perfect clarity, what it was like to live with one, and without the faintest trace of the triggering details that make most portrayals of restrictive ED so potentially harmful to real-life sufferers. It’s going to be what I compare all portrayals of restrictive EDs to going forward, and will impact how I write them in the future.

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Morning in the Burned House was good. It was my first time reading Atwood’s poetry, and I enjoyed it. There were a few that didn’t land for me, but that’s an inevitable characteristic of any collection of individual works, whether poetry, short stories, photography, or anything else.

There’s definitely no context in which being a godawful person is a good or even neutral thing, but it’s always a particular shame when I come across a talented writer or artist who is morally abysmal. I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge that Atwood is a transmisogynist loves bitching about the threat trans women are to “real women” and the mockery they supposedly make of womanhood despite her lack of interest in actual, concrete discussion or activism around feminist issues. However, most people don’t seem to recognize that The Handmaid’s Tale is pretty racist. She already has no place being praised for an allegedly “feminist” novel when her transmisogyny leads her to align herself proudly with misogynists, but how she and others talk about it is pretty racist. The Handmaid’s Tale is described as dystopian speculative fiction by everyone, Atwood included, because it takes place in some hyper-patriarchal, hyper-misogynistic world that doesn’t, at least not presently, exist—but this conveniently ignores that it’s dystopian and speculative because it’s happening to white women. For countless many women of color living under Western colonialism and imperialism, this has been reality for a long time, and it’s been perpetuated in part by white women. But hey, why listen to racialized women talking about the racism and general failings of a white, so-called feminist’s famous work when you could simply ignore them like everyone else loves to?

Anyway, good poetry collection, but I only picked it up because my husband has owned it for a long while by now, and I won’t be reaching for her literature ever again on account of I hate her as a person far too much to be inclined to give her writing the time of day beyond this one.

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My thoughts on Sky Daddy are here. All in all, it was a fun read that I’d highly recommend to pretty much anyone. The narrator isn’t half as weird as everyone I’ve seen everyone reveiwing this book assert that she is, and the book is much better than it could have otherwise been because of this fact.

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The Only Good Indians was a reread, and hit as hard the second time around. It’s difficult to articulate my thoughts about it without feeling too vulnerable, as it’s really special to me in ways no other piece of media ever has been. So much of my life has been caught up in cycles of violence; I am made to suffer because other people have been made to suffer—parents, family members, friends, partners—and when I was younger I perpetuated the same sort of violence I experienced at home and in relationships I really shouldn’t have been in. You can’t force others to end the cycle but you can choose not to continue it. I want to believe I’ll never play a role in continuing that cycle of hurt again, not only when it’s easy but when it’s difficult, when I’m in situations where choosing unjust violence (physical, verbal, emotional, any kind of violence) would be so simple and potentially cathartic in the short-term. “It’s over, enough, it can stop here if you really want it to stop.” God, I really hope that’s true.

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My thoughts on salt slow are here. It’s fine. Decent enough, for the most part, though not particularly memorable, and Armfield’s writing is so drawn-out that it’s tedious and frequently a bit dull.

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Witch Hat Atelier has been consistently engaging and compelling . Its representation of disability has made me feel incredibly seen and valued at every turn, and while I have general issues with the imagining of a de-racialized fantasy world due to the inevitability of a creator’s subconscious biases coming into play to some extent, I can find it admirable when handled by an author who truly, sincerely cares about the dignity and humanity of marginalized people. As the series progresses, as well, I find my discomfort with the de-racialized nature of Witch Hat‘s world diminishing; the more Black and brown characters there are on the page with the same diversity of personality, occupation, etc as the other characters, the less it feels the Black and brown characters may be written in ways that are accidentally insensitive or irresponsible.

The politics of the world become clearer with with every volume; it’s immersive and realistic, and Shirahama consistently has much of value to convey through her writing. As more is revealed about forbidden magic and its uses, it becomes clearer that regarding it as intrinsically bad, immoral, etc is a reductive take devoid of nuance; and to demonize it outright, whether one finds it right or wrong, is outright hostile to disabled people. The criminalization conspicuously affects those marginalized disproportionately as well, including those who have their bodies altered without their knowledge and/or informed consent. And even if someone does eagerly consent, how are actions that affect nobody but oneself reasonable to criminalize? Where’s the justice in criminalizing a child’s desire to walk again when his acquired disability made his life significantly more difficult? Using magic on others can be violating, harmful, and abjectly cruel, but the legal systems and law enforcement focused on witch- and magic-related affairs blatantly do not give a single fuck about preventing harm when the state doesn’t differentiate between perpetrator and victim, non-consent and consent. A child was forced into hiding because his bodily autonomy was violated. An impoverished man experienced police brutality because his life was saved by another without his knowledge. Regardless of where the legal line should be drawn for magic use, the laws and the police that enforce them don’t have protection in mind; as in real life, their concern is maintaining authority, not civilian protection.

And as if the criminalization of anyone bearing non-consensual seals on their bodies didn’t make that obvious enough, the police force’s favorite punishment is the use of what should be magic strictly off-limits to everyone; as if tampering with people’s minds isn’t the most vile, disgusting act of violation anyone could conceivably commit, it’s weaponized by law enforcement who happily utilize it against anyone who uses similar types of magic. As long as they’re good little attack dogs for the state, they’re allowed to maintain a position far above the law—but god fucking forbid their means of police brutality get wielded against them, then it’s a truly awful, heinous crime. But because the seals used aren’t applied directly to a person’s flesh, it’s legally permissible so long as it’s used exclusively as a weapon of the state. Except the potential for harm and abuse is the driving reason behind the illegalization of magic use on people, so why is it permissible when state actors use it in the name of justice? Simple: a state will sanction any amount of violence under the guise of “protection” and “public safety” so long as they know they can get away with it. There’s no such thing as a good cop, because good people aren’t comfortable having permission to wield state violence, regardless of whether it’s in the name of justice or not.

I think what makes this particular treatment of law enforcement—uninterested in the specifics of why someone may be branded with a seal with no regard for if it was consensual or not; so eager to exercise their control that they derive enjoyment from implicitly threatening young children; nonchalant about their hypocritical use of deeply violating magic in the name of upholding the law—is the discussion had about child abuse. It demonstrates how horrific it is to be abused as a child by authority figures and how much worse it becomes when everyone around you either denies the abuse or makes excuses for it/why you should endure it, as well as how the belief of one adult can have a profound and potentially life-saving impact on abused children. It validates the suffering of abused children, while highlighting the cruelty of the Knights of Moralis via humanization. Here is a woman all too familiar with powerlessness at the hands of well-respected authority, yet her feelings about wielding her authority over others who are entirely powerless against her doesn’t induce any complex emotions or nuanced thoughts about her line of work. She is safe and secure in her internalized understanding that what was done to her was disgusting, wrong, and unjustifiable (correct) and that because her childhood experiences—not just the abuse, but also being believed and defended—led her to where she is at present, she must be just in the ways she chooses to enact violence. It’s not a conscious line of thought, surely, but it’s one that appears to be at play.

The introduction of a fat character was pleasant, despite the fatphobia that accompanied her arrival into the story. However, Shirahama has consistently demonstrated that she has sincere respect for marginalized people and the bigotry that seeps unchecked into her writing isn’t a result of malice or dehumanization but is the consequence of living in a society surrounded by both covert and overt messaging about the marginalized, what kinds of people they are, etc. It’s not an excuse, but I do at present have faith that as the story progresses it’ll become more apparent that Shirahama is a person with accidental fatphobic ideas, beliefs, etc rather than being a fatphobic person.

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I’m hoping I can stay more on top of recording the things I read like this. Maybe I’ll write as I go along to make that easier? Unclear. But hopefully I’ll have a compilation of what I read through February finished by mid-March, and then start April with another reading-related post pretty much ready to go… We’ll have to see, though.