Discoursin'

Hello, the end (of March) is nigh 🌧️

And it’s a lovely weekend!

But April! April is looming, which means May is right behind, which means it’s almost my BIRTHDAY, and as someone who spends the first half of the year anticipating my birthday and the latter half of the year missing my birthday…this is very exciting! I’m turning 31 and I’m determined to have the best day and to celebrate the joy and honor and surprised delight of getting to grow older every year.

Read on for thoughts from the heart, a collection of photos from the past two weeks, and some Writing Discourse reflections.

From the heart 💗

There’s something about the freedom that people seem to feel on the Internet to be absolutely batshit hateful. I’ve seen takes that chilled me to my core on Twitter, that weren’t just someone trolling and being mean for the sake of it, but that indicated some sort of deeper, more pernicious rot in the foundation of our society.

I’ve seen men posting about how women need to be kept out of the workforce so they can just make babies and keep a home — as though women are not fully-fledged humans as well as men. I’ve seen transphobes1 post the most horrific things indicating that they don’t think trans people are human. I’ve seen posts about how women who have abortions should be thrown in jail or worse. I’ve seen racism that is so fierce and horrifying it seems to light my skin on fire; a lot of this has been in response to the genocide in Palestine, and directed at Palestinians, and it makes me want to scream and yank people’s hair out.

And the way we talk on Twitter isn’t confined to Twitter, is the thing. There are right-wing operatives whose whole shtick is to rile people up on the internet to go out into their communities and fuck shit up. We see this with the book banners, for one.

Which reminds me that I haven’t harangued about book bans in a moment, so let me do that now. There is something so disgusting about haters who are so afraid of seeing a different reality than the one they inhabit and take it upon themselves to ensure that no one else has the privilege of seeing those realities either.

Let’s be clear, the main targets for censorship are books about people of color and/or LGBTQ people; if you’re a queer person of color writing about yourself? It’s so much worse. I don’t necessarily want to psychoanalyze the book banners, but I can’t shake the idea that they’re operating out of a mix of fear and dislike that, when combined, excretes a putrid, horrifying hatred that will absolutely taint everything it touches.

That’s what I mean about the deeper rot. It’s not just that people are mean on the internet. It’s that hatred seems to run through the very veins of our country2. We were founded on the genocide of Indigenous peoples3, built on the backs of slaves stolen from their lands, and that fucked-up beginning has colored everything we’ve done since then, I fear. The racism that built this country is going to undo it if we don’t get a grip soon.

There is so much more roiling in my brain today. Thoughts and concepts that I’m only just beginning to grasp, that people far smarter than me have been talking about and educating on for decades. I am only barely beginning to understand how deeply rotten society is, how racist and cishet-normative and ableist it is. I don’t want to speak as though I am expert on anything but my own experience, but my experience in the US for the past 13 years has taught me that maybe, yes, we are divided, but it isn’t diversity or queerness or DEI that divides us, it’s white supremacy.

I don’t know how to end this. I have so many thoughts still in my brain, but at this point I’m just ranting and I don’t think that’s doing me or anyone else any good. But I’m so enraged, every time I see evidence of this hatred and ignorance, and I don’t know what to do about it.

There are, to be clear, people doing awesome things. In just the realm of book bans, there are incredible journalists independently reporting on what’s happening around the country and offering solutions and ways to fight back. I have a friend who’s been active in her community and literally saved books from a ban. There are organizations working hard, publishers and authors suing states for their censorship, and that’s all so inspiring and awesome.

The thing is…each individual can only do so much. And that’s ridiculously frustrating to me, someone who has a fix-it gene and needs to make everything better or I’m not sure I deserve to be alive.

So I do what I can. And I hate that it’s not more. But ultimately, the Chosen One trope is, I think flawed, because there’s not One Person who's going to save us all. Salvation is a collective pursuit. So I’ll do what I can in my corner on my fights, and that will look different than what you can do, and what your neighbor can do. But if we all do what we can, collectively, I choose to believe that we can make the world a better place.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

I’m gonna enter the Discourse today. Specifically, the discourse about characters who are flawed and do bad things in fiction. There’s been chatter lately, at least on Twitter, about people who read books and expect them to be a reflection of the author’s morality. Specifically, someone wrote about Lolita and how those who enjoy the book must share in the main character’s proclivities and sins.

It’s opened up a train of thought for me as well, because if you know me, you know I’m chronically online and specifically way too much on Twitter, and I’ve got a bit of brain rot because of it. So I’m super familiar with the thought process that if a character does something in a book that’s problematic, it must be disavowed on page, ideally by the main character. And I definitely understand why that is a thought process, especially in kidlit, because as authors for children we’ve really internalized the heavy responsibility of trying to do right by our readers.

But main characters are allowed to have flaws; in fact, they kind of need to have flaws. That’s what makes them real and believable, the fact that they, like us, are human. Sometimes they think mean thoughts about another kid in school; sometimes they yell at their parents for no reason, sharp words meant to cut; sometimes they have problematic mentalities and worldviews.

Characters need to have a growth arc, it’s true, but I think it’s a fallacy to believe or act like they need to end the book in a place of perfection. Because imperfect people deserve happy endings, too. Imperfect people deserve to have long lives that continue and allow them the opportunity to learn and grow and become even better than they were last year.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, characters that have flaws are a good thing, actually. Books aren’t morality plays, and they shouldn’t be.

Importantly, it’s also true that authors don’t always share every single perspective and worldview their characters do. I think this is an area of discussion that requires a lot of nuance4, because there’s a fine line to walk here. For example, people have rightfully called out J.K. Rowling for depictions in her book that reinforce antisemitic stereotypes; they’ve also pointed out that how she writes her characters of color doesn’t just leave a lot to be desired, but is actively racist in many ways. I think there’s a difference between that call-out and saying that a character in a book who espouses racism means the author is racist.

It’s kind of like…there’s a difference between an author’s bigotry coloring the way they build their worlds, and an author writing a bigoted character who may or may not be called out or punished in-text.

Again: lots of nuance in this discussion. Like I said, there’s a fine line between calling out actually harmful writing and holding authors and their characters to standards that don’t make sense in the context of literature and what its real purpose is. And I think it’s vitally important, especially in kidlit, to be mindful of the youth of our intended audience, and be responsible in how we tell stories.

In my practice, that means I don’t write about the experience of being BIPOC, because, frankly, I have no clue, and I fear I’d do more harm than good. But I’ve written characters who have harmful mindsets, and that doesn’t mean I share them. I strive to be attentive to how I build worlds and what internalized biases I might subconsciously communicate, and to be intentional so that every message I am communicating is one that I mean to communicate.

So, at the end of it all, we cycle back to my word for 2024: intentionality.

Also — this is a Big Discussion, and this is a short newsletter piece, so there’s likely nuance that I’ve missed. If you have a differing opinion, or you think I’m flat wrong and want to share your own perspective, I’d love to know why. Feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email.

Alla prossima 👋

Well, that concludes our newsletter — and also the month of March. Yay. Onward and upward and into April.

Before I log off, this is your regular reminder that Palestine is not free and Israel is trying to commit a genocide. This week news broke that the US is sending more weapons to Israel…so I’ll be calling/emailing my reps and also Joseph this week, because that’s unacceptable. Free Palestine, and free every other country that is being colonized and oppressed.

Also, capitalism sucks and imperialism is evil.

— Karis xoxo