#michelle tea

[librarycards]

Pigeons are doves. They are rock doves, and I wonder if we began to call them that if people would hesitate to hate them, as doves have that history as messengers of peace. It is true that in my neighborhood nobody hates the mourning doves, dusky and elegant with wings that squeak as if they flap on rusty hinges. They roost on the wires like little Audrey Hepburns, while the pigeons troll the ground, tough and fat, some of them look like they should be smoking cigarettes. They look poor and banged up, like they could kick the mourning doves’ asses but are wise to the divide-and-conquer tactics we use on one another, so they coo wearily at the mourning doves and waddle forth in search of scavenged delights. What you may not know is when you call a pigeon “a rat with wings” you have given it a compliment. The only thing a rat lacks is a pair of wings to lift it, so you have named the pigeon perfectly. When you say to me, “I hate pigeons,” I want to ask you who else you hate. It makes me suspicious.

I once met a girl who was so proud to have hit such a bird on her bicycle, I swear, I thought that it was me she hit. I felt her handlebars in my stomach and now it is your job to feel it also. The pigeons are birds, they are doves. They are the nature of the city and the ones who no one loves. When people say they hate pigeons, I want to ask them if they hate themselves, too. Does it prick the well of your loathing? Do they make you feel dirty and ashamed? Are you embarrassed about how little or how much you have, for how you have had to hustle? Being dirty is not a problem for the pigeon. You can ask it, “How do you feel about having the city coating your feathers, having the streets gunked up in the crease of your eye?” and the pigeon would say, “Not a problem.” You will now stop blaming the pigeon. It is not the pigeon’s fault. The pigeon was once a dove, and then we built our filthy empire up around it, came to hate it for simply thriving in the midst our decay, came to hate it for not dying. The pigeon is your ally. They are chameleons, gray as the concrete they troll for scraps, at night they huddle and sing like cats. Their necks are glistening, iridescent as an oil-slick rainbow, they mate for life, and they fly.

Michelle Tea, Against Memoir. [emphasis mine]

#michelle tea #words #readings #capitalism #class #ecology

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

Favorite Books I Read in 2023

Not including rereads and in no particular order, here are the books I loved the most this year.

Titles & Authors, from top left to bottom:

Fluids by May Leitz

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Perfume: Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

Valencia by Michelle Tea

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

Summer by Edith Wharton

"The Echo & the Nemesis", "Life is No Abyss", "The Interior Castle", "Bad Characters", and "In the Zoo" by Jean Stafford

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

Crash by J.G. Ballard

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde

Erasure by Percival Everett

Persuasion by Jane Austen

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, & Lost Futures by Mark Fisher

Girl Flesh by May Leitz

Here's to a new year, full of great reading!

#dark academia #light academia #literature #books #reading #2023 #may leitz #jeanette winterson #mark fisher #jane austen #john fowles #zadie smith #juan rulfo #maryse conde #kazuo ishiguro #imogen binnie #michelle tea #patrick suskind #jg ballard #percival everett #don delillo #gwendolyn brooks #mary gaitskill #jean stafford #edith wharton #vladimir nabokov #paul bowles

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || February 22 || Makes Me Blush:  I’m pretty shameless about my reading but Michelle Tea’s poetry made me blush when I first read it. 

#Michelle Tea #justonemorepage #jompbpc #book photo challenge #book photography #books #Not Out of Void But Out of Chaos #bpc catch up

[jaynedolluk]

BOOKS OF 2023

I'm so late posting this but I'm determined to get it done. These are some of the books I read/enjoyed in 2023. I still have a massive to-read pile so not all these books actually came out in 2023 (tho' most of them did)

I don’t tend to read that many novels/fiction – I think the only one I read this year was Queen K. by Sarah Thomas about a tutor to a rich oligarch’s family. Also got the books of the scripts for Succession Seasons 3 & 4.

I tend to read a lot of memoirs. This year I read ones by Paris Hilton (which was surprisingly good), Hadley Freeman (which also talks about anorexia in general), Michelle Tea (which talked about her experiences of pregnancy in the context of being a queer woman), Ava Cherry and the latest one by Boy George.

Also Anita Bhagwandas’ book Ugly which looks at various beauty standards and how they affect us all + I really liked it. Plus Grace Dent did a book based on her podcast called Comfort Eating which looks at the favourite comfort foods of various celebrities (including recipes) combined with a bit of her own memoir.

I got a new book on Marilyn Monroe by Richard Barrios which examines her acting roles and re-evaluates her as an actor.

Read Claire Dederer’s book, Monsters, which looks at how we respond to problematic artists/creators. It raised some really interesting questions and personally I don’t think there are any easy answers. Another interesting book I came across was Creative Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto by Ayun Halliday which I thought offered some really good advice.

I’m keen on history especially books that look at cultural/social history. I found this fascinating book called Queer Blues which looks at the early blues musicians who explored sexuality/gender. Also another book I really recommend is I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records by Audrey Golden – one thing I really liked about it was the range of women they spoke to, so not just musicians but the security staff and DJs from the Hacienda. Read We Peaked At Paper which was about the UK fanzine scene.

In terms of more general history I got David Mitchell’s book, Unruly, which is his personal take on the history of the British monarchy up to Elizabeth I with plenty of sarcasm and general observations of the concept of monarchy.

I love the format of oral histories in books. This year I read Reach For the Stars (about the pop stars of the late 90s/early 00s), Faster Than a Cannonball (looking at various aspects of the nineties), and Don’t F&&K It Up (about the first ten years of RuPaul’s Drag Race).

I also read a lot of books on music. This year I read two of the new releases on goth music/culture – The Art of Darkness by John Robb and Season of the Witch by Cathi Unsworth (which I preferred especially the book/film recommendations and the gothmothers/gothfathers sections).

Read Parachute Women by Elizabeth Winder which re-evaluates the legacy of some of the women linked with the Rolling Stones – (Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Bianca Jagger and Marsha Hunt). I felt like it concentrated more on Anita & Marianne and it would have been nice to expand the book to cover the likes of Jo Wood, Jerry Hall and Mandy Smith but overall I loved the book.

It also ties in with one of my other areas of interest, feminism. I read Toxic by Sarah Ditum which looks at how various female celebrities were treated by the popular media in the late 90s/early 00s such as Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse.

#end of year #book reviews #my reviews #marilyn monroe #succession #rupaul's drag race #john robb #cathi unsworth #anita pallenberg #marianne faithfull #bianca jagger #marsha hunt #ava cherry #boy george #paris hilton #grace dent #michelle tea

[passione-vera]

Michelle Tea e il suo libro "How to Grow Up"

Michelle Tea è una scrittrice eclettica, una voce unica nel mondo della letteratura contemporanea. Nel suo libro “How to Grow Up”, Tea ci offre un’immersione profonda nella sua vita e nelle sue esperienze, condividendo le lezioni apprese lungo il cammino. In questo articolo, esploreremo il mondo affascinante di Michelle Tea e analizzeremo il suo libro “How to Grow Up”, mettendo in luce…

View On WordPress

#"How to Grow Up" #libro #Michelle Tea

[thingsthatmademe]

Michelle Tea and Sliding Doors

Michelle Tea, Author: Rent Girl (2004). The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America (1998). Valencia (2000). How to Grow Up (2015)

Laurenn McCubbin, Artist: Rent Girl (2004), XXX Live Nude Girls

Rent Girl was the first thing I read by Michelle Tea, right when it was released, in 2004. In the next few years, I found The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America and Valencia and devoured them.

The draw was multifaceted. We don't seem to talk about it a lot these days, but to be gay or queer in the 80s, 90s, and even 00s meant you had no choice but to live outside of some nominal consensus on what "society" was. Michelle's writing in these three books painted a picture of a particular sort of queer life on the edges of the bigger cities. A roadmap for a young person trying to sort out exactly who they were and what their options were. Looking for any hint that there might be a place in some sort of queer community for myself.

It was always the lesbian and dyke communities that I was attracted to -- what I read, saw, and experienced of gay men was always more than a little disquieting to my sense of self. It never felt like me, but then wait maybe that's just internalized homophobia? The Kinsey Six boys didn't help things any either.

And of course the cognitive dissonance of being attracted to women's spaces when everyone had told me my entire life I was a boy or a man was equally disquieting.

Flipping back through these books today one thing that stands out is how angry Michelle's young memoir-self is at straight people and men. A similar anger is on display in XXX Live Nude Girls, illustrated by Rent Girl's illustrator Laurenn McCubbin. Looking back at that now I realize how much the expression of that anger made it impossible for me to imagine a place for myself in any women-centered queer community. Or to imagine the possibility that I might, or was allowed to be, a woman.

Looking back -- as exhilarating and intoxicating as these books were -- they were also part of the quiet guilt that settled into my soul around the desire to see myself inside these communities. As I started to figure out what sort of queer person I was going to be I found it easier to fall into the paths of the crossdressers and transvestites that came before me. To move in increasingly queer-friendly but still predominantly cisgender circles. To be a mild ontological gender terrorist.

It brought me no greater pleasure than when I overheard someone say Alan annoys the shit out of me but Alana is fucking hot, or when a friend would say she missed Alana showing up at parties. "Ha ha", I'd think, "I have inhabited the fiction suit that is gender and shown you all how arbitrary and unreal it is! I have vanquished you gender, my work here is done!"

The thing I've learned about your own gender is you can hit it as hard as you can, but it will always come back. Twice as strong and ready to show you how it's something you can't ever really outrun.

I still struggle with the anger towards men in communities of queer and feminist women. It's not TERF culture, exactly, but it's adjacent to it. It's the hammer TERFs use against trans folks. And I struggle with it because I can't bring myself to suggest that cisgender women work to make peace with it and not let it dominate their lives. I still feel like I don't have that right. I don't know how to reconcile the coping mechanism that cis-women have developed for themselves when some of those coping mechanisms can be actively harmful to trans women -- both closeted and out. Actively harmful to myself.

You don't need to tell me that's internalized TERF bullshit because I know it's internalized TERF bullshit. But it's still there. There's nothing more early transition than knowing something in your head but struggling to find ways to reconcile that with your heart, or with your fears.

Epilogue One

I turned 40 in 2015 and it was time for some changes. I had carved out a weird life for myself and the edges of that life were starting to fray.

My days of being an ontological gender terrorist had petered out in my late 30s -- the venues for those sorts of shenanigans had dried up and I had reached the limits of what drag, kink, random hookups, and other duel role gender performance could bring me. Unfortunately, the self-medication of my dissociation via alcohol had not petered out and I was starting to notice the negative effects on my health that daily drinking brought. My floating on the edges of poly communities for human companionship without deeper commitments (I think the kids call this solo polyamory?) was starting to wear thin. The weird independent career I'd pieced together was falling apart as markets changed.

In the next year I'd get my drinking under control, romantically reunite with a partner I'm still with to this day, and give up my independent career for a steady job and paycheck. I also told myself my days of gender experimentation were over. That I'd done the things I wanted to.

Sometime in that year I also read Michelle's latest collection of essays, How to Grow Up. There's a passage that's stuck with me.

I'd changed since my twenties. And though some of these changes had been life-altering, enormous enough for me to be very aware of them, many of them were small, subtle, and cumulative. In some ways I still live like a twentysomething, and I sort of prided myself on my youthfulness. But in most ways, I didn't. My ideologies had changed -- no small deal for a person who was once 100 percent ideology-fueled. My hobbies, the things I did for enjoyment had changed. What I did and didn't do to my body had changed. My income had changed, and perhaps as a result, so had my style, my taste. What I thought was acceptable or unacceptable behavior had changed. My friends had changes (my lovers, not so much). How I expressed myself had changed. I was not the person I was when I was twenty-five, and living with a bunch of twenty-something was sometimes-fascinating proof of this.

If the chaotic women portrayed in those early memoir novels could grow up a little and start to find some peace for herself and move forward maybe I could too.

Epilogue 2

In the end my gender came for me, chipped away, and finally worked me over with baseball bats until I saw the light at the center of myself. As I've been filling in the gaps of my own history, I came across Michelle's 2003 account of her stay at Camp Trans, published in the Believer Magazine. Transmissions from Camp Trans.

It's odd I can't recall ever reading this. All my googling of Michelle Tea, of being the sort of literary pretentious person who buys The Believer from time to time, etc. Or maybe I did see it, but the guards at my closet doors turned it away before I had a chance to read or remember it.

As I read through it now in 2023 I wonder what would have happened if this was the first bit of Michelle's writing that I encountered in the world. Someone a little bit older, humbled at her own misunderstanding/discomfort with trans people, reconciling the cruelty of the Mitchfest transfem exclusion policy with her own love of the things she'd seen at that festival. If I'd first read the name Julia Serano twenty years before I actually did. If I'd learned and believed that some women have a penis and some men don't, or read accounts of the cruelly some women from Mitchfest showed the women at Camp Trans.

I try not to fall into the sliding doors trap, but how different would my path have been if I had heard some of the loud clear voices saying it was OK to be trans?

#terf #Michelle Tea #transfem #trans

[zettmonte]

#eazk #black wave #michelle tea #z

[kindledspiritsbooks]

My Month in Books: June and July 2022

My Month in Books: June and July 2022

Nothing But the Truth: Stories of Crime, Guilt and the Loss of Innocence by The Secret Barrister The Secret Barrister is one of my very favourite legal commentators but the only drawback to their writing is that it can sometimes seem not particularly accessible to the average person. Given that I am personally a huge criminal justice nerd, this isn’t really a problem for me but I often think…

View On WordPress

#1984 #ARC #barbara trapido #book recommendation #book review #books #brother of the more famous jack #burning questions #comic books #douglas stuart #dystopia #essays #fantasy #fiction #george orwell #just like home #margaret atwood #memoir #michelle tea #modern tarot #n.k. jemisin #neil gaiman #netgalley #non-fiction #nothing but the truth #percy jackson and the lightning thief #rachel thompson #reading #rick riordan #rough

[librarycards]

Sometimes the shittiest, most oppressive thing about being a girl is how good you’re supposed to be all the time. And sometimes that feeling of an enforced, expected goodness can come from feminism. The thing about being a poet, a writer, an artist, is, you can’t be good. You shouldn’t have to be good. You should, for the sake of your art, your soul, and your life, go through significant periods of time where you are defying many notions of goodness. As female artists, we required the same opportunities to fuck up and get fucked up as dudes have always had and been forgiven for; we needed access to the same hard road of trial and error our male peers and literary inspirations stumbled down. We needed the right to ruin our lives and crawl out from the wreckage, maybe wiser. We needed the right to start a stupid brawl and emerge victorious or with a black eye. We needed to cheat on our lovers and quit our jobs. We definitely needed to shoplift. We weren’t everyone’s role models, but if we were yours you’d know it.

Michelle Tea, Against Memoir [emphasis mine].

#michelle tea #readings #words #mine #writing #misogyny

[reportwire]

Drag story hour hosts, under attack, dig in their heels

Drag story hour hosts, under attack, dig in their heels

SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters pray outside a library in New York City as Flame, a drag queen sporting a bright wig and a red gown, entertains the children inside by singing the ABCs, leading a coloring activity and reading books about how it’s OK to be different. Outside Chicago, protesters harass parents attending storytime with their children and proclaim that the staff operating the event came…

View On WordPress

#California #education #Gays and lesbians #General news #Government and politics #Libraries #Lifestyle #Michelle Tea #New Yor #New York #North America #Parenting #Reading #Recreation and leisure #Relationships #San Francisco #Social affairs #United States

[wandered-rose]

ೀ Floral teacups for spring | Instagram

#girly #pink #floral #shabby chic #pink vintage #grandmacore #girlcore #coquette #dollete #girlblog #girlblogging #Michelle's love letters #tj maxx finds #spring #tea party #tea cups

[jyou-no-sonoko19]

#Michelle Gomez #Doom Patrol #doom patrol spoilers #Laura De Mille #Madame Rouge #The way she divided her self-assessment into three made me think of this #Oh Laura... #I had hoped for a couple seconds that that was tea #before she made it very clear that she keeps vodka as a water substitute #no wonder she's so extra depressed :| #I'm a fan of this cute outfit btw #do wonder when she put it on tho #since last we saw she was napping in the fancy funeral outfit

[discoursets]

november reads. 🪶

#dark academia #light academia #political science #poli sci #studyblr #booklr #hannah arendt #michel foucault #antique watch #old books #books and tea #western political thought #reading #aesthetic #studyblog #bookblog

[fancyschmancyopinions]

MICHELLE YEOH at the 2023 BAFTA Tea Party on January 14th 2023 wearing OFF-WHITE

#michelle yeoh #off white #bafta #actress #gorgeous #madame morrible #wicked movie #everything everywhere all at once #bafta tea party #love #style #wicked #fashion #beautiful #celebs #celebrities #celebrity #evelyn wang #crazy rich asians #shang chi #fashion journalism #guardians of the galaxy #pretty #crouching tiger hidden dragon #celebrity style #fancyschmancy #beauty #makeup #red carpet #celebrity fashion

[ulenk]

Left to right: green tea after infusion times from 1 to 3 minutes.

#green tea #Michelle Francl

[elina231211]

Tilrey dream casting

To answer a question that's been plaguing me forever: is there any actor beautiful enough to play Tilrey in ColdColdHeart's stunning Oslov series? May I humbly present an option: 28yr old Brazilian artsy and prolific mlm-role actor Michel Joelsas 🥵

Granted poor guy looks a bit too happy, and he's a lil older Tilrey here than the Malsha years (all pics age 21-28, except the last one at 18 when he was on a teen show), but damn! I could see the Councillors not giving this up and Gersha instantly losing his mind & throwing his near-celibacy out the window @welcome-to-oslov

(For the record, we consider him blond in Brazil 😂🔥)

#Tilrey #welcome-to-oslov #The Key to Oslov #ao3 #All Kinds of Broken #A Serviceable Boy #The Trip to Thurskein #Sleeping Arrangements #The Slap #Asked and Answered #It's Her Party #Tea and Other Stuff #oslov dreamcasting #m/m romance #dream casting #twink #Michel Joelsas #mlm fiction