Reframing

 Last week I heard a report on NPR about TCM Reframed, a new series that looks at old movies to discuss why they may be  problematic through a modern lens – or in many cases, why they may have always been problematic. For example, last summer, we watched Grease with our kids and found just as many cringe-worthy as sing-along moments. You may remember this article that Molly Ringwald wrote about watching her own movies with her daughter post #metoo.

As readers, we may find this same experience in looking back at “classics.” Luckily, many authors have done the difficult work for us of reframing many of these stories in ways that are more inclusive and representative.  

Remember the reading challenge? Recently I found two examples through challenge 17 and challenge 8 of classic tales retold.

Roman and Jewel by Dana L. Davis

Fans of Hamilton will revel in the behind-the-scenes drama of a modern spin on Romeo and Juliet. Jerzie Jhames receives her big break when she’s cast as an understudy in a new Broadway musical. Her talent soon catches the attention of the leading man and sparks simmer. When a video of the star’s less than stellar performance goes viral, Jerzie must decide if she’s going to stand by her man or in the spotlight.

 Peter Darling by Austin Chant

“Then his eyes traipsed back to the stranger’s face, to his callous, boyish grin, and Hook’s stomach dropped with sudden revelation.

“You.”

Peter Pan grinned at him.

“Me.”

After many years away, Peter has returned to Neverland. He reconnects with the Lost Boys and is eager to rekindle the war with his nemesis Hook. But as the violence escalates, he begins to remember his first trip out of the nursery window, when he was named Wendy. As the story unfolds, Hook and Peter develop an uneasy alliance which leads to revelation, and eventually release, from a fictional world into a real one.

Whereas

You may have noticed on your social media feed that May 5 is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. While looking into the history of this, I discovered another news item I missed from April. A unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been created to investigate murdered and missing Native Americans. The unit was recently announced by the first Native American cabinet secretary, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. On a related note, you might listen to this 2020 episode of TAL, featuring a story about Lissa Yellow Bird, who has been investigating missing persons from her community since 2016.

Violence against native American peoples is nothing new in our history. But whether it's taught in our history classes is another matter. One text we might turn to is Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. Through poetry and prose, she offers her lament for 38 Dakota men who were ordered to execution by hanging by President Lincoln. She also responds to a 2009 apology offered by the US government which was buried in the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act. She discusses her response and other reflections on mothering, trusting, and writing in an especially gripping episode of On Being.

"I’m certain
that certain kinds of talk only = pain
excusing myself I paddle deep
in high grass waves I’m safer
outdoors than in /
in those heady grasses the mouth loosens confesses:
I don’t trust nobody but the land I said”
―Layli Long Soldier, Whereas

Buy more books

So it turns out the last Saturday of April is Independent Bookstore Day. Consider supporting your local bookseller or these Black-owned bookstores across the country. If you live in the Seattle area, you can click here for details about Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. Buy a book (or 10)!

I've been on a YA kick lately. Authors I'll be looking for:

Lev Grossman

Leah Johnson 

Adib Khorram 

Jennifer Mathieu (If you liked Moxie, check out this list) 

Angie Thomas 

What's on your shopping list?

good friday

To provide context for today’s (re)post I invite you to listen to this excerpt from This American Life.

Through collage and watercolor illustrations by Bryan Collier, Martin’s Big Words tells the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. Stained glass windows, church steeples, and the American flag illustrate Martin’s message that “everyone can be great.” We read of bus boycotts, marches, bomb threats, accolades, and finally the assassination. A concise history of the great man’s life and work that will have you flipping back through the pages even after your listener has drifted off to sleep.

Martin’s Big Words Words by Doreen Rappaport and Pictures by Bryan Collier

No One is Watching

“The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult…The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.” – Zora Neale Hurston

So reads the epigraph of When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

Sydney has agreed to put together a neighborhood tour for the annual Gifford Place block party in Brooklyn. After a difficult divorce, she’s back at home, trying to put her mother’s affairs in order. Finding respite from the heat on her front stoop, she begins noticing all the new neighbors who have displaced the familiar faces she grew up with.

One of those new faces is Theo. He’s living with his ex-girlfriend while they remodel the unit they purchased. He meets Sydney at a neighborhood meeting and volunteers to help her research for the tour. Not only do they begin discovering past injustices perpetrated by white people, but they uncover the sinister plot that is playing out in the present.

Cole aptly portrays the evil of gentrification and white privilege. As events unfold, the horror is not in realizing this would be plausible, but that this is real. 

Love Lettering

Second only to bookstores, stationers are my other happy place. Whether I’m in Ann Arbor or Wenatchee, Dallas or Seattle, I can spend hours perusing greeting cards, pencil bags, and crafty accessories. If I’m stuck waiting somewhere in between books, I simply search for “bullet journal” on Pinterest and the minutes fly by. Therefore, I was delighted to come across a novel of letters in Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn. After all the only thing more romantic than a love letter is the ink and paper with which it was crafted.

Graphic artist Meg has started to make a name for herself in designing custom planners and wedding invitations. She’s just hit a wall in her creative output when a former client reenters her life. Reid, a numbers guy, wants to know how she knew his previous  relationship would fail -due to a cleverly hidden message inked into the invites. After he disparages both her craft and her beloved adopted city, Reid compels Meg to show him what she loves about both. Together they explore various neighborhoods with a new eye on finding typefaces that play against type. Sharing these snapshots, as you might have guessed, also helps them see their friendship from a different angle. This light-hearted romance will make you smile. And may even have you hunting for that calligraphy book you bought that one time.  

"What good is an ark to a fish?"

Although it’s been several weeks since I read Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, the final section has stuck with me. Now it almost seems like a premonition of the events of the past week in my home state:

“I pad around my house in the morning, turning on faucets and lights to assure myself that the apocalypse is still self-contained over a thousand miles away at my mother’s doorstep.”

Although power is slowly being restored, many Texans are still having to boil water, if they have water, for the next several days if not weeks. Once again a failure of leadership has neighbor helping neighbor, breweries distributing water, and grocery store chains giving away food.

In Ford’s novel, the events leading up to the apocalypse begin in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1974. Justine, or Teeny, is growing up in a household of women, with her sisters, mother and grandmother. Despite the disapproval of her family’s conservative church, she contacts her father, since remarried, who offers to pick her up for a visit: “Life was spiritual warfare, and Six Flags would be no exception.” A date with a local boy leaves her pregnant, and Reney enters the world.

As the story progresses, we see Reney’s self-sufficiency emerge even has she holds a similar longing for a father figure. When Justine meets a jockey from Texas, Pitch offers the two a chance at a new start on his family’s ranch. However, the family pull is strong, and the women don’t completely sever ties with Justine’s mother. When Reney finds herself in an abusive relationship, she finally gets the courage to cut those ties with the knife of higher education.

Ultimately, it’s the end times that will pull her back.