Lavish Rebellion [DOT COM]

this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; 

“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, published in The New Yorker LINK

When speaking to my sister about the book’s veracity, she points out something ironic about it: “I feel like the people who were going to do those kinds of drugs, a book wouldn’t have stopped them.” I think she’s right. Sure, there are probably a handful of kids who read Go Ask Alice and vowed to remain drug-free, but the people affected by Sparks’ work the most were not the ostensible audience, but their parents and politicians. A friend of mine told me that their mother, who never cared much about the art they consumed, positively flipped out when she saw a copy of Go Ask Alice in her child’s hands and forbade them to read it. The War on Drugs is like a macrocosmic example of this type of authoritative overreaction. I’m reminded of a line from another diary, this time a fictional one: in Chuck Pahlanuik’s novel Diary, there is a refrain: “What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.”

-‘Go Ask Alice’ Is a Lie. But Bookstores Won’t Stop Selling It. Originally published in Esquire LINK

I sat in front of the computer, wondering what I should do next, now that I was alone. The Victorian novels I had to read for the upcoming semester sat unopened on my desk. I felt it would take too much effort to enter their world that night, to move between Brazil and the United States and then England in the course of a day.

-“Snowstorm” by Bruna Dantas Lobato, published in The New Yorker LINK