Your hold is ready! (1. 30. 25)
Hi everyone. What is there to say? Since the 20th, I –– and many others –– have been in damage control mode, supporting friends and family and comrades of all stripes as we face an uptick in mask-off american fascism that, despite my cynicism and knowledge of history, shocks even me.
While you, I’m sure, are getting more than your share of news and hand-wringing already from outlets whose jobs it is to report and/or hand-wring, I didn’t really know how else to open this newsletter, which is not particularly about reporting minute-by-minute news. To be honest, I’m unsure of a lot of things right now –– whether or not to stay on substack, a “free speech” platform whose unabashed hosting of fascist content has driven many to research other options.
My hesitance is mostly based in the seeming futility of platform-hopping: searching for one that is good or moral enough, only to be disappointed when they inevitably fail. Even BlueSky, for all its improvements, has an ongoing history of silencing Palestinians and targeting the very trans people and/or sex workers who sustained the site in its early days with shadow bans, and yet I –– and others who imagine themselves to be reasonably ethical creatures –– continue to use it. While I did leave twitter –– and in the wake of elon’s nazi salute, I’m certainly glad I did –– that was as much for my own well-being as for my political (and anti-AI) convictions.
Anyway, I’d like you to let me know in the comments or via email what you think about a platform switch, and if it matters to you. In the interest of full disclosure, I’d be keeping my substack account, as there are several newsletters that I read on here that I plan to continue reading. The new service I’d be switching to is called beehiiv, and that wouldn’t require any effort on your part –– I can export all of the emails from here to there. It may take me some time to get ready, but even if a possible switch is a few months down the line, I’m interested to hear what you think.
Fascism, white supremacy, and indeed naziism has been part of u.s. life for as long as these concepts and the u.s. have concurrently existed. I don’t envision this stopping until we do some stuff that, if I explicate on a public platform, will probably get me put on a list. I’m not sure what the role of my platform choices plays in broader resistance yet, but I do know that (as many others have said) this is the time to plug into local, in-person actions, maintain and build new friendships and relationships to sustain you through this time.
If you’re in a position of relative privilege, this is far past time to start intervening in bigoted interactions, especially among your friends and family, and standing up for those targeted in public space. If you have professional expertise, it’s time to use that epistemic advantage to write some op-eds. If you teach, or otherwise work with kids, now is the time to disobey demands on behalf of "parents’ rights”-loving authoritarians.
For everyone, this is the time to stay alive, to not comply in advance or at all. We will outlive them.
General updates:
Submissions to manywor(l)ds close tomorrow, and our next issue is set to publish on February 15!
I’ll be chatting about Failure to Comply with my dissertation chair, Dr. Colin Milburn, at a UC Davis-hosted event *this evening* at 4 Pacific/7 Eastern. You can join via Zoom here. If you’re in/near Davis, you can get a copy at the UC Davis Bookstore or at The Avid Reader!
In publicity news, I recently had an interview published on Archer with Keene Short about Failure to Comply, Madness, and abolition; Cassandra Whitaker also dropped a generous review of the book on Vagabond City Lit.
My Goodreads overhaul is going slowly, but well! I’m down in the 2200 TBR range (compared to close to 3000 before the overhaul began). In addition, I’m doing great on my Fat Books resolution (as you’ll see in my book recommendations for this month. At the link is my fat books 2025 Goodreads shelf, where I save my 2025 reads that are 1) not graphic/multimedia novels, but traditional text, and 2) 400 pages minimum.
Lastly, and as always, self-promo. Add Failure to Comply [this link leads to the ebook version!] on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my Bookshop affiliate page, where each of your orders gives me a dollar.
Now, onto the recommendations!
Today’s Recs:
Fiction & Nonfiction:
Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea
Jeff Vandermeer, Absolution
James Baldwin, No Name in the Street
S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood
S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Poetry, Academic, Stage, Unclassifiable:
Diamond Forde, Mother Body
Jackie Wang, Carceral Capitalism
Cabaret (1993) with Alan Cumming and Jane Horrocks (aka the best version).
Poetry & Prose & In-Between:
Clarise Lispector, tr. Rachel Klein, Clandestine Happiness (1971; 2013)
Isabel J Kim, Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole (2024)
Sarah Pinsker, Two Truths and a Lie (2020)
brandon brown, Faultline (2024)
Aaron Kreuter, Tasmanian Shores (2024)
Essays and Articles:
Kit Schluter, interviewed by Katie Ebbitt for BOMB Magazine (2024)
Io Dodds, ‘Never ask permission’: How two trans women ran a legendary underground surgical clinic in a rural tractor barn (2022).
My Recent Work:
Re-upping a relevant, older story: Salvation in Santa Fe Writer’s Project
Goodbye Forever Party (print) in Filling Station
You May Feel Odd or Different All Day in The Offing
nude / poem / with (top : scar) in where meadows
Every Trans Suicide is State-Sanctioned Murder in Protean Magazine
Three Micros in X-RAY Lit
Loving Renee Back in The Rumpus
This event may contain singing / accompanying craft essay in Half Mystic
POEM IN WHICH I READ TRANS in JAKE Magazine, *nominated for Best of the Net*!
My Reflection Has Been Tricky Lately in JAKE Magazine
dyke (genealogy) / alt: a letter to my grandfather in this first year of silence in Canthius *Priscilla Uppal Memorial Prize for Poetry honorable mention*
Mad Studies in khōréō.
Burrito Texts: Mel Baggs and the Language of Crip Life in Review of Disability Studies (academic).
port-man-toes: the aroace - queercrip - transmad - neuroqueer erotics of digital collaboration with ulysses/constance bougie in Kairos (academic?!?)
Find my chapbooks on my website and my Goodreads author page! Contact me for PDF requests.
That’s all for now! Again, feel free to let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more of, and if you have any recommendations of your own!
That Omelas story is excellent. Thanks for all the great links. I personally don't want to deal with yet another newsletter platform, but I guess I will cope if you switch.