Curated links.

Favorite Essays I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• I never called her Momma
• The memory picture
• Listening to Taylor Swift in prison
• I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking. Here’s what I learned.

Favorite Flash Fictions I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• My mother is an abandoned kmart, Amy Cipolla Barnes
• Procession, Kathy Fish
• Tilt, Pat Foran
• Spent, Cheryl Pappas

Favorite Short Story I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• Saved, John Fulton

Favorite Writing Advice I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• The best editing advice: read and record your work out loud

Favorite Sentences I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

“It’s so fucking exhausting to be in the year 2023 and see a woman being smeared for drinking alcohol because she’s a mother.” Girl, Get Free

“This kid who doesn’t complain never about pain not once not ever this young man of a kid who never feels sorry for himself not once not ever this darling young one the strongest one I know — the one I lean on, I lean on his strength — he takes a moment for himself he takes a moment to regroup he goes on tilt and he found him some peace yet here I shiver and I simper and I dizzily posit if-thens: If he’s giving up, how am I going to lean on him, lean on his strength?” Tilt, Pat Foran

Etcetera

• The first African American woman to enter a film into the competition at the Venice Film Festival. In 2023.
• The cost of straight hair
• A battle over race engulfed a school district
• The ones who don’t actively do harm, but don’t actively do good, either

Did You Know?

This week, a reader emailed me to ask which Amharic book translated into English I would recommend for reading. Love Unto Crypt, the English translation of Fikir Eske Mekabir, a famous Amharic novel on the love story of two people in two different classes by Haddis Alemayehu, came to mind. Considered a classic of Ethiopian literature, I read this book in its original language maybe ten times. And the English translation one time. I admire Sisay Ayenew for translating Fikir Eske Mekabir, which I think was difficult, because the Amharic and Ge’ez language in Fikir Eske Mekabir, full of proverbs, adages, songs, poems, and ecclesiastical words, was written in a language very specific to context.