lower east side librarian

Like lots of people who watched the Summer (for the northern hemisphere, anyway) Olympics, I was immediately enamored by Gabby Douglas. She's so talented! Pretty! And her being Black in a sport disproportionately dominated by White athletes, at least per this USA Gymnastics Diversity Study is part of her appeal, especially considering how biased the media coverage was. Consider that Jordyn Weiber was the girl-to-beat going in, but Douglas is the one who won the Olympic trials.

A.j.'s call for contributions to her Six Categories zine went more or less like this:

In the beginning of the novel Microserfs, Douglas Coupland has each of his characters list their dream Jeopardy! categories, fields of expertise such as "Career anxieties," "Cats," "Psychotic loser friends," and "Macintosh products." I can’t remember much else from this nearly twenty-year old novel, but these character "introductions" remain stuck in a shadowy corner of my memory. I’ve mentally made lists of my ideal Jeopardy! boards, with categories like "The Simpsons, Seasons 1 to 8" and “Postage” and "Job Dissatisfaction."

It's your turn to list your six ideal Jeopardy! categories that showcase your unique knowledge, quirks, neuroses, talents, habits, whatever.

Cartoonist Ellen Forney is completely forthcoming in her account of how she coped with getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and accepting that she'd have to be on meds the rest of her life. Aside from her frustrations with her highs and lows and the drugs that often failed to smooth them out, the central thesis of Forney's graphic novel style memoir is her fear that medication will erase her artistic talent and identity.

This is another book I wished I'd enjoyed more, as I did Griest's previous memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana. After having explored cultures foreign to her own, Griest decides to spend a year in Mexico, examining the roots of half of her bloodline. The parts where she explores her Mexican and mixed race identities are compelling, but the reportage in most of the book is less so, at least for me.

I made it well past the hundred page mark, thinking the book would eventually grow on me. The writing and story aren't bad; I just didn't care for the sisters, especially the younger one of the first generation.

Like, wow. Walker can write her pen off. Come for the story of an eleven-year-old-girl's coming of age in a global catastrophe and stay for writing so good it can make the earth spin a little slower to give you time to enjoy it.

Although I love Alvarez's novels, I found her book of essays to be a little meh. In fact, I stopped just before the halfway point. It might be zines' fault. I've read a lot of similar themed essays (about feeling half in one world and half in another, due to immigrant status, mixed race identity or the loss of one's native language) in dozens (hundreds?) of zines.