Cruel compendium #27

Mourning, once again

Mar 23, 2021

I’m Jillian Anthony, and this is Cruel Summer Book Club, a newsletter about change, heartbreak and healing. In the Cruel Compendium I send out links to everything I’m reading, listening to and thinking about. ICYMI, last week I wrote about letting go of asking “Why?”

This week America endured two more mass shootings. Earlier this month Democrats passed two gun control bills focused on expanding background checks for gun buyers. (Tangle has a good explainer on the left and right’s takes on the bills.) 203 out of 211 Republicans in the House voted against them. I’m so angry.

Today, my heart is with those in Atlanta and Boulder. I’m still processing the news. But I’m remembering Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Yong Ae Yue, and Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz.

Here are some resources and reading on how to fight violence and racism against Asian Americans:

Actions you can take today.
A collection of resources against anti-Asian violence.
A long list of places to donate to support Asian communities. I donated to the AAPI journalists’ therapy relief fund and Stop AAPI Hate.
R.O. Kwon’s “Letter to my fellow Asian women whose hearts are still breaking.”
Jay Caspian Kang on naming this violence.
Read up on how to speak out against racism when you see and hear it; I consider this one of my greatest anti-racist responsibilities as a white ally.

In August, a fatal shooting occurred on my Brooklyn corner while I was home. I wrote about that experience, police violence, and my country’s (Republicans’) refusal to change and deal with white terrorists here. I wrote then:

“I can’t say I feel much hope when it comes to curbing gun violence in my country. But I know with certainty that I will vote for the leaders and laws that are not complicit in the senseless, preventable deaths of more innocent Americans. I won’t look the other way.”

I’m reading

Walking while Black by Garnette Cadogan

The agony and ecstasy of getting mistaken for cis by Hari Nef

Why I took a vow of celibacy by Paula McLain

7 artists, 75 questions, 1 very bad year

Ask Polly: How to stop trying to be better by Heather Havrilesky

The goal is not to be better and better. The goal, every day, is to simply feel where you are and accept it. What is happiness, after all? Happiness is enjoying yourself as you are right now and connecting to other people as they are. That’s it. You don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to win anyone over. You just have to savor this day.

Hell hath no fury like a man rejected by Jessica Valenti in her newsletter, All in Her Head. Also read: Valenti’s Twitter thread on the online harassment women face, and her piece Following the rules won’t save us. I kept a Twitter thread over a couple of years of all the instances I saw in the news of women killed by men they rejected.

Janese Talton-Jackson, mother to twin girls and a one-year old son, was out at a bar when she turned down a man for a date. He followed her outside and shot her in the chest. Twenty-year old Mollie Tibbets was jogging when a man approached her. She told him to leave her alone, and he stabbed her to death. Even the spate of misogynist mass shootings over the last few years have been perpetrated by men furious that women don’t want them.
That’s what makes rejected men so frightening; women never really know how severe their reaction will be. We do know, however, that the through-line is entitlement.
Men who won’t take ‘no’ as an understandable answer are men who believe they’re owed access to women’s bodies, time and attention.

I’m listening to

My friend Jenny Gorelick started a podcast with fellow comedian Lida Darmian all about my quarantine obsession, Survivor. It’s called The Women’s Alliance and it’s a great time.
My friends David Odyssey and Samantha Stallard explore the astrology of Nora Ephron on David’s podcast, The Luminaries. (I was a guest a year ago!)

A post shared by @watts.place

Obsessions

✅ How to do 50 things
🏠 Julie Klausner’s incredible Manhattan apartment
🗽 I desperately miss long walks in New York City
🎨 Thomas Jackson’s ethereal art
🔗 My friend and journalist Caitlin Dewey writes the wonderful newsletter Links I’d Gchat You If We Were Friends. It’s packed with smart media commentary, excellent weekend reads and dog jokes (so, everything I love). Check it out and subscribe!
🕵️‍♀️ A truly terrifying NYC apartment mystery, parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 (this is the juicy one)
🪴 Pop-up houseplants (h/t Swiss Miss)
👌 What’s your best life hack?
🐙 My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. Reader, I cried.
📉 A February study “found that municipalities where BLM protests have been held experienced as much as a 20 percent decrease in killings by police, resulting in an estimated 300 fewer deaths nationwide in 2014–2019. The occurrence of local protests increased the likelihood of police departments adopting body-worn cameras and community-policing initiatives.”
🧴 Unilever drops the word “normal” from its beauty products
💰 My friend and former financial advisor Stella Gold is offering a course that centers the QTBIPOC experience in navigating the work place called PAY UP: A salary negotiation that centers QTBIPOC. Sign up!