Welcome back, Emmanuel! It’s been a crazy past few years, but we’ve made it back to campus for something resembling a normal senior year. But before all the essays and internships and other stressors pile up, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the things that brought me joy over the break. Without further ado…
Books
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
This one’s a favorite that I return to every couple of years, and there’s always something new for me. Written by Dodie Smith (yes, the same lady who wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians), this book is written as though it is the journal of the sharp-witted Cassandra in 1930s rural England. Cassandra is determined to make a writer of herself as she details the crazy goings-on in her family. Even if a lifetime separates me from Cassandra, I still see so much of her in myself; watching her come of age and find her place in the world has helped me gather strength again and again in my life. I love the time period of the book (too late for a Jane Austen-style romance but not quite in the modern age either), I love the romance heroine wannabe sister Rose, the flamboyant but loving stepmother Topaz, and the love triangle that’s intermittently adorable and heartbreaking. I Capture the Castle is one of my favorite books of all time, and one that I’ll almost definitely reread sooner rather than later.
Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms by Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill
Over the summer, I read a lot of fantasy books and fairy tale adaptations. I have only included a handful in the interest of time (for the record, I still want to shout out Blanca and Roja, Spindle’s End, What is Not Yours is Not Yours, The Golem and the Jinni, Kate Crackernuts, among others), so to represent this whole segment of my reading, I chose this piece of fairy tale nonfiction. Edited by Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill, this anthology of essays looks beyond the heterosexual happily ever afters we’re taught to seek out in fairy tales, and finds vast potential for queer readings in these stories. Some of these are stories we all know (Margaret R. Yocom dives into the gender presentation at work in “Cinderella” and “Furry-Pelts”, while Catherine Tosenberger has a particularly moving take on “Bluebeard” and “Fitcher’s Bird”), and some them I’d never heard of until reading (Kay Turner reinterprets “Frau Trude” as a lesbian love story for the ages, and I would give anything to see a full movie version of Elliot Gordon Mercer’s “The Grave Mound”). These essays all affirm that folklore belongs to the world and everyone in it. And even if it isn’t that deep, at least it demonstrates that you can write academically without being lifeless, pretentious, and boring despite what professors want you to believe.
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Okay, now we’re moving into books that were actually published this year, and coincidentally, continues our theme of queering folklore and mythology. Marvel didn’t include this in the Loki show, but in the Norse myths, Loki is the father of Hel, Jormungandr, and Fenrir, three powerful monster-gods who are destined to someday end the world. This is the story of Angrboda, mother of the monsters, as she struggles to rediscover herself after a trauma and protect her family in a world of gods, magic, shifting alliances, and nuanced takes about living under a patriarchal system in a very phallocentric mythology. I freely admit that I don’t devote much energy to Norse mythology adaptations (unless Taika Waititi is in the director’s chair), but everyone in the book feels so human and alive that you can see why these characters have resonated for millennia. Since it’s a debut novel in a so-called “low” genre, The Witch’s Heart is unlikely to wind up on many “Best Books of the Year” lists, but all the same, if these ideas have any appeal to you, I heart-ily recommend it.
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Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Shifting gears again from a debut novel unlikely to crack the “best of the year” lists to a novel by an established author already on several “Best of 2021” lists. Klara is a science fiction story with powerful ideas about how we treat the planet and each other in pursuit of “progress”. I first came across Ishiguro in high school when Never Let Me Go was an assigned reading, and this book about a robot girl taken in by a human family returns to many of those same chords about free will, mortality, and belief guaranteed to break your heart all over again. Seeing the world through Klara’s eyes is such a quietly tragic delight. She is perceptive and kind and full of a life she can never fully realize. Even if the book is ultimately aiming for something more nuanced, time and again I kept wanting to drag Klara off the page and tell her that she is loved, and that is more than enough to make her real.
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
Octavia Butler was one of the best science fiction writers of all time. Full stop. While I can’t sing their praises here because this is supposed to be a summer article, I love every word of Kindred, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents (even if the middle chapters are hard to stomach). I don’t feel confident issuing a judgment on the Patternist series, having only read Wild Seed, but that too is a beautiful little book with a lot of ideas that I can’t wait to see her develop in the rest of the series, and I could return to that dolphin chapter every day. For the final book I read this summer (as in, I put it down almost immediately before driving back to Boston for move-in day), I chose Butler’s swan song before she died in 2006. The story revolves around Shori, an amnesiac orphan from a vampire-like species called the Ina, who bears the complicated distinction of being the first of her kind to be Black. As with any good vampire story, there’s a great mix of sensuality and intrigue with the uncanny and upsetting, coupled with Butler’s incendiary social commentary that takes aim at slavery, corruption in the justice system, policing of bi women’s sexuality, and white liberals who insist that they can’t possibly be racist. It is painful that this was Butler’s last book, because she clearly had so much on her mind and so much more she could have shared with the world. And besides, if you need a “sexy blood-drinker” story, it’s definitely an improvement over Twilight.
Movies
In the Heights (dir. John Chu)
For the movie section, I’m sticking only with films that actually came out this year, mostly in the interest of time. So let’s start with a big, loud, toe-tapping musical that deserved to do so much better at the box office. In the Heights was the Broadway debut of one Lin-Manuel Miranda, the story of a few days in the mostly-Latinx Washington Heights neighborhood in NYC as characters deal with racism, poverty, gentrification, and finding their purpose in life. That sounds like a downer, and yes it definitely has some tear-jerking beats, but above all, the whole film is just dripping with hope and optimism that we can make the world a better place, all set to some of the catchiest music I’ve ever heard. The film isn’t above criticism; in fact, it’s often a little too sunny that it sometimes reads as cloying, and several Afro-Latina critics have called out the film for its marginalizing of dark-skinned Latinx. Still, if you can compartmentalize the issues, there’s still a lot to love about this movie. And besides, Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of the biggest stars in the world right now; he’ll definitely get the chance to try again.
Summer of Soul; or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised (dir. Questlove)
In 1969, a series of music festivals were held in Harlem, but annoyingly (if not surprisingly), the recordings of the historic moment in music history sat in a vault for decades. Thank Questlove for bringing it to light now, because there’s so much to learn about this moment in history from a place that’s all too often silenced. On top of the interviews and insights and fun anecdotes, Questlove reverently lets the highlights play out as some of the greatest musicians of the era perform: Mahalia Jackson in a powerful “passing the torch moment” with Mavis Staples, a young Gladys Knight leading her Pips, Sly and the Family Stone developing funk as we know it in real time, and countless others. An immediate recommendation for any music lover, and the most fun I had at the movies in years.
The Green Knight (dir. David Lowery)
By now you’re likely noticing a theme that I keep bringing up weird and colorful reinterpretations of classic folklore, with the fairy tale speedrun, Norse myths, and vampires. So here’s one more with a beautifully filmed rendition of the poem we all read in eleventh grade, about Sir Gawain’s encounter with the mysterious Green Knight. The love of my life, Dev Patel, gives the best performance of his career as Gawain. Backing him up is an incredible supporting cast that includes Erin Kellyman, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choundhury, and Ralph Ineson. These amazing actors all get moments to shine as unique versions of the timeless characters that straddle the line between the thoughtful and meditative to the downright bonkers. But the most powerful supporting performance is the landscape itself. It genuinely feels like you’ve wandered into the age of magic, tapping into the subtext of the poem about our relationship to the land and our so-called “power” over it (another recurring idea in the things I liked this summer, go figure). The film is boldly unique and full of challenging, thematically-rich narrative calls all the way up to its barn-burner of a finale. Months later, I ask myself, “Did that movie actually work?” and then follow it up with “How much does that actually matter?” That is the mark of an impactful film, and one that I hope the Academy and so on remember when it’s time to hand out those little statues.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (dir. Destin Daniel Cretton)
Rounding out the movie lineup is the inevitable Marvel blockbuster. I’m a sucker for superheroes, but this studio’s output has been a little mixed lately. I’ve been deliberately avoiding most Marvel things until they get to the characters I care about (i.e. Ms. Marvel, Echo, She-Hulk, and anything Coogler- or Waititi-related). As much fun as WandaVision was, I can’t help but feel that it didn’t do enough with the big ideas it raised (not to mention how it horrifyingly reduced Monica Rambeau, one of the all-time great Black superheroines, to a glorified sidekick). So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Shang-Chi, based on an obscure comic book character from the 1970s retooled into a fun, exciting, and surprisingly heartfelt kung fu/superhero/family drama movie. Simu Liu plays our hero, a master martial artist who must confront his villainous father Xu Wenwu to stop him from…well, that’s a spoiler. This movie has some of the best action and fight scenes in the entire mega-franchise, like a magical tai chi fight between Wenwu and his lady love, Ying Li, and a kung-fu knockout on a runaway bus. But like all the best Marvel movies, it’s less about the CGI McGuffins and superhero punch-em-ups; it’s about the characters, and this one has some great ones. Special mention has to go to Tony Leung, a Hong Kong superstar making his English-language debut as Wenwu, who is so beautifully expressive as Marvel’s most compelling and human villain since at least Killmonger. I can’t wait to see these characters again, which is ultimately the best thing to hope for in any movie franchise.
TV/Streaming
Sweet Tooth
Based on a comic series I’ve heard of but never actually read, Sweet Tooth is the story of a boy named Gus searching for his mother in the post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest. A mysterious plague has ravaged the world, the government has all but collapsed, and, most strangely, all children are born as human/animal hybrids. From what I know about the comic, it has a very dark and cynical take on what will become of humans after the world ends. But this show eagerly refutes all of that for a warm, gentle show that spotlights hope, perseverance, and our capacity to become better versions of ourselves. I absolutely love this world and these characters and I can’t wait for the next season.
Reservation Dogs
Created by Taika Waititi and Stephen Harjo, Reservation Dogs represents a milestone in representation for Native Americans on TV. The story follows a quartet of teens living on a reservation in Oklahoma, getting into trouble and launching schemes to hopefully leave their home behind for the excitement of California. The immediate comparison I latched onto was Parks and Rec. While in terms of characters and premise they are nothing alike, but in spirit it’s a sitcom about wacky, colorful characters in a small, close-knit community, but all the shenanigans are rooted in strong acting that gives each character a heartfelt humanity. The darker aspects of rural poverty and the fear of a directionless life hang over the show, but so does the excitement of finding your place in the world. There’s beauty, fun, and even magic in places where we’ve been taught to see only desolation and loss. This is a huge step forward for Indigenous representation, and here’s to hoping that more will follow suit.
The Owl House
Okay, yes, I’ll admit it, this is a children’s cartoon that airs on Disney Channel. And I, an adult woman, am announcing to the Internet that it was one of the best things I watched this summer. Drawing on my by-now-obvious love for the genre fiction, The Owl House follows an excitable Kamala Khan-esque teen named Luz Noceda who stumbles across a portal to the Boiling Isles, an otherworld of witches and demons. She’s taken in by the Eda the Owl Lady, an eccentric witch who is a recurring thorn in the side of the maybe-evil, maybe-just-misunderstood Emperor. What follows is part Harry Potter, part Gravity Falls, a lot of assorted anime, and wholly its own. While I’m sure we’re all sick of the endless parade of Disney’s “first gay whatever”, The Owl House actually kept that promise. Luz is proudly bisexual (even if they can’t actually say the word “bi”, because Disney), and she has an adorable enemies-to-lovers arc with the no-nonsense star student at not-Hogwarts, Amity Blight. And recently, the show has introduced the non-binary character Rain, an on-off love interest for Eda. Sadly, this show’s run is coming to an end next season, but I really like what they’ve done with this show and I’m hoping for good things for all people involved moving forward.
The Good Place
Okay, this one’s a bit of a cheat, but I couldn’t not include it if I was to honestly call this a list of shows that made me happy this summer. I watched this one on Netflix with my dad and my sister, who hadn’t seen it yet. Meanwhile, I’d watched it religiously (heh) over the course of its run, so seeing it through fresh eyes made me fall in love with it all over again. Sure, once you know the twists and jokes, most of the fun comes from watching others react to them, but in a fitting echo of the show’s key themes, that’s the whole point. We become better people by getting to know and see the best in one another. Every episode, my sister would laugh uncomfortably about how much of Eleanor she saw in herself, and my father and I would get into half-serious debates about the philosophical lesson of the day. Sure, I knew the plot and the jokes, but seeing it through fresh eyes took the whole experience and made it new again.
Podcasts
You Must Remember This: Gossip Girls
You Must Remember This is a nonfiction series about the history of Hollywood. Thoroughly researched and impeccably produced, it’s an utter delight to get swept up in decades-old drama and learn more about filmmaking and 20th century history. YMRT’s latest season gave listeners a nine-episode walking tour of the lives of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, two of the most powerful women in the world of entertainment journalism. Basically everything we know about “behind the scenes” and the insane world of celebrity gossip began with these two women, struggling single mothers who found their way in a world that had no interest in women’s success. But writer and host Karina Longworth has no interest in painting a rosy narrative of their journeys: they were small-minded, hatefully racist, and eager to turn their power against those whom they deemed as against them or the nebulous concept of America. With enough drama to fuel a TV miniseries and a keen eye for its modern-day echoes, this is creative nonfiction podcasting at its best.
To Introduce Our Guest Star
As most of you know by now, I’m a lifelong fan of the Muppets. So, should I have put the cancelled-too-soon Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance or the finally-on-Disney Plus Muppet Show in the TV categories? Given Kermit Culture the spot that eventually went to Transgressive Tales? No, the prize had to go to this delightful podcast from Muppet fan site ToughPigs.com, where Muppet fans Jarrod Fairclough and Joe Hennes interview people from all corners of the Henson empire in ten episodes. The Muppet fanbase is a relatively small community relative to the likes of Marvel or Star Wars. As such, these people often know each other going in, they already know all the most famous behind-the-scenes stories, forcing them to talk about something new each time. And since the guests aren’t here to promote anything, they can speak freely and honestly about what they like and where they have gripes with how the Muppets have been managed as a brand over the past few years (Kirk Thatcher in particular pulls no punches). It’s got that mix of sincerity and irreverence that powers all the best Muppet projects, and I’m hoping for more in the future.
MusicalSplaining
Spearheaded by one of my favorite YouTubers, Lindsay Ellis, the pitch of this podcast is gold: two friends watch musicals together, and one of them (Ellis) must ‘splain them to Kaveh Taherian, who has no interest in musicals. When the show began in early 2020, they were going out to see stage shows, but that had to be adapted for the pandemic. So with few exceptions, MusicalSplaining now reviews movie musicals, with eclectic results. Are you up for a surprisingly passionate defense of Xanadu? Opinions on In the Heights from a person who used to live there? A deep dive into whatever the heck Disney’s made-for-TV Descendants movies are? Lindsay and Kaveh have you covered! These two are clearly having fun together even as they rib at the other’s confusing tastes, which has made it a highlight for me in the “two people watch a thing and half-review it, half joke around” subgenre of podcasts.
Of Slippers and Spindles
Speaking of this particular podcast subgenre, Of Slippers and Spindles is a series where two friends discuss adaptations of famous fairy tales, at a rough rate of one story per month. They give a loose overview of the story’s origins starting with Perrault, the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, discuss some common interpretations of the stories as writ, and then talk about what they want from retellings that make these short children’s stories into full-fledged literary and filmic narratives. Their coverage ranges from YA novels to Disney’s movies to colorful foreign films from the former USSR and Israel, reviewing each one’s merits as its own story and as an adaptation. Then at the end of the month, the two hosts discuss how they’d like to adapt the story in their own writing. Admittedly, this one isn’t as deep as I’d like it to be, since their readings are often very surface-level and they rarely discuss the more nuanced folkloric origins of any given story. And even they have admitted that their coverage skews mainstream, white, and straight, with Cinderella 1997, Beast by Donna Jo Napoli, The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember, and Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bradhourst as their only episodes spotlighting protagonists of color or LGBTQ+ heroes. Still, it’s a lot of fun to listen to these two pals have a good time talking about something they both clearly love, and you can’t help but get caught up in the joy of it.
Octavia’s Parables
And finally, we return to Octavia Butler’s writings with a chapter-by-chapter review/reflection series of her seminal Earthseed duology, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Hosted by Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown (all lowercase), a duo of activists, artists, and fans who give close readings of each chapter interspersed with 21st-century analysis, wrapping up with a series of questions about the pertinent themes raised by each chapter, from how to be in right relationship with the space you are in and what it takes to be a “shaper” of the world instead of a passive observer. Some of the most powerful moments come from when the two hosts talk about their pasts in community organizing, and the lessons that Lauren Oya Olamina offers about strategies to implement in pursuit of justice. And, while this is less immediately relevant, each episode begins and ends with an excerpt from Reagon’s opera adaptation of Parable of the Sower, which is the basis for her current project based right here in Boston as part of her artist residency at Emerson: Parable Path Boston. As I count down the days until season three (centered on Wild Seed; as good a signal as any to finally read the rest of the rest of the Patternist books), I have plenty to contemplate about how I can partner with change and do my part for the world.
And those were the highlights of my summer. If any of these sound like a good time, and you can find a place for them in the roar of academic life, I eagerly recommend them. I hope you all have as much fun with them as I did.