My friend Isabel Yap posted this very beautiful essay on Interfictions: Life is not a shoujo manga"Why is this resonating so strongly with me?" I asked myself. "I never read romance. The closest I ever came to shoujo manga was the few pages of 'Rose of Versailles' printed in Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics ( Read more... )

So, these friends of mine are building a house together. Well, remodeling a house together. They even made a blog for it: The Purple Front DoorAnd because Emily contributed to my mini write-a-thon and asked me to write something about a couple building a home together ("and totally name them Emily and Nathan.") I spent a lot of time reading all the ( Read more... )

Writing a memoir has taught me one thing very clearly ( Read more... )

I care a lot about racial equality. I'm also one of those people who wears a lot of sunscreen, if ya know what I mean. Not to be racist or nothing.

This is not what this post is about, actually, but I really like this article on how we melanin-deprived folks twist ourselves up and get it wrong on race. We say "everyone is equal" and then act ( Read more... )

I want to address a serious instance of male privilege in our culture: pockets ( Read more... )

If there's one complaint I hear most among my friends regarding their creative projects, it's "I just can't finish anything ( Read more... )

The key to being a good blogger is to update frequently with content that is at least a little entertaining. It doesn't have to be /very/ entertaining, but it ought to hit somewhere between the power of cute kitten pictures and whittering on about your ingrown toenail ( Read more... )

I've long believed that you need a little unhappiness to be happy. Like you need a little sour in your sweetness, a little dissonance to add richness to harmony ( Read more... )

Reading medieval literature is often an exercise in frustration - these tiny glimpses into the minds of the past, and all they can talk about is religion! I suppose it says something about them, but there's little individualistic in it, and Christian theology is far from a lost art ( Read more... )

When I was young and poor, fashion was a labyrinthine code somehow kept secret from me but divulged to all the other girls at school. I felt if I just worked hard at it, I could match up my goodwill shirts and skirts and arrive at Fashionable. I read "Color Me Beautiful" and the fashion articles in the paper and really TRIED. And yeah... no dice ( Read more... )