From Ass to Assinine

Having offered my two cents about the recent booty obsession before some tired reality TV star decided to Columbustle her way into everyone’s social media, I’ve been holding my remarks for Saturday’s JAWS panel. This article by Blue Telusma says a lot of what I’ve been thinking.

Kim Kardashian: The Butt of an Old Racial Joke.

 

The Word Makers: Saturday

The Booty Myth

Recent songs by Nicki Minaj, Meghan Trainor, and Jennifer Lopez with Iggy Azalea got me thinking …

The Booty Myth — Cuepoint — Medium.

 

Who We Be: Jeff Chang Takes LMU

Writer/scholar/thinker/activist Jeff Chang spoke at LMU today about racial politics of the last 50 years and the return of the culture wars, topics covered in-depth in his new book Who We Be: The Colorization of America. His analysis was gentle, thoughtful, and extraordinarily timely. Highly recommended.

A Semi Fictionaires Reunion

Jana Martin by Jennifer May

In the mid 1990s, I became close to two amazing women who would change my life. Jana Martin and Vivien Goldman were both writers, musicians, and lovers of writing and music. Viv was already a legend, for her pioneering work as a reggae, punk, and Afrobeat journalist at Sounds and elsewhere in the ’70s and ’80s. Jana wrote acerbic but beautiful stories about women on the edge, and played bass in several bands, including one named after Mary Gaitskill’s book, Bad Behavior. We were all writing novels so began meeting regularly to share our work and push each other forward. We dubbed our writing trio the Fictionaires, and some two decades later, though we have all moved elsewhere, we are still good friends.

Jana and I are reuniting November 15 at 7 p.m. to read at Cornelius Projects in San Pedro. Or you can catch Jana November 17 at LMU; see flyer.