“Cultural awakening comes not when one learns the contours of the master-narrative, but when one realizes…that what one has always been told is incomplete, backward, false, a lie.”– Music critic Greil Marcus
I just read an amazing book by Bronwen Dickey called PIT BULL: THE BATTLE OVER AN AMERICAN ICON. It is a deeply-researched and deft description of the way fear, racism, classicism and the denial of data have lead to discrimination against pit bulls and their owners.
Before reading it, I would have looked askance at any dog that resembled a pit bull. After reading, I have a completely different perspective. I learned so much from this book, including the basic impossibility of looking at a mixed-breed dog and making solid inferences about its breed stock, the breed-specific laws that hurt primarily poor people and people of color, and the massive myth-making around these dogs.
As I read, I was struck by how the historical and social narrative that Dickey details mirrors similar false narratives like the demonization of Hillary Clinton and the refusal to analyze these narratives with actual data and statistics.
The story of the pit bull is inextricably tied to the story of race in America and thus it is an important social justice story as well. In fact as Dickey concludes: “What pit bulls have taught us is that justice for animals cannot happen at the expense of social justice for humans. The divide between the two that has existed for almost two centuries needs to be bridged. If we fail to do that, the cycle is destined to repeat itself with another type of dog and another group of people.”
As a side note, this book came onto my radar screen because the author was targeted with death threats and hate mail upon its publication. She required security at her book events. Who were these people? They were anti-pit bull activists NOT the so-called “thugs” who own pit bulls. After reading Dickey’s book, it is hard not to see racism at the core of the hatred leveled at these dogs.
If you want to support organizations that are doing excellent work helping both dogs AND their owners, check out Pets for Life and the Coalition to Unchain Dogs.
So, Amber, with all you’ve done, what has brought you to writing?
I am pretty sure that Mo Willams based one of the characters in The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog on me:
I write because I am curious about so many things. I want to know about Ama divers and Antarctica and the history of women explorers and Nordic biathlon and dog genetics and how toilets are made. I love documentaries and memoirs because they plumb people’s obsessions. The writing life gives me an excellent excuse to learn and experience all the things I’m interested in.
I write for teens because I like them better than adults (present company excepted). Young adults are on the cusp of the world. So many possibilities are on the horizon. It’s an exciting time in life when you get to figure out what you stand for and carve your own path. The problem with many adults (again present company excepted) is that they get entrenched in ways of thinking and being and living. I love the brilliant energy young adults bring to the world.
Do you have a favorite piece of your writing?
If so, what is it and why? There is a scene in The Way Back from Broken (the beginning of chapter 33) that is really important to me. It began as a picture book manuscript in the very early days of my writing adventure. I took it to a manuscript critique at a writing conference. The literary agent who read it told me (to my face) that the world doesn’t need another ugly duckling story and that I wasn’t a very good writer anyway and that it would be best if I quit immediately.
I probably wasn’t a very good writer back then but I ached to write about how we can live with our own brokenness. It was a story that I needed to tell whether the world needed it or not. And that’s the thing about writing… it is an audacious act that proclaims: My story matters. I matter. My voice will not be silenced.
Every time I read that section of the book, I want to simultaneously offer a rude hand gesture to that agent and a fist bump to my own pugnacious self.
If you could change one aspect of the publishing business, what would it be and why?
So many things… First… Oh, wait… What did you say? I only get to change one thing? Well… shoot (actually I’m saying a bad word here)… Here’s the deal: Writing a book is hard. Selling books is even harder.
Thousands and thousands of books are published each year. Some are amazing. Some are boring. Some are downright terrible. Helping your book—your blood, sweat, and tears on the page—swim to the surface and into the hands of the right reader often feels like an impossible task. I wish that it were easier to sell books. I wish less of the publicity work fell on my shoulders. I wish that good books always sold well and that writers could create without the looming threat of unpaid bills.
Word-of-mouth (direct or via reviews on Facebook, Amazon and Goodreads) is still the primary driver of book sales. If you know and love a writer, the most helpful thing you can do is share your appreciation for their work with your friends and family. Plus, it’s cool to talk about books with interesting people. Books are awesome!
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WOUNDS
I am gut-punched, hollowed out.
I am grief-broken and angry.
I could list the dead for hours: Sandy Hook, Orlando, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas-
There is ample pain to share.
Daughter, mother, wife, friend. I am these things.
And I have had my heart ripped from my chest by loss.
I know wounds.
This is what I know about wounds: they do not go away.
I will always be the mother of a dead child.
I share this with:
Sandy Hook
Orlando
Philando Castile
Alton Sterling
Dallas
We know wounds.
The wound of America is domination
gaping, bloody, seeping
It doesn’t go away.
We don’t get over it.
We built a country out of human flesh.
That is a fact.
And now-
A wound does not heal when it is
ignored: you’re okay
demeaned: it’s not that bad
prayed over: this is part of the plan
unshared: not my problem
A wound untended goes into sepsis
and the system-that body with the beating heart-fails.
So hear me:
I see the bodies.
I see the guns.
I see our flesh-country seething, suffering, dying-
And also trying to live.
This wound:
It is not okay.
It is worse than you imagine.
No good God planned this.
It is my problem.
It is my problem.
It is my wound.
Our wound.
This is what I know about wounds: they do not go away.
But they can be carried.
If we
see
listen
struggle
claim
If we do these things-
the living flesh can bear the scar.
Oh, this book, this beautiful, heart-breaking book… There is so much I want to tell you about ORBITING JUPITER by Gary Schmidt, but the most important thing is that you must read it.
Gary Schmidt is one of my favorite authors because he understands young people so deeply. The thing I appreciate most about ORBITING JUPITER is that Gary Schmidt honors the love between young people. It is so easy for adults to disregard a teen who says they have fallen in love. Oh, you don’t understand what that really means. You’re not old enough to know. As if, something about being young means that emotions don’t affect you the same way. I call bullshit on that. How can we as parents expect to have real and honest conversations with our children if we devalue their feelings? Gary Schmidt takes young people seriously and writes about them with such respect and empathy.
Another thing about this book: it was a reading experience like I used to have. I fell into this world, his characters are real to me, and all I wanted was for them to be okay.
One of the sad side effects of my life as a writer is that I no longer enjoy reading the way I used to. Most of the time, as I read, my mind whirs along analyzing what works and what doesn’t work about a book. If I read a hyped book and I don’t like it, I’m really mad. It is a rare book that can absorb me to such a degree that I am reading only to know what happens, only to live in the world of the book a little bit longer.
So this book… so much love.
Go read it!
Yesterday I began a high school visit by saying “I wrote THE WAY BACK FROM BROKEN about the hardest, saddest thing that ever happened to me–the death of my daughter.”
After my talk, one student asked me about the insensitive things people say in the book. “Are they real or did you make them up?”
I told him about being at work after she died and how people would see me coming down the hall and turn around so they wouldn’t have to talk to me.
“That’s how terrifying I was,” I told him. “That’s how scary grief is.”
Afterwards, a young man came up to me and said, “I want to give you hug. If I had been in that hall, I never would have turned away.”
And he gave me a hug and I hugged him back and I managed not to cry. The kindness–such kindness–what grace.
And to those of you who didn’t turn away (you know who you are), I am so grateful to you. You saved my life.
I write frequently about claiming space—space to create, space to protest, space to explore sexuality. On a day-to-day scale, claiming space is about getting an entire seat on the bus to yourself or calling out microagressions or expressing your own desires. On the scale of a life, it’s about staking out our territory in the world and claiming the right to be our true selves.
One of the things that I hoped to accomplish when I put together THE V-WORD was to create a space for conversations about who we are sexually and who we want to be sexually. I wanted to break through the wall of “nice girls don’t” and “boys will be boys” to reach a truer place.
Reading THE V-WORD was supposed to feel like sitting down with a smart group of older sisters or aunties and realizing that our sexual selves don’t need to be shoved in a closet. It wasn’t supposed to be erotic or titillating.
So why—you might ask—am I celebrating the publication of THE V-WORD with a burlesque show? Young adult readers can’t even attend. And talk about titillating… We’ve all seen those pictures of Josephine Baker and Bettie Page—va-va-voom!
Well here’s the deal, when we get sexual with someone else, we bring our whole selves to the table—our emotions, our desires, our bodies, and our baggage. For many, how we feel about our bodies and how we claim space to inhabit those bodies can be pretty conflicted.
What I love about modern burlesque is that it empowers performers to celebrate their bodies—scrawny, curvy, old, young, variously abled—it’s all there on the stage to delight and yes, to titillate. They are performing for an audience, and yes, the performers want you to love it. But burlesque is just as much for performers as for the audience.
I love this TEDx talk by Lillian Bustle (definitely watch the whole thing and read this profile)! She says that when she saw her first burlesque performance she was blown away by the “daring, creative, funny women of all shapes and sizes [who looked] like they could walk through fire.” She wanted the confidence to claim the territory of her body and to love it. Lillian became a burlesque performer and says it is her “courage reference,” which means ”doing something brave and keeping that feeling in your pocket for times when you’re not feeling so brave anymore.”
Burlesque is far more than striptease. It is a form of creative expression that supposes, as Lillian says, that “Being beautiful is a decision that you make. Most of us sit around waiting for permission, for affirmation, for some other [person] to swoop in and tell us that we’re worthy, that we’re beautiful. It doesn’t have to be like that … you get to wake up one day and decide that you’re beautiful.”
If you believe girls and women should be able to explore, discover, and own their sexuality without shame, then COME to Booklover’s Burlesque: The V-Word on Friday, April 8th, at Crush Bar! You can help support the movement of encouraging young women to find, fight for, and use their voices when it comes to their sexual lives.
Come curious.
Leave transformed.
(And don’t forget to get your tickets in advance!)
Readings by Amber Keyser, Sara Ryan, Kate Gray, and others!
Performances by Fannie Fuller, Lily Le Fauve, Judy Patootie,
Honey Le Fleur, Paige Rustles, and Lacy Knickers!
Books available for purchase!
When a young black woman is pushed, insulted and harassed at a Trump rally—
When armed men destroy Paiute sacred lands—
When a man tells a woman that she has to carry a child of rape—
When there are so many mass shootings that I can’t remember the details—
When anger is everywhere I look—
I get angry too.
I don’t want a world of racism and institutionalized privilege, violence and hate, ignorance and distrust.
But you know what?
I don’t want to be full of such anger either.
Today I offer you my hope for the world instead of my rage, and I challenge you to turn darkness into light. The world we will get is the one we can imagine, the one we can build with our hearts and our hands.
Share this hope. Or better yet, share your own.
What world do you want?
I stayed up way too late a few nights ago reading this book. I knew I should close the pages and go to sleep. I knew the alarm was going off early the next morning, but I kept reading.
Not because this is a suspenseful story.
Not because this is a story with a relentless pace.
Not because I couldn’t imagine how this story would end.
I read the entire book in one sitting because George is a character I have never, ever before seen on the page.
Think about that for a moment. Frodo, Harry, Lyra, Katniss… we know this kind of hero. And we know (and love) books like THE GIVER or BRIDGE TO TEREBINTHIA. I could list a hundred books I adore that have their seeds in other stories. That is how literature works.
But I have never read a heart-warming, sweet, gentle, aching book about a person like George. I love her and I wanted her to be okay. That is why I kept reading.
And we need George to remind us of our human capacity for empathy and understanding. I hope that you will buy a copy and read it in one sitting and then share it widely. George has a lot to tell you about being real.
Do you remember reading FOREVER? If you, like me, were a teen in the 80s or 90s, Judy Blume’s depiction of teenage love and first time sex was monumentally important. We’d never read anything like it—realistic sex where nothing bad happened to the teens involved.
There is a lot more sexual content out there now, but teens, especially teen girls, are still turning to young adult novels for information. This is one of the reasons that my new anthology THE V-WORD includes a Q & A with teen librarian Kelly Jensen about portrayals of teen sexuality in media.
In a wide ranging conversation, we talk about the best depictions of arousal, body image, gender identity, female masturbation, queer sex, straight sex, rape culture, and enthusiastic consent. Throughout, Kelly recommends go-to titles for teens who want to know more about these issues.
In a recent review on NetGalley, Melanie P. wrote:
I also loved the Q&A after the seventeen essays in this book. Kelly Jensen’s answers are so amazing, and I aspire to be more like her. She is so strong, and such an amazing voice for every young woman out there. I can’t recommend this book enough, just for the Q&A session at the end alone. I truly do believe with all my heart that this is a book all young girls would benefit from reading, because this book explores what schools and other outside sources are not going to teach you.
If you want to know more, check out this great article in the Huffington Post called 8 Books That Don’t Sugarcoat Teen Sexuality and of course look for THE V-WORD at your nearest bookstore.