Subscribers—
I feel I’ve neglected this space, despite submitting a couple of essays this past week. I’m still figuring out what I want from this newsletter/essay writing practice, but also how I want to continue to connect with you all. So, stay tuned. Things might start to change here at Mka.
Quick updates: Spent last week at my very first AWP in Philadelphia, where I had an ugly sinus infection (non-COVID related), but I also had the honor of being invited to read a few of my poems live at an event organized by Burrow Press and The Rumpus. Hopefully a recording of my reading will make its way online. And edits for American Sex Tape are back to the copyeditor!
As always, thanks for being a subscriber to Mka: A Newsletter. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
Favorite Tweet of the Week
Don’t forget to check out my posts this past week on commercial surrogacy and interracial couple influencers here at Mka: A Newsletter.
The great actor Delroy Lindo is finally getting his flowers from NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Lan Dao’s “ramblings from a tech-adjacent e-girl” in her Substack, The Love Diaries, has published an essay that I find wildly fascinating, especially in its investigations into how we culturally, online, respond to contemporary sex politics. I don’t agree with everything, but I’d love to write a response to the “tradCath” (traditional Catholic) movement she’s perceiving amongst sexually frustrated Millennials.
“While I’m not indifferent to the aesthetic appeal of tradcath/Mormonism, I don’t view their communities as viable meme transmission systems in the long run. On the contrary, their recent rise in popularity appears indicative of the endless swing of the cultural pendulum more than anything else; I have a hunch that many folks espousing (and loudly advertising) these aesthetics-beliefs today will grow dejected in a few years, when they inevitably come to terms with the false promises they were sold. The most important of them all, of course, is the promise of a cure to contemporary sexuality.”
Lizzo got a shapewear line coming y’all.
Saeed Jones, poet and memoirist and former Buzzfeed LGBTQ editor, has a Substack that is wonderfully personal and delivers beautiful artifacts of literature and culture without being a long read at all. They shared this week Toni Morrison’s thoughts on Sethe from her award-winning novel (arguably the last great American novel) Beloved. I’ll be writing soon about whether Sethe “did the right thing.”
Philadelphia’s very own Quinta Brunson (been a fan since her Buzzfeed days) talking Abbot Elementary, Twitter debates, and success for The New York Times Magazine.
What I’m Reading
Once I Was Cool: Personal Essays by Megan Stielstra (Chicago’s very own!)
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (whose The Audacity is one of the best newsletters on Substack)
I love close watching toxic TikTok fandoms. This one includes some Canadian model that’s got these middle-aged white gals acting weird.
“I’ve seen women say they’d eat his snot when he had a cold, and I’ve even seen women say they’d lose the light in their lives if he left the internet,” says Joann, a 46-year-old former fan from Pennsylvania who trolls White’s followers in a bid to break them of what she feels is a damaging obsession. (Input is withholding the last names of interviewees for the sake of their safety.) “If he doesn’t tweet or go live for a day or two, a lot of them will delete their accounts out of anger or get into fights.”
Joann has problems not only with the community, but with White himself. She feels he’s taking advantage of his fandom. “If you send him a PayPal during his Live and it’s large enough, he’ll thank you for it. There’s some women who send four PayPals each Live just to hear him say their name,” she says. “He’s making easy money, and he’s making tons of it. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Every human being on planet Earth had a dull “hot take” on Will Smith smacking the living hell out of Chris Rock at this past week’s Oscars ceremony. One of the worst takes is from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, NBA Hall-of-Famer, and one of my favorite cultural critics. Unfortunately, Kareem’s “respectability politics” are landing on deaf ears because, honestly, Black Americans have grown past the duty of making white people comfortable around us.
Friends Derrick Palmer and Christian Smalls spearheaded the movement for the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the U.S. The voting results reveal that JFK8 will unionize. Hell yeah for worker’s rights!
What I Made
Steak marinated in my homemade mole colorado sauce for some tacos