The Week Curated N°4
4.10.22 - 4.16.22
Subscribers—
Between working hard and looking for work (my fellowship ends in July), as well as exercising and not trying to succumb to madness, I’m burned out, y’all. But I keep coming to this space in hopes of:
Having a creative outlet when I have some precious downtime.
Learning how to make better content.
And to get you all excited for my forthcoming poetry debut, American Sex Tape (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022).
I have some exciting ideas and content for the future, including two new columns I’m trying to get off the ground. Demon Time, which will focus on everything sex. And The Kids Are All Yeet, with a little help from friends, will explore the traditions of the most hated on generation: Millennials. Watch this space to learn more as new posts will go up every other Friday.
In the meantime, check out my past Mka Letters on commercial surrogacy, interracial content creator couples, and the rapper DMX. As always, thank you for subscribing and sharing Mka: A Newsletter.
Here’s another batch for your cultural consumption:
Favorite Tweet of the Week
This historical moment! The first black woman confirmed to serve on The Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. For all the ugliness that woman endured at the hands of Republicans during the confirmation hearing, I hope that she is a vital part of making change in this country full of assholes.
The literary landscape was, once again, facing more academic blackface this week with a white academic writer representing scholarship built by uncredited Black women.
I don’t know how I missed this brief, but candid interview in The Guardian with poet, Ocean Vuong, who wrote the quietly devastating novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. He has a new collection of poetry out now called Time Is a Mother, which you can buy here.
“If you want to study literature, study war. For as long as there are soldiers there are poets.” - Ocean Vuong
EBONY Magazine’s profile of my favorite Black celebrity couple, Teyana Taylor and Iman Shumpert. Multi-hyphenate musical artist. NBA Champion and businessman. The photos by Keith Major are are just…GORGEOUS!
“Black love looks like the pain you share with someone else, so it’s not as heavy. It means unconditional love because you’re going to celebrate together when it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s affectionate and unapologetic; it is bold and needed in a world full of hate. I love Black love.”—Iman
My latest cultural obsession is this wonderfully cringey catalog of chaotic nightclub photos. It’s pure joy for me. Cathartic even.
And here’s an absolutely shameless plug on behalf of my employer, Northwestern University Press. Pre-order the magnificent debut of our latest poet of NUP, C. Russell Price. Price’s oh, you thought this was a date?! will be out in June 2022. I’m a fan of Price’s take-you-by-the-throat queering of poetic memory and personal trauma. The trigger warning is that there will be no trigger warnings. Read their poem “Désirée Says, ‘There Were Crisis Actors at the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ’” here.
Maybe nothing says more about American boredom than by how well-fleshed we imagine Armageddon.
What I’m Reading
Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy. The great folks at the radical publisher, Haymarket Books, here in Chicago sent me this title, along with a full box of their greatest hits. Check out their catalog here.
If you’re a fan of Substack, or interested in reading more newsletters, here are two recommendations for you. I’ve started following these two this week, which are both intriguing and wildly imaginative: The Drip, which couples hip hop and art history, and Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends, which is exactly as the title recommends.
What I Made
My boyfriend and I, completely sober, thought what would taste fucking amazing would be a German-cuisine topped pizza. Beer-cheese sauce. Sauerkraut. Bratwurst. Swiss cheese. We held back from topping this delicious Frankenstein with Limburger, the worst smelling and most disgusting tasting cheese I have ever allowed into my home. Yes; my boyfriend did spend $6 on 8 ounces of the worst damn thing I’ve ever tasted. The pizza was good tho. 8/10.
Thank you so much for the plug Jameka! Really digging your work too :)