This week, Mallory launched the Convert Series with this great interview of poet and publicist Kima Jones, who converted to Islam when she was a teenager:
I spent my eighth grade summer, the summer before high school, away from my home with my father. We would talk long into the night about God, but especially the Trinity and especially the Holy Spirit. We were very close, very very close, and he gave me books to read and asked me questions about them like a peer. By the end of the summer I had stopped wearing my cross and knew I wanted to convert to Islam but wasn’t completely sure. I made my final decision after a dream I had. I dreamt I was Muslim, I saw it and felt it, I saw myself taking Shahadah (the declaration in the Oneness of God and the Prophet Muhammad being the last prophet and servant of God) and my hair was wrapped in black silk. The next morning, my father gave me shahadah.
HENRIETTA MARX: either you clean your room
or i’ll do it for you
and the way i clean your room
means you won’t have any bags of marijuana left in it when i’m finished
KARL MARX: WHY DON’T YOU MAKE LIKE THE RULING CLASS IN THE WAKE OF POPULAR UPRISINGS AND GET OFF MY BACK
Are you living in an Edward Gorey book?
Women Who Cook: Dismantling the Myth of the Bitch in the Kitchen
“Growing Up With Marilyn Manson”:
When I called my childhood friend James to report how, in a wild moment of decisiveness, I’d purchased us tickets to the Vancouver show on Manson’s Hell Not Hallelujah Tour, I had to admit I hadn’t heard the new album…or the one before. As it turns out, neither of us was familiar with anything since Manson’s fourth album, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) — which was released at a time when my freshman students were listening to the haunting jingles of Dora the Explorer.
“I wonder what Goths look like these days,” said James.
“Hmm, the tickets were $90 and it’s seating only. I suspect they look like us,” I said, rubbing a string of baby drool into the shoulder of a particularly un-Goth sweater.
TTC = Trying To Conjure
IVF = I’m Very Frightened
BFN = Brownies, Faes, Nixies
SAHM = Spells At Home, Mostly
The CW is developing a “gritty” dystopian version of Little Women, and I truly do not understand how anyone’s reaction could be anything other than “AT LAST.” Here, Carly Lane and Emily Henry imagine what the new show could look like (with wonderfully disturbing illustrations by Hallie Bateman!).
Christy Admiraal on why Hawkeye (from the comics, guys, not M.A.S.H.!) is the hero for her.
Gentleman at the post office: Thank you very much, young lady. What’s your name?
Me: Nicole.
Him: Nicole! That’s a lovely name, but I was expecting an Asian name.
Me: Well…I’M Asian and it’s MY name. So it’s kind of an Asian name!
Him: Yeah, but not really, right?
^ not even the weirdest exchange I had about my name this week
Quite often we will get parenting pitches because of a line in this post about how Mallory wants more stories about moms. By that we mean we’re actually more interested in stories about your moms, like this one by Carly Lane about her mother, who is a doula. You should read it now if you haven’t! And if you ever give birth I highly recommend having a doula, or some other supportive, experienced, and unflappable person willing to push her elbow into your lower back as hard as she possibly can while you labor. Let’s hear it for doulas, and comprehensive sex ed in schools, but not birth videos because even after two actual unmedicated births I can’t deal with those things.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe got the Ayn Rand treatment. I don’t know if Ayn will rewrite all the Chronicles of Narnia, but I live in Hope.
