HELLO and welcome to the 260th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Tiffany Haddish! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
Tiffany Haddish on Beyoncé, Growing Up in Foster Care, and Whales, by Caity Weaver for GQ, April 2018
Did you know, when you woke up on Monday morning, that this gift was waiting for you? Did you know? I didn’t know. But I was ready. Unlike, I imagine, Beyoncé , when somebody bit her face.
Cloak and Data: The Real Story Behind Cambridge Analytica’s Rise and Fall, by Andy Kroll for Mother Jones, May/June 2018
Is it really easier to lie and cheat and steal than it is to just do a good job? I guess so. I hadn’t really read anything about the Cambridge Analytica situation and now I feel armed with knowledge.
‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’, by Aaron Gordon for The Village Voice, March 2018
Well fuck.
Found: The Elusive Man At The Heart Of The Hollywood Sex Abuse Scandal, by Ellie Hall, Nicolás Medina Mora and David Noriega for Buzzfeed, June 2014
Uhhhh so I started watching the film “Open Secret,” which’s about a bunch of child molesters who are, mostly, STILL EMPLOYED IN HOLLYWOOD, and this weird digital start-up that is just so so so early dot com boom and it essentially served as a vehicle for these three guys to lure young teen boys into their homes and lives for sexual purposes. Anyhow then I had to google everybody forever and this is one of the things I read, best wishes on your own journey into this k-hole.
The Last Conversation You’ll Need to Have About Eating Right, by Mark Bittman and David L. Katz for New York Magazine, March 2018
Why have I been led to believe that carbs are evil?
Highly processed grains and added sugar are bad, not because they are carbohydrate, but because they’ve been robbed of nutrients, they raise insulin levels, and they’re often high in added fats, sodium, and weird ingredients. Carbs are not evil; junk food is evil.
The Pain Refugees, by Brian Goldstone for Harper’s Magazine, April 2018
READ THIS, SHARE THIS. It drives me bananas when the legitimate medical needs of patients are being sacrificed whole-cloth to prevent a different group of people from becoming addicted to the drugs that these patients need to live happy, less-painful, productive lives. Which ALSO ruins lives and families, just like addiction! (That new Netflix documentary about ADD medication is alarming to me for the same reason, that it could prompt measures even more draconian than already exist for people who are actually being helped by the drugs other people are abusing.) We never hear the stories of people whose lives have been saved by opioids and what happened when the opioid crisis led to crackdowns against all opioid prescriptions, and this piece starts to tell them. There’s also some really surprising numbers in here that contradict a lot of the general mainstream narrative about the nature of the opioid crisis.
Dark Matters, by Alicia Elliott for Hazlitt, March 2018
Sobering and tragic account of lethal racism against Indigenous people in Canada and how some things only matter or only do not matter when it’s white people doing them.
The injustice of Colten’s death; the injustice of Colten’s friends not only witnessing his death, but then themselves getting arrested; the injustice of Stanley drinking morning coffee with his family while Colten’s body grew cold in their yard; the injustice of Debbie Baptiste’s grief being read as drunkenness by RCMP officers tearing apart her house; the injustice of so many white Canadians referring to Colten as a criminal when Stanley was the one on trial for murder—it had all simmered inside for a year. And when I read that verdict and understood that, even in this era of so-called reconciliation, Canadians would continue to see Indigenous people as worthless criminals, and that pain finally, finally boiled over, I wanted to cry or scream or collapse. But I couldn’t. I was in a Starbucks, then I was on a bus. Public pain was impolite. Someone could think I was drunk. Someone could call the cops. I kept myself composed, the way society expected me to; I tried to smile and laugh, the way society expected me to. My body was shards of sharp glass I dutifully held together.
The Cover Story: Lena Waithe Is Changing the Game, by Jacqueline Woodson for Vanity Fair, March 2018
This was EVEN BETTER than I’d expected which is saying a lot.
A Brain on Fire, by Amy Li for Narrative.ly, March 2018
This is a real good excerpt from a real good essay so I’ll just give it to you straight: “I finally realized how to stop turning my grief into anger. But not before I threw a woman through a window.”
Reader Discretion Advised, by Claire Luchette for The Poetry Foundation, March 2018
On the beauty of profanity in poetry
This Ride Was Meant to Headline the Disney-MGM Studios. Instead, It Killed the Park. Here’s Its Full Story, by Brian Krosnick for Theme Park Tourist, November 2017
Listen it’s been a long week.
Well, I cried three times reading that interview with Lena Waithe. Also how old is too old to adorn your walls with magazine pages of your fake Hollywood girlfriend JUST WONDERING.
I just found Tiffany Haddish’s book at the library last Saturday and read it all that day. I picked it for the foster care reference and really enjoyed her storytelling! Thanks for sharing the article!