Six Hours to Go!
Achievement unlocked!
WE DID IT! 6 hrs left to go and the Nothing Without Us anthology and all its stretch goals, including an audiobook, an illustrated version, and enhanced author pay, have all been funded! Thanks so much for supporting this own voices project and the disabled authors and publishers trying to change the literary landscape one accurate depiction at a time. If you want to hear more about why this kind of project is so important, check out my author interview where I discuss disability rep, chronic illness narratives, why they both matter, how they impact the real world on a micro and macro level, and why I had to ragequit watching The Flash.
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Hey, Instagram, Bring Back the Goddess
Let’s talk censorship. Here’s my take on Instagram’s ban on the Goddess hashtag and why it is not okay on so many levels. #BringBackTheGoddess
As you may or may not have heard, Instagram has banned the hashtag #Goddess. While this move was allegedly to cut down on explicit content posted under the hashtag, Instagram has inadvertently stepped onto a landmine of sexism, ethnocentrism, religious discrimination, and censorship. Instagram previously tried to ban the hashtag #Curvy for the same reason and reversed the decision after the backlash they faced. Somehow, nobody at Instagram thought that “Goddess”, an arguably way more loaded term than “Curvy”, would have the same issue.
Yet issue there was. Immediately upon noticing the ban, myself and others took to Instagram and other social media platforms to protest. Hashtags like #Goddess, #BringBackTheGoddess, #BringBackGoddess, #GoddessTribe, #GoddessRising, and others took off on both Instagram and Twitter, some with thousands of posts already. There is also a Change.org petition to reverse Instagram’s ban on #Goddess. Articles about the ban can be found on The Mary Sue, The Daily…
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Poetry Circle: The Troll that Shakes the Barley
Instead of talking about minority languages or outlawed languages as I usually do for St. Patrick’s Day, I give you a poem. Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! In keeping with my last post about soda bread, here’s a poem that seemed fitting to share on such a holiday as this. This poem began quite randomly. A box of barley went missing in the apartment. Poof. Gone. I searched everywhere to no avail. As no one had eaten it and it’s not like someone would break in just to steal half a box of barley, I jokingly blamed the trolls. I’m a mythology major, I do that.
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Fireworks, Merrymaking, and a Hobbit or Two
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,300 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
The Invisible Man: speculative fiction and disability
From Geordi La Forge to Jojen Reed, Fantasy and Sci-Fi offer a greater range of disabilities and disability/illness narratives.
That’s how we roll in sci-fi.
I don’t know if any of you have seen the infographic floating around about representation in science fiction movies or not, but I wanted to talk about an issue I had with it, namely what constitutes a “protagonist with a disability”. I won’t post a link to the infographic here because my intention is not to call it or its creator out. In fact, I applaud them for raising awareness of representation issues. However, I am bothered by the infographic’s problematic take on this specific issue, as well as by this discussion in general (which seems to happen every few years when there is a renewed controversy over Barbara Gordon).
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Stickin’ It to the Ban
Greetings readers, new and old. I’d like to thank you all for dropping in on us and getting involved in Banned Books Week, to whatever extent and in whatever way you did. BBW is a yearly event, not just to celebrate banned and challenged books and the freedom to read, but to draw attention to the fact that, yes, this is still happening. Here. In the US. In your state. In our schools and libraries and sometimes our legislatures. Read More…
10 Favorite Banned Children’s Books
One parent’s take on Banned Books Week, reasons for challenging children’s classics, and what to do if you find yourself disapproving of something in a book your child is reading.
This week is banned books week- September 21st through the 27th. It is definitely not a week to celebrate. But it’s a week to acknowledge the disservice that is still done in 2014, in this country. When a book is “banned,” it’s not banned across the board and pulled from every shelf of every bookstore or library. The American Library Association puts out a list of books that have been challenged or pulled from various public libraries across the country, and a substantial amount of those books are children’s books being removed from school libraries. This happens when some overreaching parent decides that the material is offensive for whatever reason, and not only do they not want their own child to be exposed to it, but they feel confident that they know what’s best for other people’s children as well.
Books like And Tango Made Three, the true story of two…
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The Road to District 13
Every trailer for Mockingjay just makes me feel that much more certain that they will do the book justice. I can’t wait. Stay tuned for a review of the book in the coming weeks and let me know what you think of the trailer in the comments.
Alternate Histories: An Interview with Greg Pak
An interesting interview on the writer’s responsibility to history in science fiction or alternate history stories from my friendly neighborhood comic book expert.
Greg Pak (pronounced Pock) is an accomplished film director and comic writer with acclaimed runs on The Incredible Hulk, Hercules, and Action Comics, among others. In his ten years as a published comic writer, Pak has written tragedy, comedy, and high drama, he’s shaped the births of some of Marvel’s most dangerous villains, written DC’s flagship title, and even shown the world a gay, gubernatorial Wolverine!
In short, he’s a pretty impressive guy and it’s no surprise that he’s in high demand at the moment. Pak currently writes Superman in DC’s Action Comics and Batman/Superman, a revived Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for Dynamite, and is set to launch the first ever Storm series from Marvel next month.
I managed to talk to Mr. Pak at Special Edition: NYC. As you might guess, he was very busy but he absolutely insisted on giving…
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Bound and Gagged 
