“[My parents] liked having the pool in the courtyard. My mother said it wasn’t the sea but it was nice to open the door and have some water.” – lê thi diem thúy, ‘The Gangster We Are All Looking For’
It’s the weekend! A long one, too! One last three day weekend to screw with parents have a big cookout before summer officially starts. Because when summer officially starts, that’s when…you can have a big cookout whenever you want, I guess.
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
Man, what is it about coming-of-age stories this week? And what is it about how affecting and effective I find it when coming-of-age stories are told in fragmented, almost dream-like form? I can’t say this book is super similar of House on Mango Street, but it made me think of it. This week, I’m talking about lê thi diem thúy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For.
If you’re a responsible reader in the United States, you’ve read a lot of immigrant stories. They have their familiar contours—inherent tragedy of being away from home, the awkwardness and fear of being an immigrant kid, the violent yanking around of class status. In Vietnam, the narrator’s dad is a gangster, a man who brags about an aristocratic line in his family because of a slightly longer second toe. In the US, that man is a welder in space heater factory (who really wants to be a gardener). I say immigrant narratives have familiar contours, but this novel really made me feel the uncanniness of being suddenly thrust into a foreign land after war. The extra white space on the page created by the free-floating, stark paragraphs gives a big sense of things being unsaid, things being left unresolved, things being confusing but connected. It’s a very good book, another I have to thank the old used bookstore job for, I feel lucky this book found its way onto my shelves.
LINKS!
Orcas can sink boats now! We’ve deserved this for a long time. Apparently, they’re sinking yachts. Apparently, this is learned behavior spearheaded by juveniles. I hate it when people say the kids will save us, but hey, these orcas? Sinking yachts?
Imagine the indignity of these Greenland Sharks having their eye parasites picked off of them by some loser scientists. You ever think about how research animals must feel indignant? Here’s a Creaturefector story about the Anelasma barnacle—who usually spend their lives hitched to the belly of a lantern shark—who dared to live in a Greenland shark’s cloaca, a catch-all hole for pee, poop, sperm, and eggs.
David Roth is one of the best in the business at writing about powerful people. Please enjoy Roth’s deep dive into New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s relationship to skateboarding, in theory and in practice.
At least once before, I’ve linked to videos of the ocean telling people not to kayak certain places by having whales pop up near their boat like a a flare spot on a grill. Here’s a super scary one of those:
Workers at the Nature Museum are unionizing! The Nature Museum, or Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum as it’s called by people who can remember how to spell ‘Notebaert,’ rules. It has a butterfly room, it has a great collection of reptiles including my beloved Patsy the Alligator Snapping Turtle, it’s taught me a whole lot about native plants, it’s taught me all the stuff about prairies I assume Chicago Public School children learn instead of “Andrew Jackson sure was a dick, but he is from Tennessee, and white people do have all this land now.” Man, Jackson, Polk, Johnson—is Tennessee the worst state at producing presidents? Anyway, the Nature Museum rules, solidarity to the workers unionizing, let’s hope for a fair contract. For their part, management seems to amenable to an agreement.
Alright, everyone. Get outta here. Go enjoy your weekend. Watch out for whales.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris