My mother, who is a saint and a genius, told me once that the thing she worried most about with the direction of the country was income inequality. Talked about how since 1980, income inequality metrics had done nothing but go up, and that\u2019s unhealthy for society. This was back in like 2003-2005ish, before the 2016 Bernie campaign resurrected mainstream socialism. More recently, she expressed what read to me as incredulity that capitalism wasn\u2019t working out. Like a \u201chow did they screw this up\u201d kind of thing. I\u2019m not saying this to say my mother\u2019s gotten conservative, far from it. I\u2019m just saying it\u2019s interesting how one day you can be all \u201clooks like a problem is coming\u201d and before you know it you\u2019re all \u201choly shit what do we do about this problem.\u201d Speaking of, the book I read this week!<\/p>
What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately<\/strong><\/p> Back when I worked in a warehouse at a used bookstore, one of my weekly tasks was recycling books. It sounds horrifying to any reasonable person, but the fact is there is not enough space for all the books. Our biggest metric for deciding what was recycling bin fodder was where the book ranked on Amazon\u2019s sales list. Under #5,000? Not a title any of the employees had heard of? Recycling bin fodder. Fortunately, being a person with some say in recycling bin fodder, I could rescue some books. <\/p> Let me tell you, if there\u2019s a book that steals its title from the Bible and has a Mexican author? My dude, I am rescuing that book every time. <\/p> Man am I grateful I took a chance on this book. It sat on my shelf a while<\/em>, too. The Book of Lamentations<\/em> by Rosario Castellanos is a broad-scoping book of expanding and contracting fractals where each chapter reads like a mural. It\u2019s dense, it\u2019s sweeping, it\u2019s zeroed in on single, sometimes unexpected moments that lead to years of massive change. It\u2019s so so good. It\u2019s tenderly and empathetically written in a way that\u2019s frankly amazing when you learn Castellanos is the daughter of a landowning family in Chiapas. There was a worry for a second that I\u2019d picked up Mexican Gone With The Wind<\/em>; do not worry, this book is excellent.<\/p> I lead with the recycling bin story because so much of what is described in this novel set in 1930s Chiapas is still extremely relevant to the present-day US. How quickly things can change, how long-simmering angers that should have been obvious can be. The 21st century seems hell-bent on repeating all the worst parts of the 20th, maybe everyone everywhere should give this book a read first. <\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> I was very lucky to get to review <\/a>Patterns of Orbit<\/a><\/em>, the forthcoming story collection from the one and only Chloe N. Clark. It\u2019s a marvelous collection of mostly sci-fi, but there are horror and fairy tales thrown in too. The writing is lyrical, the characters are cared about, the details rich. I thought about Lydia Millet and Aimee Bender while I read it, which is close to the highest compliment I can pay a book. Chloe also got this sick spread in <\/a>Electric Lit<\/a><\/em> that\u2019s worth checking out<\/a>.<\/p><\/li> I title this \u201cAccidental Revolution\u201d because I stumbled on this next one, completely unrelated to The Book of Lamentations<\/em>. I was cleaning out tabs on my phone this week and ended up checking out the Revolutions<\/a><\/em> podcast by Mike Duncan<\/a> for the first time. I kinda need someone I trust to recommend a history podcast before I\u2019ll listen. Never know when some old white guy\u2019s gonna slip a \u201cbut the Nazis had cool uniforms\u2026\u201d<\/a> in there. Anyway, I\u2019ve been listening to the episodes on the Mexican Revolution in conjunction with reading The Book of Lamentations<\/em>. It\u2019s well done and interesting, and absolutely infuriating to realize how ignorant I am of Mexican history and politics. I could probably name three presidents and 10 states. Shameful. Thankfully, learning is a lifelong journey, and I\u2019m enjoying what Mike Duncan has to offer. <\/p><\/li> Again, cleaning out tabs on my phone, and finally got around to this Baffler<\/a><\/em> article from 2020 by Y\u00e1snaya Elena Aguilar Gil, \u201cThe Map and the Territory.\u201d<\/a> Its entrypoint is Indigenous language rights in Mexico and the United States and from there goes into how that relates to the concept of a nation. It\u2019s easy to forget how recent of a concept nations are, or as Aguilar Gil puts it, \u201cThe\u00a0 official narrative of Mexico as a country is rooted in a more than two-thousand-year-old \u2018pre-Hispanic\u2019 world in which the concept of Mexico did not exist.\u201d What endures, nations or no nations, are communities. <\/p><\/li> Linking two podcasts really gives this week\u2019s column a \u201csyllabus\u201d feel, but at least they\u2019re both limited runs. When You\u2019re Invisible<\/a><\/em> by Mar\u00eda Fernanda Diez<\/a> has the host interviewing people not used to be interviewed\u2014mailroom workers, food service employees\u2014and the results are me asking \u201cwhy isn\u2019t every podcast this\u201d in the middle of the produce aisle at Aldi. I\u2019ve long held the opinion that everyone should be conscripted into a service industry job for a minimum of two years at some point. Since Congress and Joe Biden are cowards, we\u2019ll just have to make sure everyone listens to this podcast instead.<\/p><\/li> I can\u2019t remember if I\u2019ve linked this band before, but my neverending quest to find \u201cOther Bands That Sound Like CHON\u201d led me to DJ PERRO a few months back. Their Canis Allegro<\/em> record is my favorite so far, but I also haven\u2019t heard anything I dislike. Here\u2019s a sick set from Algazara Sessions. Let this carry you into the weekend on golden wings: <\/p>![](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/f730a2ab-a830-4b64-8e23-36784f738af3_4032x3024.jpeg\"\/)
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