The October 2018 Reading List was curated by Denise Nichole, Editor in Chief of The Hellebore. Read below for the latest articles and revelations in literary publishing and U.S. news.
Won’t Be Erased
Proposed policies that may restrict the definition of gender to sex assigned at birth threaten the existence of trans and nonbinary people in the United States. Yet, LGBT+, nonbinary folks, and allies have made it clear that trans and non binary voices will not be silenced through the powerful and compelling phrase: Won’t Be Erased.
We Are Magic Manifested, and We Won’t Be Erased by sammie via API Equality Northern California
We won’t be erased. We won’t be forgotten. We are magic manifested, dreams become reality, and futures actualized. Stay rooted, get close, and take a breath. This is just the next beginning, and we will move through this, working for a world where our full selves can thrive.
Trans people cannot be erased. We have always existed, and will continue to live. by Gwen Benaway via Maclean’s
As history shows us, you can’t legislate a people out of existence, though you can violently suppress their ability to live healthy and fulfilling lives—and even then, love finds a way through. I have lived a life built around that communal love and it sustains me, and I will continue to live—and die if required—in service to preserving and building it. Our capacity to love and be loved is one reality of trans life that no government can take away.
I Will Not Be An Invisible Trans Woman by Gabrielle Bellot via The New York Review of Books
Desire—in particular, a yearning to be who we are and love freely—is a strange lantern: it wants to be lit bright, but sometimes, to do so is deadly. In the early decades of the twentieth century and up until the twenty-first, some queer writers let that flame burn for all to see, but many more only gave us flickering glimpses of their desires, will-o’-the-wisps to follow through careful, scholarly reading. We need to speak out now, more than ever—and we need to do so in ways both loud and quiet. There is a special power to revealing our desires quietly, yet brightly, on the page or screen.
Confronting Domestic Terrorism
The wave of shootings, massacres, and (intercepted) bombings that have characterized the U.S. continues to leave many citizens unnerved, afraid, and saddened. Yet many voices have come forth to criticize the hateful rhetoric and irresponsible governing that has emboldened such attacks and attitudes.
A week of violence, anti-Semitism and domestic terrorism (a briefing) by Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, and Daniel Lippman via Politico
WITH NINE DAYS until ELECTION DAY, violence, anti-Semitism and domestic terrorism are dominating the headlines.
Dispatch from Squirrel Hill: Dread in a peaceful place by David Shribman via Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Because this was our neighborhood, caught in the crossfire of the strains of the global village, and for once — sadly, so very sadly — the hurt was ours, and the victims were ours, and the need to heal is ours. For now it has happened here; for millions across this wounded nation, we are the focus of anguish and anger and solace, the it-can-happen-anywhere place of the moment. And we know, given the tempo of tragedy in these times that are ours, that the title won’t be ours for long.
Revolutionary Publishing
The current climate facing our country, couldn’t be more discouraging. And yet, so many voices have emerged at the forefront of this struggle through the literary arts. Check out Barren Magazine Issue 3: Birch Black, Bone White edited by Jason D. Ramsey, for a mesmerizing canon of poets, essayists, fiction writers, and photographers who transform all that is raw, vulnerable, and personal into a testament of truth, survival, and perseverance.
