sarah HANNAH gómez

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I’ve been on vacation and starting new jobs and working on trying to meet lots of writing deadlines, hence not blogging. Vacation was incredibly restorative and amazing, physically and emotionally. I didn’t do as much of the stuff I intended to do, but I had some time off of work, and even though I meant to take advantage of trendy gyms in New York and Boston while I was there, I ended up not exercising for 10 days, which was probably a really big gift to my body with the overtraining I do.

Anyway, when I was in Boston I got to spend the day at the Horn Book offices, generally bothering everyone but also doing the podcast! You should listen to it , because I’m great. And also because Siân is a friend from grad school who is wonderful, and Roger is actually great to hang out with. It’s definitely a podcast I’m subscribing to, even if I am terrible at podcasts.

One thing, though, is that I don’t do well at talking – which is funny, because I do lots of conference presentations and used to do a lot of booktalks. If I don’t prepare for a booktalk, I am off-the-cuff and fun and engaging, apparently, but then I also get asked to clarify quotes for articles and literally have no memory of saying them. On the other hand, if I prepare, apparently I’m boring, but also I’m prepared.

I was somewhat prepared for the podcast, but I didn’t have a good way of answering Roger’s question about why whiteness is the default, because it’s been so long since I’ve had to explain it. It is common fact to me, as unconscious and a part of my being as driving, you know?

But here’s the thing, the real answer as to why everyone is white unless you explicitly say (and even then you still have imbeciles like the folks who failed to remember that Rue was always black ): Continue reading →

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Can you say microaggression? This list comprises just some of the words I’ve had to teach my phone and which my computer also red-underlines. No, of course a programmer or a program cannot possibly know all words ever and of course, language evolves all the time. But just as Pacemakers are designed for men’s bodies and work less effectively on women, just as women are cold in office buildings because average a/c temps are based on calculations of average male bodies, just as hair products come in “curly” and “normal,” just as “normal” is one thing and “other” is a bazillion other things, the lack of sociological and social justice terms, as well as the lack of ethnically specific (BUT STILL ENGLISH, mind you, none of those “but it’s an English dictionary” arguments here) absolutely normal and everyday words says A LOT.

Today my (white and blonde) friend and I went to a library to do some observations. We’re in library school, preparing to be youth services librarians, you know, so we were sitting in the teen section of said library and critiquing it. We were being pretty quiet and respectful, or at least she was – I kept saying things like “This blows” and “This is the most badly designed space ever.” We were in a back corner of the library, far away from most other humans there except for two teenagers who looked pretty annoyed that we were there and talking shit (sorry, it’s a beautiful building for a house, but the space was deeply uncomfortable and way too quiet). We both believe that teen spaces in libraries are for teenagers and that adults only have business in those areas if they are quickly browsing and then leaving or if they are the librarian. Obviously we are not technically either of those things, but clearly we had a legitimate, non-creepy reason for being there, and if a librarian had come up to us to ask why we were there, we could have explained that we are graduate students studying library science and that also we are pretty young, as far as adults go.

Anyway. We’ve been sitting for awhile, and all of a sudden I hear, “Hi, beautiful.” HORRIBLE, I know, but I looked up the way you do when you hear your name. GROSS. A telling reaction, I think you’ll see. Anyway. It’s this man who is maybe in his 50s and dressed kind of strangely and layered (but in a way distinct from the average homeless library patron – he was clearly the quirky kind of person, not the down on his luck kind of guy), and he comes over and says, “So, you must be either Hispanic or Ethiopian.”

Hello to you, too. STRANGER. WITH WHOM I HAVE IN NO WAY ENGAGED OR MADE EYE CONTACT AND THEREFORE DO NOT HAVE ANY SORT OF RELATIONSHIP WITH. Continue reading →

how i plan to resist during my self care downtime

#blackgirlsquibs

leon’s story

a lot of reading in review coming up

some followup to the horn book podcast

« Jan

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