smokefalls

[smokefalls]

A postwar era is never so. How often I forget the trauma and tragedy that has beset so many people I’ve loved from Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Rwanda. The era goes on. There is no “post” dying.

Shayla Lawson, "On Dying (Maastricht, Netherlands)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

This for me is why I can no longer call myself a Christian. I’ve been tethered to and exhausted by it too many times, by a white man trying to craft himself in God’s image. I’ve given up on worshiping anyone who can’t imagine a world with me in it.

Shayla Lawson, "On God (Montserrat, Spain)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

Gods don’t write the story of who they are, people do, so assured that the truth is derived from their own image.

Shayla Lawson, "On God (Montserrat, Spain)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

Real intimacy is the only way in this world to truly be brave.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

This is what makes my heart beat in spite of all the heartache. Life’s raw capacity to be sensual and unpredictable.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

Intimacy is not about the fact we need each other. It’s about facing the fact we are each other. The separations in how we feel are an illusion. The separations in who we are, are a myth. We are each other. And until we’re willing to draw close to one another, art is a refuge for me because it helps me see all those places where we overlap.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

I don’t know where we are anymore; I don’t know what we’re supposed to see, or how far we’re supposed to love each other. But covering over the places we hurt is not a better decency. Art is how we see our pain. Intimacy is art’s fruitage.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

Intensity is the difference between intimacy and any other type of emotion. The variations between a cuddle and a squeeze can be intimate, but the determination of how close we come is rendered by how far apart we were in the beginning. This means a second part of what renders something intimate is validation. The scary part. We like the kind of validation that affirms us; worships us; tells us we are everything to this world. We need to feel good about our place in the world—rectified, acceptable. But validation is actually the act of checking or proving the accuracy of something, which means it’s just as valid for someone who validates you to come back with negative reports as with positive.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

In the culture we live in, intimacies are abundant but intimacy is scarce. Sex, social contact, information. It’s easy for us to get what we want, but not want what we need—to be close to each other. It’s not excitement we need, but the nearness of it.

Shayla Lawson, "On Intimacy (Kyoto, Japan)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

In my privilege, I had always assumed that the refugee process was a troubled but essential part of giving equity to human life. Even now, I don’t know enough to speak on it really. But you know what I feel? There’s a troubling aggrandizement to believing we can heal the damage we have wrought dividing our borders and waging imperialism. As an American, I am still a privileged benefactor of this system. African American or not. And though I am thankful for an education that did not close me off to the delicacies of other cultures, I wonder who I’d be now if I had not seen firsthand, as a foreigner, what it means to seek refuge in a foreign country.

Shayla Lawson, "On Privilege (Roosteren, Netherlands)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

I don’t agree with fighting for the monolithic use of “Blackness” to describe all people of African descent. It’s not enough. We need more language so that we “speak” to each other and not just through each other—through Dr. King, and Malcolm X, and the assumption that Blackness can represent everybody with African ancestry. As long as we do this, we limit ourselves.

Shayla Lawson, "On Blackness (Harare, Zimbabwe)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

The need for capital-B “Blackness” as an ethnic modifier arose from slavery, not skin color. With the creation of an African diaspora came a need to find a unifying element. Since we are not all joined together by religion or skin color, culture became the substitution. But when we center that culture around American culture, we miss so much. Capital-B Blackness, despite its global appeal, is not a global unifier. It’s one part of the Pan-African vocabulary, maybe the most popular but not the only one. The difference between [capital-B] “Blackness” and [lowercase] “blackness” is the difference between a shout and a whisper. Knowing the difference is a crucial travel skill. I like to think of Blackness as a lighthouse on the edge of an ocean. Blackness might lead the way, but it is blackness that fills the shores.

Shayla Lawson, "On Blackness (Harare, Zimbabwe)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

That’s the only way we make it out some truly terrible shit, is by making the place we live beautiful. Making something out of it.

Shayla Lawson, "On Firsts (Minneapolis, Minnesota)" from How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

#Shayla Lawson #How to Live Free in a Dangerous World #quote #nonfiction #memoir #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

Title: Tin Man Author: Sarah Winman Publication Year: 2017 Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Genre: fiction, queer lit

This was a quiet novel focusing on the somewhat complicated relationship between Ellis, Michael, and Annie. I say complicated in the sense that the relationship between Ellis and Michael in particular wasn’t exactly defined, other than that there was an intense intimacy between the two that somewhat fell apart as they grew older. Told first from the perspective of Ellis, followed by a more intimate perspective from Michael (which I think was a result of it being told in the first person), the reader saw the wonders and tensions of love in every sense of the word through their narratives during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom (and France, for some moments).

I found that I was most invested in Michael’s section, especially to see how he made sense of his identity as a gay man during the AIDS epidemic. Unfortunately, I felt that his section wasn’t nearly as developed as it could have been, though, to be frank, I feel that the novel overall wasn’t as developed as I had hoped. Given the shortness of this novel, I think Winman could have taken more time to flesh out her characters more to really dig into their interiorities and, of course, their relationships with one another. While the prose was beautiful, I was a bit let down by the fact that there wasn’t depth in the content to make the writing really shine.

It seems like this novel worked really well for many other readers, but I found myself wanting a little more than what was given.

Content Warning: death, terminal illness, homophobia, grief, references to suicidal thoughts

#Sarah Winman #Tin Man #book review #fiction #queerlit #2024 reads #booklr

[smokefalls]

My loneliness masqueraded as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

Sarah Winman, Tin Man

#Sarah Winman #Tin Man #quote #fiction #queerlit #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

I rise early with the sun, open the shutters and rest my arms on the ledge and let my eyes gaze out onto that shimmering sea of yellow. I sit outside with a small Calor gas stove with a coffeepot boiling on top, and as the morning lightens, I watch the sunflowers lift up their heads and learn to decipher their whisper.

Sarah Winman, Tin Man

#Sarah Winman #Tin Man #quote #fiction #queerlit #2024 reads

[smokefalls]

And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

Sarah Winman, Tin Man

#Sarah Winman #Tin Man #quote #fiction #queerlit #2024 reads