The Audacious Roundup
For the week of June 23rd
AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGS
Book club news! We’re partnering with the lovely people at Allstora for the Audacious Book Club. Now, you can sign up to have the monthly selections delivered to your doorstep each month!
Our July selection is Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin. We will have a live book club discussion with the author on July 30th at 8pm EST/5 am PST. Registration is open! I hope to see many of you there. I’ve put together an Audacious Book Club storefront if you want to buy current or forthcoming book club titles. There is a bookclub FAQ if you have questions about how it all works.
THE NEWSLETTER WEEK IN REVIEW
PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL NEWS
Thanks to you guys and other readers, The Portable Feminist Reader is a NYT bestseller! So thank you! And if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, there’s still time! (And there will always be time, it’s a book.) And check out Love Letter to a Garden, by Debbie Millman.
Book and project buying links: Books I’ve Written, RGB Imprint Titles, Rebind: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
READING MATERIAL
New York had a primary and Zohran Mamdani shocked only the people who have given up on believing change is possible or are invested in preventing change. They are big big mad. He also had beautiful campaign visuals. Cuomo got shellacked and hopefully will stay out of politics and also remember Anthony Weiner? That sex pest also failed to make a political comeback. Here’s an old Grub Street Diet with Mamdani. I also appreciated this piece by M. Gessen on how we think about antisemitism. And this remains an excellent example of campaign messaging.
After bombing Iran, turns out, the U.S. doesn’t know where Iran’s uranium stockpile is and they lied about obliterating Iran’s nuclear program. Second verse, same as the first! Congress, which loves giving away their power, was surprised by this whole WWIII thing.
Because war, these days, is kind of done via telephone, Iran told the US and Qatar, oh hey , we’re going to bomb you at this exact time in this exact place and then they did but there were no injuries or deaths because, well, it wasn’t a surprise.
After more than 100 days, Mahmoud Kahlil was freed from federal custody, on bail. He gets to hold his child and be with his wife and talk about his kidnapping.
A racist did a racist thing.
The president continues to test the limits of his power and people/institutions continue to comply in advance. Sort of related: the former director of the Queens Museum shares why she resigned.
He has also ended TPS for 500,000 Haitians, saying it’s “safe enough” for these people to return to Haiti. Spoiler alert: IT ISN’T!
The Navy and Drunky McDrunkerson have stripped the Harvey Milk name from a naval ship and replaced it. All they know how to do is destroy because they lack the imagination to build anything.
Big Balls isn’t working for the government anymore. Two years ago, this sentence would have been bewildering.
The umpteenth reminder that billionaire benevolence is whimsical and fleeting. They are not going to save us.
Speaking of billionaires, WaPo continues to lose print subscribers. (And online subscribers tooooo.)
The father of a U.S. Marine was detained for deportation and, well, that’s what this regime thinks of the military.
The Telegram CEO is going to let all his 100+ heirs get a piece of his fortune. He’s like that guy in that one SVU episode who is eager to spread his seed. This is, of course, eugenics, this belief that you have such incredible genes that you should share your semen with the world. NO THANK YOU.
From Robert Jones Jr., an uncovering of Black queer history we rarely, if ever, hear about.
In New Orleans, Black drag queens helped create rock and roll.
Not that it’s all roses now but back in the day, lesbian mothers often had to go to extremes to keep their children with them. This was an interesting profile of one such mother and her now adult daughter. And it’s not as black and white as you might think.
Two firemen in Idaho were ambushed by a shooter while responding to a fire. Horrible.
A woman shot her husband when she learned he was sexually abusing children at their day care and she is now out of prison. Good for her, on all counts.
Believe it or believe it, but it has been three years since Dobbs. And guess what? Women and people with uteri are still getting abortions.
Some amazing news from lesbian basketball!
Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor as Vogue.
An excerpt from Maris Kreizman’s new essay collection, I Want to Burn This Place Down.
Mariska Hargitay made a documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield. I’ve seen it twice over the past four months and it is genuinely excellent.
From FreeFrom, Envisioning an Abundant Movement—a roadmap for the best ways to support survivors of gender-based violence.
I’m actually writing an essay about this—Only Fans creators are engaging in extreme acts to retain and recruit audiences. This is not new—it has happened as long as porn has existed, but in this day and age, when we have unfettered access to so much, it takes more and more to push those boundaries. And at what cost to the people who are allowing their boundaries to be pushed? Stay tuned. But meanwhile, Vulture published a piece about this phenomenon. Ahhh, capitalism.
When fetishes enter the mainstream…though, is gooning really a fetish?
Speaking of OnlyFans, the guy who created the platform is, of course, now a billionaire.
There are people in serious (?) relationships with AI chatbots. There are also some people who want to live forever and will do a range of bizarre, joyless things to make immortality possible. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t possible. Unless you’re a vampire.)
Blah blah blah men aren’t reading novels. This is a non-problem.
The Times is expanding its cooking roster. I feel I could make fun cooking videos!
Would love to see your cooking videos on NYT, Roxane. I’m serious. Probably not the only person who’d dig them, either. Just a serving suggestion.
Highest highs and lowest lows over here during Pride month. I campaigned for Zohran and totally stan Azzi and Paige and took my 6 year old to the Pride parade for the first and definitely not last time. The lows are still there but there were some really lovely surprises thrown in.