Things to read
Comic: S. Bear Bergman & Saul Freedman Lawson’s Special Topics in Being Human
Book: Angelina M. Lopez’s Full Moon Over Freedom (Milagro Street #2)
Reread: Alisha Rai’s Be My Fantasy, Stay My Fantasy (Fantasy #1 & 2)
Reread: Alisha Rai’s A Gentleman in the Streets (The Campbell Siblings #1)
Article: Ximena Conde’s A group of Philadelphians erased $1.6 million in local medical debt. They celebrated with an unofficial debt burning.
“…more than 30 proud, self-described gutter-pagan, mostly queer dirtbags in their early 30s gathered ‘round…raised more than $17,000, which purchased more than $1.6 million in medical debt owed by Philadelphians, according to their nonprofit partner RIP Medical Debt.”
Article: Faith Hill’s Don’t Let Love Take Over Your Life
“If you build a life with your relationship at the center, everything else gets pushed to the perimeter. There’s a way to maintain what I think of as “love-life balance,” to preserve your identity and autonomy while nurturing a caring partnership. Losing that balance can be damaging for a person, for a relationship, and for society.”
“According to Genadek, partners today tend to be entangled, in part because parents spend a lot of time watching their children together.”
“Even beyond sharing time and resources, family and friends offer different kinds of emotional care than partners do. […] No one person can realistically be good at responding to all different types of feelings or giving advice on every subject, yet some experts believe partners today are likelier than ever to lean primarily on each other for their psychological needs. Even worse: If the relationship ends, people can be left without anyone to rely on in a time of distress.”
“But it’s also a values issue. Kuurne believes that many people, if only subconsciously, think of intimacy as exclusive by definition; a romantic relationship is special because it’s prioritized more than anything else. Finding a better love-life balance in the everyday would mean creating what she calls “inclusive intimacy”; it would mean imagining a world in which the things that give life meaning don’t need to be placed in such a strict hierarchy.”
Music
Eme Alfonso’s Ayabba (NPR Tiny Desk)
Eme Alfonso’s Voy (En Directo), Veo (En Directo), and Obba (En Directo)
India’s Déjate Amar, Dicen Que Soy, Mi Mayor Venganza, Ese Hombra
Noname’s boomboom (ft. Ayoni)
Allison Russell’s Eve Was Black, All Without Within
Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure?, Save a Kiss, Adore You
Shoutout the music video for Save a Kiss.
Esther O. Lee 