Thankful words in strange times

You might think I’d have drawn a Thanksgiving comic, but I honestly didn’t even think about it until much too late, so instead you have your usual sideways look into my psyche.

Regardless! My dad is here. We are going to bake a lot of pies, and no mistaking.

If you are part of the literary world, you’ve probably seen Claire Vaye Watkins’s essay “On Pandering” up at Tin House already. (I’ve heard the site crashed due to demand, but will be back up soon, so I’m linking to it.) If you have any interest in 1. literature & art presenting a variety of voices to expand our human sense of empathy, and 2. the way that systemic inequality can creep not only into your life but into your mind, give it a read.

(And if you aren’t interested in those topics, you should probably read it all the more, but I guess you won’t.)

And, since Claire’s isn’t the most marginalized voice out there (which she readily acknowledges), there have been some interesting conversations, expanding on the ideas in the essay, cropping up on Twitter from writers of color, queer writers, etc., and those are also worth a look. Here are a few relevant timelines to read (Nicole Chung, Porochista Khakpour, and Jacqui Shine, respectively), and Flavorwire also collected some of that thinking, which might be a good place to start.

Let’s keep talking.