This is the last full week before my family, and I move houses. It’s been five years in our little desert patio home, making this house only the second in my life that I’ve lived in for 5+ years. When I was young, it was normal to move house every one to three years until we landed in Arizona when I was eleven. These are facts about me, and I don’t think they cohere into a story, yet. I do find myself less attached to a place, a house. There is more to what makes a home. But now, having lived in Arizona since 2004 (with a short stint in WA from 2013-2016), I can’t say I’m new here anymore. I wonder when (if) I won’t feel like a very young, green person who just moved here and is still acclimating. 

On Saturday, I went to a linocut printmaking workshop at Wasted Ink Zine Distro led by Dempsey Keenan, a brilliant local artist. I made a print of some lemons (predictable), and my brain is swimming with ideas. There was something very satisfying about shaving away the linoleum, strip by strip. After, I walked to Lola Coffee near where I went to college a long time ago, where I’d met Charissa of Wasted Ink, also a long time ago. The city has changed a lot since I first got to know it, and noticing those changes are when I’m most forced to realize I actually, like, am from here now. I remember the city under the current city. Phoenix is now more vibrant (as well as more expensive and gentrified). It reminds me of the quote I shared from Christina Sharpe last week: “I just think that staying with something can open up a different kind of aperture by which we don’t collapse everything into it but by which we can make an argument or see the world.” In staying with a place longer and longer, the vision is shifting, and I can see more. I keep my eyes open as I try to figure out how to be from a place where my roots are all self-planted.

I read a lot this week (perhaps seeking a third-party companion amid the chaos of moving) and wanted to share the links to my favorites:

Books

• The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg 

• The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips 

• The Wife of Willesden by Zadie Smith

Magazines

• Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg by Joan Acocella (The New Yorker, 2019) 

• The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (NYT, 2015) 

• Scorched Earth: How Mezcal’s Growing Popularity Has Undermined Oaxaca’s Ecosystem And The Spirit’s Ancient Tradition by Trudy Hall (MOLD, 2019) 

• Potatoes and Point by Angela Carter (London Review of Books, 1986) 

• How Kitchen Table Press Changed Publishing by Ashawnta Jackson (JSTOR Daily, 2021)

Newsletters

• Cameron Steele on competing motherhoods via The Argonauts, On Not Knowing, Linea Nigra, and the Blue Jay's Dance in Interruptions 

• Brandon Taylor on redemption and morality in fiction in Sweater Weather 

• Victoria Meléndez on mother love and loss in Finding the Words

• Amanda Montei interviewing Kelly McMasters on her new book about marriage, home, and fantasy in Mad Woman

• Andrew Janjigian explaining why KitchenAid actually hates home bakers in Wordloaf

• Tyler reminiscing on Phoenix architecture (the iconic Souper Salad building!) in Tyler Has a Gun 

• Allison Lichter on Roxanna Asgarian’s new book about family separation in Matriarchy Report