Am I not hot when I'm in my feelings?

Fires and floods and epic rain

This strange, wet, smoky summer has been heavy with change.

Last week I cried in a Walmart parking lot. Then I drove my oldest child to college and tried not to cry in her dorm hallway.

In my head, the first lines of Catherine Barnett’s remarkable poem, “Son in August”:

Dignity, I said to myself
as he carried his last things into the dorm.

Dignity, I repeated as I drove away, feeling lighter on the other side of the goodbye but still scraped raw, wrung out like a mother-rag.

Like birth, nothing can prepare you for the leaving. And writing honestly about the complexity of motherhood has always been a cultural taboo.

As America Ferrera says in Barbie: “You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time.”

America Ferrera as Gloria, an “ordinary” mother, in Barbie

Did you see Barbie?

What did you think?

I saw it twice, underwhelmed the first time and overcome the second. I laughed, cheered, teared up at the mother-daughter dynamics, loved Ken crooning his emotional heart out, demanding “Am I not hot when I’m in my feelings?”

Yes. Yes you are, Ken.

At first I critiqued the movie for not being revolutionary enough, for offering an oversimplified feminist vision. But then I read someone’s smart post that this is the first mainstream movie EVER to name and shame the patriarchy, and that critiques of the film for being “Feminism 101” are missing the point and enacting the same impossible standards for women that America Ferrera cites in her monologue.  

And, since Margot Robbie’s Barbie character only learns about patriarchy for the first time when she visits the real world, what she needs is Feminism 101 to make sense of it.

Also, in case you haven’t noticed, we are in a terrifying backlash and our rights are under attack. Americans clearly still need to take— and pass— Feminism 101. Just read Jessica Valenti’s latest reporting on The GOP’s Plan to Ban Birth Control. Things are looking grim in the Real World.

So thank you, Greta Gerwig, for letting us laugh this summer. I’m heartened that Barbie is the biggest movie of the year 🔥

Save the date!

My new book Dark Beds is coming out this fall! Join me for the Launch Party on Friday the 13th of October, at the one and only Brattleboro Literary Festival. I’ll be reading in a spooky old church with feminist poet Cate Marvin (check out her brilliant fourth book Event Horizon) followed by a literary soirée with nibbles & dancing.

Dark Beds juxtaposes the conflicted emotions of motherhood and domesticity with the intoxicating promises of transgression. I’m excited and a little nervous for what launching this book will bring. In it, I explore desire and infidelity and claim the role of middle-aged mother, despite its stigma and invisibility. To bolster my nerve, I’m keeping this quote from playwright Sarah Ruhl above my desk:

“But I insist… that motherhood is an undiscovered country in the literary sense, one we must venture into lest our experience goes unrecorded, or recorded only by men.” -Sarah Ruhl

Friends, you can PRE-ORDER Dark Beds HERE. And mark your calendar to join me for the launch on Friday Oct. 13! 🕸🖤🔮🩸

Rest in Peace, Sinéad

I’m still in sorrow over the death of Sinéad O’Connor at age 56. The Irish singer inspired me to find my own voice in the 1990s, although I just recently learned the truth about her traumatic childhood, her struggles with mental health, and her fearless activism.

I loved this podcast about Sinéad’s life and career, how she refused to grow her hair long or tamp down her anger, how she protested the Iraq war and other forms of violence and injustice. I’ve been listening to her music on repeat this summer, especially the beautiful song “Black Boys on Mopeds”. The lyrics still hold true:

These are dangerous days,
to say what you feel
is to make your own grave.

Poetry Books I Couldn’t Put Down

• There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker. How did I miss this exquisite book back in 2017!? I soaked up the lyric power and boldness of Parker’s poems, her dynamic use of white space and line breaks, her meditation on Black womanhood, with Beyoncé as muse. Get a taste of Parker’s voice in these three poems.

• Flutter, Kick by Anna V. Q. Ross. This stunning collection on motherhood and danger gave me poetry chills. My favorite poem, “Fugue,” brilliantly enacts the fracture and repetition compulsion of trauma, weaving the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford with a mother driving in rush hour traffic, her 12-year-old daughter in the back. A vital feminist voice for our times.

  

Short Reads Not to Miss

• The haunting short story “Long Island” by Nicole Krauss, in The New Yorker:

  “We didn’t go to our parents. That might be hard to fathom now, when children immediately go to their parents about everything— when there isn’t even such a thing as going to one’s parents, because we who are now parents are forever there, rarely leaving our children alone for a moment. But, back when we grew up, going to one’s parents was like crossing a lake–that was how far away they seemed to us, how remote. And, even if we made the effort to cross it, we couldn’t be sure that they would be there when we arrived.”

• All the Rage: The Rise of the Menopause Novel, in The Guardian. This incisive look at “the change” in literature gave me hope for the future, plus a list of great books to read:

  “If men had the menopause they would be given 10 years off work, from the ages of 45 to 55, on full pay. And then once they had transitioned into the Great Wise Age there would be a massive party and they would be revered. Instead we are mocked.” - novelist Marion Keyes

Feminist Books I Can’t Wait to Get My Hands On

• The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani. This gorgeous debut by Latinx/South Asian poet Hotchandani explores some similar themes as Dark Beds— new motherhood, loss, memory, aphasia, the natural world. Coming this fall!

• Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control by Amanda Montei. This is the book I needed in the Baby Cave. A hybrid of memoir and feminist theory that looks at the intersection of motherhood and misogyny. Bring it on.

• Bianca by Eugenia Leigh. A fiercely honest excavation of cycles of abuse and the ravages of bipolar disorder, Leigh’s second collection promises stiletto-sharp lines and unapologetic insights. Get a taste in “My Whole Life I Was Trained to Deny Myself.”:

  “How I brawled/on that battleground alone with myself/ punching at nothing until I conjured/ my multitudes.”

  

Thanks for getting into Girl Trouble with me. Stay tuned for more Dark Beds updates next month and opportunities to write with me.

xo Diana

P.S. I’m obsessed with this long list of Famous Bi People... Alanis Morisette, Aubrey Plaza, Cardi B, Janis Joplin, Lady Gaga, and of course my longtime crushes Walt Whitman and Janelle Monae 💖

P.P.S. Sha’Carri Richardson- fastest woman in the world— from all angles!