Self-Love, Self-Discovery, and a Cocktail that's Exceptionally Cozy
(PSA: Reading at the Bar is going on tour to the UK for all of next month! British friends, I’ll be seeing you soon. Please get in touch if you want to hang out IRL.)
This past week, I read and loved…Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins and Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
I could have begun this newsletter with “Get your head out of the gutter!” in reference to my title, but this weeks’ books are practically dripping with female desire, so it’s probably should begin with: “The gutter is just a tool of patriarchy!”
Sometimes I Trip is a collection of essays that interweaves depression with the TV show Bones, Kermit and Miss Piggy with learning to recognize unhealthy relationships. At first glance I had a hard time imagining how this would work. and that it does is a testimony to Perkins’ incredible writing, which had me laughing sometimes, holding my breath in shock other times, and nodding in recognition much more than I thought I would. This collection is worth having for the essays “Fast” and “A Woman Who Shouts” alone. It’d also be a great parallel read with A Little Devil In America by Hanif Abdurraqib, who delves into pop culture’s intersection points with Blackness and masculinity, similarly to how Sometimes I Trip breaks down Black femininity.
One other thing: I delighted in how frankly horny this book was. It wasn’t horny in a way that went for gags or being outrageous for the sake of outrageousness. Perkins’ thirst in all its complexity is a fundamental part of who she is, and I aspire to have the same kind of easy, unapologetic confidence in writing about kinks, pleasure, and sexuality as a whole.
Speaking of sexuality, Juliet Milagros Palante, the main character of the YA novel Juliet Takes a Breath, is a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx, is trying to figure hers out. Immediately after coming out as queer to her conservative parents, she flies to Portland, Oregon to intern for Harlowe Brisbane, a radical white feminist and Juliet’s heroine. But Harlowe isn’t all that she seems, and Juliet faces a rocky path to understanding herself and all of the women in her life.
Juliet is a rich and delightful main character - equally anxious and curious, in love with the world’s possibility and unsure of her place in it. Rivera does an amazing job of setting scenes, whether it’s a haircut-and-dance party on a hot Florida night, or a sci-fi writing workshop for POC women which worships Octavia Butler as a deity.
On a more serious note, I actually found this a really helpful read in how its characters argue about what truly intersectional feminism should look like, and they’re talking about it based on concrete, day-to-day examples. Speaking as someone who can handle reading about half a page of abstract theory before I run screaming, the explanations made more sense to me in Rivera’s young adult novel than they have in other places.
Other books I read: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, For 100 Days by Lara Adrian, Called Up by Jen Doyle, Boyfriend by Sarina Bowen
And I drank…an Autumn Sweater
Amaro Nonino first came into my life in the form of a Paper Plane, and I finally splashed out on a bottle of my own after tasting a rum variation. To me, Amaro Nonino is on the mellower end of amaros. For lack of a better synthesizing adjective, it’s very holiday-esque - warm, spiced, a little sweet, a little orangey. It’s a perfect cocktail ingredient for when the weather is turning dark and dreary, and in the Autumn Sweater it teams up with rye, Averna, and maple syrup to make something, well, that matches its cozy name to a T. (Note: I couldn’t get maple bitters easily, so I used these Tobacco Bitters instead.)