I am 41. On the list: adopt, get healthy, feel happy more often, live where I want to live, make a difference.
We’re taking a leaf out of @nglspecialcollectionsandarchives‘s book from last year and having our own @yearinreview of the best Museums, Libraries and Collections of the year:
You have no idea how much it pains us not to make this list longer, but it’s based on our Likes over the past year so it’s as scientific as it gets! All of the Tumblrs listed have gone above and beyond in terms of interesting content, fantastic GIFs and very many laughs.
So many great arts & culture Tumblrs to follow! ❤️
What happens if I tell the truth about why I’m not married? What happens if I reveal this part of myself? Does my career in children’s books end? Will teachers and parents look at me askance? Ban my books? Run me out of town as some kind of creep trying to “recruit” or pushing a “gay agenda”? Will I never be invited to another school again?
Reading this gave me warm fuzzies. :)
Why were women frozen out of the 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington?
Image: Rosa Parks, from the US Information Agency Record Group. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The admin assistant at work has never heard of LiveJournal.
This is the moment where I feel old.
Try teaching 20 year olds every day…..😒
When I was a child, my mother warned us against playing with Ouija boards. I had no idea what a séance was, but I knew what horoscopes were and those were forbidden, too. My Afro-Caribbean father rarely spoke about his childhood in Nevis, and only revealed in his memoir that his grandmother used to make him read Alice in Wonderland, which he loathed. Both of my parents belonged to the Pilgrim Holiness Church, and magic wasn’t generally permitted in their fundamentalist Christian world (my aunt loves my books but still thinks Harry Potter leans toward the demonic).
If either of my parents had taken an interest in the books I read as a child, I might not have become a writer of fantasy fiction. But aside from Ouija boards and horoscopes, not much else was banned in my home. I couldn’t listen to the radio on Sunday, but my siblings and I were allowed to gather around the TV at 5pm to watch The Wonderful World of Disney. Tinker Bell and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice formed my introduction to magic. I later devoured the Narnia books, and sent librarians on dusty basement expeditions in my quest to read everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I loved all things British—with or without fairy dust—and there was plenty to consume since I grew up in a former British colony (Canada).
By the time I started to write seriously in high school, my imagination had been completely colonized. In my first creative writing class, I wrote about a white child having a fantastic adventure because I’d never read a book or seen a film where a Black child took center stage. I knew we could feature in historical dramas about slavery and civil rights, but I’d never seen a girl like me handling magic. Young women today can rock a t-shirt proclaiming “Black girls are magic” (I have one!) but when I was growing up, nothing in my world affirmed that fact.
I am 43 now and the process of “decolonizing my imagination” continues. At times I look to other scholars to help me theorize my experience (I especially like Celestine Woo’s “mythology of displacement”), and then I sit down at my desk and try to write stories that will spare kids of color the traumatic effects of being erased by the books they love. In my time-travel novel A Wish After Midnight and its sequel The Door at the Crossroads, I write about Afro-urban magic—practices that originated in West Africa and were preserved but also modified by enslaved people who survived both the appalling journey across the Atlantic and generations of brutal bondage in the Americas. When I searched for a time-travel device to send two Black teens back to 1863, I thought about The Middle Passage. How could I make something so horrific into something magical? Would that kind of alchemy dishonor my ancestors or could it enthrall a new generation of Black youth, letting them know that magic can happen to anyone, anywhere—even the most oppressed?
The Door at the Crossroads allows sixteen-year-old Genna Colon to open a portal between two worlds, but as in my other fantasy novels, the story doesn’t offer a perfect escape from hardship or conflict. Instead, magic leads to a deeper engagement with the historical and contemporary contradictions of US society. Time travel allows readers to compare two different eras, and for the protagonists in my novel, it’s not always easy to find proof of progress. Genna and Judah trust their hearts to guide them, but in the end they realize that even love can be a form of enslavement.
I am no longer a girl, but I am a Black woman who knows how to make magic. Black girls face many challenges on the path to womanhood, but I hope my books—and my unique journey as an author—can serve as an example of possibility and perseverance. I keep this poem by Lucille Clifton on my bulletin board because it reminds me that Black women writers are not only magical, but something like a miracle:
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott moved to the US in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American Studies at NYU. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. She is the author of twenty-three books for young readers, including the award-winning picture book Bird. Her urban fantasy novel, Ship of Souls, was named a Booklist Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Title for Youth. Three books published under her own imprint, Rosetta Press, have been named Best Children’s Books of the Year by the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature. Rosetta Press generates culturally relevant stories that center children who have been marginalized, misrepresented, and/or rendered invisible in traditional children’s literature. Elliott is an advocate for greater diversity and equity in publishing. She currently lives in Brooklyn.
A Wish After Midnight and The Door at the Crossroads are available for purchase.
April showers bring…mushrooms? Sure, why not.
Here are some fungi from Birds and Nature, v.14, 1903. We’ve digitized this serial for the Biodiversity Heritage Library. They are celebrating 10 years of existence this week. Not looking to trace mentions of a specific species over centuries of biodiversity literature? Their Flickr account, with over 100K images, is full of amazing scientific illustrations.
Great report on a strong young man who gave AIDS a face all those years ago. Important to remember the person as we talk about the Ryan White program and the critical services still needed for all those living with HIV today.
The Ryan White Story (film) made a HUGE impact on me and my friends as teens. It shaped my understanding of HIV/AIDS and made me aware that bigotry is often completely illogical. I was so privileged to learn about his story and to be educated about HIV. That education has made a difference many times since.
My Grandfather speaks rapid Cantonese to me.
He’s telling me what he wants from McDonalds.
The kid behind the counter rolls his eyes at this.
The woman behind us in line says “Speak English” under her breathe.
The grip my Grandfather has on my arm tightens.
My Grandfather can speak English.
He can understand English.
He can write English.
But he came when he was in his twenties, and he has an accent
that will never leave.
And when he speaks English
he hears-
“How long have you been here?”
“Can you repeat that again?”
“I don’t understand you.”
And it humiliates him.
This man who left his family,
who left his life to make a better one.
The bravest man I know
is embarrassed of his accent.
And in McDonalds,
the man who crossed the pacific
in a freight boat with no papers
and no one he knew in this country,
bows his head in shame.
Every few years, these behind-the-scenes photos of our National Museum of Natural History go viral.
With less than one percent of the museum’s collection on display at any given time, we need a lot of drawers.
These images, captured over the course of almost 20 years, show the vastness and variety of specimens in storage but also represent very active science that goes on at the museum. What do we do with all those birds? They allow researchers to study a species’ variability, to learn how environments change over time, and to access raw data for continual investigation as the field advances.
The Story Behind Those Jaw-Dropping Photos of the Collections at the Natural History Museum by @smithsonianmag
Holy crapola
