14 years ago, my conservative school district taught a curriculum that may now be contested — I had a relatively insular middle school experience in a conservative Florida county. Most of my classmates were white and had Republican parents. Chick-fil-A was—and still is—the community’s hub. It was 2009 — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be around for two more years and marriage equality wouldn’t become federal…

How a decade-old summer reading project became “who I am” — Since 2010, I’ve read exactly 992 books. If it takes me almost fifteen years to read a thousand, I optimistically have another 4,000 books ahead of me in my lifetime. The first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered, “I want to…

Why Jordon Greene’s ‘Every Word You Never Said’ is one of my favorite YA contemporary romances — “I’m not looking for your voice. I’m aiming for your heart.” – Every Word You Never Said by Jordon Greene CW/TW: homophobia, transphobia, ableism, adoptee trauma, religious trauma, child abuse. Every Word You Never Said is a romantic dream come true for YA book lovers. There’s Jacob, a broody drummer…

How contemporary authors are revitalizing this high school reading assignment — Since January 2021, The Great Gatsby has experienced a renaissance of retellings and remixes when it entered the public domain. Like Pride and Prejudice, I expect…

Exploring Christopher Salerno’s poetry collection on manhood, trauma, and tenderness — Christopher Salerno’s The Man Grave is an exercise in duality—in studying the double-edged sword of masculinity within one’s self and the desire to become more vulnerable in a culture of bravado and violence. The collection’s opening poem, “Headfirst,” establishes this immediately when the speaker is a victim of a hit…

How language skills surface in the most vulnerable situations — Two weeks ago, I went into a six-hour-long emergency surgery with painfully numb hands and a damaged spinal cord. When I woke up in the OR, I was speaking a language that was not listed anywhere in my chart. …

What I learned in my first month on Medium and what my goals are now — I’m in it for the long haul as a freelance writer, and I expected my first venture into Medium the same as when I started building my personal brand in 2018. That is: an unpaid intern learning about social media marketing, happy to have 1,600 followers on Instagram after five…

Colley Cibber’s Sir Novelty Fashion is reimagined in Dorian Electra’s hyperpop album Flamboyant — A fop is “one who is foolishly attentive to and vain of his appearance, dress, or manners; a dandy, an exquisite” (OED). This definition stems from the archetype of the fop character on the Restoration Era British stage: a locus of gender experimentation and fluidity with an aesthetic staying power we still see today.

Upbeat, feminist comics exploring femininity, duty, and the ups and downs of being a princess — Growing up, I had a plethora of princesses to choose from. I tirelessly watched VHS tapes of The Little Mermaid and its spin-off series. I had Barbie’s The Princess and the Pauper on DVD along with a singing Erika movie–tie-in doll. Being Czech, I also had an endless amount of…