Martha Wells's Blog, page 121
January 12, 2014
Book Rec
I haven't been feeling great this past week, and I've been kind of down, so yesterday I took the day off and just spent all day at home reading. It's been a long time since I've done something like that.
The book I read was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It's a science fiction novel that's getting a lot of attention lately and that is because it's really, really good. One of the extremely cool things about it is that the main character comes from a culture that doesn't indicate gender in any cultural or linguistic way, and the default way to refer to any person is "she" even if they're male. It sounds like it would be hard to follow, but it actually isn't. It reminded me a bit of when I was sixteen and reading The Barbie Murders And Other Stories by John Varley, which takes place on a far future moon colony where people switch gender and appearance like we switch shoes, where at first it's cool but very strange, and then you quickly get the hang of it and it's just really cool. And the story in Ancillary Justice is very compelling and I was glad to have the time to read most of it nearly straight through. Anyway, I would highly recommend it.
A couple of links:
* Silent Technical Privilege by Philip Guo
Okay that entire paragraph was a lie. Did you believe me? If so, why? Was it because I looked like a kid programming whiz?
* I wrote a story with a traditionally masculine character named Rachael by Teresa Frohock
I read those qualities and thought to myself: My God, he has just described Rachael. Although readers didn't see it in Miserere, Rachael does tend to drink too much and though she doesn't womanize, she does the female equivalent and has had several lovers. We won't delve too deeply into those aspects of her character here. Instead, I want to talk about her nobler qualities--those aspects of her character that are "traditionally masculine."
The book I read was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It's a science fiction novel that's getting a lot of attention lately and that is because it's really, really good. One of the extremely cool things about it is that the main character comes from a culture that doesn't indicate gender in any cultural or linguistic way, and the default way to refer to any person is "she" even if they're male. It sounds like it would be hard to follow, but it actually isn't. It reminded me a bit of when I was sixteen and reading The Barbie Murders And Other Stories by John Varley, which takes place on a far future moon colony where people switch gender and appearance like we switch shoes, where at first it's cool but very strange, and then you quickly get the hang of it and it's just really cool. And the story in Ancillary Justice is very compelling and I was glad to have the time to read most of it nearly straight through. Anyway, I would highly recommend it.
A couple of links:
* Silent Technical Privilege by Philip Guo
Okay that entire paragraph was a lie. Did you believe me? If so, why? Was it because I looked like a kid programming whiz?
* I wrote a story with a traditionally masculine character named Rachael by Teresa Frohock
I read those qualities and thought to myself: My God, he has just described Rachael. Although readers didn't see it in Miserere, Rachael does tend to drink too much and though she doesn't womanize, she does the female equivalent and has had several lovers. We won't delve too deeply into those aspects of her character here. Instead, I want to talk about her nobler qualities--those aspects of her character that are "traditionally masculine."
January 11, 2014
More Links
I keep forgetting to mention this, but I have a tumblr where I post the same posts I post here (say that three times fast) plus a lot of other stuff. So if you prefer to tumbl instead of LJ, that's where I am.
* Of Awards Eligibility Lists and Unbearable Smugness by Amal El-Mohtar
You cannot with one breath say that you wish more women were recognized for their work, and then say in the next that you think less of people who make others aware of their work. You cannot trust that somehow, magically, the systems that suppress the voices of women, people of colour, disabled people, queer people, trans people, will of their own accord stop doing that when award season rolls around in order to suddenly make you aware of their work. You MUST recognize the fact that the only way to counter silence is to encourage speech and make room for it to be heard.
* Battle of the Sexists (aka Let The Self-Promotion Roll, Ladies) by Gwenda Bond
Don't be an imperfect vessel, kids. Which seems to mean, among other things, don't self-promote, don't believe your own work is worth promoting, and for eff's sake, don't imply that it's worthy of critical consideration OR that which books get attention really does often come down to initial perceptions of the people who make those decisions... Perceptions which are undeniably colored by impressions created by the track record/history of the author and the packaging (and I'd include marketing push there). And if you believe that women's and men's work are packaged the same, or that women authors whose works are or are perceived to be primarily about and/or for girls or women are on equal ground in this equation, then I have some lovely beachfront property I'd love to sell you with a library full of Franzen the Grouch novels. Just send me a cashier's check.
* Atlas Obscura's Essential Guide to Bioluminescence
*
elanya
commented with this and it's awesome: Peter Mayhew is posting old behind-the-scenes photos from making the original Star Wars: here, or on The Wookiee Roars twitter feed
* Of Awards Eligibility Lists and Unbearable Smugness by Amal El-Mohtar
You cannot with one breath say that you wish more women were recognized for their work, and then say in the next that you think less of people who make others aware of their work. You cannot trust that somehow, magically, the systems that suppress the voices of women, people of colour, disabled people, queer people, trans people, will of their own accord stop doing that when award season rolls around in order to suddenly make you aware of their work. You MUST recognize the fact that the only way to counter silence is to encourage speech and make room for it to be heard.
* Battle of the Sexists (aka Let The Self-Promotion Roll, Ladies) by Gwenda Bond
Don't be an imperfect vessel, kids. Which seems to mean, among other things, don't self-promote, don't believe your own work is worth promoting, and for eff's sake, don't imply that it's worthy of critical consideration OR that which books get attention really does often come down to initial perceptions of the people who make those decisions... Perceptions which are undeniably colored by impressions created by the track record/history of the author and the packaging (and I'd include marketing push there). And if you believe that women's and men's work are packaged the same, or that women authors whose works are or are perceived to be primarily about and/or for girls or women are on equal ground in this equation, then I have some lovely beachfront property I'd love to sell you with a library full of Franzen the Grouch novels. Just send me a cashier's check.
* Atlas Obscura's Essential Guide to Bioluminescence
*
elanya
commented with this and it's awesome: Peter Mayhew is posting old behind-the-scenes photos from making the original Star Wars: here, or on The Wookiee Roars twitter feed
January 9, 2014
Sorry for the lack of posts here. I just haven't felt li...
Sorry for the lack of posts here. I just haven't felt like posting or saying anything lately. Here's a few links:
IO9: The Most Incredible Historical Discoveries of 2013
MentalFloss: 5 Historical Manias That Gripped Societies, Then Disappeared
Nuclear Unicorn: Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism
PS Mag: Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet (warning for discussion of sexual assault threats)
Book rec:
HANG WIRE starred review, advance praise for THE BURNING DARK, and the awesomely kick-ass pre-order contest! (updated!) by Adam Christopher. (I've read The Burning Dark already and really enjoyed it.)
IO9: The Most Incredible Historical Discoveries of 2013
MentalFloss: 5 Historical Manias That Gripped Societies, Then Disappeared
Nuclear Unicorn: Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism
PS Mag: Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet (warning for discussion of sexual assault threats)
Book rec:
HANG WIRE starred review, advance praise for THE BURNING DARK, and the awesomely kick-ass pre-order contest! (updated!) by Adam Christopher. (I've read The Burning Dark already and really enjoyed it.)
January 3, 2014
I contributed a bunch of books to Worldbuilders this year...
I contributed a bunch of books to Worldbuilders this year and you can see them at that link.
If you haven't heard of it before, Worldbuilders is a big SF/F fundraiser run by Patrick Rothfuss for Heifer International. When you donate on the Worldbuilders page, you're entered in a lottery to win signed books and other fabulous prizes. There are also auctions for individual items. The instructions and info are here.
***
Sarah Monette has a post Buy, Read, Talk: How to Help a Writer's Career
Back in 2009, when my career as a novelist went into a nosedive, somebody asked me what my readers could do to help. I apologize wholeheartedly to that person, for I no longer remember who they are. At the time, I didn't have a good answer, both because I really didn't know and because there was, at that point, nothing readers could do.
- her new book is The Goblin Emperor, coming out under the name Katherine Addison
***
And my agent Jennifer Jackson has a contest to win an ARC of an upcoming book.
If you haven't heard of it before, Worldbuilders is a big SF/F fundraiser run by Patrick Rothfuss for Heifer International. When you donate on the Worldbuilders page, you're entered in a lottery to win signed books and other fabulous prizes. There are also auctions for individual items. The instructions and info are here.
***
Sarah Monette has a post Buy, Read, Talk: How to Help a Writer's Career
Back in 2009, when my career as a novelist went into a nosedive, somebody asked me what my readers could do to help. I apologize wholeheartedly to that person, for I no longer remember who they are. At the time, I didn't have a good answer, both because I really didn't know and because there was, at that point, nothing readers could do.
- her new book is The Goblin Emperor, coming out under the name Katherine Addison
***
And my agent Jennifer Jackson has a contest to win an ARC of an upcoming book.
January 2, 2014
Books and Stuff
* Moonkind by Sarah Prineas is out!
As the Lady of the Summerlands, Fer has vowed to serve her people without the deception of the glamorie and she had trusted other leaders to fulfill the same promise. But not all the Lords and Ladies want to keep their oaths, and they've unleashed the consequences of their betrayal onto the lands. Only Fer, with the help of the puck-boy Rook, can fight the stillness invading the lands. But can she trust Rook? And can she protect her people before it's too late?
* I just finished The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney and loved it. It's a mystery set in a magical, alternate version of early 1900s Portugal, and the worldbuilding is excellent. I can't wait for the second book.
The Cloud Roads was a top ten read at Bibliosanctum and Razor's Edge was at Shadowhawk's Shade.
Links:
* Crossroads And Coins: Naomi Mitchison's 'Travel Light' by Amal El-Mohtar
I had never encountered Mitchison's work before reading Travel Light. A cursory googling revealed, to my astonishment, that there were good reasons for me to think of this book and The Hobbit as two sides of my heart's coin: Mitchison and Tolkien were good friends, and Mitchison was among the first readers of The Lord of the Rings before it was published (Travel Light was published in 1952, Lord of the Rings in 1954). Reading further I discovered, to my astonishment, that Mitchison had written more than 90 books, that she died in 1999 at the age of 101, that she had led a spectacular life full of travel and social activism, that she had written science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction and poetry — and that she was nowhere to be found in the canon of genre fiction.
* A preview of Touch by Michelle Sagara.
* Tom Baker's newsletter where he talks a bit about filming the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who
Previous posts:
If you missed it:
* Wheel of the Infinite is out in audiobook.
* A Couple of Links, and End of Year Resolution
* Post-Xmas Round-Up
* Holiday Round-Up
As the Lady of the Summerlands, Fer has vowed to serve her people without the deception of the glamorie and she had trusted other leaders to fulfill the same promise. But not all the Lords and Ladies want to keep their oaths, and they've unleashed the consequences of their betrayal onto the lands. Only Fer, with the help of the puck-boy Rook, can fight the stillness invading the lands. But can she trust Rook? And can she protect her people before it's too late?
* I just finished The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney and loved it. It's a mystery set in a magical, alternate version of early 1900s Portugal, and the worldbuilding is excellent. I can't wait for the second book.
The Cloud Roads was a top ten read at Bibliosanctum and Razor's Edge was at Shadowhawk's Shade.
Links:
* Crossroads And Coins: Naomi Mitchison's 'Travel Light' by Amal El-Mohtar
I had never encountered Mitchison's work before reading Travel Light. A cursory googling revealed, to my astonishment, that there were good reasons for me to think of this book and The Hobbit as two sides of my heart's coin: Mitchison and Tolkien were good friends, and Mitchison was among the first readers of The Lord of the Rings before it was published (Travel Light was published in 1952, Lord of the Rings in 1954). Reading further I discovered, to my astonishment, that Mitchison had written more than 90 books, that she died in 1999 at the age of 101, that she had led a spectacular life full of travel and social activism, that she had written science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction and poetry — and that she was nowhere to be found in the canon of genre fiction.
* A preview of Touch by Michelle Sagara.
* Tom Baker's newsletter where he talks a bit about filming the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who
Previous posts:
If you missed it:
* Wheel of the Infinite is out in audiobook.
* A Couple of Links, and End of Year Resolution
* Post-Xmas Round-Up
* Holiday Round-Up
December 31, 2013
New Audiobook - Wheel of the Infinite
Wheel of the Infinite is available in audiobook today, narrated by Lisa Reneé Pitts
It should be available through audible, etc, but I think this is the last day to get it at 50% off from the publisher, Tantor Audio. (All their audiobooks are 50% off this month, including all my other audiobooks.)
The ebook is available, DRM-Free, from Barnes and Noble NookBook, Kobo, Amazon Kindle, Kindle UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle De, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy, etc.
December 30, 2013
A Couple of Links, and End of Year Resolution
* How a book really can change your life: Brain function improves for DAYS after reading a novel
* 10 Charities That Encourage Reading.
* There's also First Book which I donated to this year.
And there's this post by Jessica Spotswood 2013: A Learning Year: Managing Expectations that I just read this morning and really hit me where I live.
Our experiences have been different, but this part: When you don’t get reviewed, or get the marketing that you took for granted on the first book, or sent anywhere, or end up on end-of-year lists – you feel like a disappointment. A failure. Your family and non-writing friends only know about publishing from your experience, and they ask you all the time when you’re going on tour for your next book and where you are doing events and how are your sales and why the new book isn’t in Walmart. You try to explain that most authors don’t do that and most books don’t get that and you were really lucky that first time. You try to adjust their expectations. They mean very well. But you feel like a disappointment again. And you can’t complain about being sad or hurt, because it’s true – most books don’t get that in the first place.
That is where I’ve been for most of 2013. Feeling like a failure. Like a disappointment. Like people bet big on me and I let them down.
This is where I live, pretty much. I've never had a book come out that met anybody's expectations, and I've always felt like a disappointment, I've always failed the people who bet on me. This is a job I've been doing for twenty years, and in one big way, I've never been any good at it.
(There are still readers who enjoy the books and tell me so, and that's a huge important thing to me. As a writer, you have to remember that your books' relationships with their readers are a completely separate entity from their relationships with you or their publishers, and really have nothing to do with you or their publishers. It's a factor in this business that can't be measured. But in the factors that can be measured, I continually feel like a disappointment.)
When it comes down to it, this is a job, and it's also a huge important thing to me. In the years when I couldn't sell a book or even a short story, it was a job I didn't have anymore. (A friend described a publishing crash as being like having a job where you keep coming into work every day but you've been fired, and the people don't actually want you there, but they don't tell you about it. It's only gradually, as the paychecks fail to come in and everyone's ignoring you, that you realize you don't work there anymore.) I fought to get back to it and I had help from great people, and I came back, with hopeful expectations -- that again I haven't been able to meet.
But this year I've come to a gradual decision that I don't care. I don't care how big a disappointment and a failure I am, I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing it no matter who doesn't like it (and believe me, a lot of people don't like it) and that's just the way it's going to be.
I'm not going to allow comments on this post, and I'm not going to answer comments on it anywhere else. This was something I had to say, but it's not a conversation I want to have with anybody.
* 10 Charities That Encourage Reading.
* There's also First Book which I donated to this year.
And there's this post by Jessica Spotswood 2013: A Learning Year: Managing Expectations that I just read this morning and really hit me where I live.
Our experiences have been different, but this part: When you don’t get reviewed, or get the marketing that you took for granted on the first book, or sent anywhere, or end up on end-of-year lists – you feel like a disappointment. A failure. Your family and non-writing friends only know about publishing from your experience, and they ask you all the time when you’re going on tour for your next book and where you are doing events and how are your sales and why the new book isn’t in Walmart. You try to explain that most authors don’t do that and most books don’t get that and you were really lucky that first time. You try to adjust their expectations. They mean very well. But you feel like a disappointment again. And you can’t complain about being sad or hurt, because it’s true – most books don’t get that in the first place.
That is where I’ve been for most of 2013. Feeling like a failure. Like a disappointment. Like people bet big on me and I let them down.
This is where I live, pretty much. I've never had a book come out that met anybody's expectations, and I've always felt like a disappointment, I've always failed the people who bet on me. This is a job I've been doing for twenty years, and in one big way, I've never been any good at it.
(There are still readers who enjoy the books and tell me so, and that's a huge important thing to me. As a writer, you have to remember that your books' relationships with their readers are a completely separate entity from their relationships with you or their publishers, and really have nothing to do with you or their publishers. It's a factor in this business that can't be measured. But in the factors that can be measured, I continually feel like a disappointment.)
When it comes down to it, this is a job, and it's also a huge important thing to me. In the years when I couldn't sell a book or even a short story, it was a job I didn't have anymore. (A friend described a publishing crash as being like having a job where you keep coming into work every day but you've been fired, and the people don't actually want you there, but they don't tell you about it. It's only gradually, as the paychecks fail to come in and everyone's ignoring you, that you realize you don't work there anymore.) I fought to get back to it and I had help from great people, and I came back, with hopeful expectations -- that again I haven't been able to meet.
But this year I've come to a gradual decision that I don't care. I don't care how big a disappointment and a failure I am, I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing it no matter who doesn't like it (and believe me, a lot of people don't like it) and that's just the way it's going to be.
I'm not going to allow comments on this post, and I'm not going to answer comments on it anywhere else. This was something I had to say, but it's not a conversation I want to have with anybody.
December 28, 2013
Post-Xmas round-up
We had a good low-key Christmas. Our friend who stays with us arrived late Monday night and we stayed up a bit late watching the Muppet Christmas Carol and Vicar of Dibley. Christmas eve night we went to our a local chef-owned place for lovely Japanese food. We had more guests on Christmas day and had a big dinner, and watched The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (which I checked on the off-chance and found it was online again) and the DW Christmas special. Next day we sat around and watched the Elementary DVD I got for Xmas, more Vicar of Dibley, Love Actually, and then went out to see Saving Mr. Banks.
The food turned out really well, better than I'd hoped considering a couple of what I thought were key mistakes which didn't end up being that bad. Christmas eve day I made turkey stock from three turkey necks, leeks, carrots, celery, and some spices. I cooked it all day then strained it and combined it with the cubed bread and crumbs and let it sit in the fridge all night. Next day I added sauteed celery and green onions, and it was delicious. I also made a roast, a red wine gravy, rolls, the bacon-leek-butternut squash soup, and Emeril's garlic braised green bean recipe.
Now I'm catching up on writing, doing laundry, and at some point we need to start putting the house back together.
The food turned out really well, better than I'd hoped considering a couple of what I thought were key mistakes which didn't end up being that bad. Christmas eve day I made turkey stock from three turkey necks, leeks, carrots, celery, and some spices. I cooked it all day then strained it and combined it with the cubed bread and crumbs and let it sit in the fridge all night. Next day I added sauteed celery and green onions, and it was delicious. I also made a roast, a red wine gravy, rolls, the bacon-leek-butternut squash soup, and Emeril's garlic braised green bean recipe.
Now I'm catching up on writing, doing laundry, and at some point we need to start putting the house back together.
December 23, 2013
Holiday Round-Up
I think I'm about ready for Christmas. Still waiting for some presents to arrive, and still have some cleaning to do before our first guest arrives today, and still need to go to a couple of stores. Okay, so that doesn't sound very ready. But we do have a low-key Christmas, with mostly watching movies and eating. We also have a tradition of going out for Japanese food on Christmas eve. There's a local family-owned place that's really, really good. For Christmas day, I'm going to make a roast, which is easier for me than turkey, plus some dressing, rolls, green beans, and maybe a butternut squash curry soup.
TCM (who I normally love obsessively) is showing All Mine to Give this week. If you are inclined to depression at all, do not watch this movie! When I saw it on TCM years ago, the host Robert Osborne came on after it was over and basically said, "Oh God, why do we show this movie!" The first 2/3rds are heartwarming Christmas movie, the last 1/3 is death, death, and more death. Seriously, don't.
So far all I have that's coming out next year is:
* Emilie and the Sky World which will be out in March 2014.
* "Soul of Fire" in Tales of the Emerald Serpent II: A Knight in the Silk Purse, should be out early in 2014.
* And at least two of the Raksura ebook novellas ("The Falling World" and "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud") will be out sometime in 2014 and hopefully I'll find out when at some point soon.
Appearances:
My con schedule is up in the air but I will be going to ConDFW in Dallas, TX, on February 21-23, and right now it looks like (though I won't get it officially confirmed until January) that I'll be going to Convergence in Bloomington, MN, on July 3-6. That's a new one for me and it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
Book Plug:
If you're looking for last minute gifts, remember you can get ebooks as gifts for people. I know there's a way on Nook to buy ebooks and have them sent to someone else's Nook as a gift (I think all you need is the email address of they use for their Nook account) and I assume Kindle does the same thing. I have cheap ebooks here and the bundle of all three Raksura ebooks (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths) is at: Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. Plus all the Tantor audiobooks are on sale for 50% off this month. Everything else I have available is listed on my web site here.
PSA:
If you want to give me (or any other author) a present, leave a review somewhere like Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, LibraryThing, etc. Any honest review, short or long, is fabulous, and it does help.
And remember if you want to read a book and can't buy it, you can ask your local library to get it for you with interlibrary loan, or request that they buy it for their collection. (Check that the library doesn't have it first, because they might.)
Everyone have a happy holidays! And stay safe!
TCM (who I normally love obsessively) is showing All Mine to Give this week. If you are inclined to depression at all, do not watch this movie! When I saw it on TCM years ago, the host Robert Osborne came on after it was over and basically said, "Oh God, why do we show this movie!" The first 2/3rds are heartwarming Christmas movie, the last 1/3 is death, death, and more death. Seriously, don't.
So far all I have that's coming out next year is:
* Emilie and the Sky World which will be out in March 2014.
* "Soul of Fire" in Tales of the Emerald Serpent II: A Knight in the Silk Purse, should be out early in 2014.
* And at least two of the Raksura ebook novellas ("The Falling World" and "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud") will be out sometime in 2014 and hopefully I'll find out when at some point soon.
Appearances:
My con schedule is up in the air but I will be going to ConDFW in Dallas, TX, on February 21-23, and right now it looks like (though I won't get it officially confirmed until January) that I'll be going to Convergence in Bloomington, MN, on July 3-6. That's a new one for me and it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
Book Plug:
If you're looking for last minute gifts, remember you can get ebooks as gifts for people. I know there's a way on Nook to buy ebooks and have them sent to someone else's Nook as a gift (I think all you need is the email address of they use for their Nook account) and I assume Kindle does the same thing. I have cheap ebooks here and the bundle of all three Raksura ebooks (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths) is at: Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. Plus all the Tantor audiobooks are on sale for 50% off this month. Everything else I have available is listed on my web site here.
PSA:
If you want to give me (or any other author) a present, leave a review somewhere like Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, LibraryThing, etc. Any honest review, short or long, is fabulous, and it does help.
And remember if you want to read a book and can't buy it, you can ask your local library to get it for you with interlibrary loan, or request that they buy it for their collection. (Check that the library doesn't have it first, because they might.)
Everyone have a happy holidays! And stay safe!
December 20, 2013
This has not been a good morning.links:* Jesus, Santa, an...
This has not been a good morning.
links:
*
Jesus, Santa, and Now Sound of Music's Mother Abbess? Bigotry and ignorance join forces to deny the existence of black nuns in Europe. No surprise that it's bad history.
Although the overwhelming majority of the world’s black Catholic sisters served (and continue to serve) in the Americas and Africa, the presence of black nuns in European convents is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, one of the first documented black nuns in Europe was Louise Marie-Therese, the famed Black Nun of Moret, who took the religious habit in 1695 and remained at Benedictine abbey at Moret-sur-Loing in France until her death in 1732.
* When “Life Hacking” Is Really White Privilege
Personal Development gurus can get away with whatever they want, so why can’t you?
In the incident she saw, I was really glad the post office worker didn't cave and made the asshole stand in the line. I've been in lines in stores, etc, where they let the guy get away with it. And anybody who doesn't know what body part a femur is doesn't need to be writing for the Wall Street Journal.
links:
*
Jesus, Santa, and Now Sound of Music's Mother Abbess? Bigotry and ignorance join forces to deny the existence of black nuns in Europe. No surprise that it's bad history.
Although the overwhelming majority of the world’s black Catholic sisters served (and continue to serve) in the Americas and Africa, the presence of black nuns in European convents is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, one of the first documented black nuns in Europe was Louise Marie-Therese, the famed Black Nun of Moret, who took the religious habit in 1695 and remained at Benedictine abbey at Moret-sur-Loing in France until her death in 1732.
* When “Life Hacking” Is Really White Privilege
Personal Development gurus can get away with whatever they want, so why can’t you?
In the incident she saw, I was really glad the post office worker didn't cave and made the asshole stand in the line. I've been in lines in stores, etc, where they let the guy get away with it. And anybody who doesn't know what body part a femur is doesn't need to be writing for the Wall Street Journal.
