Find me on Substack.

Hi friends,

On this site you’ll find a few pieces, riffs, and book reviews. Currently I’m cultivating a home for new writing, which is more interested in language of embodiment, empowerment, community, and interconnectivity with the natural world, over on Substack. There, my writing will be freely accessible until January 2025, and pay-as-you-can afterwards. Over the course of a year, you’ll get approximately a book-length number of words in stories of ascent — love letters to our wild home planet and lovely people exploring its rocky bones.

Right now, my writing is available exclusively there, and right now, it’s free. You can pledge to support my writing when I turn on paid subscriptions January 2025. I believe in storytelling, and I believe in co-creating community where we can support creators.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Riff: A More Masculine Military

If you missed it, well, you didn’t, really. Just a smarmy pundit punching holes in the sky. Mr. Tucker Carlson, who is, among other things, not a woman and not a military veteran, weighed in on “President Biden’s military” with this bizarre criticism:

"…while China's military becomes more masculine …. our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore since men and women no longer exist."

Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here. For the sake of this post, I won’t open the larger (and extremely important) conversation about whether the US military in its current iteration, context, and missions keeps US families safe. The US military mostly keeps capitalism safe. Moving on.

How do changes in the military make our country safer?

In his remarkably untuned rant, Mr. Carlson asks “How do changes in the military make our country safer?”

I can actually answer that. It’s simple. It’s in a term the military throws around: force multiplier. A force multiplier is something you put in to increase your efficacy or your power. It’s decisions you make, either small unit leaders or larger policies, that support the warrior doing their work.

An NCO who mentors her people is a force multiplier. A bullying NCO who creates a stressed out work environment is the opposite of a force multiplier.

Let’s look at whether the changes President Biden implemented are force multipliers. They include:

“designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits [and] updating requirements for their hairstyles.”

Designing body armor that fits women properly. How is this not an obviously good thing. We do, in fact, have different bodies. Women are not just small men, and wearing hand-me-down Flak jackets that don’t fit subtracts from their ability to safely do their work. Warriors wearing appropriately fitted body armor: this shouldn’t be a question.

Addressing the issue of women hobbled by body armor that doesn’t fit: definitely a force multiplier.

Tailoring combat uniforms for women. Whatever your opinions on women in combat, women in the US military have been in combat for decades. Period. The end. Read about women in combat here. All opening combat arms MOS (jobs) to women actually changed is they now get acknowledged (sort of), and careerist servicewomen may have advantages towards promotion to greater leadership roles. Move on.

Creating maternity flight suits. Mr. Carlson had a field day with this one, a very, very stupid field day, about how “maybe pregnant women make the best pilots” and “pregnant women will be fighting our wars.” Yeah, some will and some have, so what? It displays the ignorance of someone who has never served a day in his life. First, not just pilots wear flight suits. Air crews have different jobs, not all of them pilots. Women can, and do, still work while pregnant. Secondly, if a woman is a pilot, she has worked her tail off to get there, she’s smart, she’s able to manage long-term career goals: if she chooses to have a baby, that’s her right and we should trust her to make an informed decision best for her.

Does accommodating women who are in the service and choose to have children add or detract from our force? A simple uniform accommodation allows a servicemember to continue to do her work more comfortably, suggests she is valued, and supports her in balancing the demands of service and family. A change that helped men feel thus supported wouldn’t be in question. Force multiplier.

Finally, updating hair requirements. Hair regulations were reviewed because they contained racial bias. Let’s just be real clear here: the military is NOT white. Nearly half of enlisted soldiers (that’s Army, specifically) are Black. Reviewing rules that have forced young women of color into time consuming, expensive, or painful chemical procedures in order to fit white-ordained standards of “professionalism” means warriors can still show up to work without stressing about one more damn thing.

By the way, according to the Black Woman’s Blueprint, between 40-60% of American Black women have been sexually abused before the age of 18. We can reasonably assume there are Black women serving who have already been shamed and harmed for their bodies. Let’s stop telling Black women there’s something wrong with their bodes.

Caring about your people: force multiplier.

Carlson’s problem

The biggest issue here is: Mr. Carlson and his ilk don’t think of women when they think of the military. It’s so out of touch it’s incredible. Yes, the Marine Corps remains 93% men. But the Army is nearing 50% women. The Air Force has an even gender break for a decade. The Navy is 40% women. When we speak about women in the military, we are still speaking of a minority, but, exempting the Marine Corps, not by much.

When we speak about women in the military, we are speaking about the military.

Response of the US Military

This is the one I’m tripping on. Military leaders are calling him TF out. Honestly I would be enjoying it —

The Pentagon: But what we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.

The U. S. Space Command’s seniormost enlisted told troops to “get back to work” and “remember that those opinions were made by an individual who has never served a day in his life.”

— except I can’t shake the concern it’s a bit of lip service. If military leaders are so proud of women among them and so quick to advocate on their behalf, should we expect to see annual sexual assault rates deviate from their upward trend? Should we expect servicemembers who rape their coworkers to actually go to jail?

The theoretical can be easier to support than the specific.

Hate the crime, not the criminal

I’ve seen a few memes floating around insulting Mr. Carlson personally, saying “this guy is saying the military isn’t masculine enough?” with the implication he’s not able to make such a statement because he is, himself, not masculine. I feel similarly when people called T***p fat: something like, guys, fat isn’t the problem here. Fat is not a sin. Men don’t have some standard of masculinity they must meet to have opinions. There is enough to dispute Mr. Carlson about without insulting his bow tie phase. We don’t need to shame anyone’s presentation. It’s enough to call out their willful ignorance.

A final note

There has been a surprising amount of vitriol re: pregnant servicemembers. I’m going to say this once, quietly, and completely: I credit a pregnant junior enlisted Marine with getting me out of a very bad situation alive. It wasn’t a combat situation. It was a Marine doing her job with care, discretion, and dedication — which is all of us ever do.

I don’t know where she is, but her kid must be ten now…. I’ve lost touch with her, but I would love to tell that kid their mom saved my life.

Riff: What We Mock

This one?

This one, I am going to leave you with without comment.

Black woman sets Naval Aviation milestone. The internet’s knee jerk conditioning is sexism and racism.

Do notice, too, what happens when RatAndRavenPhoto makes a good and true point. The sexist assumption women are worse drivers than men is a myth. As matter of fact, men do get more DUIs and in more accidents; and in a New York City study, 80% of all car accidents that kill or injure pedestrians involve male drivers.

Notice this response:

It’s just a joke. Don’t take it so hard. Like the dick you take hard— let’s make sure to get either a threatening or “you’re a whore” statement in there. It wouldn’t be disagreeing with a woman if we didn’t, right? (We have no way of knowing the commentator’s gender. Those who respond assume female, so if you’re sympathetic to anti-sexism, you must be a woman, suggesting it’s not manly to stand up to stupid sexist jokes.)

Those who can endure T****’s word salad soliloquies recognize this joke, disavow, repeat is actually a rhetorical tool. You can say anything “as long as it’s just a joke” because then you can dismiss it as such… then repeat it.

Let’s add the super courageous terror of menstruation.

It’s easy to dismiss online bullying as undeserving of attention.

Just another space where it’s okay to say women and especially women of color aren’t welcome, and possibly aren’t even safe. You know, like the space of being a female military member, where women are exponentially more likely to be sexually assaulted from a fellow service member than she is to be injured by enemy action.

I won’t riff on this one. I’ll let you form your own conclusions.

For me, I know I see this Black woman and think, you rock.

Her name is Lt Madeline G Swegle, and she’s an American badass. How will you talk about her?

Review: Re-centering the American Road Trip

In 1903, two men and a pit bull made the first documented American road trip: using only a network of dirt roads, cow paths, and railroad beds, the trio drove from San Francisco to New York in 63 days.

Look at that pupper!

Since their lauded adventure, taking to the roads has become something of an American odyssey. Environmentalist that I am, I have strong thoughts on romanticizing this, but that’s its own story, which you can read from this gratuitously long link.

Close your eyes and consider the American road trip story, and you’ll probably name a few: Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley. Kerouac’s On the Road. Arguably Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas. Fitzgerald’s admittedly funny The Cruise of the Rolling Junk. Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.

We’re seeing a pattern, right? The “great” canonized American road trip books are written by white men. It’s almost like white men have historically had the resources and privilege to travel freely. As Cheryl Strayed wrote in Wild, “Women can’t just walk out of their own lives.”

Browbeating over, let’s refocus on writing on the great American road trip from more marginalized voices, so you can armchair travel this summer with more diverse guides:

1. The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls (memoir)

This remains one of my favorite books of forever, one I re-read at least once a year. Jeanette writes from the intersection of girlhood and poverty, and how. Jeanette and her siblings are the smart, introspective witnesses of their charismatic but objectively neglectful parents — their father is a mean drunk — who leave each small town — “do the skedaddle” — whenever wanderlust or bill collectors come calling.

"How many places have we lived?" I asked Lori.

"That depends on what you mean by 'lived,'" she said. "If you spend one night in some town, did you live there? What about two nights? Or a whole week?"

I thought. "If you unpack all your things," I said.

We counted eleven places we had lived, then we lost track. We couldn't remember the names of some of the towns or what the houses we had lived in looked like. Mostly, I remembered the inside of cars.

"What do you think would happen if we weren't always moving around?" I asked.

"We'd get caught," Lori said.

A story of survival and seriously amazing kids, all of whom grew up to be successful, stable adults while their parents continued to live on the streets until their passings, much of the book features the family’s travels in a series of decrepit cars. In one memorable scene, Jeanette’s family moves from Arizona to West Virginia.

“….we had stopped naming the Walls family cars, because they were all such heaps that Dad said they didn't deserve names. Mom said that when she was growing up on the ranch, they never named the cattle, because they knew they would have to kill them. If we didn't name the car, we didn't feel as sad when we had to abandon it… That Oldsmobile was a clunker from the moment we bought it. The first time it conked out, we were still an hour shy of the New Mexico border. Dad stuck his head under the hood, tinkered with the engine, and got it going, but it broke down again a couple of hours later. Dad got it running. "More like limping," he said—but it never went any faster than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Also, the hood kept popping up, so we had to tie it down with a rope…..It took us a month to cross the country. We might as well have been traveling in a Conestoga wagon.”

2. South of Haunted Dreams: A Memoir, by Eddy L. Harris (memoir)

“These many years later, the South still owns my nightmares…”

The premise alone is chilling: a Black man compelled to journey through the South, to look American history in its human-trafficking face. Harris holds memories of racist atrocities from the near past close at hand, and South of Haunted Dreams is both a motorcycle travelogue and mental self-examination. In inclusivity-focused circles, we’ve begun to talk a lot about “doing the work”. Doing out own excavation, understanding where misogyny and racism and white supremacy live under our own skins. Reading South of Haunted Dreams, the phrase doing the work kept crossing my mind. We all have our pre-suppositions, our stories, our tightly-held beliefs and fears. Mr. Harris has the relentless courage to look at his own.

“Perhaps the South, more even than the wild wild West, more in fact than any other region, is responsible for who we are as a people and as a nation.”

3. Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder (non-fiction)

This one was a mind-blower. Journalist Jessica Bruder follows a generation of houseless + hapless elders — many of whom lost their savings in the 2008 recession — as they follow seasonal jobs as camp hosts and Amazon warehouse workers in their RVs and cars. This one broke my heart and shaped it differently: all these sincerely trying, doing-their-best, but-for-the-grace-of-God-could-be-your-grandparents people facing paying off predatory loans, ageism in the workplace and resorting to living in the back of sedans. You absolutely will not look at Amazon (who very intentionally recruit these older “campers”, who look, don’t even need to be provided housing, since they come in their cars!) the same way again. A devastating and extremely readable look at class, chance, work ethic, the United States’ lack of communal safety nets for its elderly, and permissible exploitation just under the surface of the American fabric.

4. The Wangs vs the World, by Jade Chang (novel)

A little Filthy Rich Asians meets Schitts Creek, The Wangs vs. the World follows the newly disenfranchised Wang family pulling out of their Bel-Air lifestyle to upstate New York. Jade says, “I really wanted to write an immigrant novel that gave the big middle finger to the traditional immigrant novel that we see in America.”

Two things Ms. Chang does I love:

One, she finds creative and almost convincing ways of airing out serious grievances of American culture by placing her characters in episodic encounters where characters get to riff. E.g., a failed stand-up routine touching, cringingly, on racial comedy in Austin, a bizarre wedding in New Orleans (“Y’all know how to eat crawfish?” — “We’re Chinese, the only thing with legs we don’t eat is a table” — “No man, I meant you being from the West Coast, I’m not racist…”), an economics lecture at ASU.

For example, the narrative follows one of the Wang kids, the only boy, Andrew, through his Czech professor’s economic lecture on the real estate recession of 2008 that cost Andrew Wang’s father his plush life. Behold:

“The market doesn’t lie. How many times have you heard people say that?…. it’s all bullcrap. There is no market. The market is people, and people are dolts…. [T]here were people…. who chased down ‘rare’ Beanie Babies. Who bought heart-shaped plastic-tag protectors. Who told themselves that their massive collection of plush toys would pay for their children's college tuition. In fact, you were those children, and I’ll wager that none of you are being floated in this fine institution with proceeds from Beanie Babies… we all mocked those assholes, but their only mistake was that they chose to believe, as we all have, that money is rational. That price is truth. That the market doesn’t lie. But it does. It lies…. Real estate [is] our present-day delusion.”

I’m sorry, that’s hilarious. Jade Chang is obviously brilliant — is there a touch of her, in the oldest Wang child, Saina, the intelligent, introspective, foolish-decision-reckoning artist? — and she opens her otherwise rhapsodic novel into places where the characters, god forbid, learn something. The lessons aren’t easy, smooth, well-wrapped. It makes them better.

And two — and this, personal opinion, is important — she de-romanticizes the “great American roadtrip” as all about rivers and streams, mountains and plains. Y’all driven across the country? Because I have. More times than I can count. And yes, you can find rivers and streams, mountains and plains, deserts and jade green hot springs, volcanic outcroppings and ancient arrowheads — but you probably won’t. If you’re following Google Maps, do you know what you’ll really see?

“Outside, the alien desert unfurled itself in all directions. Punctuating the endless interstate were fading billboards for strip clubs and churches. As they passed the limits of Van Horn, Texas, a brand-new billboard lit by a row of spotlights… screamed PATRIOTS UNITE! SECURE OUR BORDERS!"

And

“They were winding down the greenest road [he]’d ever seen, verdant swamp on either side of them. Occasionally, a sign would appear at the head of a narrow path snaking into the wild: ATASKA GUN CLUB/KEEP OUT. OLD BOGS GUNS AND FISH SOCIETY.”

It’s a novel, yes. And also, this insight is real. You drive a road across the United States, and it’s only ever partially and patchwork wildlands. It’s more block chains and telephone wires and monoculture farms. It’s billboards for Gentlemen’s Clubs and bizarre exhibitions (which admittedly are occasionally, in their own right, ceremonial).

Jade Chang calls it for what it is: if you pass from sea to shining sea in a car, you may just miss the country.

5. Red Road Across the Great Plains, by Chandra Lahiri (memoir, still reading!)

On my short list, so I can’t offer a review as of yet.

I want more! Please send me recommendations (or leave in comments) American roadtrips written by POC and/or women.

I’ll leave you with this essay from a Black lady climber on the dream of freedom of the open road.

But it has always been one of my personal dreams to hit the open road and travel around the country and climb and find a deeper connection to the country’s land and people. Taking almost two weeks off work would not be easy for me, but I was determined to figure out a way… I wanted to help continue breaking down the narrative of who travels, who climbs and who connects to mountains, waterways and land.

When They Call You A Terrorist

A Black Lives Matter Memoir

by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele

“Could it be that we matter?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

If you’re going to read one.

If you’re going to read just one book that looks at the current racial disparity in the United States, here. If you’re going to sit down and read one story that showcases exactly how so many Americans live their lives — suspected, harassed, and presupposed to certain fates — this is the one.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the founder of #BLM, is an academic and scholar — and a Unitarian minister with an advanced degree in religion, which is one of many things I didn’t know about her extraordinary story and movement — yet her memoir is a deeply personal account of the harm enacted on her father, brother, partners, friends, and herself by callous institutions.

There was an incredible amount of beauty and evocation in Patrisse’s work — from finding soulful work to the art of relationships — here are three takeaways I’ll highlight.

Land of the Free: Some Restrictions Apply

When Elián González was on the news, I was just a kid. As Dad told me about Cuba under Castro, he told me we should be grateful to live in a free country. In America, he said, “You never have to worry about someone kicking down your door in the middle of the night and dragging you out, sometimes never to be seen again, and never telling you why.” I shuddered to think about those poor “other countries” where such things happened. The part of When They Call You a Terrorist that gutted me the most was that very thing happening to Patrisse and her family in their beloved Californian neighborhood, for no other reason than being a Black family. As police question her on a bogus suspicion, claiming someone tried to “shoot up the station,” they already doubt her, asking her if she’s innocent, why she sounds scared. She says, “Because you have your shotguns pointed directly at me and my family.”

“Later, when I hear others dismissing our voices, our protest for equity, by saying All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, I will wonder how many white Americans are dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night because they might fit a vague description offered up by God knows who. How many skinny, short, blond men were rounded up when Dylann Roof massacred people in prayer? How many brown-haired white men were snatched out of bed when Bundy was killing women for sport?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Liberty and justice for all has actually historically meant liberty and justice for all for straight + white + wealthy men. Be ruthlessly clear on that. It is precisely because I love my young, crazy, petulant, brave country that I insist we can and must do better.

“….I tell them that even as we are labeled criminal, we are actually the victims of crime. And I tell them there are no stats to track collateral deaths, the ones that unfold over months and years spent in mourning and grief: the depression that becomes addiction to alcohol that becomes cirrhosis; or else addiction to food that becomes diabetes that becomes a stroke . Slow deaths . Undocumented deaths. Deaths with a common root: the hatred that tells a person daily that their life and the life of those they love ain't worth shit, a truth made ever more real when the people who harm you are never held accountable.”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

One-Third to One-Half of Humans Shot by Police are Disabled

Secondly, because Patrisse’s beloved brother Monte has a mental illness, she bears witness to his horrible treatment and abuse, including being tortured while detained in Los Angeles County Jail. Patrisse’s memoir illustrates the absolute human rights violations enacted in the United States against people with mental illness. It was from disabled advocate Imani Barbarin (@crutches_and_spice/ https://crutchesandspice.com/) that I first learned that between one-third and one-half of Americans shot by police are disabled. Yes, you read that right. You can read more here. The Treatment Advocacy Center reports people with untreated mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be shot by police. The Ruderman Foundation’s white paper, featured in the Wall Street Journal, reports one-half of people killed by police have a disability.

Defund the Police may sound radical, but what this illustrates is we ask the police to do too much. We ask them to be the front line when Americans are having mental health crises. Imagine if we set reallocated funding from policing to mental health first responders. The stories indicate fewer Black people and other POC would be killed on the streets.

“What is the impact of not being valued?
How do you measure the loss of what a human being does not receive?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

And the Greatest of These is Love

The final thing that deeply got me was the amount of LOVE in Patrisse’s work. At its foundation, she conceived #BlackLivesMatter as devoted to radical inclusion, love, and compassion for all. For ALL. Trans black women and straight white men: radical inclusion means it doesn’t matter how the good Lord (okay, and social, cultural, and historical context) made you, it’s how you show up to do the deep work of confronting the serious problems in our young, crazy, petulant brave country.

Women like Patrisse remind me why I am proud to be American: because of people who have her kind of courage, to stand up say “This isn’t right,” again and again and again until enough voices are fearlessly and relentlessly dedicated to change. Patrisse’s work reminds me the origin of the word courage is the Latin cor — of the heart.

“You are brilliant beings of light. You have the power to shape-shift not only yourselves but the whole world. You, each one, are endowed with gifts you don’t even yet know, and you, each one, are what love and the possibility of a world in which our lives truly matter looks like.”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Readability: Selah. I found myself putting it down and pacing many, many times. Absorbing, beautifully, elegantly written, and also holy s*** impactful.

Relatability: Mind expanding. Soul expanding.

Recommended for: Everyone. Especially every American. Should be canonized in college English.

Follow Patrisse Cullors on Twitter @OsopePatrisse, and at her site here.