TueDo List: Kinkeepers + Shonen Knife + the Art of the Apology
Plus, 5 Black women authors who are canon.
THIS WEEK
📖 READ: The ubiquity of “imposter syndrome.” Are you the kinkeeper in your family? The new rules of navigating everything (and also, because the Internet, the case against them). How to be extremely online without cringe. The importance of writing well for workplace introverts. Menopause, in depth and at length.
👀 LOOK: Joan Didion’s built-ins. Finally, moms are normalizing shoe boxes in kitchens and un-aesthetic playrooms. “The magic of the Mara Hoffman popcorn dress.” How to help families in Turkey and Syria.
🎧 LISTEN: Punk greats Shonen Knife, now in their 50s and 60s, just released a new video and have a forthcoming album. Her YouTube-powered DIY rap hit — and debut EP — take GloRilla to the cover of The Cut. You don’t have to speak Farsi to feel the power of “Baraye,” the Iranian protest anthem that won a 2023 Grammy. You’ve heard of K-POP; now comes the Korean indie wave via Parannoul.
🤣 LOL: What are we naming our imps today? Onlyfins, the column devoted to the fish of (and fishing in) NYC. Steve Albini really hates Steely Dan.
🛒 ADD TO CART: Don’t sleep on the books in The Zora Canon this African American history month. “The Death of St. Joseph Basketball” by Kehinde Wiley and other Black [Art] History Month coolness at the Brooklyn Museum. Christina Wallace’s new book will teach you all about having a Portfolio Life. In the mood for LOVE.
📺 WATCH:
Tonight: Streaming premiere of Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes, about a bird hospital in Delhi, India (HBO).
Thursday: Magic Mike’s Last Dance hits theaters, featuring Channing Tatum and his, well, abs.
Friday: Netflix’s new rom-com Your Place or Mine, starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as LA-NYC home swappers, will have some GALs in their feelings remembering A Couch in New York (1996).
Sunday: Super Bowl LVII. Need we say more? [Margit note: Go Birds! 🦅]
STORY: 5 Black Women Writers You Need to Read, Know & Study
Admittedly, I’m a non-fiction girl at heart; I know this by the 4 to 1 ratio of non-fiction to fiction in my Audible library. You got me — I love history, l love bios. I love a true story. Yet, tellingly, five titans of Black fiction make up the bulk of the fiction I do own. They are canon in Black womanist literature. What do they all have in common? They loved, centered and respected Black folk — Black women in particular — and it showed in their writing. These authors were eons ahead of their time in who and what they wrote about, in their imaginations, and in their politics. They spoke their truth through fiction, which is why their work resonates with me so much. They were most active in the 20th century and, as of last year, they are all among our ancestors. Yes, they are gone, but they are foundational, so let’s meet ‘em…
OBSESSED: It's Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry (Even Though I'm an Apology Expert)
By Marjorie Ingall
“Sorry” may be the most potent word we have. Good apologies fix rifts, build bridges, shore up foundations. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lines of lacquer and gold, an artfully deployed apology doesn’t make cracks magically disappear or erase the past. The seams, now burnished, still show. This can be gorgeous. The very thing —a vessel, a relationship — that seemed shattered beyond repair can be mended, and the process of fixing the fracture makes the entity stronger than it was before. The act of repairing a breach adds nuance, depth and beauty, turning a fissure into a feature.
I have been parsing apologies for two decades, first as a parenting columnist (who was also the mother of a particularly feral toddler who spent pretty much all of nursery school in the Consequences Chair) and then as a writer for Jewish publications (where I pondered penitence and forgiveness every High Holiday season). For the past decade, my friend Susan McCarthy and I have been running an apology watchdog website called SorryWatch. In our new book, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies, we go deep on the power of a perfectly deployed “sorry” — as well as how to deliver it, how to elicit it from someone else, and when not to apologize or forgive…
Sorry, but it’s the end of this newsletter. Have a great week, TueNighters!
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