the intimate kind.

a note on vulnerability | + lists, links, recs <3

Dear ones, 

On Friday I spoke on a panel with Chris Belcher and Sam Cohen, two of my favorite writers with whom I’m lucky to be in community. The topic at hand was Vulnerability: how we navigate it in our classrooms and in our writing. The conversation was rich and generative, covering everything from anti-carceral pedagogy, to boundaries with students, to our responsibility to other people in what we do and do not share about our lives. 

I think a lot about vulnerability in this newsletter partly because, in many ways, this is an extension of the confessional Livejournals and narrative zines I created as a teenager. Especially on these Friday notes that are often only reserved for the smaller audience of paid subscribers, I want to tell you things. My impulse, one surely born of those early internet blog corners and feminist DIY confessionals, is to share, even the ugly shadowy parts. As I’ve written and given talks about over and again: this is an iteration of the feminist mantra that the personal is political. And yet, I also value privacy and discernment— my own and the people who show up in what I write.