Here's a present.

Chencia C. Higgins, A Little Kissing Between Friends (2024)

Black Sapphic romance between a music producer and an erotic dancer, best friends for three years, until the day they suddenly developed the hots for each other. I really enjoyed this, largely because the conflict felt like it had organic depth to it. Jucee, the dancer, isn't interested in dating around, but is in it for something serious or nothing at all; meanwhile, Cyndi, the musician, only does casual relationships, and goes into a tailspin over having gone to bed with someone that she decidedly can't be casual about. But even more than that: they feel like a new couple who are still learning how to constructively fight. (Does that make any sense? It's possible to be friends for years on the mutual agreement that you don't fight. But when the stakes are raised to romantic, you suddenly discover you don't know how to constructively work through disagreements with this specific person, that each of your reflexive habits during arguments are non-constructive (either in general, or are specifically incompatible with what the other person does in a fight), and you urgently need to figure out some way to productively work through arguments together if you're going to make this work.) So, yes, there's a lot of miscommunication missteps along the way, things that each of them should have handled better, but it felt realistic and organic, like a couple who is only just now figuring out how to work through problems together. The love and respect and will are there! The how-to is not—or not at first, anyway.

I also just really liked the characters and the supporting cast: the opening scene is when Cyndi came out to her father as a child, and it 100% sold me on why she loves her dad so much. Also loved the stud representation—I found this book on a rec list for Black butch and Black stud characters, and Cyndi did not disappoint.


Laban Carrick Hill (illus. Bryan Collier), Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave (2010)

Children's picture book about an enslaved South Carolina potter, known for most of his life only as Dave (later known as David Drake, after several of his owners). Dave is remembered today for his skill—he was one of the few who could make jars that held twenty gallons and more—and for his poems, which he sometimes inscribed on his pots.

a better thing, I never saw
when I shot off, the lions Jaw
—November 9, 1836

Dave belongs to Mr. Miles /
wher the oven bakes & the pot biles ///
—July 31, 1840

another trick is worst than this +
Dearest miss: spare me a Kiss +
—August 26, 1840

I wonder where is all my relation
friendship to all—and, every nation
—August 16, 1857

the sun moon and—stars=
in the west are a plenty of—bears '''
—July 29, 1858

I, made this Jar, all of cross
If, you dont repent, you will be, lost=
—May 3, 1862

The text of Dave the Potter is a poem about the making of a single pot, from digging and grinding the earth to writing the inscription (not shown: glazing and firing). I was a little surprised at the inclusion of technical language without a glossary to define terms. An afterword gives a mini-biography of what is known about Dave's life, punctuated with a selection of his poems.

The illustrations are lovely and rich—the fold-out page of shaping a pot was especially beautiful. The illustrations are worth a second look, too: the backgrounds often show other enslaved characters, depicting the context in which Dave lived his life. I especially appreciated the burnt-umber ancestral tree, with the faces of Dave's ancestors and relations barely visible in its bark.


Compton Mackenzie, The Monarch of the Glen (1941)

I seem to have missed blogging about this, back when I read it?

Comic novel set just before WWII detailing the showdown between a Highland laird and the hikers that inadvertently ruined his hunting—the hikers are variously Scottish Nationalists and Londoners, and the one kind is quite as infuriating to Ben Nevis as the other. The dramatis personae also includes a rich New Yorker (who discovers a fondness for shockingly bold kilts) and his Canadian wife (who has had romantic feelings about the Highlands since she was a young girl). I had a particular fondness for the laird's two "hefty" daughters, who can pick up an errant hiker and carry them around over their shoulders. (Justice for Ben Nevis's daughters!)

Characterizations and incidents are exaggerated and over-the-top, a la Wodehouse, but the characters were fun, the narrator amusing, and the prose masterful. (Quite a few passages I read aloud to grrlpup, sometimes because the observation was on-point, but more often because the phrasing was so much fun.) I had to read with my phone in hand to look up all the references and allusions (some of which were NOT straightforward), but I usually found that rewarding, as well. (I... usually do not struggle this much with a vintage novel? But comedy/satire can be very of-the-moment, and I guess the popular culture of Interwar Britain is not my strong suit.)

Gutenburg.ca has a selection of some the author's earlier novels, but nothing that appears to be from this series.

I've been in remiss in logging our Hum 110 reading/viewing for the second half of the year! As previously mentioned, we centered our studies on Mexico City this last year. The material blogged here runs from the seventeeth century through the near-present, and took us half of an academic year to cover.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden), Poems, Protest, and a Dream, (late seventeenth century / 1997)

This was a fascinating collection of works. Sor Juana was both a courtier and a nun (at different times), and this collection samples both eras: at the one end we have secular diss poems and show-off pieces composed for competitions, while the other end includes a virtuoso defense of scholarship by female clerics and education for women. (The defense is the titular "Protest", which is a politically complex work in which Sor Juana responds to a rebuke by a church official who himself took on a female pseudonym for the purpose of chastising Sor Juana. Sor Juana then proceeded to play a "tee-hee, we're all just girls here" card while absolutely eviscerating the man -- while keeping up her own pretense of subjecting herself to church authority.) There's also a complex interplay between new world and old world symbols and signifiers in these works, which reflected tensions over whether New Spain or the Iberian Peninsula was the true center of the empire. Also, shoutout to the lesbian poem: we were very pleased to see it.

( III: One of Five Burlesque Sonnets )

Spanish and English on facing pages, for the convenience of the multilingual.


H.N. Branch (trans), The Mexican Constitution of 1917 compared with the Mexican Constitution of 1857

We leapt from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and twentieth century, which was an unbelievable degree of whiplash: I had soooooooo many Britannica tabs open, trying to figure out what was going on with the century-plus of revolutions, counter-revolutions, deposings, assassinations, the Mexican-American war, and oh yes, the brief installation of an emperor again (by France, when the US was too busy with its own Civil War to meddle).

Discussion this month was mostly trying to get a grasp on the history and the problem of cultivating a stable government. But we also had a lot of admiration for the 1917 Mexican Constitution, which was extremely forward thinking in terms of labor rights, up to and including things like worker safety, union protections, and paid pregnancy leaves. (The seething envy in the room could be cut with a knife!) Surprisingly to us, the 1917 Constitution was also strongly anti-Catholic, seizing Church property and mandating secular (and universal!) education. (The weakening of the Church's power led to a few more years of revolution, of course, as pro-Catholic forces objected to that part of the Constitution.)


Mexican Murals: Diego, Orozco, and Sisquieros (1920s-30s) (online gallery)
David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Xavier Guerrero, "Manifesto of the Syndication of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors," (1923-1924)

Cool art! Also, interesting things to discuss re auteur's vision vs. government propaganda; the radically ethno-nationalistic and peasant-centric vision of Mexico (vs. the context of European-trained artists who had been working in the U.S. for a living, and all painted on urban buildings, not so easily accessible to the rural peasantry); and murals as a public form of art (in contrast to easel painting).


Los Olvidados | The Forgotten Ones | The Young and the Damned (1950, dir. Luis Buñuel)
Cesare Zavattini, "Some ideas on the Cinema" (1953)

Realist film about life in the economic/criminal underclass of Mexico City. The original cut of the film depicts the inescapability of the circle of violence, but that ending played badly to test audiences, so a second, "happy" ending was filmed, in which the child protagonist slays his abuser (instead of being slayed by him), and returns to reform school. (Yay?)

( discussion )

All that said, I kinda enjoyed... maybe not watching the film, but having watched it? There was a lot of toothy chewy shit going on in and around the film, and it was satisfying to discuss, at a number of different levels.

Available on youtube with English subtitles, if you're interested.


José Emilio Pacheco (trans. Katharine Silver), Battles in the Desert (1980)

Novella of a man's remembrances of a specific year of his childhood, when he fell in love with his best friend's mother, and her ultimate erasure from (apparently) all memory and record but his own.

( A LOT going on )

We discussed this one to death and came to no agreement on it, but I can say it was one of the most enthusiastically discussed works of the unit.


Elena Poniatowska (trans. Helen R. Lane), Massacre in Mexico (1971 / trans. 1975)

( content warning for state violence, including massacre, imprisonment, and torture )

It's a powerhouse of the book, although most in my book group did not read it, or only read sections of it, because of the violence it relates. I found that frustrating, for in addition to discussion of the content, there's also ample opportunity to discuss the format of the book: how does one take reams of interviews and publicize their content, especially before one could dump a massive file of sources on the internet? How does one handle the vagaries of eyewitness accounts, the multiplicity of viewpoints, the uncertainty of memory, and conflicting testimonies? How does one do all this under a hostile government, that would much rather see your book suppressed than published? I'm a little reluctant to call this book my favorite of the course, given how challenging its content was, and yet it was definitely the one I found most rewarding, both to read and to discuss. Excellent choice for capstone of the Mexico City unit!

When he thought along those lines he was overwhelmed by waves of despair and of self-contempt, and there was no one to comfort him. The day of his birthday, when he looked at himself at the vast age of eighteen, was the worst of all. Eighteen and a discredited prisoner in the hands of a French privateersman! His self-respect was at its lowest ebb.

—C.S. Forester, Mr Midshipman Hornblower

Happy 250th Birthday, Mr Hornblower! We know you won't enjoy it.

(Icon, of course, is the birthday boy in his birthday suit—his favorite way to celebrate every and any occasion.)