We Need An American Girl.
It's summer in these United States. An amuse bouche of internet offerings.
I hope your Summering is going well readers. I promised and I did not deliver on any of the laughs or artists I teased two dispatches ago. Casting for the media part of this multimedia project is underway and I have not come up for air from Carol Anderson’s incredible and short book on the history of the Second Amendment ( it is a must-read).
As promised, I offer up some contributions (past and recent) from some women who have something to say.
Ziwe. Specifically, Ziwe’s Music Video: “Baby' Let’s Move On”. I stole this picture so you can get an idea of one of the many things we should remember, as opposed to everything else we should all forget for some kind of false #unity. This American Girl skewers and pokes with great hilarity some of our funniest ( and most serious) collective delusions.
Zora Neale Hurston, of Their Eyes Were Watching God fame, is a Florida American girl to the bone. Author, anthropologist, and filmmaker.
She grew up in what can only be described as some kind of American Wakanda and whose voice shaped and gathered precious stories and cultural artifacts of Floridians. Her legacy is complicated ( The Zora Neale Hurston We Don't Talk About) and her influence was almost lost to history. Sit down with her this summer through some of her work.
Learn about how in 1931 she interviewed the last living survivor who came off an American Slave Ship
Dive into her filmography, which might be the first documented work of a female African American filmmaker. There is a movie starring Halle Berry ( I haven’t seen it yet) in her Harlem Renaissance classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
A new collection, “You Don’t Know Us Negroes” of fifty of her sharp, controversial, and invigorating essays.
In one of the spiciest, delightful turns of the year, we the American Girls of the United States, have been granted another cultural moment. The American Girl Memes, both irreverent and insightful (as well as downright nonsensical), are here.
“The trend is one of pure creative chaos, a novel and timely way to embrace nostalgia. But in its simplest form, the American Girl Doll memes are just a satisfying way for millennials, in particular, to rewrite the history of the dolls and make them more resonant with the generation that grew up with them.” - Illana Kaplan in this hilarious essay. The meme I stole above is by the wild account that is @hellicity_merriman.
I appreciate a commitment to merriment, joy, and fun. One thing about the people we’ve been reading about is that no matter what was going on, they held onto their humanity and each other. Right now, with more news coming out of failures in policing in Uvalde, January 6th committee revelations, and an endless cycle of gun violence, we face some daunting tasks. It would be so much easier to run away to Portofino permanently, stuff our faces with cheese, and abandon all hope but we’re not facing anything that our ancestors haven’t faced already. Every generation in this relay race to justice and mercy has a hard stretch to run. So take care, laugh at something today, and onward my fellow Americans.