“Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson

This was a really fun read, it’s part of this string of older fantasy books I have been checking out recently and I really enjoyed it. The book still feels so contemporary and relevant, with a really vibrant magic system and colorful characters. It manages to feel light while dealing with a lot of heavy themes.

The book opens with a mob boss, Rudy, getting a visit from a politician and being told that he needs to find a heart donor for a political candidate who is using this to up her image. From there it transitions to the new mother Ti-Jeanne who is providing for her baby (called “Baby”) and avoiding the baby’s father, Tony. He is still in the mob despite wanting to get out and she doesn’t trust him to make good on his promises anymore. Tony is asked to get this donor by any means necessary and he goes to Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother, Mami a local healer, for help. Mami uses her way with Caribbean spirits to hide the two of them while Tony makes a run for it, and in the process Ti-Jeanne’s powers as a seer are awakened. She attacks some of the mob guys and Tony is told to get the donor (who is likely to be Mami) and kill Ti-Jeanne or he will be killed by Rudy.

Tony heads back and is followed by a local unhoused woman who is revealed to be Ti-Jeanne’s mother. She tries to warn them, but Tony kills Mami and they take her away. Ti-Jeanne’s mother then comes to her senses and is revealed to be a spirit that Rudy has chained to himself for power. Tony then shoots her in the aftermath and now Ti-Jeanne, Tony, and Baby are on the run from Rudy. They team up with a gang of street kids, and Ti-Jeanne decides to confront Rudy (who is revealed to be her grandfather). She gets there and Rudy tries to chain her into being his next spirit but instead she calls on the Caribbean spirits and ghosts to take him down. Rudy is crushed, the book ends with the funeral for Mami.

Part of the reason the book feels so prescient is that the whole body snatchers thing of forcing people to become body donors has never gone away for the Black community. There’s still that nasty stuff going on, especially with stories of Black women having to give birth after dying etc. Which is tragic. But means that there is a relevancy to that aspect of the story.

I also really liked the magic system. Each of the seers has a sort of patron spirit, and for Ti-Jeanne that’s the Prince of Cemetery who is often portrayed as a sort of trickster god. He’s a lot of fun to observe and her visions drop hints about how to defeat Rudy later on. It is delightful to see other religious systems get highlighted and explained in a book like this.

The summary almost doesn’t do justice to the book, nearly every link is resolved by the end. Ti-Jeanne’s mother is ok and they talk about the family and all of their dynamics, and Tony does try to make amends but isn’t necessarily back together with Ti-Jeanne. I thought this was delightful, I really wish there was a sequel but I haven’t found anything yet.

This Is Beautiful: Sheep Detectives

 Oh it has been such a good year for movies that appeal to specifically me. "The Sheep Detectives" was such a fun time! It was heartwarming and funny and really well done. I thought the sheep animations would get old very quickly, but they were nice! The sheep also had distinct personalities and while I thought I would mix them all up I didn't. There is a sheep main character where I expected more of an ensemble, but I guess they had to do that. My only complaint is that I thought there was going to be a sheep romance which would have pissed me off, but in the end they didn't take that route so I guess this is actually a good thing about the movie, haha. 

“Sex Isn’t Real” by Beans Velocci

I was fortunate enough to see Dr. Velocci give a talk on this work and a few chapters from it, and I knew I had to get the full thing afterwards. This is a really interesting overview of some history of sex science from a trans scholar thinking about what sex means over history and the modern day. Explicitly, they come down on the side that sex actually does not mean a whole lot, and the ending comes back to what this looks like today with new anti-trans legislation and executive orders and whatever else is happening.

The chapters each go through different realms of science, in roughly chronological order. The first is looking at animal sex studies, where apparently hyenas are difficult to sex and some birds can change their sex. The point here being that it is not a given that animals have distinct sexes that correspond to human biology and that there were even experiments getting chickens to change their sex entirely. From there we move down the street to the eugenics office where they were pioneering Big Data and all that stuff we love today about studies. Additionally the eugenics office wanted to know what the impacts of sterilization were, and research into this revealed that castration could cause individuals to become more feminine or masculine, but not enough to merit recategorization. Similarly in gynecology there emerged this idea that sex is a spectrum and that you can be more or less masculine/feminine, but again not enough to actually change category. This all gets cemented with the Kinsey studies as they needed to hold sex as a firm binary to demonstrate that humans are all a little bit gay and have a range of experiences with same-sex individuals. All of this despite the fact that their dive into physiological differences between men and women amounted to nothing. And finally it ends with the rise of trans medicine and the medical gatekeeping around these treatments.

I thought this was a fascinating and really timely look into this sex science over time. As a scientist, I maintain the belief that science is responsible for quite a bit of transphobic and queer gatekeeping that exists. And this really points the finger at it where scientists are maintaining these rigid boundaries around biological sex, even when their own evidence states that they are wrong. We know sex is a spectrum, we know that it can change, and yet we don’t treat it accordingly. Most scientific studies don’t dig into this very deep, they go with whatever is on the paperwork and toss anyone who is trans, intersex, or otherwise.

My rants aside, I also thought this was a great and easy read because Velocci makes it entertaining. There’s footnotes that are snarky and connections between chapters are highlighted throughout. There are many times complicated scientific ideas are broken down easily and simply as well. You do not have to be a scholar of science, the history of science, or of STS (science, technology, and society) to understand this work. It makes me hopeful that other interested trans readers will be able to find this and get something out of it.

Now of course there is the question of where to go from here. There is the obvious idea that science needs to change its framework to include sex beyond the binary and stop simplifying it into two immutable options or anomalies. But the work also makes a great case for the idea that sex cannot only be the realm of science, humanities scholars have interesting ideas here as well. For a very long time humanities have meant talking about gender while science is the realm of the body and biology but that does not need to be the case. Scholars like Velocci clearly have important things to say about this history and science that should be taken seriously.

I know for me, what I’ll be taking out of this is that sex is not only the biology but also includes how we present, gender roles, etc. Time and time again scientists in this work would ignore the evidence of someone’s body in favor of keeping them within the category that aligns with their social role. This was evident in the eugenic and gynecological chapters, but also the gatekeeping of trans medicine for only those that wouldn’t regret it. I think that’s a really interesting idea to think about, that science of biological sex has always been inclusive of what we might call gender. And that’s science baby! Specifically I’m thinking of those studies that base sex off of purely genetics or genitals, etc. Adding more biological variables might not be the answer, it also might just be asking what someone wants to be categorized as. And wouldn’t that be interesting?

Anyways this book gave me so much to think about and chew on. I am hopefully exiting a field where I’ll be able to do hard science research and implement this directly, but I want to keep learning about it and studying more how people think about ideas like sex. Which will likely make me happier, and also be more interesting and aligned with the ideas presented here.

This Is Beautiful: Exploring New Places

 One of the highlights of the past week has just been checking out the new city I'll likely be at and looking through what's in the area. It's a real city! With multiple options for things to do! And they're all relatively close to each other! It's probably my favorite part of moving (the rest kinda sucks tbh), just thinking about the possibilities in a new place. I'm having a lot of fun just doing that instead of packing.

Sherlock Holmes Adaptations

 Last weekend I went to see a local theater production of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and I got so annoyed by the fact that it was basically an adaptation of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It's a perfectly good version of Sherlock Holmes, but it wasn't what I wanted going into this play. And I am a little biased because I find the Rathbone/Bruce a little annoying in how much Watson is played as a dummy following Holmes the genius around. So here's a small collection of my thoughts on three different adaptations I'm most familiar with and like!

Elementary
This might be one of my favorite versions of the detective. Especially the first season with the big reveal of making Irene Adler / Moriarty the same person. It was endlessly inventive and creative while still being respectful of the source material. This particularly stood out because it started just after "Sherlock" did and fans were endlessly accusing it of being a copy.

The big standout through are Holmes and Watson themselves. I adore Lucy Liu in general and I thought she was amazing in this role. And Jonny Lee Miller captures so perfectly the chaos gremlin that is Sherlock Holmes. He does his best when Sherlock is going off of the rails a little, while Liu pulls him back in and delightfully enjoys occasionally heading with him to do something illegal. Their dynamic is so perfect. 

Sherlock
This one always has to come up, but you really cannot deny that this show opened a lot of people to the original Sherlock Holmes stories. The attention of the producers to detail gained a huge following as well, and I will absolutely give them credit for an incredible first two seasons + Christmas special. The rest was garbage.

The show really excelled when it took the original stories and airlifted them into the present. The first episode was a wonderful adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet" where all of the aspects were there, but changing it up for the modern era still left a lot of twists and turns in the case. I so wish they stuck to that but whateverrrrrr.

Benedick Cumberbatch is a truly spectacular Sherlock, and if he leans a little too much into the science robot aspect of Holmes he is played off very well with Martin Freeman as Watson. Half the mystery of the show is Holmes himself, which they are able to capture very well in this version. My complaints are numerous, but also you can tell from early on, the creators do not like women very much. Irene Adler is naked from the get go, everyone hates the female cop, etc. That aspect has me honestly scared to rewatch a lot of it.

The Guy Ritchie Movies
These movies were so fun! I also honestly think that Watson in my mind is Jude Law now for how well he captured that character in a Victorian setting. Robert Downey Jr. is also so fun as an absolutely off the walls Holmes that hyperfixates, drugs his dog, and in general is just unpredictable. He is most similar to Jonny Lee Miller, but he goes a step or two farther in that he is usually butting heads with Watson where Miller softens from his collaboration with Liu.

The two movies could have probably been more united, I didn't love the Moriarty portrayal and how he changes in his characterization. And then killing off Irene in the second one is just unforgivable to me, bring her back now! But it's such a delight to see Downey Jr go running off with Law right behind him.

Original Stories
The original stories have such an important space in my heart. I read them all over the course of a summer on the beach, they are short and fun to get through. Doyle hated them, but there is a reason they have endured. Holmes is fun and walks a fine line of being annoying, silly, and wildly intelligent. Half of the cases you cannot solve just from Watson's point of view, so there also isn't a huge expectation that the reader is able to solve it. 

There also are really fun side characters, again there's a reason Irene, Moriarty, etc are all in these different adaptations. The female characters especially, it's hard to think that Irene Adler existed back then as a independent lady adventuress. She's bold on her own and is "the woman" to Holmes (she is only in one case though and there's not much evidence they had an actual relationship). Moriarty is also only in one case with the purpose of killing Holmes off, which is still hilarious to me in that Doyle had to immediately bring him back. There are other cases though with independent women seeking Holmes' services, and one notable case that ends with an anonymous woman killing the culprit and Holmes letting her off of the hook. Not being an official part of the police lets him do that and Doyle knew how to use it.

It really goes to show how enduring these stories are, Holmes is something like the most frequently portrayed human character in media. And somehow there's many different versions of him, with wildly different personalities and preferences. But the friendship between him and Watson is always present and strong, really making any of these versions work. And that's kinda why this play grated at me, Watson can't have been an idiot if Holmes is dragging him around this way. All that to say, I love these stories and I will gladly watch different versions, but I sure do have opinions about all of them.

This Is Beautiful: Job Offer

 This has been a rollercoaster of a week, to the point that I'm not sure this counts to write this post, but I did get a job offer earlier! I will not be unemployed! And thankfully it isn't any job, I really wanted to get a postdoc and it is a postdoc position doing education research, which was my moon shot of a goal! So I am very excited about that. I keep going back and forth for different reasons, but I think I will take it in the end. And it just feels good to have a plan and keep moving forward.

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov

 Another book that I am kinda surprised ended up on my to read list. It is a Penguin classic, which has me even more surprised. I am no expert, but I believe that this was published in chunks in Russia in the 60s and is a flavor of satire making fun of society at the time.

The book starts with two men talking on a bench. A third approaches them and is quite mysterious and cagey about his motives. A few fantastic things happen, including that one of the men dies, as predicted by the mysterious stranger. The other (a poet) loses it and takes off after the stranger, his companion, and a cat that joins them. 

There's a few interspersed chapters that then take place in Jerusalem and center on Pontius Pilate sentencing Jesus to death. We eventually return to our poor poet chasing the devil around, he ends up in an institution and we learn that the devil is in the man he killed's room and staying in Moscow for a bit. In the mental institution our poet meets the master, he was working on a novel about Pilate and in love with a woman married to someone else.

She loves him as well, and we swap to her for a bit. This is Margarita, she has a wild night where she gets cream from an associate of the devil and rubs it all over herself making her young, beautiful, and able to fly. She zooms off to the devil and his friends and ends up hostess of one of his balls. As a thank you she requests to be reunited with the master. They are, and in the end the two get peace together. The devil and his friends then leave Moscow and there's a brief epilogue detailing how the poet still visits the bench he was at with his friend at the beginning.

The book is surprisingly extremely amusing and engaging, there is humor throughout it. A bit part of this is that no one is really telling the truth, there's layers of deception everywhere. So the characters can get into amusing situations. The poet's downfall is honestly ridiculous, and Margarita's flight as well. I skipped this in the summary but she trashes someone's apartment on her way out and that's incredible for her.

I'm not well-versed in the history of this time, but it is absolutely a response and satire of religious discourse of Russia. Otherwise why would the devil go there? From what I gather online, Russia was forced atheist and this was a satire in terms of people rejecting the historical figure of Jesus Christ and uplifting free thought and opinions. In the book you can be locked up for writing fiction even! The master in particular is shunned by the writing establishment and is thought to be a little biographical for Bulgakov. This is contrasted with the poet who is successful initially but is convinced to give it up.

I quite liked this book, I thought it was delightfully easy to read. I am sure that I didn't understand everything going on, I probably would need more information about Russia at the time to do that. But I thought is was amusing and resonated a lot with being at a crossroads in my life now. I look forward to coming back to it later and being able to pick up on more aspects I missed in my first go.