Project Spotlight: The Star-Touched Queen

Today, we’re very pleased to feature Roshani Chokshi, the amazing young woman who authored this year’s highly anticipated YA fantasy novel, The Star-Touched Queen.

Weekly Link Roundup: 4/14/16

Our collection of thought-provoking, discussion-sparking reads.

• How ‘Empowerment’ Became Something for Women to Buy: “[Sheryl] Sandberg and [Kim] Kardashian are perceived by most to be opposites, two aesthetically distinct brands fighting for our allegiance, when each has pioneered a similar, punish­ingly individualistic, market-driven understanding of women’s worth, responsibility and strength. In the world of women’s empowerment, they say the same thing differently: that our radical capability is mainly our ability to put money in the bank.”

• Who Disrupts the Disruptors? We Need to Change the Way We Talk About Innovation: “The culture of disruption’s American Dream 2.0—where you can both be the man and claim to be sticking it to him—glosses over the fact that the type of innovation venerated by disruption culture often works to keep white men in positions of power and strengthens our relationship to instant-access consumerism. More importantly, it lacks critical engagement with the processes of disruption and the values being advanced by those we call disruptors.”
• What ‘white folks who teach in the hood’ get wrong about education: “There’s a teacher right now in urban America who’s going to teach for exactly two years and he’s going to leave believing that these young people can’t be saved,” says Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “So he’s going to find another career as a lawyer, get a job in the Department of Education or start a charter school network, all based on a notion about these urban youth that is flawed. And we’re going to end up in the same cycle of dysfunction that we have right now. Something’s got to give.”
• Teaching Men to be Emotionally Honest: “As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes.”
• More Than One Medical Student at UVA Believes Black People Don’t Feel Pain: “The researchers found that half of the sample endorsed at least one of the false [medical] beliefs [about black patients], and those who endorsed these beliefs were more likely to report lower pain ratings for the black vs. white patient, and were less accurate in their treatment recommendations for the black vs. white patient.”

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What to Read Next? Victorian Heroines Edition

This post is part of a mini-series by I.C. on female characters, both heroes and villains. Find the rest of the series here and here. 

Those Acro Collective readers who incline toward the bookish will agree with me that there’s nothing better than a complex heroine in whose struggles you can become invested.  Victorian novels are particularly rich with such characters, coming as they do from an era in which women were beginning to call their society’s strict gender roles into question.  Below are five heroines of Victorian fiction whom you’ve hopefully already met.  (If not, do!).  Based on which one you prefer, I’ve suggested other novels, either other Victorian novels or contemporary novels set in the Victorian era (or both), with similarly engaging female protagonists.    

If you like Jane Eyre, from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847)…

Acro Collective Bookshelf: March

 

Acro Bookshelf March by acro-collective on Polyvore

What’s on your reading list this spring?

Weekly Link Roundup: 1/22/2016

Happenings and stories gathered this week.

1. “If not even an avowed socialist can be bothered to grapple with reparations, if the question really is that far beyond the pale, if Bernie Sanders truly believes that victims of the Tulsa pogrom deserved nothing, that the victims of contract lending deserve nothing, that the victims of debt peonage deserve nothing, that political plunder of black communities entitles them to nothing, if this is the candidate of the radical left—then expect white supremacy in America to endure well beyond our lifetimes and lifetimes of our children.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bernie Sanders and reparations

2. Daniel Holtzclaw given 263 years in prison for serially raping and targeting black women.
3. The exploitation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy: some things you should know.
4. Taiwan elects its first woman president, Tsai Ing-Wen.
5. “Every single presidential candidate is a character from Lord of the Rings.” It’s hard to disagree.
6. #OscarsSoWhite is more than a black and white issue.
7. A writer wades into the Trump and Sanders campaigns from the perspective of his own whiteness.
8. College application season has ended and admission season is about to begin. NPR brings us a list of ways the admissions process squeezes out poor kids (and one they forgot: standardized test prep classes, which can have a hefty price tag).
9. The seductive nature of problems that aren’t your own, and why young people are flocking to the “third world” and f*cking things up.
10. The EPA’s role in the Flint water crisis.

 

Acro Collective Bookshelf: January

 

Acro Collective Bookshelf: January by acro-collective on Polyvore

Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick / The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel (FSG Classics): Jamaica… / Everything I Never Told You / My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One by Elena Ferrante / The Darkest Part of the Forest / Three Parts Dead: Max Gladstone: Amazon.com: Books / A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki / Eve’s Hollywood (New York Review Books Classics): Eve Babitz / The Visionist: A Novel by Rachel Urquhart

 
 
What are you guys reading lately?

Weekly Link Roundup: 1/6/2015

I have been sadly remiss about this, sorry! So much has happened since our last roundup, and there’s absolutely no way I can remotely begin to cover everything, but here are some of my favorite interesting pieces from the past couple of weeks, including sad/absurd news, food for thought, and more.

1. When and how does “adulthood” begin? “All of a sudden you’re out in the world, and you have this insane array of options, but you don’t know which you should take. There’s all these things your mom and dad told you, presumably, and yet you’re living like a feral wolf, who doesn’t have toilet paper, who’s using Arby’s napkins instead.”
2. Meta linkspam: Longreads’ Best of 2015

3. On constructing feminist identity (or not) through “offense”
4. Tamir Rice and the value of life: “Take a moment and time yourself giving three commands, imagining a response from Tamir and making the decision to shoot. Maybe it can be done in less than two seconds. But to my mind, it strains credulity.”
5. Anti-muslim actions spread to Sikh communities as well
6. Keith Chow bites back at self-hating radio host who claims the idea of an Asian-American superhero is impossible.
7. “The social pressure on people of color to keep the peace, not get mad, just make sure everyone keeps having a nice time…can be overwhelming, bearing down on us in so many situations we do not see coming and therefore cannot avoid. What does our dignity matter, what do our feelings amount to, when we could embarrass white people we care about?”
8. Cliven Bundy et al. defending their right to owe more than $1 million to taxpayers: why the local militia has taken over federal property and why the double-standard in police response to this situation, versus situations involving POC, is so absurd it’s almost laughable

Weekly Link Roundup: 11/20/15

Goodreads from this week on feminist friendships, ISIS, and more.

Weekly Link Roundup!

• Elizabeth Warren for president
• Is there a link between mental health and gun violence? (New Yorker)
• For my fangirls: A linguist explains the grammar of shipping (Mary Sue)
• Nicki Minaj is getting her own TV show!
• The last black man in San Francisco (Fusion)
• The politics of pantyhose (New York Times)

Weekly Link Roundup!

• One year out from Ferguson, and with a lot of work still left to do, Mic.com assembles a Ferguson syllabus: readings on violence, its aftermath, and what it means for America.
• Why do #BlackLivesMatter activists keep interrupting Bernie Sanders?
• Eileen G’Sell on the paradox of the “hot mess” humblebrag—or why women feel the need to downplay their discipline and success.
• “Hell is empty and all the devils are here”: A Shakespearean guide to the 2016 Republican Primary.
• “Female Friends Spend Raucous Night Validating the Living Shit Out of Each Other“
• Storytelling shapes our perception of the world, and it’s clear that We Need Diverse Books!