Blog
Bibliotherapy: Books as Psychological Treatment?
“Can reading make you happier?” Ceridwen Dovey asks in the headline of her 2015 article for the New Yorker, where she describes her experience with bibliotherapist from the London-based School of Life. At its most basic, bibliotherapy, or book therapy, uses reading as a method of emotional and psychological support. Dovey was gifted an appointment with bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud, who sent her a questionnaire to help establish Dovey’s needs, including the question “What is preoccupying you right now?” Dovey wrote back that she was concerned about not having the “spiritual resources” to be able to weather grief when it inevitably arrived in her life. With this in mind, Berthoud sent her a list of books to help guide her through this worry.
Film Festivals in the Time of COVID-19
As we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, the film-festival-going crowd of the modern era may notice that the process of premiere attendnce and film submission is now out of the ordinary. We know people have to stand six feet apart, and being in a literal ‘audience’ is generally frowned upon. Even with the effects of COVID-19 in place, one must take the same steps in order to submit a film to a festival. If you were making and submitting shorts or features a couple of years ago, you would have used a website called Withoutabox to send your film, but this website is now defunct. If you submit a film to a festival now, you use FilmFreeway to connect with thousands of film festivals around the world.
The Validity of Self-Help: Literature Like any Other
Toward the end of a several-day hiatus from writing, I visited a bookstore for the sole purpose of perusing. I was shocked to see that “self-help” had become a section of its own, donning a few eight-foot high columns. Authors promoted anything from traditional Buddhist concepts to successful wall-street financial maneuvers to better the reader’s everyday life. I picked up and flipped through The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, whom I was already somewhat familiar with, when it dawned on me. I just need to write this piece. I don’t need to actually give a “F*ck”. Motivated by a Nike-esque “just do it” mentality, I embraced the ethos of the self-help genre.
Youtube Controversies: The Truth Behind Commentary Channels
YouTube Controversies: The Truth Behind Commentary Channels Prior to writing this, my YouTube history page consisted of videos of near impossible workout routines, influencers promoting healthy morning habits, and “self-improvement” products that I’d mindlessly...
Act Natural: Me and Dorian Electra’s Flamboyant
The problem of the personal essay is bridging the massive gap between me and you. Many personal essays, especially those written by queer people whose experiences are so varied and idiosyncratic, tend to share an almost unmediated picture of experience. I sometimes express dissatisfaction when an essay glances off me and leaves no lasting trace. I don’t get it. Then I’m reminded that that’s sort of the point. You read the piece, and if you share the experience, you empathize. If not, too bad. It was not for you anyway. But a melancholy taste is left in my mouth.
The Woman with the Cross Tattoo
On my sixteenth birthday, I ask my mother if I can get a tattoo like hers on my wrist. Raising an eyebrow at me, she responds back, like she’s done, a thousand times before,
It’s not a tattoo, she says.
Ferdinand Magellan Circumnavigates Disneyland and Las Vegas: World Possession Made Easy
Anno Domini 1522: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s Victoria returns to harbour in Spain after circumnavigating the globe, tying up the world with a golden girdle—which is a necklace, which is a collar, which is a garotte. Magellan himself had so famously expired many months ago on the island of Mactan in the Philippines—speared to death like a fish, by all accounts—but, alas, the flat-earth, anti-Cartographic forces of the universe were too late. Magellan’s will be done: the globe is complete.
Grow Up and Vote
With the American presidential election just weeks away, the importance—and the question—of voting is heavy on our minds. In the past year, the leadership of one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world has broken down. President Trump was briefed on the danger of the Corona virus in late January, and did nothing to protect the American people except imposing travel restrictions on China; and this was after he disbanded the pandemic response team set in place for exactly these kinds of outbreaks. Over 200,000 Americans have died from the virus, and many of those deaths could have been avoided if the Trump administration was more proactive, and less concerned for the economy.
Racial Diversity in Literature – What it Means and Why We Need It
“What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me,” wrote Walter Dean Myers in a 2014 opinion piece for the New York Times, titled Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books? He explains that when living through extremely difficult points of his life (including coping with the murder of his uncle, grief, and alcohol abuse by family members),reading books became a retreat from the world. He noted that the world he saw around him was not reflected in his reading material: “As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine.”