It's no secret or surprise that canon is white, cis, and male, so I'm not even going to delve into this topic. All I'm going to say is that the canon does not have to be this way, because history has not been white, cis, and male, and if you'd like to sink into the diverse, magnificent world through books, it's wonderfully possible, especially armed with the resources below!
Perhaps the most difficult part will be locating the following books, but I suggest requesting your library or local indie book store to purchase such books and writers, and using used bookstores, whether online or in person. Indiebound is also good, if you do not have access to such shops.

The Second Shelf, a book shop and magazine, is an invaluable resource for not only rare or collectible books by women, but also discovering that women have been publishing high quality, notable work for a very, very long time. Not only this, but The Second Shelf is a woman owned business, so the purchase of a magazine helps both you and the lit world. While you wait on your magazine, peek into the Second Shelf Instagram.
The Paris Review also has a brilliant series profiling underread women authors, called Feminize Your Canon. It makes my heart flutter.
It's important for me to note that these resources are careful to be intersectional.

Not all canon to embrace is historic. There are some voices that (as we know it) are only just being equipped to be heard and reached.
RL Goldberg has written a great list for The Paris Review called Toward Creating a Trans Literary Canon.

Enough of all this all-white canons. I recommend avoiding lists written by white folks, as our view of culture is vastly misrepresentative of reality. This is the whole problem. 
The Well Read Black Girl is an absolutely amazing resource for books by people of color, from people of color.
Books by Native Americans is one of the most difficult tasks for me, but this list is a good start.

Move beyond Oscar Wilde with these titles and articles on and for queer theory and canon via Brown University, or this article via Advocate.

This is the most brief, incomplete guide one could possibly make, and I am okay with this. I so encourage you to do more research and collect lists as you read, you expand your view of the literary world, and thus people.
An okay place to start is the list ALA has compiled of book, print, and media awards.

You'll notice the lists contain backlist books, but it's important to remember that we are actively creating a new canon for generations beyond us. The books published today matter, and it matters that we read them. Be loud about the books you love. Tell us- and your friends, your coworkers, the social media void- about what you're reading.

Happy exploring,
​m

heya dear lovelies,

this month marks 50 years since the stonewall riots, an occurrence reminding us that queer folks had to literally fight to be seen, acknowledged, and gain human rights. one need only glance at the states of politics and churches to know the fight has not ended.
​
this month, to pay homage to queer artists, i encourage you to do something small every day, to listen or to see a queer person. one opportunity is included here: read a poem every day, written by someone in the LGBTQ+ community.

this would be a lovely challenge to complete alongside nadine's 30 day challenge. as we hear others, it is healthy to process our own feelings on gender and love, regardless of our orientations.

following are a handful of queer poets and their books to start you off in exploration... but not to worry- i will check in throughout the month to give you 30 poems to read.

happy wandering,
m

Howl by Allen Ginsberg
​Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo
How to Love a Country by Richard Blanco
Lessons on Explusion by Erika L. Sanchez
Wind is the Wind by Carl Phillps
We're On by June Jordan
​Upstream by Mary Oliver
​Afterglow (a Dog Memoir) by Eileen Myles

by Jack Kerouac

​1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house 
4. Be in love with yr life 
5. Something that you feel will find its own form 
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 
19. Accept loss forever 
20. Believe in the holy contour of life 
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better 
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge 
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it 
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form 
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness 
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better 
29. You’re a Genius all the time 
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

[this post was originally posted on my blog... i think about this one often, lovingly.]

It’s eighty-two degrees and I sit on sun drenched concrete, hot pink book in hand, pebble- small crimson strawberries staining my left hand and right knee. Suddenly, a fluttery brown butterfly wiggles between my thigh and the ground, crouching against my skin. I shriek- being the put together young person i am- and then quiet, carefully shifting to stare at this beautiful thing that has chosen me to rest against. It flutters upwards too quickly, shooting straight into my neck where its wings rustle kisses much too softly against the most intimate sections of my neck. I shriek and wave my arms again- because yes, I am peaceful and one with the universe, experiencing every little girl’s dream of cupping a butterfly, though definitely not in the proper place- and scream the line of poetry I had just read moments ago: the butterfly, “she was floating like a lost brain cell!!!”
The line is all too simple and visual and connotative. Yes. I know who this is. I can use this. Good poetry feels like that: stunningly familiar and sensible, yet so perfectly said that it must be filed away for future reference.
Analicia Sotelo’s Virgin is so: lush, surprising, and yet all too familiar. Sotelo explores the feminine, specifically the bittersweet single girl in all her conflicted, tired-of-your-bullshit, loving, hungry, reliable complexity. The first sections of the book, aptly named TASTE and REVELATION, root themselves in this girl and her perspective. From an emotional distance, she observes those surrounding her from within their midst at summer barbecues or late night kitchens. Here, there is desire for love and satisfaction, intertwined with innocence, hesitation, memory of her Texas home, and personal myth. This is exactly how the entire book is constructed; though we depart from our single girl and travel backwards, we remain rooted within her multi-faceted identity.
Sotelo paints portraits for her reader, embracing lush and surprisingly logical imagery and metaphor. Such metaphors are not simple and there for the poetics. Instead, the metaphors are reflections of the scene in which it stands, to convey not only a person and their feelings and desires, but also to deepen the setting itself. A strong example of this follows, as our single young woman drifts through a summer potluck. Metaphors reflect her resentful boredom, and her desire for true emotional and physical intimacy.
“I’m a radish tonight, for everyone
has been flowering with careful hellos
and it’s made me red and pungent,
made me sick of potluck drinking
under the stars with the weeds, brushing
their blond hair against my ankles, sick
of the clear buttons of sweat on their skin
and their salty arguments about who’s best
at breathing…”
(Expiration Date, 11)
All metaphor in Virgin is effortlessly intentional, and stunning.
After observing and interacting with men who can’t quite satisfy, the reader is led down the hallway of doors, first to revisit past traumas, revealing how exactly we arrived in this single female body. Sotelo is thoughtful; she does not write with blame or bitterness. Instead, she gingerly examines all angles, including, yes, toxic men, but also, relational complications-“In this the twenty first century / where men still love girls, but rarely admit it, / and history binds you to your signature” (29)- and emotional unavailability- “the place, like me, had its visitation days” (48). We continue to slowly backwards through time, stumbling home to a childhood with a father drifting in and out of view. Slowly, we understand the first sections from within the lens of the girl’s roots; a girl is a history: “I am my mother’s daughter. / I am not afraid to go back in time” (42).
A girl is a myth.
The concept of virginity is slightly questionable, placing value in a touch or experience which is often so very complex and personal. In one realm, all value is given to the virgin, while in other worlds, “when they said Virgin, they meant Version we’ve left behind” (23). So is this a virgin: A myth? In a sense, yes. The book follows every myth revolving ’round the heart: the myth of who she has been: “People think I’m sweet… look now: my heart // is a fist of barbed wire” (8, 18). The myth of the identity of who she had thought she wanted: “so / many people are tender from the right angle” (8). The myth of unreachable fathers. The urban legends behind artists like Frieda Kahlo. The traditional myths, rooted in Ariadne and Theseus. Virgin is, at its core, a book of myth.
The book closes softly, a reflection of every poem and girl portrayed. It is neither sad, nor joyful. Perhaps we fall within our single girl, weighed down with disappointment, building a sort of beautiful funeral pyre, looking for meaning in the rising smoke.
Her bed is an island,
her dreams are a breakthrough,
each vessel finds the pia mater,
sends her to the beach
to collect their driftwood. Burn it.
This is how I find you.
In short, beautiful. Onto my wishlist it goes. Rarely do I find a book of poetry that so seamlessly connects all of its individual pieces into a complex, reflective narrative. I am impressed, and intrigued by this gorgeous book.

namaste,
​m

Samuel Levi Jones literally deconstructs history, delegitimizing white supremacist knowledge bases.
Did you know,
Martin Luther King Jr. was not included in the Britanica Encyclopedia until 13 years after his assassination, despite new editions printing annually. Yet then, he was only included under African American.
Jones rips them apart.
Turns them inside out.
​Reframes power.
Hangs them on the wall.

Find his portfolio here.

Stay dismantling,
m

love,
m


photos via Glenbow and Bazaar.