The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 8: Joanne Rixon

 

 

2024 Joys

by Joanne Rixon

 

 

 

 

Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert from NPR ( https://youtu.be/-91vymvIH0c?si=52HkgG8b8noJF6gi )

This performance came out just a few days ago, and I’m listening to it (again) as I write this. Doechii is a rapper solidly a generation younger than I am; listening to her makes me feel young again. In a good way, like the first dawn blooming, like walking through a city I’ve never seen before. Her music is so damn intricate and precise and beautiful that it hypnotizes you.

 

OKPsyche by Anya Johanna Deniro  ( https://smallbeerpress.com/books/2023/09/12/okpsyche/ )

A complex, dreamy book full of magic and mundanity. I found it bruising but in a healing way—it contains a particular sort of grief, the grief of the queer parent cut off. It’s not the grief of death, and so you keep telling yourself it isn’t that bad. Your child still lives, and that’s what matters; it’s selfish to mourn just because you can’t see them anymore, and anyway they’re not really your kid. Not the child of your body, not a child who wants to claim you as their parent anymore. To be trans is, sometimes, the grief of not being an ancestor. 

 

Asunder by Kerstin Hall

Asunder is one of those books that just has that je ne sais quoi that makes a good book something to rave over. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets award noms this year, because it’s honestly just so fun to read. Charp, cosmic, tense, emotional—a triumph of a book.

 

 

“Inside the House of Wisdom,” by Tamara Masri at Lightspeed Magazine ( https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/inside-the-house-of-wisdom/ )

Like OKPsyche, this short is also a story about being a person who is not a parent, not an ancestor, but only on a technicality. Contains descriptions of current, real-world genocide. If it doesn’t make you cry you need to get your heart right with your god.

 

 Joanne Rixon's short speculative fiction has appeared in venues including Strange Horizons, Terraform, Fireside, and Lady's Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. They are a member of STEW and the Dreamcrashers, and are an organizer with the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup. They are represented by Jennifer Goloboy of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, and you can find them yelling about poetry and politics on bluesky @joannerixon.bluesky.social, or at joannerixon.com