Congratulations to LaToya Jordan!

 

 

 Big congratulations to LaToya Jordan: her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat just won the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award in the novella category!

 

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, Part 22: LaToya Jordan

 

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023

by LaToya Jordan

 

 

Books:

I started off 2023 with two novels that will stay with me for a long time: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and The Change by Kirsten Miller. These were perfect to read back to back because they spoke to each other and could’ve been in the same universe. In both, women channel their rage, transform it, and use it to change their situations.

In Nightbitch, a stay-at-home mother solo parents her two-year-old during the week. She’s angry with her husband who’s only home on the weekends from work. She is an artist, or was one, because she hasn’t been able to make any art since becoming a mother and being primary caretaker. She starts physically transforming at night, into what she thinks is a dog. As she begins to accept the animalistic nature in her, she makes dramatic changes that lead her to being able to be a mother, wife, and an artist again.

In The Change, three middle-aged women experiencing changes in their lives: empty nest, widowed, divorce, career failings – all of that while starting menopause. But as they experience the change of life, they also come into powers. Working together, they use their powers to solve the murder of a teenage girl.

 As a perimenopausal mother-writer, these books hit me in the gut. What I wouldn’t give to have more time to work on my craft and how I’d love to develop superpowers and channel my hormonal rage into something that could help the world.

 

 Other books and stories I enjoyed reading this year:

Books:

Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker - (I read this one with my tween daughter!)

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings

 Jackal by Erin E. Adams

 Bad Moon Rising by Luisa Colón

 Bleak Houses by Kate Maruyama

Murder Book by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

 

Stories:

“Light Spitter” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in his short story collection Friday Black. I read most of the stories in this book but read this particular story five times. It’s about a college campus shooter and his victim as ghosts.

“Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Uncanny Magazine

“Clown’s Balloons” by Sam Rebelein in Bourbon Penn

 

Streaming:

Almost all of my favorite series, except for Black Mirror, are book adaptations.

 

Netflix:

Bodies

I love time-travel and mysteries. This series was a slow burn of confusion in the beginning but by the end I was hooked and wanting more. It follows four detectives in four different timelines, two set in the past, one in present day, and one in the future. 

Shadow and Bone, Season 2

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

Sweet Tooth, Season 2

Black Mirror, Season 6. My two favorites of the season were Episode 1, “Joan Is Awful” and  episode 5, “Demon 79.”

 "Joan Is Awful" is about a woman who discovers that the hottest new show on a popular streaming platform is based on her life and it reveals secrets about her life to her boyfriend, colleagues, and everyone watching. One of the biggest things I learned from the episode is that we all really need to be reading the terms and conditions before we agree to purchase a product or services.

 Demon 79 is about a demon who needs to help the protagonist make three sacrificial murders to save the world. It is supernatural horror, which is a deviation from the sci-fi and technology aspects of Black Mirror, but still holds up a mirror to the social and political issues we face.

 Hulu:

Black Cake

 

Podcasts:

2023 was the year I finally gave podcasts a chance.

“Shame Spiral” with Ely Kreimendahl is a shameless plug, I was featured on this podcast this yea). Ely speaks with guests about shame; it’s funny, it’s deep. She asks thoughtful questions and has a beautiful voice for radio. One of my favorite episodes of the year was “Embarrassing Myself In Front of Jon Hamm” with Mara Wilson.

I also listened to “Scamanda,” hosted by journalist Charlie Webster. This podcast is the story of Amanda C. Riley, who scammed her friends, family, and town into believing she had cancer. I love that this podcast uses an actor to read the blog and social media posts written by Amanda.

Just when you think you’ve learned everything about Michael Jackson, you find out you don’t know it all with “Think Twice: Michael Jackson” from journalists Leon Neyfakh and Jay Smooth.

Finally, true crime podcast “Anatomy of Murder” with Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and Scott Weinberger. Of all the true crime podcasts in the world, I enjoy this one the most because I prefer a journalistic style to true crime and because of the expertise the hosts bring to the show: Nicolazzi was formerly a NYC prosecutor and Weinberger was a former deputy sheriff.

 

 

 

LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, Shirley Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more. Her flash story “Offering” was a spotlight story in Best Small Fictions 2021 and named in Wigleaf’s Top 50 2021. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After and another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by The Manifest-Station, was notable in Best American Essays 2016. She is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar. Aqueduct Press  released her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series earlier this year Follow her on Twitter @latoyadjordan.

To the Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of To the Woman in the Pink Hat, a novella by LaToya Jordan, as the eighty-seventh volume in the Conversation Pieces series, in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at www.aqueductpress.com. 

Jada Morris was the fierce and resilient leader of a social movement against the theft of young women’s uteruses before she committed a violent crime. Now, in 2040, the 24-year-old is serving time at The Center for Future Leaders, an alternative to prison for young leaders who committed crimes as a response to gender-based violence. The Center supposedly provides training, education, therapy, and reduced sentences to the convicted in order to return them to their communities as leaders. But as Jada begins her therapy, she realizes all is not as it seems, and memory is thorny at best. Can she trust her android therapist and the terrifying path down which she’s taking her? And what will she find at the other end?

Jordan’s novella is a gripping and terrifying look at our reproductive future that sends shudders through our reproductive present. 

You can read a sample of the book here:  http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-236-7.pdf

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 19.: LaToya Jordan

 

Reading, Viewing, and Listening

By  LaToya Jordan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read:

Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston

I read this with my 10-year-old daughter. It’s very exciting to share a love of fantasy and sci-fi with her, and I love finding books with young protagonists she identifies with. Amari is a 13-year-old Black girl who wants to find her missing brother. Most people think he’s dead, but Amari gets a special message that sets her off on an adventure at a summer camp for the supernatural that introduces her to a world where all the magical creatures people think are fake do exist.

 I didn’t read as many novels as I wanted to this year because the pandemic stole my attention span for long-form fiction. I’m hoping this is temporary though I’m enjoying my deep dive into short stories.

 

One Story

I bought a subscription to One Story, a literary journal that publishes one story a month, during the pandemic. I enjoy receiving my monthly chapbook instead of junk mail. The issues fit in my purse and are the perfect companion for my commute to work. I haven’t read all this year’s issues yet, but my favorite story so far was Issue No. 290, “From the Comfort of Your Own Home” by Lincoln Michel. I read this one by flashlight on a camping trip with my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop. It’s a horror story told in email format about a virtual reality writing residency gone creepy. I do not recommend reading this at night or when camping. I also caught up on issues from 2021 I hadn’t yet read. I keep returning to Issue No. 283 “Naturale” by Carrie R. Moore. The story is about how a woman deals with who she becomes dealing with her pregnancy and her husband’s affair. I’ve read it at least three times this year because the writer does an amazing job at backstory and moving through the past and present in a short story.

 

Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horrorby  Lincoln Michel & Nadxieli Nieto

This collection of flash horror was weird, creepy, and scary. So many good stories in the collection but as a New Yorker, “Carbon Footprint” by Shelly Oria, stuck with me. It’s about a way to prevent the destruction of the Earth by mass murder via pushing people off subway platforms to thin the herd. As a mom who’s made mom friends online, “Human Milk for Human Babies” by Lindsay King-Miller made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s about mothers who cultivate an online relationship with one donating breast milk to the other in need that ends up with a bad outcome for one of the mothers when they meet in real life.

 

Uncanny Magazine

 I love the stories in Uncanny and I hope to be published there one day. I enjoyed  "Our Love against US" by DaVaun Sanders in Issue Forty-Eight. One of my favorite lines from the story is “It’s using our love against us.” Even though it sounds painful, I love the idea of an alien parasite spreading via love. 

 

Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories

I’ve read “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, but since I’ve been writing sci-fi and horror, I felt it was my duty to read more of her work. I especially enjoyed the uncollected and unpublished stories.

 

 

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses

Even though I’m no longer involved in traditional writing workshops, this book caught my attention for how teachers and writers need to rethink teaching craft to reach writers with diverse backgrounds.

There are so many dog-eared pages in my copy of the book, especially in the back section with 34 revision exercises. I’m currently using two to help revise a short story I’ve been having trouble with.

 

Watch:

I’m not ashamed to admit I love TV.

Paper Girls, Amazon 

This series features many of my favorite things: the 80s, the 90s, girl protagonists, and time travel. It’s about four newspaper delivery girls who end up caught in a battle between people from the future. The girls end up time traveling to the 90s and meet their future selves as they work to figure out how to get back to their timeline. Watching the girls — who had high hopes and plans for their futures — meet the adult versions of themselves and reckon with dashed dreams made this a poignant coming of age vignettes for each girl. There’s a lot of cursing in the show, but more cursing from me after I learned Amazon didn’t renew the series for a second season. Since it’s based on a comic book series, I picked up the complete story collection, issues 1-30, for me and my daughter to read together.

 

Stranger Things, Netflix

Paper Girls led us to watching Stranger Things. My family (minus my four-year-old) finished all four seasons in about a month. This sci-fi and horror series has 80s pop culture, the paranormal, secret government experiments, and has become a new cult classic. I was drawn to the series because it reminded me of Stephen King books. My least favorite season was 3 because it veered more towards gross horror with exploding rats.

 

Travelers, Netflix

Another series about time travel. A team of “travelers” from a post-apocalyptic future world travel back to our present day to complete missions to try to alter the course of humans destroying their future. The way they time travel is by sending their consciousness into present-day people at the exact date and time of deaths. Travelers need to pretend to be their host. Unfortunately, the show went the way of most popular Netflix series and was canceled by the streamer.

Wednesday, Netflix 

A dark and funny series featuring Wednesday Addams investigating murders in the town where she attends school. It was great to share with my daughter and have the Wednesday I grew up with from the 90s (Christina Ricci) as a character in the series.

 

White Lotus, HBO Max
It’s not sci-fi, but I like to think of it as fantasy since it’s about the lives of rich people at a luxury resort, with a dash of murder.
 

Everything Everywhere All at Once

I went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once twice in the theaters. As background, I’m not a fan of going to the movies. I prefer watching movies in the comfort of my home. But this movie hit every mark for me: sci-fi, weird (hot dog fingers, a raccoon chef, and butt plugs), female lead, and the exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and a husband-wife relationship. Experiencing the movie in the theater the first time was a profound experience and made me realize why people enjoy going to the movies. I remember looking over at the woman seated next to me who was crying when I was crying, laughing when I was laughing. At the end of the movie, I wanted to know who wrote it (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and aka The Daniels) because it is the type of exploration of motherhood I want to write. This will be a movie I rewatch with my daughter when she’s a teenager.

 

Listen:

 
Ursa Short Fiction Podcast 

Ursa is a podcast dedicated to short fiction by underrepresented writers co-hosted by Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. The podcast features short stories and interviews with short story writers. I especially loved the “Book Club: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” episode where Dawnie interviews Deesha about her debut short story collection to mark the two-year anniversary of the book being published.

 

Lofi Girl on YouTube

This is my go-to when I’m doing personal writing or writing for my day job. Lofi hip hop with no vocals and the animated girl who sits at her desk continuously writing while her cat looks out the window makes me feel like I’m having a virtual writing date.

 

 

LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, Shirley Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more. Her flash story “Offering” was a spotlight story in Best Small Fictions 2021 and named in Wigleaf’s Top 50 2021. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After and another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by The Manifest-Station, was notable in Best American Essays 2016. She is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar. Aqueduct Press will be releasing her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series in March 2023. Follow her on Twitter @latoyadjordan.