“It gives me permission like nothing else to accept myself in all of my own wildness and growth. Nature puts the struggle in perspective and I am filled with my own power. Whether I am sitting coochie directly to the earth or am looking at a waterfall pour from its source, abundant, orgasmic and confident of its origins, or I am floating in the ocean letting the rage and grief in my ovaries be rocked out of me with each wave. Nature loves on me and helps me re-align. Being in my wildness has allowed me to know divine consciousness in a real way. I pray to be like nature and unfurl without permission or fear.”
—Junauda Petrus, from Black Woman Wildness: A Spell, in Pleasure Activism
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TASTING LIGHT: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions
What does the future hold? Ten speculative short stories by leading young-adult authors imagine what the world could be through the lens of technologies emerging today. When the modification industry transforms how humans look, sound, and interact, a nonbinary teen braves the “reinvention room” to accept a gift from the dead. In an accidental city in space, a young apprentice holds neighborhoods together with braided carbon filaments until distraction and inspiration arrive in the wake of a visitor. In tales buzzing with possibility, hope, innovation, anger, and tenderness, Tasting Light offers a dazzling challenge to connect with open minds, hearts, and senses in a fast-changing world. With stories by William Alexander, K. Ancrum, Elizabeth Bear, A.R. Capetta, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, Wendy Xu.
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PLEASURE ACTIVISM: The Politics of Feeling Good
How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Junauda Petrus, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.
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BODY TALK: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy
via Refinery21: Author and editor Kelly Jensen’s career is based on helping young adults feel more comfortable talking about complicated issues relevant to their lives, subjects that have been difficult for parents to discuss with their children for generations. Her books tackle topics including feminism and mental health. In her new anthology, Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy, Jensen collects essays that all focus in some way, shape, or form on body image. In an exclusive excerpt from the book for Refinery21, Junauda Petrus discusses race, queerness, and self-acceptance.