On the Topic Of...
A roundup of links to explore & appreciate
I love a good link list and have been meaning to send one out regularly for a while (perhaps a subscriber perk in the future!). Some of my favourite round-ups include Cup of Jo’s Friday posts or her Four Fun Things; Mother Mag used to do a great weekly link list called The Motherlode but I am not sure if they’ve stopped post redesign.
(Lyz Lens) does a Sunday Reads for her paid subscribers I always love, and has her Bits section. I also adore the five things at the bottom of every Brooding newsletter written by and The Audacious Roundup by is the best, even if it gives me serious anxiety because there are so many good links and so little time to read them all.I don’t always feel I have enough to share every week, especially around the main themes of this newsletter but this week, there was so much good stuff out there. So, without further ado, here are a few links and recommendations for you:
To Read (or Listen):
As I shared on social media, I always love what Radiolab does, but last week’s episode called The Seagulls was so moving. Yes, it is about seagulls, but it is also about love, animal queerness and what is considered “natural” versus “unnatural”. At the end, co-host Lulu Miller shares her experience as part of a queer family and what reporting this story meant to her. The end had me in tears.
The Atlantic had two multilingualism-related articles this month:
How to Fall In Love When You Don’t Speak the Same Language and My Novel Is a Love Letter My Mother Can’t Read about the language barrier between a mother and her novelist daughter. If you’ve been here for a while, you might remember this newsletter I wrote about the popular theme of how partners who fall in love in different languages are super sexy but multilingual parents raising multilingual kids are…so so tired.
I let out a nervous giggle when I read in the first article how one of the couples, who already experienced significantly challenging lost-in-translation moments just the two of them, couldn’t wait to have children together to teach them all their languages. Godspeed, friends. I am here if you need me.
I found this New York Times article on the use of “Mother” and its ties to the L.G.B.T.Q. ballroom community fascinating.
This New Yorker piece by Jiang Fang on a mother and daughter, immigration and illness was so powerful. In the print edition of the magazine, it is called “What Am I Without You?”
In my twenties, I worked as a standerdized patient, someone who portrays scenarios so med students can learn and practise. I write more about this in a project I am currently working on but this article, When Doctors use a Chatbot to Improve Their Bedside Manner reminded me of that time. Like all doctors, I remember how some med students had incredible bedside manner and knew exactly what to say, others, not so much.
Through the brilliant Jessica Valenti’s
, I read this NPR article from March about how because of abortion bans in Texas, doctors can’t even mention out-of-state abortion options and sometimes, “talk in code” to pregnant patients. There is a part in the article that mentions an immigrant woman who didn’t even know she had out-of-state options until six weeks after her initial appointment, presumably because of a language barrier. Awful.And for my UK friends, if you think the anti-abortion horrors are far from home, think again. This week a woman, mother of three children, was sentenced to more than two years in prison for “procuring drugs to induce an abortion after the legal limit”. The legislation dates back to 1861. Read that again, 1861!
Art & Insects to Appreciate:
If you are in London or nearby, you may have heard that the National Portrait Gallery is reopening next week. I can’t wait, it is one of my favourite museums and I look forward to visiting Diana there again.
Also in London, the Museum of the Home has a new exhibit titled, “No Place Like Home (A Vietnamese Exhibition) Part II” on two of my favourite topics, you guessed them, notions of home and multiculturalism.
My children and I recently did one of those butterfly kits where a company sends you a small jar of caterpillars and they eventually transform into butterflies, and you release them. It was awesome and we all loved it. All five of our caterpillars made the transition successfully, or should I say “eclosed”. I didn’t know that’s what emerging from the pupal case was called and for some reason, find it so poetic that this idea of emerging anew has “close” in the word. I could also go into the idea of metamorphosis here when you become a mother but really, this is just an excuse to post a photo of one of our butterflies.
I took my children to a workshop at the British Film Institute this week. It was on being yourself and celebrating differences like race, sex, disability, sexual orientation through film and discussion. The workshop was brilliant and ended with this video campaign. I found it online and my daughter kept asking to watch it again and again on the way home.
I am ending on one of my tweets that got some love last week. I am not on Twitter often but when I am, it’s almost always linguistics-related stuff. This was a big one for us as we’ve been struggling a bit with languages lately and I’ve been beating myself up over it. But moments like these really help. As always, feel free to share your best or worst language moments or multilingualism highlights. I am here for it all.
