A look back at my Moth GrandSLAM performance
And a smattering of one-sentence book reviews
Dear readers,
It feels so amazing to be on the other side of my Moth GrandSLAM performance, which happened a week ago today. That story was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write because it was so emotional and a real challenge to fit into 5 minutes. It was about how I got into activism and decided that being a parent may not be for me even though I’ve always wanted children. I don’t have the recording yet, but I’ll share it when I do.
This was my third time telling a true, personal story on-stage, from memory. I’m always a nervous basket-case leading up to these performances (so much so that I realized just before the show that I’d forgotten to do my right leg while shaving earlier—which, fortunately, was only a problem when I was sitting). But, without fail, when I enter the theater my head gets totally calm. Then, on stage, my mouth muscle-memory takes over the words work, because I’ve practiced the thing about a bajillion times, and my brain can just sit with the memories and experience the emotions of the story. It’s kind of magical.
Some fun facts about the night:
I finally got to wear these shiny silver pants I’ve never found an occasion for in the ten years I’ve had them.
A dozen of my friends came out to support, which meant the world to me. Several others couldn’t get tickets because the show sold out the week before (and it’s a 971-seat venue!). This was easily the largest audience I’ve ever been on stage in front of.
I was the first storyteller after intermission. When I returned to my seat after my performance, the cast member next to me had a plastic cup of wine waiting for me from the green room. 😭 Small acts of kindness sometimes pack a real punch.
I haven’t yet figured out the proper way for a performer to exit the theater after a show. I was so eager to leave that I tried to shuffle out with the crowd right away, and then got trapped in foot traffic with people who recognized me and told me how much they liked my story—which meant a lot (seriously!) but only took about five seconds and then an awkward silence set in for the rest of the painfully slow exit, because I still don’t really know how to talk to strangers sometimes.
I’m grateful that I don’t have to spend any more time practicing this story and sitting in those intense emotions (I think you’ll understand what I mean when you get to watch it!) but I’m so glad I told it. An audience member came up immediately after the show to tell me my story made her cry, and others emailed me through my website to tell me I made them feel seen, and that’s why I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. <3
A reading diary, in one-sentence book reviews
I’m trying something new today. This summer I asked you all to chime in about what content you’d like to see more of, and book reviews were a top request. So, below I’ll share one-sentence reviews of everything I’ve read since my last post.
Why so short? I’m a big fan of one-sentence journaling, a concept I first saw in Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project, which restored my commitment to regular diary-keeping after college. Of course, the one-sentence thing only lasted four months for me, during which I progressively lengthened my entries with semi-colons and em-dashes until I defiantly wrote an entry with five short sentences and ended with, “This is MY diary and I can write as much as I want! So there.” But my short entries are some of the most fun to read because I was forced to report only the most important/interesting/funny things from the day.
Fair warning: one sentence is not all that much to work with, so things might get silly.
FICTION
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward: This very literary horror book was hard for me to get into on audiobook, but I bought a paperback version because so many people have told me they loved it—and the hype is real; it was funny, and scary, and halfway through, I was so hooked that I finished the rest in one sitting, which is super rare for me.
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: I listened to this 1872 Gothic novella (the “original vampire story,” predating Dracula) in one sitting while making the first apple pie of the season—cozy, creepy autumn vibes.
Katabasis by R. F. Kuang: In the inverse of Needless Street above, I started reading a physical copy of Katabasis but it didn’t hold my attention so I switched to audiobook; this story had a lot of relatable (for me) academic trauma but didn’t rise to the importance and “drinkability” (page-turny-ness) of Babel, which is my favorite book by this author and maybe any author, ever.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: This dystopian sci-fi novel is like a nearer-future Hunger Games meets abolitionism—highly recommend.
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow: I learned about this book at the Seattle WorldCon labor-organizer meet-up—it’s a historical fantasy about the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. (which duly acknowledges the movement’s anti-Blackness), and although it took me a while to get into, the story eventually presented very difficult, currently-relevant political obstacles with satisfying solutions where the magic paralleled the power of collective action.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor: A sci-fi novella with some very cool fictional human and alien cultural elements to it—not a page-turner, for me, but it’s short and worth a listen!
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz: I don’t typically go for a lot of AI point-of-view (POV) books because if we’re not doing human POV I’d rather be in the head of an animal or alien or something, but this story was hella cute and weird and cozy and I’m a sucker for culinary fiction.
NONFICTION
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins: This book—and The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick—have been my latest forays into the dark history of U.S.-driven mass killings of anticapitalists throughout the Global South during and after the Cold War; it’s chilling but essential reading.
DNF (did not finish)
These are books I started reading but abandoned (usually 5-50% of the way through) because they didn’t hold my interest as much as other books on my shelf at the time. Instead of listing titles, I’ll count them by genre:
Sci-fi: 4
Fantasy: 1
Classic fiction: 1
Contemporary fiction: 1
Historical fiction: 2
Writing craft: 1
If you’d like me to include a reading diary like this in future posts, please let me know. Or chime in if you’d like to see film/TV reviews as well—my favorite of the month was probably How To Train Your Dragon, a phenomenal movie that I’m honestly shocked I haven’t watched before now.
Till next month!
Love,
Rachael