READ WATCH PLAY FEAST + OFFICE HOURS
October Edition!
Fam!
Next time we speak we will have elected a new president, for better or worse. I don’t do much on social media; mostly what I read are books and newspapers, and still my head feels close to exploding from the torrent of electoral anxiety that’s being rail-gunned straight into my cortex. Spending the next week in the World Series, rooting for the Dodgers and Ohtani will hopefully help.
What also helps: the coming of Halloween, greatest of all holidays.
And: my best friend from childhood is here for a visit and there are few solids more solid than being truly known.
As always: tremenda gratitud to all our subscribers. Thank you for hanging with us and sharing with us. The plan always: deeper tools for deeper work.
AND NOW… FOR ANOTHER OFFICE HOUR!
If you have any questions regarding building stories or the creative life in general — if you have any questions about anything we’ve been discussing — please post them in the comments section below or message me directly.
And now onto what’s nourished this last tumultous month.
READ
Really loved this book. A beautiful moving portrait of a family, a mother, a daughter, scattered by time, by immigration, by state tyranny and what remains once the claws of history and the hammer of forgetting — the heartbreaking labor of recouperation and re-memory — have their say. Morillo has talent to burn.
What I said originally: “A one-of-a-kind book, beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking . . . Morillo has a novelist’s profound heart and the piercing truth-seeking of a documentarian.”
https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/mother-archive
The Guardian’s description of the original show is a perfect review of this “mind-altering catalog: “Exhilarating, mighty, radical, tender, as disturbing as it is beautiful, Life Between Islands is a revelation from first to last. It follows 70 years of tumultuous history through art. Agonising departures and brutal arrivals, kindness, cruelty and community, uprising, oppression and unceasing injustice: all are carried in powerful films and photographs, spectacular sculptures and paintings, portraits sketched on police stop-and-search reports, even a walk-in front room where Joyce, the imaginary inhabitant, recreates her old home down to the crocheted doilies and velour map of Saint Vincent.”
If you’re looking for a door into the Caribbean cosmos from which all of us have either sprung or benefited from — this is it.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/life-between-islands
WATCH
CUCKOO
A Halloween horror film rec for you, uneven but enjoyable, and as far as horror is concerned on the light side, starring a terrific Hunter Schafer (from “Euphoria”).
https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/cuckoo-review-hunter-schafer-dan-stevens-1235913849/
DADDY’S HEAD
Can’t recommend this one enough. Better than the reviews I read. If you’re a gore hound look elsewhere, but if you are looking for a superb film shot through with awesome chills and ridiculous awesome performances from our leads — and one of the craziest “ghosts” around — this one’s for you.
https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/daddys-head-review-shudder-benjamin-barfoot-1235054403/
AMERICAN HISTORIA: THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF LATINOS
John Leguizamo is the man — talented beyond description — and this documentary is a welcome and beautiful corrective to all the bullshit distortions and negative projections the Latine community is forced to bear.
https://www.pbs.org/show/voces-american-historia-the-untold-history-of-latinos/
PLAY
THE PLOT THICKENS: DECODING JOHN FORD
If you’re into old Hollywood and John Ford movies or the source code of our settler colonial entertainment complex, this podcast is for you. What a fucked-up dude and what a dive into one of the pillars of American cinema.
From TCM: “For our fifth season, we bring you Decoding John Ford, a seven-part series that dives deep into the tough personality and complex legacy of cinema’s angriest auteur. John Ford was a bully and a drunk who ruled Hollywood for five decades, making dozens of seminal movies – though he was incredibly hard to pin down. His behavior swung wildly from loyalty to cruelty, without notice. He won more Oscars than any director in history, but never showed up to accept an award. And he rewrote American history, painting the country with images so beautiful that people wished they were real. From his clashes with Hollywood to the front lines of World War II, Ford's story is brought to life through a treasure trove of newly-discovered interviews with film legends including John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Ford himself. Join host Ben Mankiewicz as we strip back the mythology to reveal Ford's brilliance – alongside the often ugly, uncomfortable truths about his life and movies, asking whether we can ever truly separate art from the artist.
https://www.tcm.com/articles/Programming%20Article/021880/tcm-presents-the-plot-thickens
My Rutgers sister KB always brings the best music and here’s BLOODYWOOD, an Indian folk metal outfit.
EL FOTHER y LAPIZ CONCIENTE
Nuff said.
FEAST
POKE FIX - HONOLULU
I thought I had fotos but clearly was too busy devouring to document one of the best damn poke spots in the Kingdom of Hawai’i. If you plan to be in Honolulu for any reason put Poke Fix at the top of your list.
https://www.honolulumagazine.com/youll-find-legit-local-style-poke-bowls-at-this-waikiki-hidden-gem/
REGARDS - PORTLAND, ME
And on the complete other end of the continent is one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten in the longest time — a California coastal restaurant that’s heavy into Mexican-Japanese swirl. Portland, Maine is lauded for its restaurant scene and while everybody hits Eventide Oyster, Fore Street, Leeward, The Honeypaw, Duckfat, they should also be heading to Chaval and Jin Yang, but above all : Regards. I ate almost the entire menu and it was revelation after revelation. Plus, that bar was the real deal.
https://www.instagram.com/regards.maine/
https://www.businessinsider.com/regards-portland-maine-everyone-should-be-going-to-2023-6
This is just to say how much I appreciated your recs here. Checked each one out more online. What a melange, a good reminder of how much good, if often overlooked, art (even in the form of food) is being made all the time.
Hi Junot. Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply about voice in the last office hours.
Do you have any tips for learning to write better when you’re already reasonably good at it? Aside from doing an MFA, I find a lot of the available educational offerings are more basic than what I’m after (and expensive!) Yet I still really crave some input and guidance on how to get better at this very hard thing. Any thoughts on good techniques for self-study or finding a mentor or other options?