Hi! & welcome to Free Pizza.
Free pizza is a nice, unexpected thing in a strange world. Every other week, I will share some free pizza with you in the form of things that I am reading, watching, googling and thinking about that you may like too.
I would love to hear what you like/don’t like/want to see/don’t want to see/what your favorite pizza is so email me!
Thank you for reading 🍕
1. watching season 1 of “pose” in 24 hours 💄
💡 when you want to put yourself in the way of beauty (and/or the ‘80s)
I am, admittedly, extremely late to the game which is maybe why I devoured season 1 of Pose in fewer than 24 hours, but just in time, because Season 2 was released last month.
There’s so much to love and admire, and there are people who are more appropriate and better-equipped to talk about those things than me, like Angelica Ross (although this interview contains a spoiler alert), or Mj Rodriguez, Dominique Jackson and Indya Moore, along with writer, producer, director Janet Mock in this Out interview, or Janet Mock on NPR.
Some of the things I love and admire: an unprecedented number of roles for Black trans women, trans women actually being played by trans women, Black trans women in the writer’s room and in the director’s chairs. The spectacle: the dingy but still chic Upper Manhattan apartments, the overblown 80s hair, velvet, velour and glitter. But what gets me the most is the story of a chosen family, and the ways a community supports each other because there is no other choice.
Also it has by far the best possible use of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” which Wesley Morris so beautifully describes in this piece, and I can’t wait to SLAY IN KARAOKE (if we ever get karaoke again? Can’t think about it…)
2. shanika powell & blackout poetry 🖍
💡 when you’re about to recycle a stack of old New Yorkers
Shanika Powell is a writer in New York City who creates blackout poetry, which basically means inking out words on a page until you are left with a poem (though you should follow her because she describes it much better than me!) I love Shanika’s work and am constantly amazed at the power her poems pack in so few words.
I took Shanika’s blackout poetry workshop a few weeks ago (which you should absolutely sign up for when she does another) and it was incredible. We all had books or old magazines we didn’t mind writing in, and in our own tiny Zoom squares on read words on the page and crossing out in Sharpe what didn’t serve us. I was amazed at the Rorschach-like effect of the act. It meditative, psychically revealing and an accessible way to be creative.
Sometimes it’s hard to be creatively productive, which is why coloring a coloring book can be so relaxing. I am fascinated with the idea of creativity through constriction. What is revealed when we take words away instead of creating them out of thin air?
Anyway, here’s the poem I made in Shanika’s workshop!
3. putting flowers in your books 🌿
💡when all any of us is trying to do is feel okay
Finding an old bookstore receipt, post-it note to-do list or margin notes in a book has always felt like a gift from my past to future self. In Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar, I wrote on a post-it note a list of Anthro 220 assignments I had (definitely bonobo-related), alongside an accounting of whether or not I had enough money to pay my utility bill and go to Dollar Beers (probably not, but did anyway) and for a brief moment, get an accurate glimpse of Who I Really Was, not who I thought I was in 2014.
A not-so-emotionally-loaded way of documenting a time is to simply pick a blades of grass, a sprig of lavender, some pine needles or daisies and place them in what you’re reading. It is a way to mark a time and a place. It is a small gift from your past to your future self.
4. whitney museum coloring 🎨
💡when you want to be a kid, but still kind of bougie
I always kind of LOL at stuff like this because it feels designed for kids who grow up on the Upper West Side who end up being quoted in New Yorker articles before they’re in their double-digits; and yet, I am so charmed by the coloring pages the Whitney released this week: Hopper from Home, where you can print out Edward Hopper coloring pages.
5. sunday shares 🗞
💡 when you’re the person in the group text whose always sending links to 10,000-word articles
Off and on for the last year, Erik and I send each other an article on Sunday. It’s typically a #longread: We’ve sent articles about naming conventions of British houses, a migrant family taking a Greyhound across America and a column about emergency beans — most of which I would not have read had it not been so intentionally recommended.
I’ve been reading less long-form journalism and more fiction lately so if you’re not into sharing articles, you could take this and make it a Sunday recipe share, or a soothing image share, or an anti-racist education share or even a—dare I say — tik tok share? It’s like having a mini newsletter between yourself and one person and it’s added a lot of joy to my life. (P.S. if anyone is trying to do a shiba share I am here for it which brings me to the newest feature of this newsletter which you can see below.)
🦊 shiba of the week: mocca
Thank you for reading! I’ll see you again in two weeks. In the meantime, tell your friends and tell me what you think. And here is the link to join the Collective Donating group I’m a part of, where each month we pool our money to donate to an anti-racist organization. This month it is the Anti Police Terror Project in Oakland.
This newsletter is fully funded by Atlas Media Group.