Good morning,

This Friday I present a series of articles on being who you are and not what you represent. One is serious and two are funny and I hope you enjoy them all.

Firstly, an interview with Elena Ferrante! She gives some lovely considered answers about many things, including narcissism, her writing process and also her reading process (like me she forgets books she reads quite fast and unlike me she doesn’t let it get her down) – but this is the paragraph that really struck me:

It seems to me risky to forget that no one gave us the freedoms we have today—we took them. For that very reason they can at any moment be taken away again. So just that, we mustn’t ever lower our guard. It’s wonderful to give oneself fully to another, we women know how to do it. And we should continue. It’s a serious mistake to retreat, giving up the marvelous feelings we’re capable of. Yet it’s indispensable to keep alive the sense of self. In Naples, certain girls who showed the marks of beatings would say, even with pleased half smiles, He hits me because he loves me. No one can dare to hurt us because he loves us, not a lover, not a friend, not even children.

http://hazlitt.net/feature/be-silent-recover-my-strength-start-again-conversation-elena-ferrante

Everything in this “If Women Wrote Men The Way Men Write Women” article is a delight, but of course my pullquote is going to be the Lolita reference:

But of course, it had to be the Nabikova where he showed a little glimmer of hope. What other book would serve?

“Professor,” Stephen began, one well-tanned arm in the air. “What if it’s not really about the boy? What if, like she says, he’s a safely solipsized something else? What if the plaything isn’t the jailbait kid, but the English language itself?”

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/if-women-wrote-men-the-way-men-write-women

Reductress has been on point lately, so if you have some time today, just browse through everything they’ve written in the last two weeks.

After the first dozen inquiries came in, she said she found the messages “thoughtful.” But once they fell into the triple-digits, Khan reports they became “uncontrollable in volume” and states that they put “pressure on women of color to have all the answers.”

http://reductress.com/post/what-can-i-do-one-thousandth-person-asks-huda/

BY THE WAY if Huda failed to get back to you as well, here is a helpful website:

http://www.whatcanido.io/

Hey, and happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Alex.