I almost gave up on The Tenth Muse because of the muse-y prologue. I'm glad I went back to it because it's perfectly compelling almost from the start, the reveals keep coming. It's a first-person narrative by a mathematician, Katherine, one who reached great heights despite the men who helped her along the way lol.

Katherine isn't involved in feminist movements, but she is a woman who is aware of the forces conspiring against her success.

...when I stood in front of the hallowed buildings of Harvard grown over with ivy, I thought--What beautiful places men have built for each other with the intention of keeping women out.

.

In my mind I see Hypatia sculpted in marble: she was flesh and blood, mind and spirit. The book she wrote has been lost. None of her papers remain. But reports of what that mob did to her have endured.

The Hypatia quotation resonates with me in the wake of an event at work that was Zoom bombed. The panelists, Black women, ended up having to process the violence that took place, rather than give their presentations. The event will always be remembered for the interruption, not for the content. Hypatia becomes an object of pity or even fetish, rather than the author of a work of brilliance.

...folktales were mostly told and passed along orally by women, but that the written versions have universally been set down and altered by men, that in the women's version the girl gets away by her wits, and in the men's version she's saved by a hero."

That's from a PhD student named Henry working on fairy tales, and the Grimm brothers in particular.

Spoiler

Henry is disappointingly heterosexual, despite her chosen name and how she dresses.

Protagonist Enchanted Jones, whose name is doing a lot of work, is a 17-year-old would-be singer who gets discovered by 28-year-old star Korey Fields, but this is no A Star Is Born. It's more like burned. Chant falls for all the tricks of emotional manipulation and abuse, starting with accepting and participating in being isolated from her loved ones. The powers that be don't understand why she allowed herself to stay in such a painful and dangerous situation, but I feel like every nonpower that be can relate. Luckily/unluckily, Ms. Jones isn't the first to report difficulties with Korey Fields, and luckily her family sticks by her. Some less lucky things happen, too, and then the end will mess you up!

Rose and Fern remember their childhood differently, perhaps because Fern is on the spectrum. Despite their diverging memories--to Rose, their mother was an ogre and to Fern, she was just their mom. Rose's journal details the horrors she experienced while an oblivious Fern depended on Rose for everything. Now, they're grown up, and Fern is a public librarian. Rose works, too, and is married to Owen. Fern hasn't dated much. She's a practical person and often single-focused. When she meets a guy she calls Wally (in the US that would be "Waldo," as in Where's) because of his hat and striped shirt, she has an ulterior motive for asking him out.

I can't say much more because I don't want to spoil the plausibly twisty plot. Let's just say there's an interdependence between Rose and Fern.

"...my sister holds the key to my sanity (even though I never gave it to her.)"

Favorite librarian Easter egg,

"...is at my bedside again, this time reading a John Grisham novel."

SOLID writing. I might become a Sally Hepworth head after this.

I wanted to like this queer librarians wild west tale more than I did. It's fun, but despite having so much sassiness embedded in the set-up, it's a little thin. After Esther's girlfriend is hanged for being a lesbian, Esther stows away...in a book buggy. She wants to join the librarians, delivering Approved Materials. The librarians are Esther's chance to be Good. Only, as Head Librarian Bet puts it, "Well. I've got good news for you, and I've got bad news."

Thus begins Esther's journey of self-knowledge and librarianship (transporting Unapproved Materials) with Bet, Bet's partner Leda, and Apprentice Librarian Cye, whose pronouns are they/them/their, except when they're in town. Esther has a lot to unlearn, and Cye is just the person to teach her.

Rarely to graphic novels (or memoirs) work as well as ebooks as That Can Be Arranged does. The art is broad, sort of a rounded version of stick figures, but not in an amateur sense. On one page, where 15-year-old Huda is contemplating arranged marriage to a stranger, there's a drawing of a hijabi woman in a blue abaya and a leather jacket standing on a hill. There are few clouds in the white sky and a flag on the hill that read, "The Hill I Die On." Huda's thought bubble is "I bet I'll get great signal up here." Lol, but also whoa.

There are some other handwritten thought and dialog bubbles throughout, but the majority of the text is typeface, thus easy to read in ebook form, which is important to some of us.

Fahmy's memoir takes us through her childhood to her spinsterhood (25, if you're in some Muslim communities) with generosity (an explanation at the beginning about why she draws herself wearing hijab in circumstances where she wouldn't have it on and a glossary) and gentle good humor. I say "gentle" because I'm often frustrated by "too clever by a half" humor. Fahmy teases her loved ones, but not to the point of aggressive self-deprecation. Further, the humor is universal--or maybe just Jewish, as well as Muslim because this one rings true for the secular Jewish culture I grew up in (à la [a:Erma Bombeck|11882|Erma Bombeck|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1208791191p2/11882.jpg]).



Then there's this moment, in the My First Proposal chapter


The next page begins, "It was a very freeing thought." AND YET, this statement of agency and independence is rendered in a dull pastel with NO FACIAL FEATURES. I am so intrigued maybe even haunted by what that means.

I hope to read more Huda Fahmy. For now I'll just follow her on Instagram.

She Came to Slay is a playful, illustrated biography of American badass Harriet Tubman. If, like me, your schooling was historically white, you may know little about Tubman other than that she conducted enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad and that her face would be on $20 bills right now if the fascist-in-chief hadn't delayed the currency change because, per Mnuchin, "It is still not time." AARGH.

ANYWAY, I didn't know that Tubman was disabled by debilitating headaches, seizures, and hypersomnia from a skull injury induced by an overseer--violence that was meant for a runaway, not for Tubman. That same injury is said to have prompted a religious awakening that came with precognitive visions and a sixth sense that helped her elude danger.

Slay describes Tubman's accomplishments, triumphs, and abuses: saving family members and others, networking with Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and politicians--but also not getting recognition or pay for her service to the Union army, being kicked out of the veterans car on a train (it took more than one man to move her) with spoiler/not spoiler zero help for Tubman from white passengers.

The illustrations are warm and visually uncomplicated but full of depth.

I didn't enter a rating because I don't entirely know how I feel about this story of an out lesbian teen who goes back in the closet at her preacher father's request when they move from Atlanta to suburban, Baptist Rome, Georgia. Jo agrees because her dad makes her an offer she can't refuse, and also, she's alone. Her mom died years ago, her parents are only children, and her new stepfamily is a skosh intolerant. In Atlanta there was a GSA and a queer best friend, and in Rome there are youth group kids who...actually turn out to be pretty nice (despite some of them being a skosh intolerant).

This is a teen romance, so inevitably one of the Georgia peaches softens to Jo, and strangely, it's Jo who keeps their forbidden love hidden. She's discovered that not making waves and getting approval from her intolerant stepgrandmother has its charms. Plus she wants to please her dad even while righteously pissed at him. Jo is passionately Christian, so maybe that's why she obeys her father's strong request.

It's a compelling story, and I'm sad it's over, but I found Jo's deceptions torturous, and not in the exquisite way--more along the lines of "snap out of it!" But what do I know about queer teen life in the Bible Belt? Maybe the story, as it's told, is necessary for folx in some demographics.