So much is already lore. She wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day. She said no to Elvis buying rights to “I Will Always Love You” and said yes to selling it to Whitney Houston, loved the iconic version and used much of the royalties to support a Black neighborhood in Nashville. She was an uncredited producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer! She gave a $1 million early in the pandemic to COVID vaccine research and is credited with why it moved so fast. She funded school bands across the South, including and specifically majority Black schools. She started writing 9 to 5 with the sound of her acrylic nails sounding like a typewriter! And of course Dolly’s Imagination Library which gave millions of free books to millions of kids IN FIVE COUNTRIES for decades in honor of her dad who couldn’t read (and will continue to do so, except for those states in which Republicans defunded the programs).

Essay: “The Dolly Moment” by Tressie McMillan Cottom: The essential piece for me is Sujata Said favorite Cottom’s 2021 piece. Cottom is interested in why Parton means so across lines of gender, race and class, and particularly what Parton’s ambition meant in a culture where ambition is not an acceptable feminine trait.

essaying

The Dolly Moment

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6 years ago · 1059 likes · 62 comments · Tressie McMillan Cottom

Cottom has done some follow up writing and conversations since last week that continue to add to the conversation in thoughtful and loving ways! But most important are Dolly’s own performances!

Wendell Berry

I found Berry through his poems (a few shared below that I love), but then I leaned that he was also a prolific essayist on the environment, agrarian society and his beloved Kentucky and Appalachia, and the promise and danger of technology. His passing a few days after Dolly seemed fated for two icons of Appalachia and the South. Both of whom shared their love the land, their people and of community and care for each other in everything they wrote and did.

Questionnaire by Wendell Berry: Earlier this year actor Nick Offerman did a series for WNYC’s All of It called, A Wonder Is What It Is, of Wendell Berry readings and they are well worth your attention now! Here’s one my favorites - and you can watch/ to all of the series on You Tube and at WNYC

Poem: The Peace of Wild Things: Listen to Berry read one of his most beloved poems.

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Recommendations

TV Series: Widow’s Bay (Apple TV+): This is emphatically NOT my genre, but Matthew Rhys IS emphatically my genre, so I watched and loved it and it’s cast and quirky small town vibes - the critical acclaim is worth it. Strictly daytime viewing for me; absolutely no need to invite the creepy small-town vibes into my dreams/nightmares.

TV: The Other Bennett Sister (Brit Box): Oh, I loved this. This is a new series about Mary Bennett, the sister in Pride & Prejudice with the least story. The cast is fantastic, especially Ella Bruccoleri who plays Mary (also great in Call the Midwife) and the always wonderful Indra Varma! It offers a different perspective on the entire Bennett family by shifting our attention away from Lizzie, Jane, and Mr. Darcy to reconsider Mary specifically. And there is some really interesting work around Mary and her mother, Mrs. Bennett. TBH, the love story part was the weakest of the series but it was diverting! I’m looking forward to the Christmas special.

Podcast: Marlon and Jake Read Dead People: Season 2 of this wonderful literary podcast returned after a 3 year break, and I couldn’t be happier. Writer Marlon James does this with his agent Jake and they only talk about dead authors so no one can sue them! It’s funny, smart and also very blunt! James is one of the most challenging writers for me to read (I did finish Booker Prize winner A Brief History of Seven Killings but it took all my attention and intention). His new book The Disappearers came out this week and is already long listed for the Booker Prize this year. Mostly I would listen to him talk books and writing forever, and also I’d listen to him read the phone book! So this podcast is perfect for me.

Documentary: Mary Oliver - Saved by the Beauty of the World (PBS): Regular readers know that Mary Oliver is one of my all time favorite poets, and this documentary was a wonderful way to get to know more about her life and how it formed her writing that so many of us love.

Movie: Remarkably Bright Creatures (Netflix): I haven’t read the book, so I came to this with no expectations except for my love of the amazing creature that is the Octopus, and found it charming and sweet, and Sally Field. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need.

TV Series: Ride or Die (Prime): I came for Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham and was not disappointed. I’ve never been a huge Octavia Spencer fan, but this movie got me to like her a little bit more! Spencer and Waddingham make a genuinely fun pair. Nothing revolutionary, but a highly enjoyable time-pass with enough action and chemistry that I would absolutely watch a second season.

Things to Look Forward to

September 5: Movie: Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story (Lifetime TV): Regular readers know that I love Roxane Gay for her newsletter, essays, fiction, opinions, culture writing, her social media presence, and her love of reading and art. Her memoir Hunger is vital reading in my opinion and this movie based on it will be on Lifetime TV, and Gay narrates it.

October 10: Continuing Education: First America (Comrades Education): Over the past few years, I’ve taken a few courses from Comrades Education and appreciate their “class-based anti-racism programming.” And I’m signed up to take this course based on Sujata Said favorite Rebecca Nagle’s recent podcast First America. Listen to the podcast, and sign up for the course. You can take it virtually or watch the class and do the readings on your own schedule! And while you have all this free time, read Nagle’s excellent book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

These events offer a glimpse of the world as it could be: interconnected, curious, collective, animated by something other than business strategies, politics and borders. (Even if politics, business strategies and borders are never very far away.)

The Knicks did this on a city scale. For a few delirious weeks this spring, strangers nodded and smiled at each other. People lingered outside after games. Entire blocks erupted at once. A city famous for cool indifference bordering on hostility was the definition of Collective effervescence.

The Men’s World Cup has done something similar, all over the world, but especially here in the United States, where, because of our immigration history, we have diaspora communities from every country in the Cup - and diaspora who has beef with every country in the Cup!

The world feels bigger AND more accessible. People discover places they’d never thought about before and suddenly care deeply about what happens. (Looking at you, Cape Verde) For all of FIFA’s many, many flaws (see below), the tournament still manages to open up worlds and bring joy! And we need it!

And of course, it’s all political, always has been.

The Knicks belong to New York. They also belong to a billionaire owner. Madison Square Garden’s mythology exists with power run wild and decades of tax exemptions and a friendship with Trump, who EVERYONE agrees is why NY lost that one game that time he came, and also why the US got knocked out the Cup.

The Men’s World Cup sells a story of global unity and joy while carrying FIFA’s decades-long baggage of corruption, misogyny, unequal power, and the ways some nations are welcomed (and given preferential treatment by the FIFA refs and VAR🤷🏽‍♀️👀) while others are treated as problems. This year’s tournament is also unfolding inside the United States, where the Trump administration has used immigration and visa policy in ways that disproportionately burden people from countries it deems adversaries or that are majority Muslim, Brown, or Black. They follow familiar racial, imperial and geopolitical fault lines. Don’t even get me started on the unique racism that this sport brings out across all hemispheres. And also don’t get me started on, how many players are under investigation for sexual assault and rape.

In that spirit, below are a few recommendations, articles, and, yes, memes to keep the conversation and the joy going.

Sportsball Recommendations

• Movie: Bend it Like Beckham (Streaming): Don’t care about Beckham, def don’t care about England, but this is an iconic and great movie, and Parminder Nagra should have had the career that Keira Knightly does.

• Movie: Next Goal Wins (Streaming) and Documentary: Next Goal Wins: Movie about the American Samoan soccer team directed by Taika Waititi based on the documentary.

• Documentary: Copa 71 (Streaming): FIFA was so threatened by the first-ever women’s World Cup, held without its sanction at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium in 1971, that it shamed the tournament, buried its history, and erased it from the sport’s story. Even some of today’s biggest women’s soccer stars had never heard of it. Neither had I. This documentary was equal parts uplifting and infuriating. The interviews with the players in that tournament were heartbreaking, joyful, and moving. The final, played in September 1971, still holds the record for the highest attendance ever at a women’s sporting event.

• Art: No Ice in the Cup: Trump used visa and immigration and border patrol to harass and turn back players, fans, referees and more for the Men’s World Cup, and as all the joy of gathering has happened, ICE is still working at full pace in its cruel mission with the increased pace of detentions up across the country AND in the past two weeks multiple murders in Texas and Maine. Before the Cup began artists came together to prepare visitors and locals alike and call for No ICE in the Cup. You can download selected, amazing art here.

  

• Podcast:

  • Our Copa (Limited Series): “Former US soccer player Merritt Mathias and journalists Musa Okwonga (a favorite of Sujata Said) and Julio Ricardo Varela … trace the history of how global power has tried to influence the game….” (The Guardian, 6/8/2026)

  • After the Whistle: This is the third season and focused on the Men’s World Cup and has expert Soccer sportscaster Rebecca Lowe and Ted Lasso’s Brendan Hunt chatting about all the things.

  • Burn it All Down: I recommended this during the Winter Olympics and they have just a few episodes on the Men’s World Cup and more for their paid subscribersKeyne Yamal's. They do a great job of the on and off the field issues from a feminist point of view.

• Article: How the Working-Class Man’s Game Became an Elite Sport in the U.S: The path to the World Cup is accessible to only a narrow slice of American soccer players.

• Article: The World Cup Is Exposing Sports Media’s Big Blind Spot: Telemundo is smashing records on the Spanish-language feed — proving why U.S. rights sold in two separate packages may not last

• Article: ‘Crony Capitalism on Steroids’: 3 Writers on the World Cup’s First Week

• Article: Six Ways Capitalism and Imperialism are ruining the World Cup

• Reading Recommendations

• Soccer Romance Recommendations: I have read many of these! But missing is a new great one, Futbalista by Jonny Garza Villa.

  

  

Newsletters:

• World Cup Recap No. 4: the last four and anyone but [REDACTED] by Hmm That’s Interesting: A favorite newsletter for books and culture (she also used to do those fake PR videos of celebrities in crisis), she’s an actual soccer fan, and I have loved her takes, like “My friend is nursing a debilitating crush on Jude Bellingham and sends me approximately fifteen Jude-related memes a day, which has in turn convinced the algorithm that I am nursing a debilitating crush on Jude Bellingham who, in fairness to him, I do like more than Harry Kane…”

• Joey D’urso: D’urso is a journalist who writes about how football explains global politics, money and power and I’ve been thinking about a lot of his pieces the last few weeks.

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Fun times - Thanks to my Soccer Adjacent, Winter House, and Cottage group chats!

And two poems…

As Capitalism Gasps for Breath I Watch the Knicks Game By Yesenia Montilla (2024)

We can choose to share and talk about what makes this nation and its history truly unique: the inspirational, good, mediocre, bad, AND the ugly, or we can be complicit in and settle for jingoistic propaganda and feel-good patriotic narratives that flatten the truth.

And it’s worth naming that many of us were raised on those patriotic, jingoistic, feel-good versions of history - I certainly was as an immigrant - to always be grateful and never question or criticize. That framing is often the default we inherit through school, journalism, entertainment/culture, and public rituals, so it’s no shock that people are “surprised” when they later encounter more complex accounts that were never taught. Some of us take that surprise and continue to learn and unlearn, but unfortunately others get defensive about these truths and get stubborn about the false narratives.

So we choose to remember and continue to ASPIRE for the betterment of a country we live in and believe in without red white and blue colored glasses.

July 3rd: 250 Years of Resistance Virtual and In Person Chicago Event: Consider signing up for this virtual event on Friday July 3rd (or in person if you are in Chicago) sponsored by Haymarket Books with one of my favorite writers and thinkers Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Podcast: First America: This new series by perennial favorite, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle (This Land Podcast and By the Fire We Carry) “re-examines the US founding story through the lens of Indigenous history. It dives deep into how the founders' treatment of Native nations—and the colonists' hunger for Indigenous land—was the true driving force behind the American Revolution,” not the taxation without representation that we have all been taught. And of course once independent, our founders went full force on seizing the land and exterminating the people with genocide.

Writers on the Anniversary: Some short and long reads from key thinkers, artists and writers on this moment, past, present and future!

American Sonnet for the New Year by Terrance Hayes: Worth a re-post at this moment. This is a sonnet by a favorite poet, Terrance Hayes, from his 2018 collection American Sonnets my Past and Future Assassin.

• After 250 Years: Everything Back – Everything Forward (Native News Online)

  

• 250 Years of White Supremacy: And as many years of resistance (Hammer & Hope)

• American Dream, American Nightmare: This nation’s DNA is a double helix of beauty and brutality (The Nation)

• USA 250: Looking back on the best of times and the worst of times. As the great American experiment reaches a milestone, Marilynne Robinson, Richard Ford, Attica Locke and other leading authors reflect on their nation’s highs and lows (The Observer)

• Viet Thanh Nguyen: Most American Literature is the Literature of Empire: An imperial literature prefers the realism of showing the imperfect domesticity within an American empire. (LitHub)

• These History Books Will Make You Impossible to Lie To: How power actually works, who got erased, and where we go next. Mainstream history can be rewritten. The books on the shelf in your house cannot. (The Humanity Archive)

Resources for these Times: In the past I shared the following resources to download, watch, listen to, print, archive, and buy now … for future generations, for people of all ages in our lives, and for ourselves. So we remember what has been, what’s at stake, and what we fight for.

• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn: A landmark book of U.S. history from the perspective of everyday people, not the powerful, including a version for younger readers.

  • Teaching People’s History, Zinn Education Project: Since 2008, this project has built an incredible online library of lesson plans that center this history. Download and print them!

• An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: A re-framing of American history through the lens of Indigenous survival and resistance.

• A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman: A global look at power, revolution, and the struggle from the view of those who survived … inspired by the Zinn book!

• Video Series: Crash Course Black American History by Clint Smith: A 52-part video series that’s sharp, honest, and accessible for the youths, and frankly for us, created by another one of my favorite poets and authors, historian Clint Smith.

• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi: A history of racist ideas in America’s founding and how they shape society to this day including a version for younger readers.

• The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of American History by Ned Blackhawk: A re-examination of U.S. history, centering Native resistance across centuries.

• Podcast Series: Seeing White by Scene on Radio: A transformative audio series that unpacks the history and construction of whiteness in America.

  • Explore the other seasons of Scene on Radio, three of which dive into the history and systems behind patriarchy (”Men“), democracy (”The Land That Never Has Been Yet”), and capitalism. Each one offers engaging and critical, truth-telling education rarely taught in mainstream spaces.

• Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White by David R. Roediger: A look at how 20th-century European immigrants were first segregated from and then absorbed into whiteness, revealing race as a shifting category used to maintain systems of power and class.

Anti-Prime Days (June 23-26) Offers for Audiobooks and Books (Links embedded!)

Time Pass Neutral

Last week I shared some Time Pass recommendations good to excellent. This week I will share Time Pass neutral - these are things I enjoyed while watching, was engaged (although perhaps doing some other things while consuming them), and then once done, I mostly forgot them, except for some good songs and/or emotions. So in short, the perfect summer culture and time pass!

Movie: Voicemails from Isabelle (Netflix): This was probably my favorite of this list. It is marketed as a RomCom, it is NOT. It’s a romantic dramedy, and the drama is real: grief is recognized and discussed in thoughtful, mature and real ways. I didn’t do anything else while watching this, which is a high compliment. And the story about the lead character and her journey after losing her best friend/sister and making her life make sense in both love and work was the best part of this. The romance was fine and handled appropriately given the baked in conflict. Also Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” figures big in the story and I will take any Robyn delivery system these days!

Limited Series: I Will Find You (Netflix): For whatever reason, novelist Harlan Coben has a lot of movies on Netflix, from many different countries, and I’ve watched almost all of them and have no memory of any of them, the perfect definition of Time Pass Neutral. A quintessential “just one more episode” thriller: twisty and deeply effective at making my bedtime a moving target. I wanted to see the next twist and see if my guess on who did it was correct. Spoiler alert? It was, but I was surprised with how we got there. And it had a great cast including Chi McBride, Milo Ventimiglia and Sam Worthington.

TV Series: Off Campus (Prime): Off Campus is a TV series based on a series of hockey romances (MF romances, not MM) by Elle Kennedy, a writer I have generally enjoyed as a Time Pass but I prefer her adult rather than college-age books. Off Campus was already in production when Heated Rivalry (yes I’m still talking about this and you should watch it) took over the world so they are understandably hoping to capture its zeitgeist. But it is not really the same in tone or story only attractive people on skates are the similarity. Each season is another couple from the Hockey house. I’ll watch it but am hoping for some better chemistry in future pairings, this pair was not as strong for me in that. The soundtrack is what has stuck with me, and I have been listening to the lead’s cover of “Baby Now That I Found You.” again and again. Oh and if you didn’t watch Heated Rivalry because of the nudity and sex, well this has more nudity so now you can decide if that was the issue or if it was…something else.

TV Series: Four Seasons Season 2 (Netflix): Much like the first season, this is an enjoyable hang with an appealing cast: Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo, and more who get together in each of the four seasons and yes there is always some Vivaldi (which I welcome). They are people whose problems are made easier to endure by their very specific level of upper-middle-class-to-wealthy lives. Gorgeous homes, enviable vacations, relationship angst among people who can apparently drop everything for multiple long weekends with each other (my dream actually!). As with Season 1, I had a lovely time while it was on and then promptly moved on with my life the second it ended except for this meme from Colman Domingo which really speaks to me even though I don’t drink!

TV Series: Every Year After (Prime): Hollywood saw the success of The Summer I Turned Pretty (don’t even get me started on how much I want to shake those people into good decisions) and apparently concluded that we have an insatiable appetite summer houses, complicated crushes, sibling drama, and at least one dead parent where no one goes to therapy or deals with grief in a healthy way. So naturally, another romance book (this one by Carly Fortune) was fast-tracked to the screen. It’s the same phenomenon we’re seeing with hockey romances: one breakout hit and suddenly every publisher’s backlist is getting optioned regardless of whether or not it should be. I watched it all, wasn’t that invested in the lead couple getting together. Once again, I liked the music and there will be a season 2 which I will likely watch, and hope for more Jordie, the one character I liked, and then forget it again:)

Time Pass OK, Not Good, Probably Bad..

The only thing I can say about these is that these took time I can never get back and were bad, but they gave me something to complain about instead of only raving about things! And yes. Okay. Not Good. Probably Bad is a perfect Heated Rivalry reference for this category.

Movie: Office Romance (Netflix): I came to this for obvious and valid reasons: Brett Goldstein (wrote it and stars in it) and Jennifer Lopez (whose RomCom heyday I love). But it was a big disappointment. Every so often you catch glimpses of Goldstein, the writer and actor Interested in vulnerability and the ways adults (and men) stumble toward growth and connection (in faves Ted Lasso and Shrinking). Then a scene arrives that feels imported from a completely different movie, broad and awkward in a way that recalls peak Judd Apatow (and that’s not a good thing for me). Netflix spent a lot of money on a supporting cast including Edward James Olmos (Selena call back!), Bradley Whitford, Betty Gilpin, and Amy Sedaris, but sadly not great material for them.

TV Series: Not Suitable for Work (Hulu): I generally come to anything with Mindy Kaling’s name attached with some goodwill, which made this one all the more disappointing, but a reminder that I didn’t love her last show Sex Lives of College Girls after the first season for lots of the same reasons. This show wasn’t even particularly effective as background viewing for me. The biggest problem: I simply didn’t like, or care about, most of the characters, which is a tough hurdle for an ensemble comedy to overcome. Sadly, this one never quite finds its footing and, for me at least, wasn’t worth the time investment and is one of the few shows I didn’t even finish.

A reminder for my non-Desi readers, Time Pass is, as comedian Kanan Gill says, both an activity and a review. Today is Time Pass Good and next week look for Time Pass Neutral and Time Pass Ok, Not Good, Probably Bad.

Time Pass Good to Excellent!

Movie: The Voice of Hind Rajab (Hulu): In January 2024, 5 year old Hind Rajab was murdered by the Israeli Military along with paramedics who tried to rescue her after her family was killed by the Israeli Military and she was stuck in the car for almost 4 hours with their dead bodies. This movie uses the real life emergency call recordings of little Hind on the phone with the Palestine Red Crescent Society as part of the telling of the desperate attempts to get paramedics and rescuers to her while Gaza continued to be under fire. By centering the efforts of Red Crescent workers and incorporating Hind’s actual voice, the film is a study of helplessness, bureaucracy, and the moral cost of looking away. It’s unforgettable viewing that refuses to let suffering become an abstraction to those of us whose countries are complicit in the ongoing genocide. Please watch it.

Book: When the Clock Broke by John Ganz: This was a really good if not frustrating and eye opening book, since it takes place entirely in my GenX lifetime. Ganz traces a direct path to what happened in this country in the 70s-90s that led to strengthening of far right movements and eventually Trumpism. Rather than offering a simplistic origin story for Trumpism, Ganz shows how long these trends have been embedded in American life, and a reminder of why his newsletter, Unpopular Front, is one of my favorites.

Movie: Project Hail Mary (Streaming Rental Begins June 18): This is #NotMyGenre but I enjoy Ryan Gosling and the reviews from folks I trust were raving. This movie is fun, moving, existential, and serious, with great performances by Gosling, Sandra Hüller and an amazing alien, Rocky (voiced by its puppeteer James Ortiz). It’s survival sci-fi on how to rebuild a civilization-level crisis from scraps of science, and how relationships and community are hope when everything else has failed. Memes and edits of Rocky and Gosling’s character Grace are regular joy these days, only second to Heated Rivalry and baby animal edits and memes! I will def be watching it again!

TV Series: Rivals Season 1 and 2 (Hulu): Set in the excessive 1980s, this British series is power suits, enormous hair, country estates, nascent media wars, sexual intrigue, and people behaving with insane levels of self-interest. The cast, including David Tennant and Aidan Turner know they are in a soap opera and eat it up and we are all the better for it!

Book: Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian: Star Shipped is an enemies to lovers romance about two actors on a long running popular sci-fi TV series. Cat Sebastian is a favorite author of queer romance books and makes workplace professionalism, mutual respect, and years of suppressed longing swoon-worthy.

Movie: Is God Is (Streaming Rental): I love multiple Tony-award winning actor Kara Young, and see anything she does and luckily living in NYC there’s a lot to see of her on stage. This is her first leading role in a movie, based on the play by Aleshea Harris who also directed it. Twin sisters search for their violent and abusive father (Sterling K. Brown) to take revenge on him at their mother’s request, and we see what pain and vengeance does to family, relationships, and our bodies.

TV Series: Big Mood Season 2 (Tubi): I recommended the first season of this dramedy and the second season is worth a watch. Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West continue to portray female friendship as it is: loving, exhausting, generous, occasionally snarky, and more important than most romantic relationships in their lives. All while both are dealing with mental health struggles. AND there is a great cover of “If I Had Words” from the amazing 1995 movie Babe (see below for another Babe mention!)

Book: How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn: I came to this book as a recommendation from perennial fave Empire Podcast. How the World Made the West argues that what we call “the West” emerged through centuries of exchange, migration, conquest, and cultural interdependence. Gone are the simplistic pro- and anti-Western narratives in favor of a messier account of what we now call “the West.”

Movie: I Love Boosters (Theaters for Now, Streaming Rental Soon): I love Boots Riley - his culture making (Sorry to Bother You, I’m a Virgo) is unique, quirky and unapologetic-ally radical. Keke Palmer leads a great cast (including Kara Young!) in this movie that focuses on folks trying to survive capitalism and economy and solidarity in all forms that can get us to freedom, while highlighting how media and corporate entities fight every step of the way to pit us against each other.

TV Show: Alice & Steve (Hulu): I would watch Nicola Walker in anything as I’ve written about before. She alone made Alice & Steve a must watch for me. A woman finds out her life-long best friend is dating her daughter (the daughter is 26) and the show devolves into a War of the Roses tit for tat with the two friends in anger and betrayal. It’s absurd and I loved Walker in it. I also don’t think it needs another season!

Book: Darkology by Rhae Lynn Barnes: This history of Blackface and minstrelsy in the United States from the beginnings to the 21st Century was excellent. More than a history of accepted racism; it’s a powerful study of how images normalize violence and shape collective understanding. For me, learning how far it continued and was supported by leaders, cultural elites and government funding, especially during the Depression and World Wars and into the 70s and 80s, was just striking. And how much of that has been erased and hidden.

Movie: The Sheep Detectives (Theaters for Now, soon Streaming for Rental): The Sheep Detectives is a warm and charming film about a flock of sheep solving the murder of their shepherd (Hugh Jackman). A stellar cast commits completely to its sincere tone, the who-done-it is actually a mystery, and it reminded me of the original 1995 movie Babe in the lovely talking animals and their personalities and jokes!

Book: On Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward: Ward is a favorite writer and observer of mine, and this essay collection is a sustained meditation on grief, memory, and storytelling. It’s ultimately a defense of witnessing as an ethical act and one that brings hope, no matter how rough what we have born witness to is.

TV Series: Deli Boys Season 2 (Hulu): Season 1 was a fun enjoyable Desi crime family comedy, and season 2 continues with great cameos and a core family unit stumbling through their regular life and their crime life! It’s chaotic and full of cultural specificity that never explains itself, and Poorna Jagannathan’s is, as always, the best as Lucky Aunty!

TV Series: Moni (SBS On Demand). This funny and bittersweet series follows Moni, a gay Samoan Australian man returning to Western Sydney after a decade away in London, only to find himself pulled back into family obligation, gossip, resentments, support, cultural expectation, and the childhood trauma he thought he’d escaped. The episodes are really short, which gives the series this compressed emotional intensity where every interaction feels loaded.

Movie: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Prime): I saw this movie in Australia when it came out, and it was my first exposure to the world and mind of Takia Waititi. I love it, it makes me smile and tear up and laugh. I watch it at least once a year. It has Sam Neill who I love, and Julian Dennison who plays the young boy is awesome! It remains New Zealand’s highest grossing film.

TV Series: Sunny Nights (Hulu): Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden play American siblings who arrive in Sydney convinced they’re about to become beauty-industry moguls with a spray-tan company called Tansform, only to become entangled with blackmailers, gangsters, exploding crocodiles, and bad decision-making. Sydney itself looks gorgeous but vaguely threatening. As always, when Americans show up in Australia there is also great cultural exchange of misunderstandings and entitlement!

TV: Series: Dear Life (Stan.): I came to this because Deborah Mailman, who starred in another fave, Total Control, had a small role in it. It’s good but pretty heavy. A woman mourning her fiancé becomes obsessed with the recipients of his donated organs and it goes in odd, sometimes funny, often cringe, directions. and always about the ways grief and trauma show up, from there. This show doean’t make a martyr out of grief - instead we see grief as it is, sometimes harsh, sarcastic, and occasionally selfish.

TV Series: Colin from Accounts (Paramount+, AppleTV): These two seasons were a mix of funny, profane, rude, and sweet. Basically on brand for Aussie TV. Ashley and Gordon’s relationship begins after a flirtation causes a car accident involving a dog named Colin. I don’t know that I’m a fan of the couple or that they should be together, and neither are any of their friends and family. But Colin is cute! What follows is less rom-com than sustained chaos between two adults (sort of) carrying wildly different baggage and questionable coping mechanisms.

TV Series: The Tourist (Netflix): This is a two season thriller, one season in the Australian outback and one season in Ireland, and both work thanks to the two leads Jamie Dornan and Danielle MacDonald (who was wonderful in Dumplin’). Dornan wakes up in the Australian outback after a violent crash with amnesia, but a lot of people want him dead and Macdonald plays a police trainee who steals the show when she stumbles upon the case and can’t let it (or him) go!

Documentary: Last Stop Larrimah (HBO): I came to this documentary because of someone I know is one of the journalists interviewed in it, and it definitely was worth the watch! This Duplass brothers produced documentary is about the disappearance of an elderly man in a remote Australian town with a population of 11. Everyone in Larrimah appears to hate everyone else with a level of commitment that to be honest, feels like it takes way too much energy! There are accusations involving poisoned pies, pet crocodiles, hidden recordings, decades-long grudges, and neighbors who speak about each other like feuding medieval warlords.

Alive at the End of the World: I wanted to re-share resources to support all of us and our loved ones in these times of rising authoritarianism and techno-fascism. Please take a moment to revisit this resource document, and share it widely.

Specifically, starting last Friday, May 8th, Meta/Instagram no longer end-to-end encrypts (the gold standard) your direct messages, meaning they can and will use all your messages, photos, and yes all the baby animal, gen X, Heated Rivalry reels you send back and forth to your friends in the middle of the night for their own AI, monetizing, and surveillance purposes and will share with law enforcement whenever they want/are asked. I strongly suggest you stop any real conversations and sharing private photos/thoughts in your insta DMs. Tech experts expect this will soon happen to Facebook personal DMs soon (Business and Group DMs have been insecure for a while already on Facebook)

1. Immigration/Citizenship including protecting yourself around ICE, and traveling the world and re-entering the country

2. Personal and Financial Protection

3. Digital Hygiene and Data Protection

4. Protesting Safely and Surveillance

5. Preserving and Teaching Real US History

They use resources like donated airline miles (and money) to move lawyers where they’re needed, to bridge that distance that makes access to legal help almost impossible especially when ICE is moving these humans around in the dark of night and far away from their communities and families and lawyers.

So if you have miles sitting around and you, like me, are seeing that airline status and loyalty doesn’t mean what it used to, or if you’re able to give financially, the Detention Bridge Project is a concrete place to do much needed good.

New Poetry Collections for National Poetry Month…and Beyond: 2026 marks 30 years of National Poetry Month!

Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I will read anything by Nezhukumatathil, so Night Owl already had me.

She writes about the natural world without hitting you over the head with the metaphors. And then, almost without you noticing, it becomes about love, family, memory, all the things that sit beneath.

What I keep coming back to is how much affection is in these poems. To animals, to people, to the planet in all its complication and sometimes despair. And that feels consistent with her works over the years - the insistence that paying attention to nature is not separate from how we understand ourselves. It’s one and the same.

A Suit or a Suitcase by Maggie Smith: I don’t really need convincing when it comes to Maggie Smith. I’ve been here since “Good Bones,” which broke containment many years ago! What I like about Smith is that she doesn’t over-complicate: the language is accessible, deceptively so, but the ideas are doing the work.

TV Series: The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins (NBC/Peacock): I don’t really know why I started watching this show…well that’s not true. It started with Daniel Radcliffe, a reliable entry point into anything slightly unhinged (especially in his post HP career) but what I didn’t expect was how much I’d love it! Meanwhile, Tracy Morgan continues to operate on his own comedic frequency, half chaos, half brilliance.

I still don’t know where it’s going. Not structurally, not emotionally, not even tonally half the time. And I’m totally fine with it and enjoy it every week! Oh, and Megan Thee Stallion guest stars as Radcliffe’s love interest - makes perfect sense and no sense at all.

Non-Fiction: No!: The Art and Activism of Complaining by Sara Ahmed: I read this book the week it came out (this week!) because it’s by Sara Ahmed, the Feminist Killjoy!

Ahmed does that thing she does best: she takes a word that’s been used to shrink people (especially women) - complaint - and turns it until you can see the whole structure behind it. Complaint isn’t pettiness. It’s method. It’s evidence. It’s what happens when someone refuses to smooth over harm for the sake of everyone else’s comfort. That’s the killjoy inheritance, refusing to let things go unnamed, even when naming them makes you the problem.

All the times someone “raised a concern” and became the problem. All the ways institutions and those in power don’t just ignore complaints, they absorb them, redirect them to make the “complainers” the problem, and protect themselves.

But it’s also, somehow, empowering. Because complaint here is also refusal. It’s a no that doesn’t disappear. It lingers, it gathers, it finds other nos. Read it if you’ve ever been told you’re “too much” for noticing something was wrong and saying something about it.

The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors by Steven Schwankert: The Titanic story feels like canon. This book totally changed the canon, which like so many, was created and told by those in power at the time and since. Six Chinese men survived the sinking, something I genuinely never knew until this book, and within hours of arriving in New York, they were demonized, criminalized, pushed out, erased, turned into a footnote that never quite made it into the version of history we all know. There’s research and documentation, and it also re-frames the disaster not just as spectacle or tragedy, but as something entangled with migration, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, with the emerging empires in the West and the East, and as always, with who gets to be visible and who doesn’t. There is accompanying documentary available on streaming as well.

Dalit History Month (April): Dalit History Month was started by a group of Dalit Women in 2015 and is observed now around the world. I have been on a journey the past many years to identify and understand how Caste Supremacy and Caste Privilege has shaped my own experiences and assumptions. Where South Asians go in the world, we take Caste with us.

My own journey on Caste Supremacy had been mostly self led, until I came to know and support the amazing advocacy group Equality Labs. I have taken their workshops, donated to their work, and follow them to learn more and know the latest. I encourage you to do the same with some resources to start below.

• 11 Books to Read If You Want to Understand Caste

• Caste Discrimination Exists in the U.S., Too—But a Movement to Outlaw It Is Growing

• The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan

• Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India’s Caste System by Yashica Dutt

• Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla

And the Swet Shop Boys moment, with Heems appearing so casually, adds to the feeling that the show is building its own little world: the desi diaspora world, our lives, our families, the internal and external of it all, and the mistakes we make when we want what is not “for us.” It doesn’t over-explain. It just assumes you’ll meet it where it is.

And the soundtrack is great! That Arooj Aftab Urdu cover of “Sweet Dreams” is fire and has been on repeat for my daily soundtrack since I watched the show last week!

TV Series: Deadloch Season 2 (Amazon Prime): I’m so very happy this is back. Season 1 had that balance I love: sharp, funny, genuinely twisty, and so specific to Tasmania that it felt lived-in rather than “set.” Now we’re in the Northern Territory of Australia, which immediately changes the energy (if you have been there, or live there, you know!). It’s bigger, a bit messier, slightly unhinged in a different way and crocs, so many crocs. But the core dynamic of the two leads is still there, which is what matters. The mystery pulls you in, the theories start stacking up again, and you’re back to suspecting everyone almost immediately. And it’s still doing what I loved in the first season, playing with all the expected roles around gender, sexual orientation, cops, victims, perpetrators. It keeps shifting things just enough that you can’t get too comfortable, but you are always entertained.

Movie: Sabar Bonda Cactus Pears (Apple TV): Sabar Bonda is set in India and moves through queerness, family, and the weight of expectation with quiet tenderness. The film understands how love and duty can become indistinguishable.

Queerness here isn’t spectacle. It’s the calculus of who knows and who must never know. In a moment when queerness is either monetized or criminalized (most recently last week in India), this film lingers in the quiet, intimate stakes: What does it cost to disappoint the people who raised you? What does it cost not to? Nothing is over-explained. It trusts you to sit with it.

Fiction: All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun: Jung Yun is one of my Brilliant Friends and her third book came out in March, and I read it as soon as I could. It takes place on a cruise in the days immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. It’s definitely a moment in time captured (for those of us that lived through it, but also the technology, the weirdness, and for those of us who are not white and Christian the fragility immediately after even from our loved ones and friends), for the world, the country, and these individual characters and their relationships.

Essay Collection: Let the Poets Govern by Camonghne Felix: Camonghne Felix is a favorite poet of mine, and why not start National Poetry Month with essays by a poet! Felix’s work insists that poetry is not an escape from power, it’s a way to re-imagine it.

I related to so much of her writing, especially as a recovering political operative as seen in these few excerpts.

Short Film: Friend of Dorothy (Kanopy): This is a lovely British short film that stitches together two very different lives: an lonely octogenarian with sharp eyes and a younger neighbor with dreams bigger than his postcode. Together, loneliness, theatre, and a stray football (soccer) is the beginning of something more. I loved sitting with it for 21 minutes.

Docuseries: Eyes on the Prize III 1977 - 2015 (HBOMax): As a Gen-Xer, I experienced the original Eyes on the Prize through VHS tapes in history class. While the original 14-hour series is widely available, that doesn’t automatically mean every school system is willing or able to show it in class, especially these days, when telling the truth about American history especially when it comes to racial history is iffy. What the new Eyes on the Prize III underscores is 1977-2015 history, and it maps onto current debates over voting rights, public education, and authoritarianism. The fight for belonging, dignity, and political power didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement and 1968, it morphed, and we’re still figuring out what it looks like to teach that truth and more vital, live and accept the truth of our history.

Some Post Olympics/ Pre FIFA/ Sportsball Reading: So many great books to read on the Olympics as an institution, what they mean, what/who they lift up and what/who they destroy. I started reading Out of Your League as part of my Heated Rivalry(HR) life, and not surprisingly found perspectives on sportsball and writing that I really enjoyed and learned from. So from Out of Your League, here are more options for Olympics history that are about more than just the love of Sport in addition to what I’ve written in the past! And given the cluster that is FIFA as an institution and the World Cup happening this summer in the US, I expect I’ll be sharing more sportsball culture soon!

And then there was the Super Bowl, the biggest sportsball I don’t care about. But it is an mono-culture moment, and I’m not immune to spectacle or Benito!

It’s also Valentine’s Day. You know how I feel about this commercial holiday. And you know I am an avid romance reader.

So culturally? This was big week for Sujata Said…

Milano Cortina Olympics

Thanks to a friend who recommended the Burn it All Down podcast knowing that I would love their power, gender, race and economic lens on sport from people who love sport! I LOVED their Olympic previews!

Quads, Backflips, and the Surya Bonaly & Ilia Malinin of It All: When I started writing about US figure skater Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God,” his back-flip and Surya Bonaly earlier this week, I could not have predicted the surprising results of the men’s free skate yesterday. Global media spotlighted Malinin’s technical dominance: the only skater to land a quad Axel, his string of jaw-dropping quads, and, earlier in the week, the first legal back-flip on one blade at the Olympics. Malinin ensured the US secure team gold with that performance, along with his talented team.

But then Malinin faltered BIG in the men’s free skate and finished eighth yesterday. This 21 year old remains a phenomenal athlete with many years ahead of him to astound us and make history. I was very pleased with the performance of the 2026 Olympic Gold Medalist, Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan.

I still want to talk about Surya Bonaly, a French figure skater who peaked in the 1990s. I grew up watching Bonaly as a 80s and 90s skating fan and didn’t have the words to describe what we saw in media coverage, her scores and treatment by the skating institutions of the world. Bonaly landed the first back-flip on one blade at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. She knew the move was illegal at the time. She wanted to make a statement at her last competition.

Many of us want to be sure her story and historic accomplishments were included in the story of the backflip on ice this week, and we often heard back “she deserved the penalty. She knew it was against the rules. That’s not racism.”

No one is confused about what the rule was. Rules often reflect racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia while claiming neutrality.

Bonaly was a World medalist. A European champion. A dominant athlete. She was also cited for costume violations at a time when finding tights that matched her skin was nearly impossible. On paper, that’s a rule break. In context, it’s something else. In a subjective (hello Ice Dancing judges!), artistic sport, rules about presentation are never just about presentation. They are about aesthetics. About who fits the mold. For years, Bonaly was labeled “too athletic,” not “artistic” enough, and yes “not feminine” enough - critiques that judged her body, her race, and her presentation from a very specific white and misogynistic lens - misogynoir!

We celebrate Malinin’s historic one blade back-flip landing last week and still recognize the context in which Bonaly was judged. Bonaly was a pioneer in a system not built with her in mind.

Olympic Movie Recommendation: The Cutting Edge (1992): Gen Xers know what a time 1992-1994 was for Winter Olympics: 2 Winter Olympics in four years (and the Kerrigan-Harding drama). With no streaming, it was peak appointment television for everyone. And in the middle of that? The Cutting Edge (1992). The ads ran constantly during the 1992 Olympics, so truly, we had “no choice” but to see it multiple times in the theater (or maybe it was just me and the friend’s I dragged to the Poughkeepsie Galleria!). 34 years later (oof), “toe pick” is still a inside joke with my friends.

If you love the Olympics and a sharp-tongued, enemies-to-lovers romance? Watch it. As the kids say, “The Cutting Edge walked so Heated Rivalry could run.” Yes I’m still talking about Heated Rivalry. Also this never gets old!

The Benito Bowl

As I said earlier, I don’t watch/like sports ball. And I especially don’t support the NFL: It is very much of this country, white supremacist in structure, patriarchal and misogynistic in operation, aggressively capitalist and profit-driven, and deeply invested in empire and its military optics.

The halftime spectacle? That exists because the league once got embarrassed. When In Living Color (Black written and Black and Brown starring sketch show)aired a special during halftime in 1992 and pulled 20 million viewers away from the game, the NFL panicked. The next year: Michael Jackson as the halftime star!

The NFL books global superstars because it wants the audience. It wants global expansion for its sport and market and its own empire. Cultural showcase as business strategy. So when Bad Bunny was announced, I felt excitement and side-eye.

Even for those of us who are not Spanish speakers, his songs carry a vibe and history: Puerto Rican, Caribbean, colonial, and imperial. Millions of viewers looking up lyrics, reading about Puerto Rico, Hawaii, sovereignty, and clocking that maybe kids fall asleep on chairs in multiple cultures between commercials? That’s something!

• Sujata Said… favorite Vibe Check did an episode about the show with one of my Brilliant Colleagues Nelini Stamp of the Working Families Party

• Inside Bad Bunny’s Historic Super Bowl Halftime Show

• The Triumph of Bad Bunny’s Unapologetically Boricua Halftime Show

• Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show was Loaded With Cultural Storytelling and Symbolism

• Books From Almost Every American Country Mentioned in the Benito Bowl!

• 5 Books to Get You Caught Up on Puerto Rico History!

Romance on V-Day, and Yes, I’m Still Talking Heated Rivalry

Because of Heated Rivalry, more and more folks are talking about, exploring and writing about the romance genre. I’ve done it before, but I of course can’t help but share a few new things that came up in the discourse spurred by HR.

• The New York Times put out a GLOSSARY of romance terms that KILLED ME DEAD! It’s good and if you want to start romance, a way to explore what you may or may not like!

• Vibe Check this week also focused on romance and queer love stories. And this quote was a highlight, because…IT ME (thanks to my good friend who sent it to me first!)

Heated Rivalry Discourse on Love and Romance

• Mouth and Muscle

• Heated Rivalry and the Art of Anti-Dystopia: Joy in the present makes joy in the future seem plausible

• Why Heated Rivalry is the Perfect Adaptation of the Romance Novel’s Strict Conventions (worth a read to distinguish the adaptation choices that HR and Bridgerton make)

• Lesbians see something in “Heated Rivalry” that TV still won’t give them: Sapphic romances remain scarce, so queer women are projecting their own longing onto the show’s characters

Beyond the love and sex discourse around HR, it goes back to SPORT and the institutions that reflect the best and worst of our societies. Rachel Reid, the author of the books, has said openly that as a hockey fan, it was her frustration with its misogyny, homophobia and abuse, that drove her to write the books.

• Time for Men’s Hockey to Actually Go to the Cottage: When the real life NHL commissioner and the league try to capitalize on the HR interest and uptick in ticket sales … maybe someone will tell the NHL commissioner who the villain of all the books is!!!

• sorry but I don’t give a fuck that the NHL has embraced ‘heated rivalry’:
  a post-holiday haterade rant

• The NHL wants a piece of the Heated Rivalry hype… if only it weren’t still dealing with its homophobia problem

• how ‘heated rivalry’ brought toxic fandom to the olympics: athletes do not exist to be used as objects by fans who want to escape into a feel-good fantasy

My Brilliant Friends

I’m so excited to share that my brilliant friend Angélique Roché’s new book, First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth, is out this week! I cannot wait to read it and hope you’ll consider reading it and sharing it with your friends and getting your libraries to acquire it. Roché has been at the intersection of upholding Democracy, systems change and culture (Marvel’s Voices) ever since I met her! First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth is the first graphic novel dedicated entirely to the origins and history of Juneteenth.

Things I’m Looking Forward to in January:

• January 8th: Season 2 of The Pitt (HBO) begins

• January 11th: Season 2 of The Night Manager (Prime) begins (after 9 years!)

• January 14th: Season 2 of Hijack (Apple) begins

• January 21st: Season 2 of Drops of Gold (Apple) begins (after 3 years)

• January 28th: Season 3 of Shrinking (Apple) begins

• January 29th: Season 4 of Bridgerton (Netflix) Part 1

Recommendations

Movie: Homebound (Netflix): Homebound is India’s Academy Awards entry and an account of migrant workers stranded in the sudden COVID lockdown inspired by Basharat Peer’s July 2020 New York Times essay, which was inspired by this photograph that went viral that year:

At its center are two friends, one Muslim, one Dalit (formerly known as Untouchable Caste), whose desperate journey home from the city after the COVID lockdown is about deep friendship and care, AND a reckoning with the country’s entrenched caste and class hierarchies and religious bias. The movie starts a few years before COVID when the two friends are applying to join the police force, and we see how identity (caste, religion, class) decisively determines who is protected, who is ignored, and who is left to fend for themselves, all replicated in extremes when COVID came.

This was not an easy watch, but I am so glad I made the space and hope you will too. Homebound holds up a mirror not just to India, but to any society with foundational fractures and how pressure exacerbates it all.

Movie: Sorry, Baby (HBO): I loved this quiet, intense movie, written and directed by the star Eva Victor. I laughed and was angry, and I was moved. The movie leaps back and forth through a professor’s life before and after a “bad thing”, as she calls it, happened. The movie is about how life keeps unfolding around pain. The film uses humor the way survivors often do - as a way to live with what happened, not to escape it, and the friendship she has is the core center of this survival. Naomi Ackie plays her best friend and, as always, is excellent.

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Movie: Knives Out: Wake up Dead Man (Netflix): I really enjoyed the third Knives Out adventure; a good who done it, funny, and a great ensemble cast with Daniel Craig back as Detective Benoit Blanc. Andrew Scott, Josh O’Connor and Glenn Close were standouts in the ensemble this time, but a blink-and-you-might-miss-it cameo from Bridget Everett (of fave Somebody Somewhere) was quite moving.

Documentary: It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley (HBO): I wasn’t hip enough to follow Buckley while he was alive. I really knew just one song: his haunting, beautiful version of “Hallelujah,” a track that’s lived on my regular playlist for years. I also knew that he died in my hometown of Memphis. I came to this documentary for another reason: one of my brilliant friends Stacy Goldate was one of its editors. You hear his voice first and then watch a young artist wrestle with legacy, longing, and promise.

Movie: The Best You Can (Netflix): I’ll be honest, I had no idea what this was about but when I learned that real life partners of almost 40 years, and perennial favorites of this Gen Xer, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, were starring in their first joint project in over 20 years, I was of course going to watch it. And I was rewarded with a funny, sweet and moving reflection on aging, parenting, and connection.

Documentary: The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix): This Netflix documentary doesn’t tell you what happened like most true crime out there, it lets you watch a neighborhood unravel via law enforcement cameras: a dispute over children playing in a field escalates and the result is a fatal shooting. It exposes the legal and social backdrop, from “stand your ground” laws to the way fear and prejudice becomes justification. The director, Geeta Gandbhir, did an amazing job of pulling together all the body cam footage and telling this very horrible, very American story.

For me, as a Gen X-er, it was Reiner’s extraordinary run as a director that truly defined my pop culture coming of age: This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President, and more recently, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life. For Gen X and X-ennials, those early films were a defining run. We still quote them. They still hold up. They’re part of the background of our lives in a way that feels enduring rather than dated, shaping how we talk, laugh, and connect to this day.

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Television!

Adolescence (Netflix): A tough, smart, four-episode drama about the murder of a teenage girl and the crisis of misogyny among boys and men. The performances—especially the 13-year-old lead—are incredible, but it’s not an easy watch. And yes, it’s frustrating (and familiar) that advocates for women and girls have been warning about these exact issues for years, yet a show by two men gets the spotlight. Still: if it gets people talking, I’ll take it. Check out Kate Manne’s newsletter on this subject.

Deli Boys (Hulu): Anything that Poorna Jagannathan (Never Have I Ever) is in, I’m there for, and Deli Boys was worth it for the laughs of two very spoiled Pakistani-American brothers who are shocked to find out that their father was in some shady business after he dies. This is a crime and family comedy - it’s a fun and enjoyable time pass. I will never think of achaar the same way. I hope it gets a second season!

Dept Q (Netflix-Season 1): My love of UK crime dramas led me to this one, mostly because of beloved actors Matthew Goode and Kelly MacDonald. It’s based on the Nordic book series The Keeper of Lost Causes. Violent, yes, but Goode plays against his usual type, and the few MacDonald scenes are the best. Season 2 is already greenlit, and I’ll be there.

Docuseries: God Save Texas (HBO): Three directors (Richard Linklater, Alex Stapleton, Iliana Sosa) offer three portraits of their hometowns in Texas, and watching it was like doing a deep dive at all the places America pretends don’t exist. Episode 1 follows Linklater back to Huntsville, TX, confronting the prison-industrial complex that shaped his hometown and generations of families. Episode 2 has Stapleton tracing Houston’s oil money, pollution, and the environmental racism made worse by climate change. Episode 3 finds Sosa on the El Paso–Juárez border, exploring identity, migration, and what it means to live between worlds. Even if you know Texas, this series will open your eyes to what’s impacting Texans…and all of us.

Heated Rivalry (HBO in US; Crave in Canada): With 4 of 6 episodes now out, this is for sure a 2025 year-end recommendation. It’s one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I’ve seen (ever, of any genre). It’s faithful to the heart of the books while improving them as well. The novels were written by a queer woman (Rachel Reid), and the series is written and directed by Jacob Tierney, a queer man who clearly loved the books as well, respects the book lovers who made it successful, AND has brought his real life lens of queer love and culture and his generally lauded sense of humor, snark and tenderness to it as well. The sex scenes are hot AND meaningful to the broader narrative and journey, the chemistry and yearning are palpable. And the acting is good - you can see the emotions and story unfolding on the ice, in the sheets, in the shower, all in so many quiet looks. Curl up and watch (and rewatch) the rivalry, lust, awkward tenderness. Two very key episodes remain (if you’ve read the books you know how vital they are), and drop Fridays at 12:00am ET. They’ve already teased a few characters from the other books (Ryan! Kyle!), and season 2 has been greenlit. Listen to this brief podcast and some thoughts from Jessica Valenti below on what its success means about romance, queer representation, and the nuance of who gets to tell and perform the stories! Oh, and the excellent soundtrack is also worth a listen and brings back the smiles and good feels when I listen to it!

Mo (Season 2 Netflix): I adored Season 1 back in 2022, and Season 2 was just as sharp, funny, and full of heart. Mo Amer, a Palestinian-American comedian, created the semi-autobiographical series. It’s a love letter to Houston and a pointed look at the U.S. immigration system, healthcare chaos, family, money stress, and survival. You’ll laugh and you’ll feel all the things.

North of North (Netflix Season 1): A Canadian coming-of-age/workplace comedy set in Arctic Canada that had me grinning the whole time. Funny, tender, grounded in Indigenous life and realities, with a great soundtrack (lots of Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit people). It doesn’t erase history and reality of these communities and centers joy. Season 2 is filming for 2026 and I cannot wait.

The Pitt (HBO/TNT Season 1): I came to this for the return of Noah Wyle in a weekly medical drama, I stayed for almost about this new series. This 15-episode show takes place in a Pittsburgh ER over a 15 hour period. It’s one of the best medical dramas in decades and I love seeing Noah Wyle back on my screen after watching him grow up as Dr. John Carter on ER back in the day. The Pitt is now airing on TNT before season 2 debuts on HBO on January 8th.

The Residence (Netflix 1 season only): Even though Netflix didn’t renew it (rude), this Shondaland murder mystery is still an excellent standalone watch; Knives Out meets Columbo with a dash of Monk. Uzo Aduba is fantastic, the ensemble cast is stacked, and the White House/Australia jokes alone are worth it.

Docuseries: VOCES American Historia - The Untold History of Latinos (PBS): John Leguizamo hosts this three-parter that travels from ancient empires to modern times. Episode 1 highlights the Maya, Inca, Aztec, Taino, and Olmec and how conquering empires erased their histories and impacts. Episode 2 traces Latino presence and contributions through settlements, missions, wars, migrations, and colonial struggles. Episode 3 moves into the 20th century, showing civil rights, labor activism, culture, and leadership despite ongoing erasure. If you care about truth-telling or simply want to know how deeply Latino lives are woven into the American story this is worth your time!

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BOOKS!

Romance Series: The Cocky Kingmans (Amy Awad): Sportsball, chaotic family loyalty, and swoony chaos with ridiculous double entendre/animal-themed titles. The books in order are prequel novellas: Bear Naked with the Bearded Baller, Honkers Under the Holly, and Ants in Santa’s Pants; Books 1: The C*ck Down the Block, 2: The Wiener Across the Way, 3: The P*ssy Next Door, 4: The Anaconda Downstairs, 5: The Jack*ss in Class, 6: The Goat in the Bedroom. There is still one more book for the youngest sibling, and I can’t help but hope for Happily Ever After (HEA) for the father as well.

Memoir: The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza: A beautifully written exploration of Palestinian identity, displacement, family, disordered eating, and the politics of being perceived as white in an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian United States.

Poetry: Becoming Ghosts by Cathy Linh Che: This year marked 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War/Fall of Saigon. Che’s poems reflect her parents’ escape from Vietnam, their eventual arrival in the United States, and the US’s continual involvement in military destruction around the world.

While in a refugee camp in the Philippines, Che’s parents were cast as silent background extras in Apocalypse Now, turned into scenery in their own story, in a film that became a defining (and deeply American, imperial, white-gaze) narrative of the Vietnam War. Che flips that erasure inside out with this collection.

Non Fiction: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow: Doctorow unpacks how platforms deteriorate—feeds, apps, privacy, attention - all of it. His monopoly vs. monopsony breakdown (Amazon vs. Uber) is worth the price of admission. When companies are Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Care, we drift into tech-feudalism. Bleak, yes, but clarifying. And his organization, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a go to for my digital privacy/hygiene. The basic explanation is below!

Non Fiction: Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh: I picked this up after hearing it discussed on my perennial favorite podcast, Empire, and it completely reframed what I thought I knew about the British–China opium story. Ghosh makes clear just how central India was to the entire operation, from forced cultivation in Bihar to the brutal economics that shaped regions, corporations, and dynasties that still matter today. What surprised me most was the American angle: Massachusetts families, firms, and fortunes, many still familiar to us, built in part on the opium trade. There are quietly astonishing details throughout, from the first US international trade ship post revolution being to China, to the origins of all those US towns named Canton. It’s clarifying, and deeply familiar if you’ve ever watched colonial wealth (and history) slowly become white-washed and respectable. As always, Ghosh is brilliant at pulling apart history’s polite lies and showing how empire still lives in our present structures.

Literary Collection: The People’s Project: Poems, Essays, and Art for Looking Forward Edited by Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith: The People’s Project gathers voices that believe language can reflect and mitigate despair. Edited by my perennial favorites, poets Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith, it’s a collection of poets, activists, and essayists reacting to the current moment in the United States. It’s a reminder that resistance sometimes it’s the poem/essay you read again and again when the news makes you want to disappear.

Non Fiction: Back in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry: Perry is one of my favorite writers and thinkers, and her latest book was wonderful to read (and to listen to her read the audio book). It’s easy to read in chapters as stand alone essays, some memoir, some history, some cultural writing, all tied together in blue (the color). 

Memoir: Mother Mary Come To Me by Arundhati Roy: I don’t love Roy’s fiction (forgive me my people), but her nonfiction is essential to me and my way of thinking. This memoir is unflinchingly honest about her childhood and family, and how gender, caste, religion, and politics shaped all of it.

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THANK YOU!

This marks the 3rd anniversary of the Sujata Said. Thank you, always, for reading, sharing, and showing up. As the year winds down, I hope you find time for rest, care, and community with the people you love. Please revisit and share Resources for These Times: Alive at the End of The World as we continue to protect ourselves and those we love, especially the guidance on dealing with ICE and other law enforcement, and practical steps for keeping your digital and physical life safer in these authoritarian times, particularly in and around U.S. borders.

Empire Podcast - Ireland, Canada & Greenland Episodes: Longtime readers know I adore this podcast for its deep dives into empires past and present. This year, their set of mini-series on Ireland, Canada, and Greenland added to this love. These episodes were the perfect mix of history, politics, and “wait, how did I never learn this?” First episode of each series is below, and all are short enough for listening to over a few walks or drives!

Movies

It was Just An Accident (Apple TV): Iconic Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s new film is extraordinary and was filmed in secret on the Tehran streets over 25 days! The film gives former prisoners under an authoritarian regime a chance to take revenge on their warden. I winced and laughed throughout this movie. If you want context, his art and having also been imprisoned for his work, the Vulture profile is a must-read.

Flow (HBO): I watched this Oscar winning Latvian animated film twice in January because it soothed my soul even though it’s about surviving a climate disaster. Not a single word of dialogue, just a black cat navigating a massive flood with other animals, rendered with eerie accuracy of the animals and their personalities!

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Netflix): This was a lovely movie and so very French and British. You don’t have to know Jane Austen to love it, and you can think she’s overrated (The Horror!) and still enjoy this sweet and funny movie.

No Other Land (Online Rental US): 2025’s Oscar-winning documentary about the people of Masafer Yatta, over 30 ancient Palestinian villages, is a vital document of Israeli backed forced expulsions, home demolitions, and of Palestinian survival. One of the film’s participants, Awdah Hathaleen, was murdered by an Israeli settler in July 2025. The filmmakers, one of whom (Hamdan Ballal) was assaulted and detained by Israeli forces weeks after winning the Oscar, were not able to secure a United States in theater distribution deal for this film.

The Queen of My Dreams (Online Rental US): A Canadian gem I saw last year and is finally available in the US. Amrit Kaur gives a remarkable performance as a queer Pakistani-Canadian woman returning home after her father’s sudden death, and also as her own mother in 1960s flashbacks. It’s funny, tender, heartbreaking, and filled with English/Urdu dialogue that made my desi heart happy. The soundtrack? Perfection.

Sing Sing (HBO): Colman Domingo shines (as always), but the magic is in the ensemble of men who actually participated in the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program inside the prison. If you’ve ever done theater, you’ll recognize the energy instantly: the ego, the nerves, the intimacy. Except here, it’s happening inside one of the most brutal carceral systems in the world.

Sinners (HBO): #NotMyGenre, but Ryan Coogler + Michael B. Jordan? Yes! And worth seeing on the big screen, one of the few I went to this year. A supernatural horror film rooted in the real histories of the Mississippi Delta, Black communities, the blues, Indigenous Mississippi Choctaw history, and Chinese American Southern history. It’s layered, ambitious, has a great soundtrack, and was sometimes too gory for me, but still a great and fun film! Worth noting: Sinners had the biggest opening weekend for an original (non-IP) film since the pandemic.

Thursday Murder Club (Netflix): A cozy British mystery with a killer cast directed by Chris Columbus? Yes. Fun, charming, and I’m already hoping they adapt the rest of the popular book series.

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Baby Animal Joy

Look, 2025 has been a lot. That’s why we have to have baby animal joy! A few of our 2025 favorites (with some 2024 star cameos) are below. There are many more of course, but these are the ones that got into my feed and part of my rotation for joy! If I missed any cute babies, post in the comments!

• Ume: Malayan tapir calf, Port Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, Takoma, Washington, USA

• Remi: baby Bonobo, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Zoo

• Cheetah Cubs: In 2025, so many cheetah cubs were born in the zoos! Five in St. Louis, six in Richmond, four in the Smithsonian!

• Lion cubs: In 2025 four lion cubs in Denver, two lion cubs in Fort Worth, three in New Orleans!

• Three endangered clouded leopards in Nashville!

• Baby Giraffes in Detroit and San Diego!

• The Pygmy Hippos are still around!!! Poppy in Richmond, Anuket in Montgomery, Mars in Kansas, and Hugo in Michigan!

• And the OG Moo Deng is 1.5 years old and is grown, but still cute!

Read Palestine Week (Nov 29 – Dec 5): Since 1978, November 29th has been the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and again it was observed in the shadow, grief, and anger of an ongoing genocide and aggression that continues despite “ceasefire,” and supported by U.S. financial and military support.

In addition to calling for an immediate end to the violence and for a free Palestine, we can participate in Read Palestine Week and partake in reading fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction from the voices that have been telling the truth long before the last 2.5 years.

Publishers for Palestine has free eBooks in many genres to download to start (or continue) your journey, including some from two of my favorite writers and poets Mahmoud Darwish and Hala Alyan. If you’ve been wanting to deepen your understanding, this is a powerful entry point.

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TV Series: Heated Rivalry (HBO in US; Crave in Canada): Regular readers know I love reading romance > sports romance > hockey romance (MF, MM, FF, all of it). And one of the most iconic Hockey Romance books of the entire genre is finally a TV series: Heated Rivalry, based on Rachel Reid’s beloved characters. in the Game Changers Series.

I re-read the books, the first two episodes dropped last Friday and… reader, I love it. I have already watched them twice, and will likely watch them again before the new episode drops on Friday. Fans worried the show wouldn’t honor what makes the books, and Ilya and Shane so special - the chemistry, the rivalry, the awkward charm of two young men figuring themselves out - but so far it does, and does it well. It’s sexy, funny, tender and respects and improves on the source material.

I hope the rest of the season is just as satisfying and that a second season is based on the 2nd book of this couple, The Long Game. Note: Maybe don’t watch with your parents or kids or on a plane!

As I’ve written before, this moment is a perfect snapshot of how the Romance genre is still dismissed and mocked. When Reid first published the Game Changers books, they were eBook only. Only after becoming massively popular did they get paperbacks. The series itself was produced by a Canadian streamer (Crave), and honestly? It was Romancelandia and Game Changers fandom pushed it into international distribution. HBO picked it up literally ten days before it premiered, and in the few days since launch it’s already blown up around the world. Yet try buying the paperback right now. You can’t. It’s out of stock everywhere. And unlike every other book-to-screen adaptation, there isn’t even a TV tie-in cover ready to go. I’m sure someone is frantically printing as we speak, but as some of my favorite authors shared…really??? And this is after the huge success of Red White and Royal Blue and Bridgerton adaptations.

Then there’s the much-needed ongoing conversation about why MM romance resonates so deeply with women readers, and why so many of the authors in the genre are women (although more and more men are being published and/or coming out from behind gender neutral pen names as the genre (both romance and MM romance) is more accepted. Worth thinking about and interrogating.

This is also related to representation: both Reid and the show’s writer are white, while Shane is half Asian-Canadian. I’m fully invested in the slow-burn ache of it all, but we get more access to Ilya’s interior world and motivations than Shane’s. If you’ve read the books, this tracks.

These are things I hope we can consider and be curious about and grow (especially in future seasons)… all while curling up with this hot love story at the end of this long year.

TV: The Morning Show Season 4(Apple TV): This show started messy when it debuted - star-studded chaos trying to do too much, but the more recent seasons have settled into something more tolerable! It nails corporate and oligarchic capture of media, how billionaires dictate narrative for their interests, and how journalism is squeezed between money and ego, with public good barely ever rising to the top.

Billy Crudup, Karen Pittman, and Greta Lee continue to walk away with their performances. And unexpectedly, the intense Jeremy Irons–Jennifer Aniston father–daughter scenes were… good? Meanwhile, Witherspoon and Aniston remain the least interesting parts for me.

Poetry Collection: The Gallery of Upside Down Women by Arundhathi Subramaniam: I was visiting family in India last month, and I bought a lot of books, and did a lot of bookstore tourism (maybe for another newsletter), and absolutely loved this poetry collection, and the cover art was stunning as well. She was new to me and thankfully this isn’t her first collection or first book so I’m excited to dig deeper into her work!

TV Series: Victoria (Netflix formerly PBS): A true delight has landed on Netflix: Victoria, the 2017 lush PBS/Masterpiece series about the early reign of Queen Victoria. Jenna Coleman is wonderful in the role, and how I first found this actress who I love. But the absolute pleasure of the show is Rufus Sewell as Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, Lord M as the young Queen calls him in the show. If your main association with Sewell is “Jasper the wanker from The Holiday,” this performance is the opposite in all the best ways.

And for my Lord Byron-loving heart: Lord M comes with real life Byron lore. His wife Lady Caroline Lamb infamously had an affair with Byron himself, and in the misogynistic ways of the time, has been blamed for all the bad behavior, even when Byron was the original F&%#Boy. ANYWAY! My historical drama nerd heart loved this for the facts and the fiction and charismatic actors.

Documentary Series: The American Revolution (PBS): Listen: this documentary is extremely Ken Burns, which is either your thing or absolutely not. I fall somewhere in between on this one. The first three episodes? Excellent. Genuinely illuminating, full of history and context I was never taught in school about the political, social, and economic lead-up to colonial rebellion against the British including real focus on the Native American communities and federations and how westward expansion was just as impactful as taxes in how the British and the colonists acted. After that, though? It turns into extended battle-documentary-porn, which is very Ken Burns, and… not for me. If you’re here for history beyond the gunpowder, the first three episodes and the final half of the last episode are worth your time!

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Alive at the End of the World: This set of evergreen resources (that you are welcome to share) is named after one of my favorite poetry collections by one of my favorite poets, writers, and culture critics Saeed Jones (of perennial podcast recommendation VibeCheck). A reminder: this administration does not believe in the rule of law. Do not assume citizenship, a green card, a visa, or class privilege will keep you safe from extrajudicial overreach. Be prepared.

• “Block It!” is a campaign aimed at stopping the expansion of ICE detention and deportation especially with the US 2025 budget funding massive capacity increases and thousands of new agents. The system only functions with our money, data, labor, and complicity. The campaign’s three directives are:

  • Don’t Build It (block construction + contractors)

  • Don’t Fill It (community defense + stopping detentions)

  • Don’t Fuel It (cut money, data, tech, and political support)

• Leaving and Re-entering the United States: Many of us travel this time of year. Regardless of your status, assume ICE, Border Patrol, TSA, and other law enforcement may ignore civil rights norms. Know your rights and know what changes the closer you are to a national border - even with domestic travel.

  • CUNY Clear Know Your Rights in Traveling

  • EFF Border Know Your Rights Pocket Guide:

• EFF’s report Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices

• ACLU’s Know Your Rights: 100 Mile Border Zone available in multiple languages

Remember, we can’t control everything happening around us. But we can build habits, protections, and communities that keep us safer inside it.

Wong co-founded #CripTheVote, and was unwavering in her support of a Free Palestine, especially with her Crips for eSims for Gaza, a still active fundraiser to provide connectivity to Gazans surviving the ongoing genocide. Her loss is immense. But her legacy, in stories, in community, and in a clear, just vision of what disability can and should be lives on.

TV Series: The Gold (PBS from BBC): It takes the real-life 1983 UK Brink’s-Mat gold robbery and turns it into a heist series about greed, class, and power. Come for the heist energy and stay for performances of folks you will recognize from Slow Horses, Downton Abbey and more. Season 2 has already aired in the UK and will air in the US in 2026.

TV Series: The Couple Next Door (UK Channel 4/Amazon Prime): I came for some of the actors I liked from Poldark and How to Get Away with Murder and then stayed for the full CAMP of it all. Is it high art? No. Did I forget it’s name and confuse it with a documentary called the Perfect Neighbor? Yes. It’s tense, a little messy, and just the kind of escapism this week (and these times) demand.

Poetry Collection: How About Now by Kate Baer: I came to Kate Baer through her Instagram poetry. She writes short poems that are perfect for many moments, but my favorites are like the creations below, from existing speeches, emails, comments, then made into poetry by redacting many of those words as a direct response.

Poetry Collection: Same by Hannah Rosenberg: The poem “Same” on Hannah Rosenberg’s instagram was a favorite of mine and many of the friends I sent it to, so of course I read and enjoyed her new collection. Her poems feel like someone finally saying the thing you’ve been thinking for months, and while I do love a long narrative poem, I always appreciate pithy ones as well.

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Thanksgiving Recommendations: In the United States, Thanksgiving is a time of gathering, gratitude, warmth, and the “beginning” of the intense shopping frenzy and commercialism that is deeply tied to all of it. Thanksgiving is also national myth built on the painful reality of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island, North America in the origin story of the United States.

Native America: An Indigenous perspective on news & history

The myth of Thanksgiving is as American as it is wrong

In my 20s, I lived on the east coast and flew home twice a year for the holidays. One Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I boarded a plane. I was startled to see a child wearing a paper bag. The grocery sack had been crudely cut into a costume vest. It was dotted with crayon-colored, glued-on paper feathers. She wore a matching headband. To teach their chil…

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9 months ago · 45 likes · Rebecca Nagle

As you settle in with family or friends, or as you find rest in solitude, I invite you to hold two truths at once: gratitude for the people and communities who love and support us, while recognizing and sharing the real history of this country and the indigenous peoples who remain the land’s stewards. Consider watching the Annual Day of Mourning Ceremony at 10:00am ET on Thanksgiving Day. The Annual Day of Mourning is held since 1970 by the United Indian Americans of New England and focuses on the true history of the Wampanoag people, their encounters with the Pilgrims, the dispelling of the mythology commonly taught as part of the Thanksgiving story, and awareness of ongoing history of Native American tribes ever since.

Some resources that I’ve shared before in previous posts are relevant still:

• An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: A re-framing of American history through the lens of Indigenous survival and resistance.

• The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of American History by Ned Blackhawk: A re-examination of U.S. history, centering Native resistance across centuries.

• Books on Thanksgiving For Young Ones from Illuminative and Mai Story Book Library

• Books By Native American and Indigenous Authors

• Indigenous Bookshelf 2025 Books Part 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7

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A Gentle Nudge for Holiday Shopping: We talk a lot about gratitude this time of year and gift-giving (and receiving) is a common love-language. But the season’s (and our world’s) rampant consumerism and guilt about gift giving are frustrating. If you’re shopping this season, consider choosing small & independent businesses, Indigenous, Black and people of color makers, local artisans, and those creating with care and purpose (not extracting or exploiting). Consider gifting experiences, rest, food, mutual aid donations, or shared time together — things that nourish rather than become clutter in our homes and in the world.

Bottom line: No one needs to be (or is) perfect. But we can try to redirect our spending (in this season and all year round) toward what (and who) makes our communities and world better. I’ve shared how to be a more ethical consumer of books and audio books in the past, and if we’re going to participate in gift-giving season (and beyond), please consider doing it without feeding the systems and companies profiting from harm, exploitation, excessive consumerism, authoritarianism & genocide.

Non Fiction: The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddharth Kara: Kara revisits the 1781 massacre aboard the slave ship Zorg (often called the Zong, because “r” and “n” in vintage handwriting look the same) not as distant history but as a blueprint for modern greed, by exposing how trade/commerce/capitalism rationalizes cruelty and how profit makes violence a matter of bureaucracy. The Zorg isn’t just about the past; it’s about the polite language power and business still uses to excuse the inexcusable. I happened to have grown up with the author back in the day and appreciate his approach and his other writing which I’ll highlight in a future Sujata Said…

Non Fiction: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow: You’ve probably heard this word, “enshittification,” floating around the internet since Doctorow coined it a few years ago. It’s funny until you realize it describes literally everything: your feeds, your shopping apps, your data, your attention span. Doctorow has been fighting the good digital fight at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - a trusted resource on protecting yourself digitally.

The bit that stayed with me was his breakdown of monopoly (Amazon) vs. monopsony (Uber): one seller vs. many buyers, one buyer vs. many sellers, and how both end up crushing everyone else, including governments. When companies are Too Big to Fail, they’re also Too Big to Care. Without thoughtful, enforceable regulation, we’re sliding toward a kind of tech-feudalism where a few oligarchs decide how the rest of us live, work, and connect. It’s bleak, but Doctorow makes it clear that knowing how it works is the first step toward fighting back. Good times.

Literary Collection: The People’s Project: Poems, Essays, and Art for Looking Forward Edited by Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith: The People’s Project gathers voices that believe language can reflect and mitigate despair. Edited by my perennial favorites, poets Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith, it’s a collection of poets, activists, and essayists reacting to the current moment in the United States. The tone is intimate, but the aim is political: to name what’s breaking and imagine what might be rebuilt. It’s a reminder that resistance sometimes it’s the poem/essay you read again and again when the news makes you want to disappear.

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Historical Romance by Alexandra Vasti: I stumbled up on Vasti’s historical romances in a trilogy of novellas about the Halifax Siblings and loved her writing, her independent characters, the banter and the spice! She has two trilogies out now and third series starting next year!

• The Halifax Hellions by Alexandra Vasti: The Halifax sisters, Margo, Matilda and Winnie, are everything Regency women were told not to be, clever, unruly, unwilling to apologize. Vasti gives each woman the full arc of rebellion with a love story and partners who appreciate these women instead of trying to change them!

• Belvoir’s Library Trilogy by Alexandra Vasti: The Belvoir’s Library Trilogy follows a heirs, rakes, and society’s “hellions” who delight in bending the society’s rules. The ton may expect decorum, but these lead characters insist on wit, disrupting the status quo, and the occasional scandalous compromise. The three books are: Earl Crush, Ladies in Hating, and Ne’er Duke Well.

Documentary: Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery (Hulu): I never went to Lillith Fair (the first all women music tour 1997-1999) even though I was the target audience back in the day, but it was everywhere in culture back then. The world said female artists couldn’t sell tickets on their own, and then singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan put together a tour that sold out venues around the country. But beneath the flower crowns mocked by late night TV comics was a deeper fight: women in music constantly measured against male “credibility” and impossible standards of beauty. The celebration lived in a lens of misogyny; critics called it “too soft,” “too emotional,” “too feminine.” And yet, that’s exactly what made it radical at the time. The doc mixes archival footage with interviews from artists then and now, showing the tour’s impact, and also how much hasn’t changed: pressure to add men, blind spots on race, and the constant push to avoid “politics.” To hear the Indigo Girls, always iconic in my mind and memory, say that they were surprised they were invited to the tour because they were lesbians, a reminder of what’s always been true. I’ve had these songs as my soundtrack for the last few weeks.

AKA Charlie Sheen (Netflix): I first loved Charlie Sheen from his stand out bad boy stealing scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off back in the day, and he’s had a pretty strong career since as well a life of up and downs. I can’t say that I really loved his work or him in his later career after Spin City (in which he was a surprising but excellent replacement when Michael J. Fox left health reasons), but this documentary, which he produced was worth a watch. Whether Sheen wanted to or not, for me, AKA Charlie Sheen showed me something bleak - how masculinity performs until it breaks. Fame gave Sheen permission to act out the ugliest parts of misogyny and patriarchy, to embody excess, objectify women, mock vulnerability, and society rewarded him for it. I don’t know if he sees it all but it is interesting that his ex-wife, Denise Richards, participated in the documentary, but his father, Martin Sheen, and brother, Emilio Estevez, didn’t.

John Candy: I Like Me (Amazon): GenXers saw John Candy in all the ways, a clown and a sensitive character who showed up in Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The interviews of his friends, family, and folks he inspired make this documentary. In particular Macaulay Culkin, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara interviews were touching, funny and real. John Candy: I Like Me is a love letter to the man behind the laughter, but it’s also a quiet indictment of how the industry treated him. The same culture that adored his warmth typecast him as the “lovable slob.” Beneath the jokes was a man battling self-doubt and the weight (literally and metaphorically) of a society that made fatness a flaw. The title is based on a line from one of his best and most moving scenes (in my opinion) from Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

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Documentary: Sally (Hulu): This documentary offers an intimate look at Astronaut Sally Ride’s life, with insights from her family and longtime partner. It’s revealing, not just about what it meant to be the first U.S. woman in space, but also her disillusionment with NASA after the Challenger disaster and corruption, and the weight she carried to keep her personal life private until her passing. As a GenXer, Sally Ride was a touchstone in my own understanding of women in STEM. Watching this was both illuminating and bittersweet.

Documentary Series: And So It Goes (HBO): Billy Joel was a big part of my growing-up soundtrack, so I couldn’t resist this documentary and it didn’t disappoint. With Joel and much of his family participating (including ex-wives), there’s definitely a strong point of view, but he’s surprisingly candid about his struggles, missteps, and the choices that shaped his career. I came away learning so much I didn’t know about the making of his songs, the arc of his success, his financial struggles, and yes, even the drama with Elton John during their joint tours. If Billy Joel was ever on your playlist, this one’s worth a watch.

Alive at the End of the World: As many of you consider attending No Kings Protests this weekend, please know your rights before, during, and after a protest especially now that the Administration has made clear they consider any opposition to them “treasonous” at worst and “terrorist” at best. Protect yourself by minimizing digital exposure, using secure communication, and documenting safely. Afterward, take steps to secure your devices, protect your identity, and access legal or bail support if needed. Tools below from the ACLU, EFF, and Liberation Toolbox can help you stay safe while standing up for justice and against authoritarianism.

• Know Your Rights Workshop, No King’s Protest, ACLU - Wednesday October 15, 7pm ET

• ACLU Know Your Protest Rights

• EFF Surveillance Self-Defense BEFORE a Protest

• EFF Surveillance Self-Defense DURING a Protest

• EFF Surveillance Self Defense AFTER a Protest

• Wired Protest Privacy Protection Tips

• Liberation Toolbox Post Protest Tips

1. Immigration/Citizenship including protecting yourself around ICE, and traveling the world and re-entering the country

2. Personal and Financial Protection

3. Digital Hygiene and Data Protection

4. Protesting Safely and Surveillance

5. Preserving and Teaching Real US History

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Recommendations!

Documentary: Sally (Hulu): This documentary offers an intimate look at Astronaut Sally Ride’s life, with insights from her family and longtime partner. It’s revealing, not just about what it meant to be the first U.S. woman in space, but also her disillusionment with NASA after the Challenger disaster and corruption, and the weight she carried to keep her personal life private until her passing. As a GenXer, Sally Ride was a touchstone in my own understanding of women in STEM. Watching this was both illuminating and bittersweet.

Limited Series: Hostage (Netflix): This political thriller was a good time pass about the UK and French Prime Ministers having a summit and dealing with a terrorist attack. The cast is great and the political intrigue was sadly familiar but plot kept it moving.

Documentary Series: And So It Goes (HBO): Billy Joel was a big part of my growing-up soundtrack, so I couldn’t resist this documentary and it didn’t disappoint. With Joel and much of his family participating (including ex-wives), there’s definitely a strong point of view, but he’s surprisingly candid about his struggles, missteps, and the choices that shaped his career. I came away learning so much I didn’t know about the making of his songs, the arc of his success, his financial struggles, and yes, even the drama with Elton John during their joint tours. If Billy Joel was ever on your playlist, this one’s worth a watch.

TV Series: Fisk Season 3 (Netflix): Season 3 of a perennial best of from Sujata Said…dropped last week and was, once again, a joy to watch - and this season, George was the best! I continue to love this Aussie comedy written by the star. And if you’ve never watched it, it’s now three seasons to make you laugh and cringe! Who doesn’t need that in these times?!?!?

Movie: Thursday Murder Club (Netflix): Look, a cozy British mystery in an awesome location with these 4 excellent actors AND Naomi Ackie, directed by Chris Columbus of Home Alone fame? Yes Please. It was fun and charming and a lovely time pass. It’s based on a very popular book series, so I’m hoping that there are more to come with this cast! There are other excellent and well loved British stars in it as well! And look, this was a great palate cleanser after watching Pierce and Helen in the uber violent series Mobland earlier this year.

WTF Did I Just Watch?

SMDH: The Licari Cyberbullying Story: I read the original New York Magazine long read on this teen cyberbullying case months ago and couldn’t believe what I was reading. Now there’s a Netflix documentary with real footage and interviews. It’s every bit as unsettling.

What’s shocking isn’t just the twists of the story, but what it says about the culture we’ve created: a world where obsession, control, and cruelty can flourish behind screens. If you want a window into how far this can go, read and/or watch!

BAD: TV Series: Hunting Wives (Netflix): This is now one of the most watched series in Netflix history and I understand why (sex, guns, MAGA America), but I found it really bad, and not good bad. I didn’t even enjoy hate-watching it! Yet I finished it. I’m the problem, it’s me. Dermot Mulroney cracked me up though, and Malin Ackerman’s wig is a character of its own!

BAD: TV Series: Keeping Faith (AcornTV): I love my British TV but this Welsh series made me crazy. I didn’t like anyone, and hated quite a few of the major characters, including the folks we were supposed to root for and like - the main character was really not it for me. And I didn’t have any desire to ‘ship the couple that was supposed to be endgame, there was no chemistry and it was weird. Anyway, only the kids deserved my love and support. And yet, I finished it. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Free Press Media Capitulation Index: This isn’t a book, it’s a brutally clear tracker and breakdown of who actually owns the media in the US, and how much they’ve sold out journalism for power, profit, and political cover. Free Press (NOT THE BARI WEISS ONE, PLEASE HAVE YOU MET ME!!!) maps billionaires, private equity, and conglomerates controlling US (and often global) news, from Comcast to Disney to Fox, and ranks them on a fantastic scale of independence using one-to-five chickens (🐔) to show how compromised they are. If you care about democracy, authoritarianism and fascism, this shows how concentrated media power fuels disinformation, erodes trust, keeps us in the dark, and builds power for the worst.

TV Series: Stick (Apple TV+): As Sujata Said…readers already know. I don’t like or really get sportsball, and this is especially true about Golf (Cricket is worse, but barely.) So I wasn’t expecting to like Stick, and yet… I did. I’m have no doubt it’s fully in partnership with PGA propaganda (Big Golf), but it was also funny and about friendship, family, who supports us, speaks truth to us and pushes us, in the right and wrong ways. There was some very annoying GenX whining and complaining about young people today, but I was able to overlook that intolerance (as a GenXer, I hope I’m not that annoying to my young peeps!). Despite It being led by Owen Wilson, who is a lot to take in a movie, let alone a series, I found myself enjoying this show during the latest NYC heatwave. I don’t think it needs another season but I’d probably watch it if it had one.

Book: Misbehaving at the Crossroads by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: Jeffers is already an amazing poet (Red Clay Suite) and novelist (The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Novel). I devoured this biographical essay collection during the NYC heatwaves this past month. She talks about race, politics, church, womanhood, power, legacy, and not making yourself small to survive. And she holds a lot of nuance and recognition of her own contradictions, not just society’s contradictions.

Poetry: Rebellion of Care by David Gates: Many people are doing the #SealyChallenge in August, reading a book of poetry every day in August (inspired by the poet and writer Nicole Sealy in 2023. I am trying to read new poems by new voices (to me). In the meantime, a poet I love from Instagram has put out his first collection and it was worth a read, with his introductions and context. Gates’ poems pay attention to what most societies and people in power look away from: care giving, inequitable systems, the small violences of ordinary things. Gates also has a new newsletter where he shares poetry and his view of rebellion of care.

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Book: I Want to Burn It All Down by Maris Kreizman: I didn’t know that I liked Kreizman specifically until I realized I kept enjoying her writing on LitHub, so I def was excited for her debut essay collection, all about her recognizing that the American Dream she grew up on, in school, at home, and in the media, should be interrogated. Kreizman’s writing is sharp, funny, and self deprecating. She’s probably about ten years younger than me, but I related to her tween self being excited about Bill Clinton’s 1992 win (I was 20) and looking back with clear eyes and more context.

WTF Did I just Watch?

TV Series: The Good Ship Murder (BritBox): The Good Ship Murder might be the worst British crime show I’ve ever finished, and I watched Hope Street (IYKYK). I’ll be honest, I thought I was getting a light, tropical murder-of-the-week romp, something like one of my all time favorites Death in Paradise (now on Season 14), which I love despite its formulaic procedural vibes, cozy beach atmosphere, over-reliance on a white British dude sent by Empire to be in charge, and the wildly scary body count on a very very small fictional Carribbean island of Saint Marie. Instead, I got… this. Tot even charming-bad or ridiculous-bad. Just bad acting, zero chemistry for the two “leads”, and murders I just didn’t care about figuring out, but always knew who did it almost before it even happened. And yet I watched it all. I regret everything. So watch Death in Paradise instead. Justice for Saint Marie (and maybe some kind of travel advisory?)!!

And here’s the harder truth: this is only going to get worse. Recent GOP/Trump cuts to federal disaster funding, DOGE/Musk drastic cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA (key for tracking, research and warnings), and a long, deliberate campaign of climate denial from GOP leaders have left these states dangerously unprepared. The people paying the price (in lives, devastation, and financial) are all of us.

If you’re in a place to help, please consider donating through the links below. The last two also support communities in the Carolinas, who are reeling from Tropical Storm Chantal the past few days as well Thanks to New Disabled South for many of the suggestions.

Texas Organizing Resilience: Raising money for groups such as Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, the United Survivors Disaster Relief and other efforts to make sure families living along the Guadalupe River can recover and rebuild their lives. Tax Deductible

Hands Off Central Texas: Hands Off Central TX is raising funds and resources for mutual aid including housing, food, transportation (gas) and medical needs for Central Texans affected by the July 4 flood. Supplies will be distributed based on asks from the counties affected by the floods with an emphasis on needs not being filled by churches, the National Guard, and local government. Tax Deductible

Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country: The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover. The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. Tax Deductible.

TEXSAR is responding to requests for support to the floods affecting Kerr County, and beyond, in Texas. Some are saying this event is worse than the horrific Memorial Day Wimberley floods of 2015. We will be deploying volunteer "ground pounders," swiftwater teams, boats, drone teams, K9s and whatever else requesting agencies need of us. Tax Deductible.

Project Mend: Supporting folks who need wheelchairs, scooters, beds, walkers or rollators. Tax Deductible.

Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies: The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies (The Partnership) is the only U.S. disability-led organization with a focused mission of equity for people with disabilities and people with access and functional needs throughout all planning, programs, services and procedures before, during and after disasters and emergencies. Tax Deductible.

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Limited Series: Best Interests (ACORN): This moving and intense 4 episode limited series is about a family struggling with medical decisions around their chronically ill daughter. This is about medical care and systems, grief, and what family means to each other, and yes, what’s in the best interest of the patient and child. It’s really hard to watch but as always with Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen, well acted and doesn’t pull punches.

Movie: Heads of State (Prime): This was a fun and mindless movie to enjoy over the weekend. I came for Idris Elba and it also has John Cena and Priyanka Chopra, and it was actually funny too, although a little too close to real life when it comes to world events!

TV Series: Patience (PBS): This is a new British series with 4 episodes so far and I’ve enjoyed the main characters - a lead detective and a administrative clerk with Autism who is able to cut through the clutter and solve puzzles in crimes.

TV Series: Art Detective (ACORN): Another crime procedural but this time about “heritage crimes” in art and culture, and why not!

During Prime Days This Week (and always), please consider Using Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for your books, e-books and audiobooks and buying your other goods direct from the seller instead of via the Amazon Empire.

Book: The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza: Aziza writes about her Palestinian family, their displacement there and here in the US, and her relationships to others and herself. But what caught me off guard was how deeply this book also wrestles with her own body, with anorexia, and with the complicated terrain of identity, especially being perceived as white in an ever growing anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian world. It’s beautifully written. I took my time with it. Some parts, especially the sections about her body dysmorphia and her grandmother, are gut-wrenching in their honesty. One moment that stayed with me: a teenage Aziza, distancing herself from her grandmother in front of white friends who were making fun of the elder. She names it plainly, without making excuses. This book holds a lot - grief, longing, memory, and clarity.

Movie: Sing Sing (HBOMax): Oscar Nominated Sing Sing follows a group of incarcerated men in a New York prison who find purpose and dignity through performing in plays. Colman Domingo gives a beautiful and well deserved Oscar nominated performance, but for me, the real revelations are the men who were actually part of the program and acted in the movie. If you’ve ever been in a play, you’ll recognize the familiar rhythm between castmates - the egos, the nerves and the trust. But you’ll also feel the weight of what it means to create joy and meaning inside the largest prison system in the world. The program is called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA)—you can learn more about it here.

DocuSeries: The Dark Money Game (HBOMax): This two-part documentary is a clear-eyed look at how corporate money has quietly, and not so quietly, rewired and eroded American democracy. It’s essential viewing if you’re want to understand the roots of the chaos we’ve lived through over the past 50 years. Part 1 digs into a case study in Ohio, where tens of millions in secret money flooded a local election. You see how power moves at the state level, reshaping everything from energy policy to criminal justice while most of us aren't looking. Part 2 zooms out to trace the long unraveling of campaign finance, from post-Watergate reforms to Citizens United and the rise of super PACs and dark money networks that now shape nearly every election. For many of us who’ve worked in campaigns, too often playing by these rules for “our side” just to win and “level the playing field”, this series makes clear: we're not actually winning by playing their game, and we might actually be making it worse.

TV Series: Forever (Netflix): Like a lot of Gen Xers and Millennials, I read Judy Blume’s Forever as a teen, but I barely remember it. What pulled me into this new series was showrunner Mara Brock Akil who created Girlfriends or Being Mary Jane. This is a tender, sometimes messy story about two Black teenagers in LA figuring out love, identity, and themselves. It’s also about their families and friends. It’s grounded, emotional, and full of those moments that feel big when you’re young because they are. Yes, the characters make questionable choices (as teens do), and yes, they do the MOST. But I was with them the whole way. The show is honest about sex, just like the book was, and it doesn’t talk down to its audience. It’s beautifully shot, has a great soundtrack, and feels like a love letter to L.A. There will be a second season—and I’ll be watching to see how these two grow.

TV Series Animated: #1 Happy Family (Prime): I don’t usually go for animated series, but I showed up for this one because Ramy Youssef, of Ramy and Mo, created it. And I’m glad I did. Set in the weeks and months after 9/11, it follows an Egyptian American family trying to stay grounded while everything around them shifts for the worse. Ramy voices his younger self, and the result is tender, funny, sharp and real. Where Ramy leans adult and complicated, this is intimate and warm, but still pulls no punches. It captures the everyday family life from multiple perspectives (the adults, the elders, and the kids) while showing how racism, Islamophobia, and surveillance reshaped entire communities, first Muslim and those perceived as Muslim and now, almost 25 years later, all of us.

TV Series: Mr Loverman (BritBox): Based on Bernardine Evaristo’s novel, this series is beautifully acted. Lennie James (Barry) and Ariyon Bakare (Morris) both won BAFTAs for their roles. Sharon D. Clarke, as always, brings brilliance and depth in her portrayal of Barry’s long suffering wife. I watched all nine 30-minute episodes in one sitting earlier this year. The show is an honest, tender, and at times brutal portrait of the British Caribbean community in it’s family, faith, masculinity, queerness, and the weight of being expected to succeed in a British society built to deny you. And I love that it doesn’t make Barry likable. He’s complicated, frustrating, and his family and long-time lover often bear the consequences.

Things to Look Forward to in June!

June 18: TV Series: Outrageous (BritBox): I have no idea if this will be good but I saw the trailer and the cast (including Prudence Featherington from Bridgerton). Six sisters who refuse to live by society’s rules in a historical drama? Yes please.

June 18: MOVIE: The Queen of My Dreams (In selected US Theaters): I saw this Canadian gem last year at the Asian American International Film Festival and was lucky enough to hear director Fawzia Mirza speak after. If it comes to your city, go see it. The film follows a young queer woman (Amrit Kaur) who returns to Pakistan from Canada after her father’s sudden death. Then delves into the heart of a complicated relationship with her mother. Through flashbacks, we travel between '90s and late '60s Pakistan, with Kaur also playing her mother as a young woman. If you only know Kaur from The Sex Lives of College Girls, you’ll be blown away and understand why she won Best Lead at the Canadian Screen Awards (their Oscars). Hamza Haq (Transplant, Crashing Eid) and Nimra Bucha (Polite Society, Ms. Marvel) round out a strong cast. The soundtrack is a perfect mix of vintage Bollywood and original music. It’s sweet, funny, heartbreaking, and the English and Urdu dialogue made me feel at home.

June 22: TV Series: The Gilded Age Season 3 (HBOMax): I’ll be watching it for all the amazing performances and the Audra McDonald, Carrie Coons, Christine Baranski and Morgan Spector of it all and a reminder of how the wealth of that time continues to impact and ruin our country today!

And also I continue to hope that a favorite writer, Brandon Taylor, continues his commentary on the show, which makes watching the show even better.

sweater weather

morgan spector pls break me in half

Hello friends…

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4 years ago · 135 likes · 19 comments · Brandon

June 23: Documentary: Union (PBS 10pm Check Local Listing, On Demand until Aug 31st on PBS): This award winning documentary will air on the PBS' POV series and follows a small group of union organizers (including Chris Smalls) at the Staten Island Amazon Plant organizing workers in one of the most powerful and profitable companies in the world. The work is hard, fulfilling, and still ongoing.

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Alive at the End of the World: This is one of my favorite poetry collections by one of my favorite poets, writers, and culture critics Saeed Jones (of perennial podcast recommendation VibeCheck). I’ve decided to use it as the name of a new regular Sujata Said… feature with recommendations and tips for these authoritarian times in the United States. I’m not here to convince you that we are in dangerous and precarious times. We are here. For many communities, we have been here for a very long time, not just since January 2025. I’ll be offering tips and resources periodically for you and those you love. They will also be compiled in this evergreen document.

**If you have corrections for me or other resources to add, please comment or message me**

Immigration/Citizenship: We’ve seen the Trump administration double down on actions that not only defy basic decency but violate the Constitution, impacting so many who live in the United States, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has escalated its presence and tactics at airports and land crossings, with U.S. citizens now being treated no differently than non-citizens. Meanwhile, ICE has ramped up enforcement nationwide, focusing disproportionately on cities that this administration has openly vilified, targeting communities to create fear, meet quotas, and generate instability in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and homes.

Let’s be clear: this is not about public safety. It’s about coercion and control, and dehumanization of large swaths of communities in the United States.

This is a moment that demands clarity, courage, and action. We all need to know our rights—and use them.

• Workplace Rights - Restaurants - Owners, Workers, and Customers:

• Know Your Protest Rights:

• Defending Against Surveillance at and after Protests:

  Liberation Toolbox

  Post Protest Tips

  Note: these tips are primarily for marches as opposed to protests, but the state often does not bother to make the distinction, so they’re tips all around…

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  a year ago · 136 likes · YK Hong

• National Bail Funds and Immigration Support By State:

• Re-entering the US after Traveling Abroad: Since I first wrote about this issue in March, more and more, both U.S. citizens and documented non-citizens are reporting trouble at the border when re-entering the country. I’ve personally experienced two smooth re-entries this year, and one that was not. Let’s be clear: having Global Entry, holding U.S. citizenship, or even possessing government-sponsored status does not guarantee a hassle-free return, especially in the current enforcement and profiling climate. This is a pattern we’ve seen before, targeted, inconsistent, and often legally questionable. Stay informed. Know your rights. Travel with awareness.

  • ACLU's Know Your Rights: Enforcement at the Airport available in multiple languages

  • ACLU's Can Border Agents Search Your Electronic Devices? It’s Complicated

  • ACLU's Know Your Rights: 100 Mile Border Zone available in multiple languages

  • EFF Border Know Your Rights Pocket Guide: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-border-search-pocket-guide

  • EFF's report Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices

  • CUNY Clear Know Your Rights in Traveling