Senate Dems got me so frustrated I'm doing magnetic poetry again

I could notice anti-blackness in South Asian diasporic communities growing up, but books like this gave me more confidence to push back with how the War on Drugs, civil forfeiture, and mass incarceration in the US sustain a vicious cycle of systemic racism. 17/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Back to #scicomm, this book on how questions (not answers) drive science was NeuWrite West's catalyst. Firestein spoke at our retreat about the OG Columbia NeuWrite group bringing scientists and writers together to build skills each lacked. And the five of us said, let's do it too! 16/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Missed a few days, sorry!

Jordan's magic system is entrenched in the gender binary, and his commentary on gender roles was very 90s, but as a teenager, I saw a cool magic society led by women, with female viewpoint characters who were flawed af in ways usually reserved for men. 15/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Another from queer book club, a collection of essays serving as reminder of many ways in which fighting for LGBTQ+ equality sometimes means fighting to join a broken system, fighting to be one of the privileged ones, when we should instead be striving for better alternatives. 14/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Have all the ideas in this book turned out to be accurate? Well, probably not. But it was the first book on the brain I picked up in high school that got me interested not just in the biology (Scientific American Mind had some of that), but in how the brain works computationally. 13/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Thinking back to my queer book club, here's a historical fantasy with a messy genderfluid bi protagonist who can literally, physically, shapeshift. Isn't it amazing that there is a form of shapeshifting (i.e., gender affirming care) that can literally, physically, save lives? 12/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Space was always a dream. I got to attend a #NASAsocial for Cassini's finale, but my astronaut application didn't make the cut. Now I'm less sure I'd want to be so far from my partner or nature, but the history of women in the space program is equal parts inspiring and frustrating. 11/20 #BookSky 💙📚

I thought I wasn't creative, but I've learnt creativity for me requires restriction - to think outside the box, I first need a box. Combined with an appreciation for wordplay, you can understand my love of a satirical novel in which letters of the alphabet are outlawed one by one. 10/20 #BookSky 💙📚

More recent: a cozy, character-focused tale...of major governmental reform. Features a civil servant who's dedicated his life to making the world a better place for all (not just the rich), while grappling w/ living between cultures. Gave me some hopeful vibes I desperately needed. 9/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Middle school me devoured one of the first fantasy series I read featuring a girl - a tomboy like me, who wanted to do the things boys got to do but still had to deal with issues like getting her first period. It set me on track to look for women as authors and protagonists. 8/20 #BookSky 💙📚

A story of three generations of women carrying intergenerational caste & immigrant trauma, this was one of the first books I read with a queer South Asian protagonist, not long after I came out to my parents - I got my mom to read it too, and it created openings for us to talk. 7/20 #BookSky 💙📚

No longer just an Emily Doe, Chanel Miller shared her own account of the impact of sexual assault and a system that takes payment in pain for even a tiny chance of justice - a heavy read, but well written and at once heartbreaking, insightful, and a little bit hopeful. 6/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Growing up, I loved science but badly wanted magic to be real. Duane's idea of magic as understanding the physical nature of the world (sometimes down to the molecular level), then convincing it to do something improbable was a version of magic that felt most probable to young me. 5/20 #BookSky 🪐📚💙

Working w/ a queer and trans South Asian community org, I've been learning how to better consider/integrate disability justice into our work. It's hard, there's always tradeoffs, and we still get it wrong, but this book helped me imagine a more just world and how to work towards it. 4/20 #BookSky 💙📚

This story of Henrietta Lacks came out during college, falling in the overlap between my bio major and my minor (which focused on the ethics, methods and pragmatics of global poverty) - it contributed to an interest in bioethics that eventually fed into my shift to science policy. 3/20 #BookSky 💙📚

This hybrid work of poetry, history, and memoir expanded my understanding of the broader South Asian diaspora. What keeps me coming back is the beauty of the writing and art along with the combination of both finding common ground and learning something new. 2/20 #BookSky 💙📚

Always loved thinking abt animal behavior tho I agreed w/ Nagel I couldn't know what it's like to be a bat. Spent my early years reading writers like Ed Yong on ScienceBlogs and undergrad/grad studying the sense of touch while getting into #scicomm, so this felt written for me. 1/20 #BookSky 💙📚