Beware The Savage Jaw of 1984

Doublespeak, constant surveillance, alternative facts, the pursuit and maintenance of power at all cost… Of course, I’m talking about George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. These books are just flying off of the shelves.

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Animal Farm is one of my favorite books. It’s a tale about animals who revolt against the farmer who is oppressing them (forcing them into labor, killing them, etc) and what happens after they win. Driving off the humans is one thing, creating new rules to run the farm is another. In truth, it’s a story about the Russian Revolution (Lenin, Trotsky and the gang) but the allegory does not depend on your knowledge of Russian history to work.

If you are in an Orwellian frame of mind, here are some other media suggestions:

David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and The 1980 Floor Show
At one time, David Bowie wanted to create a musical based on 1984 but the Orwell estate wasn’t interested. Those songs were incorporated into Diamond Dogs, an album that cast a very dark image of the future.
While the musical itself didn’t happen, you can get an idea of what Bowie was going for in The 1980 Floor Show (recorded over 3 days in October 1973):

Brazil
Can you imagine what would happen if Monty Python got their hands on Orwell’s 1984 and made a movie? You don’t have to imagine–it kinda happened. In 1985, Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame directed Brazil – a film that’s a spiritual cousin of 1984. See, a worker – a cog in the wheel of a totalitarian government tries to correct a mistake and all hell breaks loose:

*An alternative title for this post: They’ll Split Your Pretty Cranium And Fill It Full Of Air

WILTW – Hidden Figures: The Secret of Hampton High School

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By NASA [Public domain]
It’s 1956. Mary Jackson is a computer at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She wants to continue her education and get an engineering degree. Good news: The University of Virginia offers engineering courses at a local high school – Hampton High. Bad news: Hampton High is for whites only. Ms. Jackson has to petition the City of Hampton to get special permission to take the classes.

Going into the school for the first time, Mary Jackson makes a shocking discovery…

Hampton High School was a dilapidated, musty old building.
A stunned Mary Jackson wondered: was this what she and the rest of the black children in the city had been denied all these years? This rundown, antiquated place? She had just assumed that if whites had worked so hard to deny her admission to the school, it must have been a wonderland. But this? Why not combine the resources to build a beautiful school for both black and white students? Throughout the South, municipalities maintained two parallel inefficient school systems, which gave the short end of the stick to the poorest whites as well as blacks. The cruelty of racial prejudice was so often accompanied by absurdity, a tangle of arbitrary rules and distinctions that subverted the shared interest of people who had been taught to see themselves as irreconcilably different.

–Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, p 145

 

It’s here! The Next Girl & Other Lesbian Tales (ebook)

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The Next Girl & Other Lesbian Tales is now available via Amazon and Kobo.
The Next Girl & Other Lesbian Tales

The Introduction:

A collection of previously published stories, The Next Girl & Other Lesbian Tales is an eclectic mix of black lesbian fiction. These are stories of love, lust, desire, mystery, and revenge—with a touch of humor here and there.

There are two stories of “pure” erotica; sex is the engine driving the plot. In The Souvenir, a woman riding the subway gets a front row seat to a live sex show. In Just Desserts, the erotic potential of chance comes into play when a couple is stranded at an airport.

Several tales delve into the up-and-down nature of relationships. When Narcia loses her lust interest to her best friend in The Next Girl, long held resentments rise to the surface. After a disastrous day, lovers in The Getaway take an impromptu trip and reaffirm their commitment to each other.

In Losing Michelle, a horror writer wishes her partner would leave her alone—until the woman goes missing. Originally published under the pseudonym Evelyn Foster, In Remembrance of Her finds a woman negotiating with dark forces in a quest to save her lover. Despite rumors, Chante is drawn to the mysterious Diana in The One Who Got Away.

Themes of community and forgiveness are also explored. In Operation Butch Ambush, rival factions come together to save women from a nefarious group that reprograms butch lesbians who have strayed from strict gender roles. Aria comes home from a hellish week at work to a nasty surprise in Cat and Mouse. In The Homecoming, it’s a funeral that prompts Melanie to revisit the past and her fractured relationship with her family.

Also included are flash fiction pieces with bite. Famished and Witness are about different forms of hunger.

Spanning a decade, these pieces reflect the political and social realities of their times. For example, before same sex marriage or civil unions, a lesbian couple who wanted their union recognized in some legal capacity could get into a domestic partnership (if their municipality offered it).

I enjoyed writing these stories; I hope you enjoy reading them.