Category: Identity

What's in a Name?

8/1/2025

by Alexa Diamant

via flickr by Steve Jurvetson

The enemies have taken over the ship! Quick, Captain, we must board our escape pods and find life somewhere else. But before we go, you’ll need to verify your identity to access the pods. What do you mean you don’t know? What’s that you say—the author changed it again? Damn those writers and their incessant need to constantly change our names!

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Jane Austen, Queer Icon: How the LGBTQ+ Community Puts the “Pride” in Pride and Prejudice

4/1/2023

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by Nyds L. Rivera

My first introduction to Jane Austen was when I was twelve years old, on the brink of coming out to my family, caught in the throes of questioning my sexuality. Pride and Prejudice was the first romance novel I ever read where I actually found some level of identity in it. Now, nearly a decade later, and still as enamored with Austen’s work as I was in middle school, I’ve discovered that this is far from a unique experience. Much of my close circle of friends is comprised of queer people, and most, if not all, of them are also fellow Austenites (Janeites? I’ve heard both). So why is this?

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash

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We are not a genre: reevaluating how we talk about black literature

2/1/2022

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by Ariana Tucker

Go onto any major book-selling website and you’ll probably find a section dedicated to Black authors in the list of genres and subcategories. Amazon calls theirs “Amplify Black Voices” and lists it among other popular keywords like “Award Winners” and “Celebrity Picks.” Barnes and Noble calls theirs “Black Voices” and lists it among other browsing options such as “Large Print Books” and “Trend Shop.” Click on either link and you’ll see popular books written by Black authors, most of which are the same books we’ve been talking about for the last five years.

Barnes and Noble is the worst offender of this. On their featured page of “Fiction: Black Voices,” only four were published between 2020 and 2021 (Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle is their featured book from 2021). The rest are classics by Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison and books by authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Sister Souljah, which were published in the 2000s and 2010s. Amazon at least offers a more up-to-date list of recently released books by month and recommendations from editors and Black icons like Billy Porter and Rick Ross. You can find almost any genre and any subject here, the only difference is that the authors are all BIPOC.

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Dropping the Beat: Why I Won’t Let Anyone Tell Me Not to Listen to Music When I Write

11/1/2021

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by Marissa Stanko

Trying to find your identity as a writer is nerve-wracking. There’s pressure on all sides to do certain things or be a certain way or write at certain times and so on and so on. It took me a long time to feel like I was a writer, and even now I struggle with feeling like I don’t write “the right way.” One of the things I always felt forced to justify as a writer, even to myself, is that I like to listen to music while I write, and it isn’t instrumental. Studies, blog posts, and articles galore tell me that I shouldn’t listen to music while I write, or that if I do, it should be classical, instrumental, or a playlist designed to fit the piece I’m working on. Lyrics distract from writing, they say. Music puts your focus somewhere else. And I know for many people, that must be true.

Photo by C D-X via Unsplash

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Esperanto: A Humble Lingua Franca

6/1/2021

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by A.C.

Because of my background in linguistics, people have often told me how great it would be if the whole world spoke one language, if everyone could understand each other without the blockage of language barriers. They say it as if they came up with the idea. I smile and nod, letting them believe they are the egalitarian genius they see themselves as. This idea is nothing new, and it’s been attempted before. Humanity just doesn’t want it. We’re too overpowered by our sense of “us vs. them.”

When people from around the world have tried to speak a unifying language that could end all language barriers, it was attacked time and time again until it was subdued by the language of business.

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What's in a Name?

Jane Austen, Queer Icon: How the LGBTQ+ Community Puts the “Pride” in Pride and Prejudice

We are not a genre: reevaluating how we talk about black literature

Dropping the Beat: Why I Won’t Let Anyone Tell Me Not to Listen to Music When I Write

Esperanto: A Humble Lingua Franca

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