A beautiful collection of essays ranging from calls for accessibility, for understanding, for belonging, for community and everything in between. Though the collection had some heavy-hitters, there was never a feeling of despair. Even when sad, they were inspiring. They reached for hope. I felt seen and understood in a way that doesn’t often occur to me.

I highly recommend this one.

‘There is no reasonable excuse that remains for white women to continue to betray women of color. White women have a choice. It is a choice they have always had to some degree, but never before have been in such a strong position to make the right one. Will white women choose to keep upholding white supremacy under the guise of “equality” or will they stand with women of color as we edge ever closer to liberation?’

It pains me that I can’t force every white woman ever to sit down and read this book. As a white woman so deeply integrated into rural white society, this offered so much new perspective. An insightful deep-dive into the insidious history that created whiteness and everything that white women have done to uphold it. In truth, there is nothing that I can say that hasn’t been said much more eloquently by somebody else but I will be holding what I learned from Ruby Hamad very closely on my ever-continuing journey to grow into the person I can be most proud of. This, to me, is never-ending. There will always be more to dismantle, and more to absorb.

If you somehow haven’t read this yet, I simply can’t encourage it enough. I believe it can serve as a perfect entry-level intersectional feminist text and open up a deep discussion with not only yourself, but the world in which you inhabit.

Oh, Sunburn. Sweet, Sunburn. Look what you’ve done to me. Sunburn reached its fingers past my ribcage and tore out my still-beating heart, lay it out on a platter and served it to me with garnish. It watched as I struggled to fit more of it into my mouth and bled freely down my throat. It left me with a stomachache. One I’d gladly sit with. Like a cramp in the back of your leg you’d gotten running for miles. A sweet ache - a satisfying one.

This not a book for everyone. But it is a book for me. It is my childhood home, the dilapidated blue house with the foggy windows - the porch that creaked far too loudly to ever escape unscathed. It is my first boyfriend. My wonderful, beautiful attempt at love. It is being cradled in his arms as I whisper apologies into his t-shirt soaked with tears. Not because I could not love him, but because I didn’t love him in the way that my mother wanted. It is the many late nights I spent sending horribly cringy letters to my first girlfriend. The one who taught me what love could be, and how badly it’d ache when it was all gone.

I was Lucy. I was Susannah. I was Martin.

Sunburn encapsulates its title. When we first meet Susannah she is described as a sunbeam - this is a fixture of her character that sticks throughout the novel. She is not just the good parts of the sun, but she is also everything that hurts about it. She is the sunburn. The red that lives on your skin long after the haze of summer has gone. The way your skin peels for days, striking layers underneath it that you never meant to unearth.

I’ve written it before and I must write it again: Chloe Michelle Howarth has written a masterclass in sapphic yearning. She has enfolded the pain of a first love, the terror of being known so intimately in a small town, and the way that devoting yourself to a woman feels like a borderline religious experience. If I wrote for the rest of my life, I do not know if I’d ever write something that feels this beautiful. It is entrenched with all of the trappings of a perfect love story. Balmy, hazy, all-consuming.

I am so glad that I found it now, when my world is more stable and not at seventeen when this surely would’ve ruined me for months.

As a little treat, here are some songs that I thought about while reading:

• picture you // chappell roan ‘do you picture me, like i picture you? am i in the frame from your point of view? do you feel the same? im too scared to say, half of the things i do when i picture you.’
• honeybee // olivia rodrigo ‘pick me up, walk me home. And it feels like god threw me a bone. Sticky sweet, tangerine. Would you sit and keep me company?’
• pushing it down and praying // lizzie mcalpine ‘when i close my eyes, you replace him. wearin’ no disguise, you erase him.’
• always an angel never a god // boy genius ‘the way i am, not strong enough to be your man. i lie, i am just lowering your expectations. half a mind that keeps the other second guessing. close my eyes and count. always an angel, never a god.’
• triple dog dare // lucy dacus ‘i wanna run away and live on your family’s boat. it’s a triple dog dare, you’re chicken if you don’t. i can fish for our food and you know how to start a flame. if you don’t get out now, you’ll only have yourself to blame.’
• good, luck babe // chappell roan ‘when you wake up next to him in the middle of the night with your head in your hands you’re nothing more than his wife, and when you think about me all of those years ago, you’re standing face to face with i told you so.’
• pictures of you // the cure ‘i’ve been living so long with the pictures of you, that i almost believe that the pictures are all i can feel’