January reading recommendations
The Cost of Being the King by Steven Marrocco, MMA Fighting
“Spencer ‘The King’ Fisher has been one of my favorite fighters in the UFC for a while now,” [UFC president Dana White] said before a No. 1 contender bout against Frankie Edgar at UFC 78 in 2007. “This kid, when you think of the word fighter, and what a fighter is supposed to be and what they’re supposed to do, Spencer ‘The King’ Fisher is the epitome of a fighter. This kid’s been in some of the best fights in UFC history – some of his fights now are classic fights in the UFC.”
Those classics came with a physical price: broken hands, torn shoulder, torn retina, fused neck, bulging discs, a plastic buckle in his right eye, and the lesions on Fisher’s brain that retired him before his planned retirement bout. They may also have caused severe neurological symptoms that left him unable to hold a regular job. The money he made over seven years in the octagon is long gone. He had no idea the ultimate cost of fighting.
The Boy With the Vengeful Heart by Eric Nusbaum, Substack
When the military discovered his talent, Ri was plucked to be part of the country’s sports program. He was the youngest member of the shooting team, but he was a willing student and a fast learner. He arrived in Munich completely unknown to his competitors and totally oblivious to the norms of international sporting events. It seemed likely that Ri would return to North Korea just as obscure as when he arrived. But that was not the case. At their best, the Olympics are a perfect stage for underdog stories.
QAnon and the Bright Rise of Belief by Kerry Howley, New York Magazine
Q is a whistleblower; he would not exist without Edward Snowden. (Q stands for Q clearance, which Q, ostensibly some sort of deep state official, would like us to believe Q has.) Q is the source you conjure when you feel truth is only available via disenchanted insiders. Q’s various prophecies are incredibly fucking weird, which doesn’t necessarily distance them from other texts to which people turn for spiritual guidance. There is, as one often finds in American abortion politics, a particular focus on the perfect innocent savaged by the selfish cosmopolitan; reading Great Awakening is like reading the story of Julian Assange as narrated by Marquis de Sade. And yet, with repetition, anything becomes mundane. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out,” says Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, “and I think we have the president to do it.” A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! True believers speak of Satanism with the bored fluency of someone selling condos.
January book review
Any Other Place by Michael Croley
A wonderful short story collection where each story is intersected by the characters’ desires to be somewhere else. Most of the stories take place in Kentucky, the author’s birthplace, where he explores what leads people to leave their home and what drives them to want to leave. A high school graduate dreams of going to college and leaving his small town behind; a Korean woman leaves her country and follows her American husband to the farming town he grew up in, only to see it wiped out in a massive storm; a young boy witnesses his free-spirited sister abused by her alcoholic boyfriend; a father and son wrestle with the silence lingering after their wife/mother dies.
Croley pulls the Big Questions into everyday situations and magnifies the tension of ordinary moments, blending the hopelessness and hopefulness of escapism. It’s a beautiful, nostalgic and moving collection from a smart, soulful writer.
From the story “Passing Shadows.”
At the kitchen table, the coroner was filling out a report. He watched the man’s pen move across the page in a flurry of checks and hurried notes, and he realized, almost in that instant and in a way that amazed him, what his mother’s death meant. There was no one left to work out the silence between him and his father. There was no interpreter left to relay messages. Who would tell both men that they loved each other?
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
A revelatory memoir in essays about the author’s life with schizoaffective disorder. Though we have become more comfortable talking about mental health and why it matters, there remains a gap in understanding what it actually feels like to live with diseases that are synonymous with “crazy.” What is it like to be deemed unfit to make rational decisions? How does it feel to doubt your own experiences?
Wang bridges the gap between the ever-changing history and theory of schizophrenia and the actual reality of it with clarity, honesty and humor. It’s an invaluable look into a widely misunderstood mental illness, and a profound meditation on the nature of experience.
From the essay “Perdition Days”
If I am psychotic 98% of the time, who am I? If I believe that I don’t exist, or that I am dead, does that not impact who I am? Who is this alleged “person” who is a “person living with psychosis,” once the psychosis has set in to the point that there is nothing on the table save acceptance?
When the self has been swallowed by illness, isn’t it cruel to insist on a self that is not illness? Is this why so many people insist on believing in a soul?
Reading now
I’m a halfway through The System by Ryan Gattis, which follows two gang members in post-‘92 riot Los Angeles going through the complete criminal justice system — from the street to incarceration to the courtroom. So far I’m loving it. Gattis is one of my favorite writers (and also happens to be my former teacher), and this might be his best novel yet.
On my phone, I’m reading World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. It’s the perfect phone book: short essays that dip in and out of the author’s life and descriptions of incredible animal and nature facts. It’s beautiful and uplifting, a refreshing breeze of a book.
January writing
I wrote an essay for Hana Hou! Magazine about how Hawaii hip-hop artists capture and reflect contemporary island life.
For Honolulu Civil Beat, I wrote about what Hawaii can learn from the Trump years, and what Max Holloway can teach us about Hawaii’s brain drain.
Speaking of Max Holloway, for Sherdog I wrote about how he and Punahele Soriano broke the decade-long curse of Hawaii fighters in Abu Dhabi. I also made the case for a Dustin Poirer-Charles Oliveira lightweight title fight.
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