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Reminder Post: Creator Accountability Network

Hi everyone! I'm excited to announce that I've joined the Creator Accountability Network. I've posted about it several times recently as part of the onboarding process, and a quick version of the details about CAN will be at the end of all my posts from now on (including this one).  CAN is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing harassment and abuse through ethical education and a system of restorative accountability. I joined because I care about the safety and well being of my community members. If you feel my behavior or content has harmed someone, please report it to CAN, either via the reporting form on their website, CreatorAccountabilityNetwork.org, or via their hotline at (617-249-4255). They’ll help me make it right, and avoid repeating that mistake in the future. CAN also needs volunteers from our communities to help with their work, so if you have skills you think would be helpful, or time and a desire to help, please visit their website to find out how you ...
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Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Go Tell It On The Mountain is about hypocrisy, loss, death, abuse, piety, pretense, denial, and self-delusion in a Pentecostal preacher’s household in 1930’s Harlem. The main story takes place in a day, with several vignettes reaching back.‬

John is navigating his sense of himself and his sexuality as a black teen in 1930’s Harlem. Because of when this was written there’s a lot that remains heavily implied, couched behind religious language and “holy” kisses. Some passages are shocking in their language, because the rest of the book is so carefully phrased, the few explicit sections have an impact that they might not have had otherwise.
John’s father (Gabriel) is a pastor whose religious devotion seems to have been unable to put a dent in his capacity to bring grief and pain to those around him. Indeed, the book seems to argue that it’s that very search for piety which created the ground for his abuses to flourish. I came to this book as an atheist and an ex-christian, and the depictions of the oscillating nature of Gabriel’s faith were familiar to me. He demanded reverence and piety from the women in his life, even while he was complicit with them (or was doing things they weren’t).

I read this book in under a day (today, in fact), and it’ll probably be one I read again.

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