Monday Matter: October, a touch of moss and dating while sick
Your biweekly Foreign Bodies roundup
Every other* Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. *This is new!
First things first
A little housekeeping
October, October…
The thing with October is, I think, it somehow gets in your very blood. Unapologetically. Almost ruthlessly.
— Anne Sexton
Waking up to October in Georgia feels like a rebirth to me, not just because it is literally my birth month, but because I can always taste its upcoming arrival in the air for weeks. And after surviving the long, swallowing, sweltering days of summer, I’ve grown desperate for a change of pace, for shorter days and earlier nights and sunsets timed perfectly with dinnertime. October, to me, is synonymous with autumn more than its start in September, because September in Georgia is just a tease, and for some time during that ninth month every year, I can’t help but first lose myself in the grief of another season lost before I feel the excitement of something new. October reminds me there’s some joy to make of this passage of time, however fleeting. I’m grabbing my pumpkin everything, bringing out the plaid and flannel, getting dressed up to meet a stranger. I’m eager to hand out candy to children in costumes I no longer recognize and to find nostalgia in all things spooky. We only have so long until the nights swallow us up again.
A musical start to your Mondays 🎧
One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share
This week’s pick from Welsh multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter Ali John Meredith-Lacey (better known as Novo Amor) is plucked from one of my favorite autumn playlists.
Resource(s) of the week
Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)
How Schools Can Help Refugee Students: Psychologists Jeffrey P. Winer and Luna A. Mulder share guidance for educators and schools on how they can better help refugee and immigrant youth. Tips include connecting children and families with English-language tutors, allowing extra time for schoolwork and celebrating their cultures within the classroom.
*Periplus is now open to fellowship applications for its mentorship collective serving emerging writers of color. From the FAQs: “We write essays, fiction, longform journalism, poetry, memoir, criticism, and various hybrid or undefined forms, and seek mentees working in those forms. (While several mentors are journalists with varied experience, this collective is geared more toward longform stories—features, investigations, and the like—than shortform reporting.” Writers of color located in the U.S. and who are at least 18 years old are encouraged to apply by Oct. 24th. Existing mentors include Adam Harris, Bryan Washington, C Pam Zhang, Dina Nayeri, Kiese Laymon, Nicole Chung and many more. Apply here.
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