Hey gay Republicans: Justin Sayre would like to have a word with you. 

In his latest video for HuffPost Queer Voices, the writer-performer doesn’t hold back when it comes to conservative members of the queer community who continue to support President Donald Trump. (WARNING: video above contains graphic language.) 

“You should be embarrassed to be a gay Republican,” Sayre says in the clip. “I can’t fathom that you would think, ‘Oh, it’s OK to vote Republican now ― especially for this Republican.” 

And don’t get him started on former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who is known for his inflammatory, trollish comments about women, people of color, transgender individuals and Muslims. “[His words are] a tool to use against you, to show that there is hatred within your group for your own rights,” Sayre said. 

Sayre’s “International Order of Sodomites” (I.O.S.) gathers once a month for “The Meeting,” a variety show honoring an artist or a cultural work that is iconic to the gay community. The next installment of “The Meeting” is dedicated to the Velvet Underground and hits Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York on March 19. 

You can check out Sayre’s comedy album, “The Gay Agenda,” here. Meanwhile, the latest episode of “Sparkle & Circulate with Justin Sayre,” the official I.O.S. podcast, was released last month featuring an interview with Intimacy Idiot author Isaac Oliver. 

You can also view some previous performances from “The Meeting” on Sayre’s official YouTube page. For more Sayre, head to Facebook and Twitter.  

Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ entertainment with the Queer Voices newsletter.

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A billboard in Arizona is drawing public outrage after featuring President Donald Trump’s face surrounded by dollar-sign swastikas and nuclear mushroom clouds.

The controversial artwork appeared in Phoenix on Friday. In the days since, California-based artist Karen Fiorito says she’s received death threats.

“I think a lot of people are feeling this way and I’m just trying to express what I think is on a lot of people’s minds these days,” she told local news operation 12 News. “Something that really concerned us was this idea of a dictatorship where things were going in a certain direction.”

The billboard space was provided by the owner, Beatrice Moore, who 12 News reported has offered to showcase the work for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. 

On the back of the billboard, there’s another message. It reads “unity” both in English and in sign language.

Of course, not everyone is on board with the sign, even those who say they’re fine with an anti-Trump message.

“It’s pretty drastic, I thought swastikas were very crude and violent,” neighbor Jeff Whitman told AZ Family.com. He suggested more family-friendly symbols instead.

“Maybe put some thumbs down up there around Trump or something but I don’t like waking up to the Nazi signs,” he told Arizona Central.

Passerby Astrid Olafsen, however, threw support behind the sign, particularly the front and back contrast.

“I think that it’s a wonderful expression of the two sides of the opinions of what is going on and how we can move forward,” she told Arizona Central.

Jeremy Bacpac also shared her approval of the imagery. 

“It’s fantastic. I think this is what artists are supposed to do, make statements, whether you agree or not, it’s a statement,” she told ABC 15.

On Friday, Fiorito posted on Facebook that she expected “death threats and the like” over the work. There appeared to be mixed reviews on her page’s comment section, one calling her a “racist pig” and another thanking her for her “amazing, insightful artwork.”

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Following news of Chuck Berry’s death on Saturday, plenty of fellow musicians shared touching tributes to the rock ‘n’ roll legend on social media. Among them being The Rolling Stones, who considered Berry a huge influence on their own music. 

“The Rolling Stones are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Chuck Berry,” the band wrote in a statement on Facebook. “He was a true pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll and a massive influence on us. Chuck was not only a brilliant guitarist, singer and performer, but most importantly, he was a master craftsman as a songwriter. His songs will live forever.” 

The band’s lead singer, Mick Jagger, also shared a tribute of his own, writing, “I want to thank him for all the inspirational music he gave to us. He lit up our teenage years, and blew life into our dreams of being musicians and performers.” 

He concluded: “Chuck, you were amazing, and your music is engraved inside us forever.” 

Guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood also shared individual tributes on Twitter.

“’One of my big lights has gone out,’” Richards wrote, while Wood called Berry “my inspiration, a true character indeed.”

Other stars, including Brian May of Queen, Carole King, La Roux and Bruce Springsteen, also paid tribute to the rock ‘n’ roll legend. You can see more tributes here. 

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WASHINGTON — The gravedigger doesn’t have any reason to lie to you.

If the grave is deep enough and wide enough, that’s all that matters. The lies can be told by the shiny casket going into the dirt, by the funeral parlor salesman who talked the grieving relatives up to the gold-patina model, and by those mourners who didn’t really want to be there.

But the man who shovels out the deep hole in the ground with a back hoe has no reason to embellish. He’ll just tell you what he thinks, if you ask.

Jimmy Breslin, the columnist who died Sunday, knew that in 1963 when he framed the funeral of John F. Kennedy through the experience of Clifton Pollard.

Pollard, an African-American man who dug graves at Arlington National Cemetery for $3.01 an hour, dug the slain president’s final resting place. He couldn’t watch the burial ceremony because he was digging more graves.

Still, he called it “an honor.”

Breslin’s story about the day is the one that’s remembered most out of the hundreds written, and it offers a lesson both about him, and for the reporters in Washington more than 50 years later covering a White House occupied by man who doesn’t need to be talked up to the gold model, and who has a strained relationship with the truth.

The lesson is, if you want truth, you have to leave your desk, step away from your computer, and must certainly ignore your Twitter feed.

“Breslin hardly ever came to the office. He just sent his stuff in,” said Anthony Mancini, a journalism professor at Brooklyn College who worked at the New York Post in the late 1960s when Breslin wrote for the then-liberal paper.

“Jimmy got up in the morning, and put on his shoes. He never learned to drive, so he walked, took the subway, a cab, whatever,” said Denis Hamill, a former New York Daily News columnist and friend of Breslin’s.

“He wouldn’t sit at a desk and think up what to write. He would form his opinion based on the legwork that he did,” Hamill said. “He went out and really did the work.”

The results were stories that helped expose the corruption immortalized in the book City For Sale, revealed New York City cops had tortured suspects with a stun gun, and infuriated powerful people, including Breslin’s friends like former New York Gov. Hugh Carey. Breslin dubbed him “Society Carey,” and Carey declined to run in the next election.

Breslin ran into some trouble in the era of “new journalism” when some of his regulars in his columns were deemed to be composite characters. “They were playing fast and loose in those days,” said Mancini, noting that in the era of “fake news,” reporters need to avoid some old-school liberties. “That was a little Trumpian.”

Hamill said much of the concern was overblown, though, by people who didn’t like Breslin, and just couldn’t believe that the truth was true.

“Most of the columns that looked fictional were real, and some of the people in them were not happy because they revealed real things about their lives,” Hamill said.

“Shelly the bail bondsman was real. Marvin the Torch was real,” Hamill said, referring to some of Breslin’s recurring characters. “I met them.”

'Good,' Breslin said. 'The more people we get angry the better.'”

For Hamill, the larger point is that Breslin, better than anyone, used the experiences of regular people to speak truth to power.

In the era of President Donald Trump, it’s a skill the media would do well to rediscover. Reporters certainly do try to humanize the news these days, but often it’s the Trump tweet that dominates the headlines. And all too often, the press is cowed by claims that it is being unfair when reporters ask Trump about falsehoods.

When Trump held his joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, it was not the American journalists who asked Trump the hard question about the White House’s inflammatory and unsubstantiated claim that the British government helped former President Barack Obama tap Trump Tower. It was the Germans.

“Breslin would have been the perfect guy to really go and illustrate the lies and deceit that Donald Trump has launched upon the nation and the world, by going to the little guys, the guys who had contracts with him and got stiffed, the guys at the casino who got laid off, the people who Trump University swindled,” Hamill said.

Even in a laudatory moment in 1963, in a column that extolled Kennedy and the powerful fortitude of his widow, Breslin very intentionally included the fact that Clifton Pollard could not watch the burial.

“He was very interested in what people did, the work they did, and what they meant to the world,” Hamill said, recalling a conversation with Breslin about Pollard. “He said what bothered me about [Pollard] was he was allowed to dig [Kennedy’s] grave but he wasn’t allowed to go over and watch the ceremony because he was a black guy and a working guy, and wearing shabby clothes. He couldn’t go over and mingle with the big shots. It’s what was wrong with this country.”

Breslin probably wouldn’t have wanted to cover Merkel and Trump’s White House events, as staged as such things are. But you can be sure he would have asked the aggravating question.

Mancini recalled watching Breslin on a panel where the columnist mentioned with satisfaction the fact that an interest group was furious about something he wrote.

“Good,” Breslin said. “The more people we get angry the better.”

If the anger is sparked by someone like a gravedigger, there’s a much better chance it will be true than if it’s delivered in 140 characters by a man who used to impersonate his own press agent. And there’s a better chance it will move other regular people.

Breslin called it the “gravedigger theory.” Now it’s a lesson from the grave. Breslin surely hopes it haunts Trump.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Carey lost re-election. He declined to run.

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LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Bernie Wrightson, the prolific horror comic book artist, died on Sunday after a long battle with brain cancer, his wife announced on his official website. He was 68.

Wrightson is best known for co-creating the DC Comics monster Swamp Thing with Len Wein in 1971. The character would go on to be the subject of Wes Craven’s 1982 cult horror classic.

The illustrator began his career as a freelance artist for the Baltimore Sun at the age of 18. He joined DC Comics two years later, going by “Berni” in his early professional work.

Wrightson’s many other projects include a 1983 version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” released by Marvel and comprised of 50 ink illustrations. He also illustrated the comic book adaptation of the Stephen King-written horror film “Creepshow.” He worked as a conceptual artist on movies such as “Galaxy Quest,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Land of the Dead.”

Wrightson was known for his vivid attention to detail and took on the works of such authors as Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. He released his own interpretations of other famous superheroes, including Spider-Man and Batman.

Fans took to social media to remember Wrightson on Sunday morning. See their tributes below.

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“Sesame Street” just got a whole lot broader with its newest neighbor: Julia, a Muppet with autism.

The little girl Muppet with red hair and a favorite bunny clutched in her hand has been in “Sesame Street’s” online Digital Storybook series since 2015. But she’s making her TV debut surrounded by everybody’s favorite neighborhood gang on HBO and PBS in April.

The show’s creators hope the new character will help children better understand playmates who have autism, which is affecting more and more American kids. Children with autism will also have a Muppet they can identify with.

In Julia’s first episode, she experiences a bit of a glitch while meeting Big Bird. When the two are introduced by pals Abby and Elmo, Julia is hesitant to shake Big Bird’s hand. He’s sad and worried that Julia doesn’t like him, but Elmo explains that Julia has autism so she “does things a little differently.”

Julia’s designers were eager to use the new Muppet to express issues kids with autism often deal with, without turning her into some kind of standard model for everyone with the disorder. 

“It’s tricky because autism is not one thing, because it is different for every single person who has autism,” writer Christine Ferraro told “60 Minutes.” “There’s a saying that if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”

Still, the show’s creators wanted to exhibit certain behaviors through Julia that children with autism may exhibit. They consulted with organizations serving families dealing with autism to discuss what best to highlight.

Julia’s first episode not only focuses on her reluctance to engage with Big Bird, but also her sensitivity to loud noises and her excitability during a game.

Julia’s puppeteer, Stacey Gordon, has a son with autism. She wishes Julia had been around years ago when he was “Sesame Street” age.

“Had my son’s friends been exposed to his behaviors through something that they had seen on TV before they experienced them in the classroom, they might not have been frightened,” Gordon told “60 Minutes.” “And [they] would have known that he plays in a different way, and that that’s okay.”

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In the early 1990s, painter Kerry James Marshall created a series of paintings depicting black love ― a subject that, despite being glaringly simple, was largely absent from the annals of art history.

In one 1992 painting, “Slow Dance,” a black couple slow dances together in their living room as music notes swirl around them. Marshall immortalizes this romantic moment, exceptional in its ordinariness, magical because it’s mundane. With his paintbrush, Marshall sought to normalize the banal elements of black life that are nearly always overlooked by art, film, and cultural representation. The basic gesture of depicting black couples hanging out was something revolutionary. 

Artist Leslie Barlow had Marshall on the mind when she embarked on her most recent series “Loving” in 2015. The mixed media paintings depict interracial couples based around the Minnesota area, where Barlow lives and works. The series takes its name from the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. 

Fifty years feels wildly short when considering this is how long interracial marriage has been legal in the United States. And still, prejudice regarding interracial couples endured long past the Loving ruling. “I think a lot of people forget that there is this history of discrimination, and it didn’t just disappear when the Supreme Court banned anti-discrimination laws,” Barlow told The Huffington Post. “I wish that was the case, but racism is totally alive and well in this country.”

This inequity is painfully clear, for example, in the history of art, where oil paint has been used to tell certain kids of stories about certain kinds of people for centuries, leaving whole populations unrepresented and seemingly overlooked. “My work is about having agency over the representation of my story and stories like mine,” Barlow said. “It’s a sharing of experiences we don’t often see.” 

Barlow, who is mixed race, began making work that grappled with themes of race and identity while in graduate school. Her earlier work mainly depicted members of her immediate family, but with “Loving,” Barlow hoped to create equally personal works for a larger community.

In particular, she was interested in the local Minneapolis–Saint Paul population, which still lags behind most other U.S. states in terms of race and representation. “The lack of diversity in Minnesota did have an impact on my racial development and ideas of what was ‘normal,’” Barlow said. She resolved to illustrate interracial couples, still largely erased from the cultural archives, hoping the intimate depictions could steer viewers away from binary methods of thinking about race that operate primarily in terms of black and white. 

For the series, Barlow selected couples and families in the local vicinity, most of whom she knew through personal connections. “I wanted the paintings to meet these families where they are,” she said. She began by photographing her subjects in a space they felt comfortable ― whether at home or roaming the neighborhood. She then rendered the photographic images onto un-stretched canvasses or wooden panels, starting with acrylic underpainting and adding layers of oil paint and pastel. 

Barlow also experimented with sewing and collaging fabric onto the works, subtly alluding to the traditions of quilting and tapestry. “The quilt is a coming together of these disparate materials to make something beautiful, whole, uniquely its own thing,” she said. “It ends up being a metaphor for these people coming together to become one family. Quilts also bring up these ideas of domesticity and family, the warmth of that.”

Although the Loving case is the impetus for the series, the paintings themselves depict couples and families ― hanging out, cuddling, drinking a glass of wine ― just being, together. “I want each painting to be unique, but to also have this thing in common of feeling normal,” she said.The artist communicated with all of her subjects beforehand to agree on an environment and activity that represented their daily lives. “The paintings felt mundane in the best of ways. That’s what I want, to normalize these images.” 

Although race and identity have long been ideas central to Barlow’s artistic project, they are especially necessary right now, when racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric are becoming commonplace under President Trump’s administration. “I don’t shy away from my art being political,” Barlow said. “I do believe in the power of images and social change. I think, as an artist, it’s my duty to reflect the world and what’s going on within it. I feel it’s important I continue to push that.”

Leslie Barlow’s “Loving” is on view until March 25, 2017 at Public Functionary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

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In 2014, photographer Émilie Régnier photographed women in the beauty salons of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Her goal was simple: to give her subjects space to flaunt their fabulous hair. 

The images’ impressions, however, aren’t quite so unambiguous. “For black women, hair is political,” Régnier told The Huffington Post. With her series, dubbed “Hair,” the photographer hoped to explore the influence of African-American culture and media on West African women, as expressed through the aesthetic ritual of getting dolled up.

“There has been a big movement toward natural black hair, and away from wigs or anything artificial,” the photographer expressed. “But personally, I don’t think these women are thinking about the political aspect, they just want to look good.” 

When Régnier first entered a local salon, she expected to embark on a photo project revolving around black women who used products to bleach their skin. However, her vision changed course after she flipped through the look books on-site, which flaunted various ‘dos for customers to adopt and improve upon. 

“I’ve been in West Africa for almost eight years,” Régnier explained. “Once a place becomes familiar, you don’t see everything you used to. But I suddenly noticed, these women had amazing hair.” Beyond pure style, the hairstyles illuminated the myriad cultural influences shaping the dominant trends, as well as the physical standards of beauty women around the world feel compelled to embody.

In Ivory Coast, women undergo a variety of treatments and procedures to qualify as a “go” ― or a good-looking girl ― Régnier explained. “Hairstyle is the privilege of the ‘go-choc,’” she said in an artist statement. As a result, women often invest their savings in revamping their tresses, through highlights, extensions, dye, and wigs. 

Régnier saw hair as a vehicle of communication, expressing unspoken understandings of identity, beauty and power for many local women. As the artist put it: “I tried to demystify the direct African-American influence, the part owed to globalization, and the part relating to the African decoding of information seen on television.” 

Régnier was inspired by iconic Nigerian photographer Okhai Ojeikere ― who chronicled Nigerian women’s serpentine braided styles ― as well as Ivory Coast’s local look book photographers, who had created their own brand of glamour shot. She reached out to one of said professional photographers and asked to become his assistant.

In the style of most Ivorian street photographers, Régnier traversed the city with a camera around her neck, snapping the daring styles that women might later want to don for themselves. Such photos are usually then sold for around one dollar each, to hairdressers who put them into their look books for future clients to peruse and select.

Although the series is not overtly political, Régnier captures moments of freedom, confidence, creative expression and self-love for women of color. Given the beauty industry’s proclivity toward aesthetic standards of whiteness, the series can’t help but take a political stance. “As a woman of color myself, I can’t help but think of colonialism,” Régnier said. “The way women were made to want to have blonde hair.”

Today, however, Régnier observed that her clients seem somewhat removed from the political underpinnings of their style choices. “Women of West Africa aren’t thinking about white colonization that occurred 60 years ago when they wear a wig. They reclaim it,” she said.

The series frames women of color’s hairstyles as existing somewhere between frivolous style and political statement. Political influence, personal taste, cultural trends, and social status often converge to yield a chic bob, mohawk or weave. As the artist said: “All the hairstyles represent a fusion between African-American influence and African interpretations.”

Although Régnier’s photos speak volumes about the relationship between black women and hair, when the artist asked her subjects about why they chose certain styles, the responses were relatively straightforward. “They wanted to look like Rihanna or Beyoncé,” Régnier said. “Even that was a bit too plain for them.”

“From Mobutu to Beyoncé” by Émilie Régnier is at the Bronx Documentary Center from April 15 through June 4.

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Actress Nathalie Emmanuel recently opened up about the damaging nature of seeing predominantly white casts on television while growing up. 

In an interview with Hunger magazine, the “Game of Thrones” star, who is half Dominican said that she didn’t see people who reflected her racial identity during her childhood.

“For me, when I was growing up, not seeing anyone on television that looked like me or that I could identify with was really hard, and that can affect someone’s self-esteem hugely,” Emmanuel -- who plays Missandei, a translator on "Game of Thrones" -- told Hunger. 

Emmanuel, who also played Ramsey, a computer hacker in “Fast and Furious 7” lauded the movie’s casting for its exemplary diversity. But where the rest of the Hollywood ― whose diversity issue was bought to light in 2016 during the #OscarsSoWhite controversy ― is concerned, she said that despite the attempts at diverse casting, she doesn’t know how long-standing these efforts will be. 

“Will it be that they just do the one film and then it goes back?” she questioned. “If you go up for anything, you know there is always a cast of people and a small number of them are [from] a minority.

“The majority of the cast will be white with a few roles from a different ethnicity. Ultimately that’s not the world we live in,” she said. 

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Historically, women artists have rarely gotten their due. But there’s no time like the present ― especially this Women’s History Month ― to change that, and to make sure that we’re appreciating all the genius work women writers are doing.

In the past year, we read dozens of brilliant books by women. We read insightful essays that cut to the heart of the human experience, and we read lyrical short stories that moved us to laughter and tears. We read epic novels that contained unimaginably capacious worlds. 

Here are 23 of the most unforgettable books by women that we read recently:

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

“It’s a quick read that’ll leave you in a sweat, if not a panic. If you like your endings happy, or at least conclusive, the journey will be futile. But Fever Dream is worth reading for its inventiveness alone. Schweblin gives us memorable characters and a haunting parable, all in fewer than 200 short pages.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

The Girls by Emma Cline

“As full as the book is of clearly articulated notions, paragraph-long observations on the paradox of feminine power and girlish powerlessness, it’s not a creed; Cline carefully treads along a well-paced plot, drawing characters with heart along the way. She manages to reflect on the tension between the selves we perform and the selves we feel we are — “affected” is a favorite alternative to “said” — without getting mired in commentary. The result is a book as fast-moving as a van on the run, as dark and atmospheric as the smog it cuts through.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

 “Silver’s book is magical and parabolic, but it doesn’t have the stark, curious language of a fairy tale. Instead, she adorns her fable with earthy imagery, crafting a rich setting and lovable characters.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Virgin and Other Stories by April Ayers Lawson

“A refreshing take on desires both taboo and repressed, Virgin and Other Stories is a promising debut.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

The Mothers by Britt Bennett

 “At 17, Nadia Turner and Aubrey Evans worried about the usual teenage concerns: which Kanye West song to put on, which tight-fitting dress to wear out, which guys were worth their time, which childhood secrets were too taboo to reveal. But beneath the veneer of youthful ease, each harbored her own private pain, hoping that time, eventually, would bury it.

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Intimations by Alexandra Kleeman

“In her first short story collection, Kleeman’s breadth as a writer is on display. She writes surreal scenes that are emotionally resonant and realistic stories that are affecting in their strangeness.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

“The unpleasant, even grotesque behaviors of her characters seem amplified thanks to Moshfegh’s cool, matter-of-fact prose. [...] In much fiction, writers draw us in by painting the relatable, lovable vulnerabilities within even their most nominally unsympathetic characters, complicating our impulse to divide the world into ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Moshfegh’s stories do the reverse, confronting readers with the squicky, selfish, and sociopathic inner selves of even outwardly decent people.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Human Acts by Han Kang

“Human Acts [...] isn’t a book about forsaking or repairing violence; it’s about the inescapability and deathlessness of violence in humanity. Every effort to paper over the horrors of what these protesters suffered, at the hands of their own nation’s soldiers, whether through time or literary censorship or personal forgetting, fails. The violence of the past rises up again; it was never really past.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

“In Idaho, a literary novel about a horrific and baffling crime, the tension between what author Emily Ruskovich will reveal and what readers long to know can be excruciating. Told from the perspectives of Ann, the loving younger wife of a man who tragically lost his family; Jenny, his ex-wife; and Jenny’s cellmate, Idaho obsesses obliquely over the horrifying moment that tore apart Jenny and Wade’s family.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins

“Nearly 30 years after her too-early passing, this author’s powerful debut collection manages to perfectly embody the existential torment of her country. The lingering question of whether we really understand each other and what’s happening around us, or whether we’re getting it catastrophically wrong, looms over Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? ― and it’s a question we’re likely to continue grappling with for many years to come.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

“In a first-person twist on her buoyant, bustling London narratives, Smith examines the trouble of combining the personal and political, and captures the thrills of girlhood, dance, and first friendship.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin

“Until the 19th and 20th centuries, women didn’t typically go on walks in urban areas, and those who did were presumed to be ‘street walkers.’

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

“Kitamura [...] gives us a book that’s worth reading for its inventive cadences alone. And there’s more to it than that: surprising turns and honest thoughts on the complexity of loss.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

O Fallen Angel by Kate Zambreno

“SUVs, red meat, Jesus. If a dissenter’s view of Middle America were turned into a Bingo card, Kate Zambreno’s debut novel O Fallen Angel ― recently reissued by Harper Perennial ― would win the game a few pages in.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce

“No one at Chizuru Akitani’s school saw it coming. Quiet, bookish, the butt of bully jokes, her coping mechanisms were the usual methods of disenfranchised 12-year-olds. She sought solace in her teacher, Miss Danny; she turned inward, binge-eating sweets after class. 

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky

 “Leah does not like to fight. In fact, not fighting is one of the few firm stances she’s able to take in Marcy Dermansky’s new novel The Red Car, a spare and funny story about regaining your footing after coping with grief.

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs

 “The Art of Waiting explores negative portrayals of childless women and families in popular culture (as sinister, resentful). It manages also to delve deeply into the scientific and political processes of IVF, a treatment that’s much more accessible to some communities than it is to others. Boggs gracefully touches on her own brush with infertility, and by sharing stories of those in her support group, she shows that the experience of yearning for children is multifaceted, not so easily whittled down to a harsh stereotype.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

South and West by Joan Didion

“With an anthropologist’s detachment and precision, Didion took notes on the South that, while lyrical and often funny, do little to empathize with the region. Still, the writer reinforces the paradoxes of Southern warmth, and exposes contradictory beliefs about race and religion.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

“The latest of Hogarth’s retellings of Shakespearean plays by eminent authors is a match made in dystopian heaven. (If such a thing could exist.)

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Deceit and Other Possibilities by Vanessa Hua

“Venturing across boundaries both tangible and imperceptible, legal and emotional, can carry tremendous weight in Deceit and Other Possibilities. Throughout Hua’s collection, written over the course of over 10 years, she tells the stories of people who have crossed borders despite all that they must leave behind in the process, or who choose to cross back despite all that they’ve gained in their new world.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Land of Enchantment by Leigh Stein

“Stein’s memoir Land of Enchantment, published earlier this year, is about many things: abusive relationships, grief, chronic depression, adolescent alienation. Or maybe, to put it another way, it’s about one thing: how much of ourselves we store in each other.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

Trainwreck by Sady Doyle

“In Sady Doyle’s sharp new book Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why, she examines the particular pleasure our society has taken, for centuries, in tearing down publicly visible women.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

“Not often does a novel so expertly seduce its readers into an alternate state of consciousness that it mimics an actual dream state, where everything solid is hazily just beyond reach. Eimear McBride, with her deployment of modernist technique reminiscent of James Joyce, elicits such a mental state throughout her new novel, The Lesser Bohemians ― really, it’s the only way to read it.”

Read our full review and find the book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

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Racial issues continue to fester in America, but this has not instilled a sense of despair or hopelessness among black millennials, a new study finds. In fact, researchers say they have found the opposite.

Data from a collaborative study conducted by the University of Texas and Hispanic advertising agency Richards/Lerma released on Monday reveals that black millennials are most optimistic about their future when compared to Hispanic, Asian and white millennials. The study, titled “Millennials Deconstructed,” also has other fascinating findings about where millennials ― young adults between the ages of 18-34 ― who make up America’s most racially diverse generation in history, stand when it comes to having faith in the American dream and their ability to succeed in the future. 

Researchers ― who say the study was designed to decode the relationship millennials have with America ― say some of the results were surprising, even noting in the report that “the data reached out and smacked us with untold cultural stories that challenge popular notions about each race and ethnicity.”

Researchers, who looked at over 1,000 respondents, say that black millennials in particular show some of the study’s most interesting and counterintuitive discoveries, writing: “A reasonable person may expect to uncover a sense of despair, apathy, or hopelessness. In this case, a reasonable person would be wrong.”

“We found the opposite,” it continues. “With a heightened sense of control over their future, [black millennials] have the most faith that their hard work will pay off.”  

Pointing to the role of black activists in calling out systemic racism and white privilege, researchers say some may interpret this as “showing disrespect for America, apathy, playing the victim [and/or] asking for handouts.” Instead, rather than reporting feelings of neglect or disrespect, 83 percent of black millennials say they are proud to be an American. And although black millennials (67 percent) are closely tied with Hispanic millennials (66 percent) in being less likely to say they are satisfied with life when compared to Asian (71 percent) and white (71 percent) millennials, most black millennials (61 percent) hold on to a sense of hope and optimism rather than feelings of apathy.

“This suggests their vocalization of injustice isn’t at odds with respect for their nation,” the study says of black millennials. “In fact, it’s possible their motivation to speak up is because of their national pride, because they hold their country to a high standard.”

“Our communities are resilient and innovative, often making a way out of no way."
Dante Barry, co-founder of Million Hoodies

Researchers say that they expected black millennials to be the most likely group to reject the concept of the American dream, which is traditionally defined in the study as “the ability to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” However, the study showed that, although 55 percent admit their race has made it more difficult to attain the American dream, black millennials (49 percent) are more likely than any other segment to say they still strive for it.  

The study also showed that, compared to other groups, black millennials have the strongest sense of control over their future (56 percent), place more value in hard work (59 percent) and are more likely to believe that people can achieve their dreams if they work hard enough (59 percent).

This doesn’t come as a total surprise to 28-year-old Dante Barry, a black millennial activist and co-founder of the social justice organization Million Hoodies, whose unrelenting work with black millennials around the country has show him the resilience that any of them possess. He says this strengthens his faith in their collective ability to effect positive change.

“At Million Hoodies, I get to work with hundreds of young Black people around the country, and I am reminded every day about what our communities have to do in order to live a decent life,” he told The Huffington Post. “Our communities are resilient and innovative, often making a way out of no way. Black people can combat systemic racism in community with other black people.”

Another notable finding shows that it is Hispanic millennials who, despite feeling misrepresented and blamed as cultural intruders, are reported to “be the most traditionally American Millennial segment, adherents of classic American virtues with a high level of energy to build a better future for the country.” The study shows that Hispanic millennials have the greatest sense of American pride (54 percent), which stands in strong contrast to white millennials, who were reported as having the least (40 percent).

“[Hispanic millennials] are perhaps the most traditional keepers and seekers of the American dream,” Chaille Alcorn, the brand planning director for Richards/Lerma, told HuffPos. “In other words, ‘making America great again’ requires Hispanics.” 

While white millennials are tied with Asian millennials in being most likely to say they are satisfied with life (71 percent) than black or Hispanic millennials, they rank the least optimistic about the future. They also report the lowest levels of enthusiasm or interest about their future, the American dream, achieving financial comfortability, owning a home, getting a college or advanced degree, traveling, helping others, and experiencing and learning new things.

“This lower-grade energy and excitement about the future and decreased faith in the American dream suggests that it will be the ethnic minority segments who contribute the most energy and optimism toward America’s future,” Alcorn says. “Without minority millennials influencing the future of the country, the outlook appears bleak.”  

The importance of young people of color, especially at a time when overt racism and xenophobia run rampant, is certainly not lost on 27-year-old Rhonesha Byng, a businesswoman and founder of HerAgenda, a digital media platform for millennial women. She, like Barry, wasn’t taken aback by the study’s findings because she knows black millennials have “no other choice” but to persevere, place value in hard work and push for change. 

“If we give in and feel despair on a daily basis, that won’t solve anything,” she told HuffPost. “These systems were not built with us in mind, they weren’t built for us to succeed, so when there’s another black person excelling we have to champion them, and if you’re that black person succeeding you have to keep going.” 

“Nothing is handed to us,” she added. “We are already taught from a young age that we have to work twice as hard, and I believe now more than ever we have access to more examples of black success and black excellence.”

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The numbers don’t lie: James Patterson loves clichés. He deploys 160 for every 100,000 words he publishes. Yikes!

In a new book, Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician Ben Blatt runs the numbers on bestselling and classic literature, coming to some startling ― and not-so-startling ― conclusions. In a Publishers Weekly article, Blatt shared a few of the stats from his book, revealing the most, and least, cliché-prone, exclamation-point-heavy, and weather-obsessed authors. “If you have a body of literature, stats can now serve as an x-ray,” he writes.

Some of the revelations are hardly surprising.

Patterson, who has his name on over 200 novels, many of them bestsellers, isn’t known for his innovative prose. After crosschecking 50 classic and bestselling authors against Christine Ammer’s The Dictionary of Clichés, Blatt found that the crime writer took top prize for most clichés. Certain literary writers known for pushing the style envelope weren’t far behind, however. Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce (rather surprisingly), and Zadie Smith also deployed well over 100 clichés per 100,000 words. On the low end: Virginia Woolf, Veronica Roth, and Khaled Hosseini.  

What about exclamation points? Noir novelist Elmore Leonard hates ‘em (49 per 100,000 words) and James Joyce loves ‘em (1105 per 100,000 words). Interestingly, male writers populate the extremes of Blatt’s body of authors, when it comes to exclamation points. The top users include Tom Wolfe, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Sinclair Lewis, while the bottom users include Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and Chuck Palahniuk. 

Blatt also analyzed how often authors open their books with descriptions of the weather, a scene-setting tactic that, he points out, was slammed by spare stylist Leonard. “The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people,” Leonard argued in a 2001 New York Times column. While some authors, like Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway, never mention weather in the first sentence, Blatt found that John Steinbeck and Willa Cather both did so about a quarter of the time. And then there’s the all-time champ: “Danielle Steel, known for selling hundreds of millions of books, should also be known for talking about the weather,” he writes. “Nearly half her of introductions involve weather.”

These stats might not tell us anything particularly world-shaking about the authors we love, but there’s an inherent fascination about seeing the habits and stylistic patterns of great writers broken down into precise parts. Frankly, we just can’t get enough of it.

Check out graphics and more stats from Blatt on Publishers Weekly. 

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Taraji P. Henson’s career has been on fire. From playing a quick-witted, formerly incarcerated music executive Cookie Lyons on Empire to a brilliant NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, Henson’s made it pretty clear that she likes to keep us on our feet.

In that spirit, Henson told The New York Times that she’s eager for a new script...preferably from comic powerhouse Marvel.

“I would love to be a Marvel superhero,” she told NYT in an interview published on Friday.

Marvel has been flooding the Netflix Originals realm with shows based on their classic comic series “Jessica Jones,” “Iron Fist,” and “Luke Cage.”

“I’m dying to get into some comedy,” she continued. “I think I’m a stronger comedic actress than a dramatic actress. You guys just fell for the drama side.”

Marvel ― if you’re reading ― we’re waiting. 

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One of the year’s documentary highlights is “City of Ghosts,” a portrait of brave Syrian activists who banded together in 2014 to curb ISIS’ invasion of their homeland. The Huffington Post has an exclusive clip that dissects ISIS’ cunning recruitment tactics.  

“City of Ghosts” is the latest from Matthew Heineman, whose shocking vérité movie “Cartel Land” earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Amazon acquired “Ghosts” after its prizewinning premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It will also receive a theatrical release on July 14.

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Life as a Jane Austen fan can be, occasionally, infuriating. Male classmates deride her as subliterary fluff, pop culture uses her as a shorthand for romance novels, and, for women, professing to love her turns you into a cat-possessing cliché. The latest insult, however, is the most egregious yet: Alt-right thinkers have appropriated Austen as a symbol of white nationalism, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education article by Nicole M. Wright.

Wright, an assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, noticed an Austen cameo in a Milo Yiannopoulos speech in January. “As a Victorian novelist might have put it,” she quotes him, “it is a truth universally acknowledged that an ugly woman is far more likely to be a feminist than a hot one.” Amusingly, Wright points out, Yiannopoulos, an alt-right “fellow traveler,” was incorrect about Austen’s era: the Regency-era author died some 20 years before the Victorian period commenced.

More to the point, however, is that Yiannopoulos is not being very careful with his references. The “truth universally acknowledged” in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, that “a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” is delivered with gentle sarcasm, not earnestness. In parodying the language of philosophical treatises, the author mocks the very simplistic assumption she’s putting forth.

Austen’s scathing wit, often directed at the shallow societal mores of her time, is often overlooked, so it’s little surprise that alt-righters would take superficial and misguided lessons from her work. Diving deeper into the overlap between the author and the alt-right, which is by no means new, Wright found several standard interpretations of Austen’s significance in a variety of alt-right forums she perused: “1) symbol of sexual purity; 2) standard-bearer of a vanished white traditional culture; and 3) exception that proves the rule of female inferiority.”

Given that Austen wrote marriage-plot novels set in the early 19th century, when chastity and advantageous marriages were middle- and upper-class women’s primary objectives, she’s easily appropriated as a symbol of premarital abstinence and valorization of traditional marriage. Jane Austen girls don’t hook up, they settle down; they don’t forge their own way, they build their lives around husbands. In a novel such as Emma or Mansfield Park, the casts are nearly, if not entirely, white, and their social encounters are governed by clear hierarchy and a shared culture. 

Though absurd, the deployment of Austen to argue for the idyllic nature of an all-white, patriarchal state makes sense. Using white women as justification for egregious racism is one of the oldest tricks in the bigot’s book, a way of arguing that discrimination and violence against non-white people is necessary to protect fragile white women’s safety and purity. As perhaps the single most famous woman writer in Western history, Austen and her heroines are easily turned to this purpose. “Of course the one female author who has name recognition on par with Shakespeare is the one who gets dragged into debates like this,” Juliette Wells, an associate professor of English at Goucher College, told The New York Times.

Literary critics can and have critiqued Austen for the whiteness and apparent conventional morality of her novels, but the case is by no means simple. As biographer Paula Byrne argued in 2014, there’s substantial textual evidence that Mansfield Park obliquely but pointedly condemned colonial slavery and anti-black racism. In her unfinished novel, Sanditon, a West Indian heiress described as “half mulatto” appears yet never speaks; however, she is presented as a highly eligible maiden.

To use Austen as an alt-right icon, these thinkers must either read the author’s work poorly or not at all, relying on our cultural association of her work with chaste courtship, romantic marriage, and overwhelmingly white British society to imply an endorsement of those values. In fact, white nationalists would do well to realize, her work has endured largely because it cleverly and subtly skewered them. 

H/T New York Times

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HBO’s miniseries “Big Little Lies” is a story about the complex inner lives of privileged women, wrapped up in a murder mystery set in a wealthy seaside town. Amidst the stunning vistas and unraveling whodunit plot line, viewers are witnessing something rarely seen on screen: A thoughtful portrait of an abusive relationship. (Note: Spoilers ahead.).

It’s no coincidence that the show got it so right: HBO worked with Safe Horizon, a domestic violence victim assistance organization, to ensure “Big Little Lies” was accurate in its portrayal of abuse. They also prepared a plan for what to do if viewers had a personal reaction and needed support.

The show’s abuse plot line centers around Celeste, played by Nicole Kidman, a lawyer who gave up her career to raise twin boys. To the outside observer, her life appears picture-perfect: She has a stunning home, healthy children, and a gorgeous husband whose adoration for her is obvious to all. But as the show progresses, the facade crumbles. Celeste is deeply worried about her marriage. She uses the word “volatile” to describe it, but the more accurate label is abusive.

While her charismatic husband Perry, played by Alexander Skarsgård, can sometimes treat her “like a goddess,” he is more often possessive and controlling. He is quick to physical aggression, choking, slapping and throwing her against the wall. Celeste hits back at least once in an act of self-preservation, bucking the traditional role of passive victim.

Their fights typically conclude with rough sex scenes, which are ambiguously consensual. It’s unclear to the viewer (and perhaps to Celeste herself) if she is engaging in sex because she desires Perry, or because she feels she has no choice. Afterwards, he offers apologies and gifts, at one point anointing her bruised body with a sparkling necklace.

In the most recent three episodes of “Big Little Lies,” (episodes 3, 4 and 5), the couple goes to marriage counseling. The resulting scenes offer a profoundly nuanced look inside an abusive relationship and the complicated landscape a couple in a similar situation might navigate.

In the couple’s first therapy session, Celeste, looking extremely uncomfortable, talks about their issues in the plural, constantly glancing at Perry for approval. “I just think things can get a bit volatile,” she explains. “We fight a lot, we yell, we scream. We just have a lot of anger that we need some help controlling.”  

Of course, it is not really her anger that needs controlling, it is his. At its core, domestic violence is about maintaining power and control over another person. It is clear that Perry’s need to dominate Celeste is at the root of their problems.

Later, she sees the therapist alone. When she is asked directly about the abuse, she continues to insist she is equally at fault. “We both become violent sometimes, I take my share of the blame,” she says. “I’m not a victim here.”

It is a startling moment. As she asserts her autonomy, Celeste unabashedly rejects the label of victim. It’s debatable if she does this because she has internalized negative stereotypes about the type of people who end up in abusive relationships ― weak, damaged women, not independent, accomplished ones like herself ― or if she truly does not see herself as abused.

Marium Durrani, public policy attorney at The National Network to End Domestic Violence, said it could be a mixture of the two, noting that it’s common for victims to take time to process their situation before accepting it.

“A victim might wonder, ‘Doesn’t everyone fight?’” she said. “It’s hard to know what’s normal in intimate relationships.”

They also need to be emotionally ready to deal with the consequences, she added. Once they recognize they are in danger, the next logical question is, what are they going to do about it? Celeste might not be ready to tackle that yet, she said.

Celeste may also be repeating what Perry has long told her: That she is the cause of the violence. Like many abusive partners, Perry is a master of projection, blaming Celeste for anything that goes wrong.

In episode 3, the couple is drinking wine in front of a fire, a portrait of domestic bliss, when Perry finds out that Celeste and the kids are going to Disney on Ice without him. He accuses her of purposely excluding him, and grabs her roughly by the neck.

When she protests that he is hurting her, he flips the statement around. “Oh, I’m hurting you? he scoffs. “Can we talk about how much you hurt me?”  

It is her fault, he means. She hurt him first. He is the true victim.

Perry later tells the therapist that his rage stems from his fear that he will lose Celeste. “I always had the sense that the day would come where she would just not love me anymore,” he says. “I think I’m constantly looking for evidence.”

He admits that he is insecure, and that is driving his controlling behavior. But while his confession appears sincere, it’s subtly manipulative. He implicitly blames her ― it is because Celeste is unhappy that he is acting out. The underlying message: If you loved me more and showed me better, I wouldn’t have to hurt you.

The show takes pains to not flatten Perry’s character. Some of the actions he takes are surprising: It is he who discloses the abuse to the therapist, not Celeste, who tries to protect him. As he puts it, “there’s a line between passion and rage, and sometimes, maybe, we cross that.”

In a particularly resonant scene, the family is having dinner. He starts joking around, and pretends to be a monster, lurching around the table. The kids, who are delighted, giggle and run away.

As viewers, we know that to Celeste, Perry can be an actual monster, but here he is being a fun and engaged father. That symbolism and duality reveals a frightening truth: Abusers are not shadowy monsters devoid of feeling or compassion ― they can be fathers and lovers and husbands; beautiful men living in beautiful neighborhoods with beautiful wives.

We don’t ever really know what domestic violence looks like from the outside.
Marium Durrani, The National Network to End Domestic Violence

Celeste wordlessly answers the question, “why don’t you just leave,” in almost every scene. We see her fear as a constant undercurrent to her interactions with her husband, as she weighs what to say and calculates how to defuse tense situations. We also see her hope and desire to keep her family intact.  

In one scene, the couple dances to Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. Perry, staring in her eyes, whispers, “don’t give up on me baby.” Celeste glances at some drawings done by their children and it is clear where her priorities lie.

When the therapist asks her why she doesn’t want to leave, she talks about focusing on what is profoundly right in the relationship instead of what’s wrong.

“I think about what we have, and we have a lot,” she says. “We are bound by everything we have been through.”

Brian Pacheco, director of public relations at Safe Horizon, said that reaction is common.

“Domestic violence is complicated and many survivors are conflicted by the good times―and there are good times,” he said. “Often survivors may just want the abuse to stop, not necessarily to end the relationship.”

Durrani applauded the show for opening up a much-needed dialogue, and challenging stereotypes about who experiences abusive relationships. 

“I think one of the lessons to learn is that we don’t ever really know what domestic violence looks like from the outside,” she said. “People don’t think that someone rich and beautiful in a seemingly idyllic life would be facing something like this. There’s a really dark cloud over her that isn’t visible.”

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the
National Domestic Violence Hotline
.

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One particular actor in Marvel’s newly released series about a man and his mystical martial arts powers is being touted as the most kick-ass of the cast ― and he’s not the lead.

Lewis Tan, who plays Zhou Cheng in Netflix’s “Iron Fist,” only appears in one episode. But Tan ― who lost the main role of Danny Rand to white actor Finn Jones ― has drawn a ton of praise from the interwebs for his performance. 

And though being passed over for the lead is not the most pleasant experience, Tan says the positive feedback he’s received for his role has been pretty sweet.

“There is definitely a level of vindication, but mostly I just feel inspired to keep pushing boundaries and grateful for all the love,” the actor told The Huffington Post in an email. “Asian-American actors rarely get that type of praise and theres so much talent out there, we want to show that to the world.”

“Iron Fist” follows Danny Rand, whose plane crashes and goes missing in Asia before he eventually returns to New York City with superhuman martial arts powers.

Though the original comic storyline featured Rand as white, some critics have accused the show of whitewashing, since it still chose to cast a white actor as a martial arts expert.

It’s also been called out for perpetuating white savior narratives, with NPR’s Eric Deggans calling it a “troubling translation in part because of how it minimizes Asian people and Asian culture” while putting a white hero on a pedestal. 

Jones defended the show’s casting in a Twitter debate with Asyiqin Haron, creative director for online community Geeks of Color, saying the series “incorporates and celebrates actors from all different backgrounds.”

In the midst of backlash, Jones temporarily deleted his account, telling Deadline that he needed to focus on filming “The Defenders.”

Considering the lack of Asian representation in Hollywood, many Asian viewers and actors alike found the show’s issues especially frustrating. 

Tan explained to HuffPost that the series opted for a white lead to stay true to the source material, however he admitted he felt casting an Asian actor for the part would’ve paid off. 

“Personally, I thought it would have been a risk with a huge reward ― a totally dynamic and new narrative that we haven’t seen,” Tan, who’s currently focused on creating his own series featuring a diverse cast, told HuffPost. “There is a large group of people that want to see themselves represented as the heroes of the story and they are making their voices heard.” 

With many groups still fighting for representation on-screen, the actor stressed to HuffPost that there’s far more work to be done in terms of diversity in Hollywood. But with people are making their concerns heard on social media, and successes from movies with diverse casts like “Get Out,” Tan is hopeful. For now, he urges fellow Asian talent to master their craft from every angle and show viewers “why they should be paying attention.”

Most importantly, Tan says, it’s important for Asian members of the industry to show love for one another. 

“Supporting each other and keeping this discussion alive is what we need to be doing,” he said.

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A fun-loving Texas family turned an ordinary maternity photo shoot into muddy adventure.

While expecting their third child, Jon and Brittany Barton of Waxahachie hired photographer Elaine Baca of Lane B Photography to take family maternity pictures with their other two children, 4-year-old Declan and 2-year-old Noah. Due to some weather issues, the shoot got a little ... messy.

“Lately in Texas when it rains it pours,” Baca told The Huffington Post. “In the weeks leading up to the maternity session, the rain was relentless. We had rescheduled the session a couple of times already, and Brittany was quickly approaching the end of her pregnancy ― so we knew he might come any day.”

Baca knew Brittany and Jon were outdoorsy and wanted to keep the shoot outside, so the photographer suggested something a bit unconventional. 

“They have a huge backyard which backs up to a field and I knew it had lots of muddy puddles, so I asked her what she thought about playing in the rain and ending with a mud fight,” Baca explained. Brittany didn’t even hesitate to give the go-ahead. 

On the day of the shoot, the Bartons posed for a few conventional photos before letting loose in the mud. Brittany, Jon, Declan and Noah all got their hands dirty, though Baca said the parents had the most fun.

“They weren’t just casually throwing mud, they were chunking it at each other!” she recalled. “Declan was worried about getting his white shirt muddy so it took some convincing before he started having fun. The boys still talk about how much fun they had.”

Brittany was 38 weeks along in her pregnancy during the photo shoot, and she gave birth to a baby boy just nine days later. The couple named their son Matthew. 

The joy-filled photos from the maternity session epitomize how much the Bartons love spending time together, Baca told HuffPost. 

“For me, photo sessions are all about preserving memories and making new ones. With small children it’s about remembering their ever-changing personalities and quirks that make them unique,” she explained, adding that she hopes families who see her photos will opt for candid, documentary-style sessions in the future.

“With this genre of photography, parents don’t have to stress about getting their little ones to sit still and look at the camera and kids get to be kids while doing something everyone enjoys.”

Keep scrolling for more awesome photos from the Bartons’ muddy maternity shoot.

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Hi, stranger: Prepare to be deeply disturbed, but somehow also oddly soothed. 

Artist Kirsten Lepore uploaded the claymation video “Hi Stranger” (above) to YouTube Monday and reactions have been interesting to say the least.

At first glance, the clip, which features a nude, dead-eyed clay man with a prominent butt uttering sweet-but-creepy nothings to the viewer, is just plain unsettling.

But some viewers, it seems, started to have more complicated feelings.

Feelings of being comforted, of feeling like maybe everything was OK.

Not that the initial feelings of discomfort ever go away.

Bye, stranger. And please, let us know how you feel.

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What words give a Merriam-Webster lexicographer the most consternation?

Some people might envision a list of 10-dollar terms like “verisimilitude,” “nidifugous” or “poniard” as true dictionary stumpers, but as word maven Kory Stamper explains in her new book Word by Word, the hardest definitions are those attached to simpler letter combos. Think “but,” “be,” or “the.”

The challenge for lexicographers, Stamper explains, is not only to provide a concise, clear definition for the average dictionary user, but also to make sure the definition comprises the many uses of a word. Is “do” used the same way when someone suggests you “do dinner” and when you “do your homework”? That’s for the editorial staff at dictionaries like Merriam-Webster to nail down.

Stamper makes it clear in her book that the job of Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries is to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive, when it comes to chronicling language. That means instead of delivering instructions for “proper” usage from on high, lexicographers aim to document and define language as it is actually used. That’s right: As much as “irregardless” feels like the typeset equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for some, its use is widespread enough to deserve a spot in the dictionary. (Same goes for “facepalm” and “binge-watch,” two recent additions.)

In recent months, Merriam-Webster has shown that dictionaries can be punk rock, too — the dictionary’s Twitter account has trolled Kellyanne Conway for her definition of “feminism” and Scottie Nell Hughes’ “mazel tov cocktail” slip, and became the fact-based watchdog we needed during the chaos of election season. In this political era, we are reminded daily of the power of words, and Stamper’s book is yet another example of that.

A book about dictionaries could likely seem like a dream to a certain sect of book-lovers and a snooze-fest to others, but Stamper’s accessible yet pragmatic writing falls somewhere in the middle: A pleasant, yet realistic, view of the challenges that come with working at one of the best-known dictionary publishers out there. Despite the mid-century coffeemaker Stamper says is still present at the Merriam-Webster offices, ruminating on usage in a quiet office sounds ideal for the average bookworm — until one is tasked with reviewing the definition for “take,” as Stamper is in a middle chapter of the book.

“Sometimes these small words are pulled from the regular batches and are given to the more senior editors for handling. They require the balance of concision, grammatical prowess, speed, and fortitude usually found in wiser and more experienced editors,” Stamper writes.

Seriously: “Take” is no joke. If you’re not convinced, though, don’t take our word for it: Pick up Word by Word and see dictionary-making in a way you hadn’t before.

Word by Word is out now. Pick it up on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.

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