More from Morgan

Hello! Thanks for returning to the newsletter! This week will be a bit different…and very late. I have some thoughts about the election to get off my chest and then I will move into what you all are here for, books, beauty, and some pop culture stuff.

The Election: I’m Still Pissed off and I Can’t Rest

I was hoping America would do something different. I was hoping that America was exhausted from Trump and wouldn’t elect him for a second time, but here I am, wrong as ever and grossly underestimated how many people are stupid and/or racist and/or sexist. I believed that once Joe Biden exited his bid for a second term and Kamala Harris took his place, that we had a real chance of winning. I believed that Americans were tired of the circus Trump has lead since 2016 and would vote against him simply because they were tired and I was wrong. 

I believed the polls that it would be a tight race and the credible news sources that told us we wouldn’t know the winner of the election that night. That it might take days to find out who won the 2024 election. The pollsters, the political scientist, the journalists, the tarot readers, astrologers, and witches were all wrong. I woke up in the middle of the night to see multiple alerts from the New York Times proclaiming Trump’s lead into his win. I didn’t cry like I did in 2016 when I saw the clip of Van Jones saying how Trump won and people were going to have to explain his hateful rhetoric to their children. I simply said, “no, no, no.” and went back to bed. I even hoped it would somehow change by the morning and of course it didn't.

There were no tears, just anger. How did he win the popular vote?! I couldn’t believe the horrible moving dials the Times used to reflect the vote count in real time. My chest started to hurt when I saw the Senate and the House also aligning red. We have really fucked ourselves this time around. I’ve gotten so angry this week that there were moments my chest started to hurt. How can I rest at a moment like this? What the fuck are we going to do?!

I’ve indulged the conversations online about what the Democrats did wrong. I also know misogynoir played a role in the voting booth. But I am still too upset to actually care about what can be done next time when there is no promise of a next time. Trump and his minions have already tried to overthrow the government once and he has vowed to not leave the White House this time around. Also, how is it that 92% of Black Women still voted for Harris despite all of the missteps of the Democratic party? Why does every other voting block need to be catered to except for us? I hate that we know how bad things can be that it doesn’t take us much convincing that things can get worse, but it does for everyone else. 

Even now I am having a hard time articulating how angry I am. We are about to see a serious wave of our civil rights disappear. We failed the biggest group project of our lifetime. I applaud the Black Women who have been able to rest this week and tap out for a bit, because I am not there yet. I know it is for my own good to take a breath and to calm down, but I am unable to at the moment. I hope rest comes soon, but it’s not coming easy for me./

Books: Women Surrounded by Water by Patricia Coral and Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim

Two highlights of this month I can find solace in is seeing both Patricia and Glory launch their books at Politics & Prose a few days apart. I was able to learn so much about two people I felt I knew well.  Patricia is my former boss working on the events team with P&P.

She was working on her memoir when she started and got the book deal before leaving the store and I’m glad I got to witness her memoir come full circle. Women Surrounded by Water is her story of growing up in Puerto Rico and riding the waves of patriarchy as the women have before her. She recalls their struggles as women having to endure the men in their lives to make a way so that she could choose a path of her own. 

The hybrid memoir contains pictures and poetry that gives the reader a deeper and literal image of her childhood and family. During her event she mentioned working from actual journal entries and keeping the parts that stood out. 

Glory told me years ago when I invited her to my then book club to discuss her first book, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, that she was working on a memoir and it’s finally here. Gather Me covers Glory’s childhood to the birth of her son and the books she read along the way. Each major moment of her life she ties to a book or poem that taught her more about the life event she was experiencing. 

Reading books about reading always warms my heart. It is a reminder of how powerful literature can be in our lives and that I’m not the only one moved by stories. It was moving to see how literature lended a helping hand into her develpment into the woman she is today. We even find out how she came up with the name of the book club and how it grew to the literary force it currently is.

Beauty: Trump Almost Ruined Sephora…And Still Might

It was earlier this week that my sweetie sent me a TikTok video with someone highlighting a number of large corporations that did and did not donate to the Trump campaign. One of the alleged companies to donate to Trump was Sephora and this further upset me. Playing in makeup and shopping at Sephora go hand in hand for me, so when she sent me the video I replied “can’t even lean into consumerism in peace!” For a moment I was bummed and upset this man was stealing another small piece of joy from my life. I do not want to support businesses that support him in any way. 

The makeup girlies were also feeling the same way. Our corner of the internet was in an uproar and Sephora swiftly defended itself stating they did not make any corporate donations to any political campaigns. It turns out that individuals in the corporation made their own private donations to various politicians over this election season. We do not know who these individuals are, but I am not holding this against Sephora as a company. I won’t If you decide unnamed individuals donating is also an issue and you’d like to stop purchasing from them. The Cut Magazine has a quick article on the situation here.

While one fire has been put out in the beauty community, another is starting. The Trump administration has promised to raise tariffs on products that are made outside of the U.S. and corporations are vowing to place that cost increase on the consumer. Many beauty insiders, like beauty chemist Javon Ford and beauty journalist Kirbie Johnson, have warned folks to expect price increases on their favorite beauty products. They suggest stocking up now, but I won’t be doing that. If items become more expensive, I plan to use what I have and to go back to drugstore beauty if I need to. Their products aren’t exactly cheap either, but they are less than the cost of items in Sephora and department stores.

Pop Culture: Tyler, The Creator - Chromakopia 

Chromakopia dropped last week and I’ve been playing it whenever I choose to listen to music over a podcast. I’ve never been a huge Tyler fan especially when he was doing all that weird shit with Odd Future, but I’ve looked forward to his music after a number of his singles like Earthquake and See You Again with Kali Uchis tickled my eardrums. His album Call Me if You Get Lost made me look forward to him dropping new projects. 

I mostly listen to nothing but rap girls now but Tyler did not disappoint. It’s another album with no skips and his mother’s skits (are they considered skits? Am I aging myself?) were the icing on the cake. She’s offering advice as his songs discuss how he knows he’s great at what he does but still struggles to make sense of it all. The album is a pendulum swinging between immense self-confidence and sadness which I think we can all relate to at times. 

Some of my favorite songs are St. Chroma, Rah ta ta, Sticky, and Balloon. Apparently he lied about not having features on this album that was full of them. Sticky is one of the best songs on the album because it is full of features. I love that he’s not afraid of embracing the rap girls unlike some of these male rappers. Chromakopia has quickly become one of my favorite musical projects this year.

Thanks for reading another week of my ramblings. I’ll see y’all again mid-Deceber for the last newsletter of 2024.

Love, from Morgan