Welcome to Litsy!

Well this was a delight. It felt like getting to sit around with Casey Plett at the kitchen table after dinner talking, except with the luxury of citations. Plett shares a lot of her own life, and the many communities she has been a part of. Smart, vulnerable, and thoughtful. It doesn't present any judgement on community being an ultimate force for "good or bad" --it explicitly doesn't want to-- but I left feeling hopeful about community anyway.

"Community can be fractured and slippery and seemingly ever at risk of dissolution at the same time that it can consistently regroup and resolder itself, mutate in ever-new fashions, form a balm to meet needs in ways it is difficult to predict or imagine."

A low pick, but thought-provoking. This shorty is one of the newest in Biblioasis‘ Field Notes series. Plett does a good job of exploring possible definitions of community, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of communities. She explores online camaraderie, “third places,” Mennonite communities, queer spaces/groups, and much more. It raises a lot of questions without answering them, embracing ambiguity. ⬇️

“What if we had social media platforms that might eventually meld into the fabric of a life in a less inflammatory, more convivial way, in a way that one day might leave us going ‘Water, what the hell is water?‘”
In reference to a David Foster Wallace anecdote about fish. Some young fish pass an old fish who says, “Morning boys, how‘s the water?” One young fish replies, “What the hell is water?”

“…if I hear the term the trans community without further clarifying context, it‘s impossibly abstract to me, even as tiny and specific a group as we are… One economical solution I use in my own personal life is the phrase my [X] communities. To say ‘my trans communities‘ or ‘my writer communities‘ implies something more accurate and specific yet leaves room for heterogeneity. There‘s an understanding of internal range built into it.”