One of my favorite bookstores, Yu & Me Books in Chinatown, NYC, suffered severe fire and water damage due to a fire in their building on July 4th. They will be forced to close for a year to fully rebuild. They opened in 2021, at the height of pandemic in Chinatown, in the midst of what that community was going through as the on of the only Asian American owned bookstores in the country. Please consider supporting their GoFundMe page to support their team and rebuild if you are able and/or buy books via their Bookshop page to support them.
Fifth in my series of Brilliant Friends, you can find the first four installments at the bottom of this newsletter
There’s a very inside reason that I paired these two brilliant friends here today, it has to do with some archaic graduation traditions at our school!
Stacy Goldate: Stacy and I went to junior and senior high school together in Tennessee and have remained friends since. Stacy is one of the kindest people I know and a talented documentary filmmaker, editor and storyteller. Her thoutful and provocative work is always interesting, educational, and in my opinion, reveals the truths about who has power, who doesn’t and how power is wielded and who it is often wielded against.
Documentary: A Greater Society: Stacy and her husband Craig A. Colton conceived, directed and produced this documentary about residents of a Florida retirement community during the 2014 midterm elections
Documentary: Hillbilly (rental streaming): Forget Hillbilly Elegy and definitely fuck JD Vance, watch this thoughtful film about Appalachia and the race and class tensions that aren’t always what you think they are and a reminder of why political and corporate powers in this country want to divide working class people by race.
Documentary: Inhospitable (Streaming July 14): This documentary reveals what many of us already know, that health care in the US is deeply broken, specifically focusing on a nonprofit hospital in western Pennsylvania, its patients and its staff, and the community it claims to “serve.”
Documentary: Our Father (Netflix): This documentary is about a criminal fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate his patients. This is actually not uncommon around the world (Immaculate Deception Podcast) and it’s messed up.
TV Documentary: The 1990s (CNN): Many of you probably saw this multi-episode documentary series about the 1990s, focusing on pop culture, politics, and more! She also worked on The 2000s.
Documentary: The Stroll (Max): Just released a few weeks ago, this is a very good documentary that Stacy consulted on about trans sex workers in NYC especially in the area of the Meatpacking District before it became what it is today. Heartbreaking in more than one way, about how people are treated, dismissed and paved over for “progress.” This line gutted me, “How many times did have to be arrested for this HighLine Park to be here.”
Nishta J. Mehra: In the small world of Indians living in Memphis, Tennessee back in the 80s, I knew Nishta and her family and we went to the same school. I was older by a decade, so I’ve gotten to know her as a brilliant adult through her work in recent years - specifically Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion which I strongly recommend for anyone, but especially to those of us who know and love folks with trans-racial adoptees, and those families directly. Her book of essays, The Pomegranate King is also on my to read list!
Nishta’s newsletter and podcast, Omnivore of the Human Experience is worth your time especially if you engage in writing with thoughtful prompts. I’m always looking forward to what she will write and who she will interview next!
Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of My Brilliant Friends