Jen R.’s Reviews > A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance > Status Update
Jen R.
is on page 133 of 320
I’ve run out of language to explain the avalanche of anguish I feel when faced with this world, and so if I can't make sense of this planet, I'm better off imagining another.
— 14 hours, 14 min ago
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Jen’s Previous Updates
Jen R.
is on page 143 of 320
There are many ways to be of a place, and there are many ways to fade into the architecture of the landscape, until you draw the frustration of it.
— 2 hours, 33 min ago
Jen R.
is on page 113 of 320
I wish to view the moon as Hayden viewed the moon, an object that has a purpose rooted primarily in how it shines, and little more beyond that.
— 21 hours, 23 min ago
Jen R.
is on page 103 of 320
And if you found yourself with a committed Black goth, you could pull the dubbed tape of Cure songs out of your back pocket. I first learned to code-switch through the musical movements of my people, and done among my people in this way, it didn't feel like a shameful burden. It felt like a generosity— a celebration of the many modes we could all fit into.
— Feb 09, 2026 10:16AM
Jen R.
is on page 90 of 320
One way trauma can impact us is by the way it makes us consider a polite proximity to violence and oppression as comfort.
— Feb 09, 2026 07:43AM
Jen R.
is on page 89 of 320
My father, who would return home after work and sit in our driveway with the windows up on our old van, letting loud jazz fill the car's interior for a few moments before exiting. Like it was a bridge bringing him back to a more familiar self.
— Feb 09, 2026 07:42AM
Jen R.
is on page 68 of 320
If there is some kind of loophole in the rules of magic, it might be this: the one where a person is able to be invisible until they are desired. Where they are an echo of nonexistence until they can fulfill a need, or tell a story, or be a thread in the fabric of someone else's grand design. The flawed magic of desiring a body more than an actual person. (66)
— Feb 06, 2026 12:48PM
Jen R.
is on page 65 of 320
Ellen Armstrong kept performing in smaller rooms, to crowds without as much money or social capital. The idea, it seemed, was about offering a sense of wonder to those who may otherwise have been denied it. To make something small spectacular. Magic relies on what a viewer is willing to see, and what a viewer is willing to see relies on what the world has afforded them to be witness to.
— Feb 06, 2026 12:40PM
Jen R.
is on page 65 of 320
The magic of it all. The literal magic, that which exists to give a suspension to belief. That which exists to wash away the knowing of a wretched world and replace it with another. What appears when there was once nothing. What miracles a love for our people bends us toward.
— Feb 06, 2026 12:32PM
Jen R.
is on page 60 of 320
I say I love my people and I mean there is a language that is only ours, and within that language there is shelter. But when I speak that language into the world, I know how eager the world might be to bend it to its own desires.
— Feb 06, 2026 12:11PM
Jen R.
is on page 38 of 320
I think about the small but important distance between gospel as popular music and gospel as a vehicle for salvation: how it is possible to take in the music without much concern for salvation, but still be carried off to a place that feels holy.
— Feb 05, 2026 11:41AM
