I just can't decide how much humanity you deserve

In the new age of acceptable fascism, I guess the thing I find most troublesome is how familiar it feels. I stood in Dachau Concentration Camp as a child. I looked at all the photos and the ovens. I stood there as a five year old and have never been able to shake that feeling. I loved Germans. I spoke German fluently as a child. How could they have done this? Or stood by and let it happen? And the rest of us? Where were we?

I sat in a Southern Baptist Church in Arkansas for the last time as a young woman while the minister spat into the microphone that all the gays should go back into the closet with the other skeletons. I grew up around the kind of Christianity that refuses to acknowledge the full humanity of Methodists, black people, brown people, immigrants, Catholics, Mormons, rich people, anyone on welfare. Jesus, the list goes on and on. My family thought the KKK was horrible, but warned me never to go into the black neighborhood two streets from my grandmother’s house.

You can’t have fascism without bigotry. They are intertwined. And being stared at in a restaurant because I’m laughing with my wife hadn’t happened for a number of years, but man, when it happened this summer, all the hair on my neck stood up and I kept track of that guy until he finally left in a huff. How dare those queer people enjoy themselves in front of my family!

Finding and loving Mary, and being loved in return is the best of me. It’s neither a shameful thing nor an immoral thing. And you’ll have trouble arguing that Jesus supports you if you disapprove of my relationship when that is clearly not the case. I promise you, the Jesus from your book is a fan of me, and my love. He would eat at my table; he would hold me in his arms. He would stand in my wedding party and bless us.

Dude was a radical. A proponent of love and the impoverished. A warrior against the rich and the greedy and the corrupt. He did not dig the self righteous.

Do not be silent now in the face of fascism. Do not be silent. This is no time to let the most vulnerable be terrorized because you don’t like to feel uncomfortable. Fuck your comfort. Morality is not relative. What we are witnessing in America is wrong. And if we refuse to act, if we only watch and do not speak, do not organize, do not protest, then we have failed one another. And we have failed ourselves. You have to invest in seeing people around you as the other. You have to invest in that. Or you can choose love. A lighter burden. A better path.

2 thoughts on “I just can't decide how much humanity you deserve”

  1. I’ve heard several people call for calm. They want to temporise and moderate and compromise. I’ve heard people denounce those who have leaked information to the press. I will not be moderate in response to incompetence, ignorance, inexperience and bigotry. I refuse accept pathological lies and behavior.

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Jill Malone

Jill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery that made gummi bears the size of mice. She has lived on the East Coast and in Hawaii, and for the last seventeen years in Spokane with her son, two dogs, a hedgehog, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar. Jill is married to a performance artist and addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet.

Giraffe People is her third novel. Her first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, was a Lambda finalist and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction. A Field Guide to Deception, her second novel, was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary Award and the Great Northwest Book Festival.

Giraffe People

Giraffe People

Between God and the army, fifteen-year-old Cole Peters has more than enough to rebel against. But this Chaplain’s daughter isn’t resorting to drugs or craziness. Truth to tell, she’s content with her soccer team and her band and her white bread boyfriend.

And then, of course, there’s Meghan.

Meghan is eighteen years old and preparing for entry into West Point. For this she has sponsors: Cole’s parents. They’re delighted their daughter is finally looking up to someone. Someone who can tutor her and be a friend.

But one night that relationship changes and Cole’s world flips.

Giraffe People is a potent reminder of the rites of passage and passion that we all endure on our road to growing up and growing strong. Award-winning author Jill Malone tells a story of coming out and coming of age, giving us a take that is both subtle and fresh.

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A Field Guide to Deception

A Field Guide to Deception

In Jill Malone’s second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, nothing is as simple as it appears: community, notions of motherhood, the nature of goodness, nor even compelling love. Revelations are punctured and then revisited with deeper insight, alliances shift, and heroes turn anti-hero—and vice versa.

With her aunt’s death Claire Bernard loses her best companion, her livelihood, and her son’s co-parent. Malone’s smart, intriguing writing beguiles the reader into this taut, compelling story of a makeshift family and the reawakening of a past they’d hoped to outrun. Claire’s journey is the unifying tension in this book of layered and shifting alliances.

A Field Guide to Deception is a serious novel filled with snappy dialogue, quick-moving and funny incidents, compelling characterizations, mysterious plot twists, and an unexpected climax. It is a rich, complex tale for literary readers.

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Red Audrey and the Roping

Red Audrey and the Roping

Occasionally a debut novel comes along that rocks its readers back on their heels. Red Audrey and the Roping is one of that rare and remarkable breed. With storytelling as accomplished as successful literary novelists like Margaret Atwood and Sarah Waters, Jill Malone takes us on a journey through the heart of Latin professor Jane Elliot.

Set against the dramatic landscapes and seascapes of Hawaii, this is the deeply moving story of a young woman traumatized by her mother’s death. Scarred by guilt, she struggles to find the nerve to let love into her life again. Afraid to love herself or anyone else, Jane falls in love with risk, pitting herself against the world with dogged, destructive courage. But finally she reaches a point where there is only one danger left worth facing. The sole remaining question for Jane is whether she is willing to accept her history, embrace her damage, and take a chance on love.

As well as a gripping and emotional story, Red Audrey and the Roping is a remarkable literary achievement. The breathtaking prose evokes setting, characters, and relationships with equal grace. The dialogue sparks and sparkles. Splintered fragments of narrative come together to form a seamless suspenseful story that flows effortlessly to its dramatic conclusion.

Winner of the Bywater Prize for Fiction, Red Audrey and the Roping is one of the most memorable first novels you will ever read.

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