tomatoes in space

The Shelf: A3 - Tina, Creativity, and "Cringe" Humanity

Photo of Shelf 3A

The Shelf: A3 Location: Home Office Desk

I regrettably missed last weeks post, but have come up with a series I’ve decided to call “the Shelf.” Basically, I take a shelf, I write about it. Today, the shelf is titled arbitrarily Shelf A3, located on my desk. This is possibly the most embarrassing one to start with. Mainly because I think it says a lot about my greenness in writing, in research, and especially in the lack of control I feel concerning my hobbies. It is embarrassing to admit I spent seventy-five on the newest Chicago Manual of Style, but also that I am Black but don’t know much about “Rap and Hip Hop Culture” but want to know more.1 But, this shelf says something more about being cringe.

Tina Belcher Salt Shaker

I scored big at the local thrift shop when I found some Bob’s Burger’s salt and pepper shakers of Louise and Tina Belcher. When I was a young girl, I was compared to Tina often, possibly the queen of “cringe.” Nerdy, weird, artsy, bold but somehow manage to be socially awkward. Now, going through transition (my second round, my God when will it stop) and becoming slowly but surely a queer Black guy, I am happy to have this little vessel to help me salt my food. It reminds me of how liberating it was to have the audacity to do the things I have done despite my anxiety and over analyzation. When I was a high school sophomore, I wrote an original song on my guitar in my new school in Oklahoma. Doing that in the first place was a lot for me, but knowing that I got third place because I was the only acoustic guitar player who didn’t do a cover (there were quite literally 6 acts doing covers), it at least showed that creative gambling in public was worth it. Which brings me to the culmination of my two year long creative gamble.

It’s Life As I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980 Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos

I do research on Black cultural and intellectual history particularly at the intersection of technology and art. And, bingo, my current research is about the comic strip “Bungleton Green.” It is what I am writing my concluding MA paper on, which is currently sitting pretty like an everything pizza without the crust. What’s great and bad about my topic, is that there is not much literature on “Bungleton Green” and especially not on the particular illustrator Jay Jackson. I get to make an intervention, but I am so scared of doing a bad job. Again, creative gambling. At least, in one of these books, there is a simple big mistake to remind me this. In It’s Life As I See It published in conjunction with the 2021 MCA show titled “Chicago Comics: 1960 to Now” Jay Jackson is listed to be born in 1908. Jackson through my genealogical research was conclusively born in 1905.2 AND IT WAS PRINTED. The content is great in that book, but that one mistake doesn’t make it terrible, or “cringe” it makes it human.

The Delusion - Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

One of the most human things I possess is the art catalogue from amazing digital 3D artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Brathwaite-Shirley is doing insanely healing and amazing work concerning how we are (dis)connected today through and by technology, race, and gender (which have been argued to be technologies in and of themselves by scholars and artists too).3 Brathwaite-Shirley does this through interactive, confronting, and cathartic video games you can play here. AND DO NOT SKIP IT, SHE IS RIGHT, THIS IS ABOUT YOU (TOO). Do not shirk the responsibility of being human because these fluid and rhetoric categories feel beneath you or “cringe”!

Artist bio of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley which says: PRO BLACK TRANS LIFE /ARTIST LIVING AND WORKING IN BERLIN/ I CREATE WORK THAT SEEKS TO ARCHIVE BLACK TRANS EXPERIENCE. I USE TECHNOLOGY TO IMAGINE OUR LIVES IN ENVIRONMENTS THAT CENTRE OUR BODIES.../THOSE LIVING, THOSE THAT HAVE PASSED AND THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN FORGOTTEN/YOU THINK YOU CAME HERE TO ENJOY SOME ART/ YOU ARE MISTAKEN/ THIS IS ABOUT YOU/HOW YOU FEEL IS THE MEDIUM I AM WORKING WITH/YOU MAY FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE/YOU MAY FEEL REPRESENTED/BUT YOU WONT FEEL FORGOTTEN

[screenshot 17 March 2026, from artist website, all-rights reserved to Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley]

I hope after the craziness with my last semester, I get to sit down and document my “playthrough” of this inventive catalogue that has a “choose-your-own-adventure" structure for the table of contents, which invite you to work through emotions of fear, hate, anger, and hope. Brathwaite-Shirley’s medium of choice is decidedly, emotional, affective.

Pilgrimage by Zennia Henderson Issac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine January 16, 1982 Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer & Other Writing Reference Books

I am not just an annoying and reluctant academic, I am also a wanna-be speculative fiction writer. In the newest Octavia Butler biography Positive Obsession by Susanna M. Morris, I learned about her favorite book. Butler would try and get anyone to read Pilgrimage by Zennia Henderson. This is part of a series, and I am curious to see the influences Butler gained from reading Henderson’s work, and see if I can learn anything too. Another summer read. I am afraid of collecting the Issac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine because a local used book store in my town has SO MANY. I caved, and got this one and man is it FULL of literary analysis I have yet to dive into (despite my ponderings on the bathroom throne). The cover is a Native American man with a roman arcade in the background, and the story concerning that cover is about Romans who mastered the car engine and have begun to colonize the Americas. Literally insane.

Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer was bought at a time when I was so confident I could write all these fiction stories I’ve come up with while also going to school full time. So, being the good student I am, bought it, and I actually learned a lot from it. It is a good resource to have to write really, any story, and has helped me in my academic writing too, believe it or not. Reference books about writing and productivity are my weakness and I fear that I am severely cringe for liking them. What I look for is how particular people do things and try to glean any new systems that could help me. I know that it doesn’t do me any good if I don’t just make myself do the things, but I simply cannot help it. This sums up the rest of the books on this shelf. My plans after graduating? I am gonna write a short story!

Room One Gaoyu Special Edition “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” Eucalyptus & lavender from Bath and Body Works

Bought this deck because it is gorgeous and I collect decks of cards (I have so many bad ones from Italy!). I love the face and suit cards because the (2nd) best card game ever Regicide, is best with an imagination–and these cards offer rich storytelling for the RPG card game. This one is cool because the tuck box has a fan that expands. Unfortunately, the left side is forever open and doesn’t collapse neatly anymore. The spray is old and used to combat my partners farts because they are rank and we have to share an office together, which is truly human (and cringe when I am mad about it).

Shelf A3 is now complete. Don’t fear cringe, be human.

  1. I at least spent zero dollars since it was weeded from my PWI university library. ↩︎

  2. The other book “Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos” is correct on the date, Jeet Heer is the one to put in commentary about Jackson and the context of the strip during WWII. ↩︎

  3. If you would like to read more, consider Black Meme & Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell, and Race After Technology & Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin. ↩︎