Tootfinder

Day 23: Thi Bui
Indirect CW: parental neglect, war, intergenerational trauma
Bui is the author of "The Best We Could Do", a graphic memoir which explores her relationship with her parents and unpacks some of the intergenerational trauma coming out of the Vietnam War. It has a lot of wisdom to offer about both dealing with troubled parents as a 1.5th-generation immigrant, and it delves deeply into her parents' histories in Vietnam and the complexities of the situation there both in the north and in the south. It's beautifully illustrated and very nicely plotted together given all the disparate threads it is working with.
I haven't read any of Bui's other work, but it looks like she's published a picture book for kids as well as a series of short comics during the pandemic. Besides Oseman who also writes non-illustrated fiction and the two manga artists Ice mentioned, Bui is the first graphic novel author I've included here, but I've actually got quite a few of them in my longer list, one of whom may make it into the 30 I'll include in this thread. These days I'm reading a bunch of graphic novels since they're easy to get through, and the variety of stories and perspectives in that space is wonderful these days, with a huge array of indie stuff that probably never would have gotten off the ground in traditional publishing/comics spaces.
#30AuthorsNoMen

game_thrones: Game of Thrones coappearances
Network of coappearances of characters in the Game of Thrones series, by George R. R. Martin, and in particular coappearances in the book "A Storm of Swords." Nodes are unique characters, and edges are weighted by the number of times the two characters' names appeared within 15 words of each other in the text.
This network has 107 nodes and 352 edges.
Tags: Social, Fictional, Weighted

Series D, Episode 06 - Headhunter
TARRANT: That's right it is! [Points to teleport controls.]
VILA: A straightforward pickup job you said. As last words go, they're not likely to be famous.
TARRANT: You should worry.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/406/52 B7B6

I always know @… wil have a clear view.
https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-rules-of-grief?publ…

Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes Gets Blunt Words From Raiders’ Pete Carroll https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/pete-carroll-message-chiefs-patrick-mahomes/?adt_ei=[email]

Mein Mitgefühl geht raus an die Pharma-Familie #Merck aus #Darmstadt, deren Vermögen angeblich um 9,3 Milliarden Euro geschrumpft ist. 🤨

Neue Liste enthüllt: Das sind die reichsten Deutschen
Auch 2025 führt Dieter Schwarz die Liste der reichsten Deutschen an. Doch nicht alle Milliardäre verzeichnen Zuwächse.

Reading Paul Krugman talking with Adam Tooze . Re. € crisis in 2012: "Paul DeGraue, Belgian economist said, “this is a panic, the numbers don’t really justify this.” Mario Draghi actually agreed and said three words, “whatever it takes,” that the ECB will stand behind that and will make sure the countries don’t run out of cash. The crisis just evaporated like nothing. *Most effective central bank statement in the history of humanity*, I’m sure." Here is Dhragi's speech:

"Countries that neglect #science become dependent on those that don’t. U.S. post-WWII dominance came from basic science investments (OSRD, NSF, NIH, DOE labs). After WWII ended, the UK slashed science investment which allowed the U.S. to commercialize the British inventions made during the war.
...[USSR failed] to convert science into sustained innovation...during the same time that U.…

Steve Blank No Science, No Startups: The Innovation Engine We’re Switching Off
Tons of words have been written about the Trump Administrations war on Science in Universities. But few people have asked what, exactly, is science? How does it work? Who are the scientists? What d…

game_thrones: Game of Thrones coappearances
Network of coappearances of characters in the Game of Thrones series, by George R. R. Martin, and in particular coappearances in the book "A Storm of Swords." Nodes are unique characters, and edges are weighted by the number of times the two characters' names appeared within 15 words of each other in the text.
This network has 107 nodes and 352 edges.
Tags: Social, Fictional, Weighted

Day 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen