I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and I don’t even like eating the plain turkey, but I appreciate the long five-day weekend. I spent most my time with my kids. These days I have to compete with the iPad. To get the three older boys off their device, I have to take them out of the house. We went out to eat and to fun places, but the most enjoyable time for us was getting back to nature.

I posted most of our activities on Facebook so our family members, especially my mom can see what her grandchildren are doing. Every time I talked to her over the phone she told me the joy of seeing them. I feel conflicted about Facebook. On one hand, I despise the platform. The way it fucks with our data and the way it mishandles misinformation. And yet, it is the only platform that even my mom knows how to use. Besides Facebook and YouTube, she would never venture out to this blog. Most of my family members don’t either, which is good. I still have my own space to truly be myself.

I am also feeling guilty that most of my Facebook posts are about living life. I give the impression that I am living a wonderful life and that I am such a great dad. The reality is not as rosy and I have my flaws as a parent. This blog captures the raw, unfiltered side of that. It appears as if I am living two different lives on two separate platforms. On Facebook, I locked down my privacy to only friends. I even went through and took out people I don’t know too well. I have refrained from posting political views.

This blog is still open to the public. I write anything I want without filter. I can be truly be myself through words, not photos of my kids. This blog I will keep, but I can shut off Facebook any time I feel like I have enough of it. The rest of the social media networks, I am pretty much done with.

Mary Norris explains the classic grammar mixup of who vs. whom:

My test for the correct use of “who” or “whom” in a relative clause—“who I know will use it judiciously”—is to recast the clause as a complete sentence, assigning a temporary personal pronoun to the relative pronoun “who/whom.” “I know she will use it”? Or “I know her will use it”? No native speaker of English who has outgrown baby talk would say “her will use it.” The correct choice is clearly “she”: “I know she will use it judiciously.” If the pronoun that fits is in the nominative case, acting as the subject (“I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” “you,” “they”), then the relative pronoun should also be in the nominative case: “who I know will use it judiciously.” Yay! I got it right.

Suppose I had written that I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague who I have known for years. Recast the relative clause as a complete sentence with a personal pronoun: “I have known she for years”? Or “I have known her for years”? This time the correct choice is “her,” which is in the objective case (“me,” “you,” “him,” “her,” “us,” “you,” “them”); therefore the relative pronoun should be in the objective case (“whom”). I should have written, “I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague whom I have known for years.” Boo! I got it wrong.

Andrea Long Chu writes in The New York Times:

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it.

In his latest special for Netflix, Trevor talks about snake, tacos, Trump, and racism. His jokes seem a bit exaggerated. I am not quite feeling him. It’s enjoyable but not outstanding.

Season four of the drug drama lays out the extreme corruption of the Mexico government. Félix Gallardo (played by the charismatic Diego Luna) built his trafficking empire by funding the entire government. He got rich and comfortable on smuggling weed, but got greedy and expanded into cocaine. And that’s when it all came crashing down. The story is good the cast is fine, but not stellar. Teresa Ruiz is so damn hot though. This season isn’t quite as suspensful as the previous one—I miss Alberto Ammann the most. It looks like more seasons in the Mexico to come though.

Mailhot’s dark, riveting memoir reveals deep personal stories include domestic violence, sexual abuse, motherhood, and mental illness. Her prose is poetic and poignant. Here’s an example:

My mind is overwhelmed with breakfast alone. I don’t eat for days so you can run your hands over my ribcage. You told me that you always want to eat ribs afterward. I don’t eat for days because I can’t afford it. The meal I order after being fucked, by you, or anyone, is sont earned. Men objectify me, to such a degree that they forget I eat. You feed your dog more kindly than you feed me. That’s men.

That is some fucked up shit, but I appreciate the honesty. It’s a concise, eye-opening read. Definitely a recommendation.

Selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review, this is an impressive list. Here are books I would like to read:

• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• These Truths by Jill Lepore
• Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• Why Comics? by Hillary L. Chute
• The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
• Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Yet another guide on writing and Leith does not offer anything new to the crowded field. It’s not a bad refresher, but it can be skipped if you already read other references.

Nguyễn Thanh Việt:

I never said “I love you” when I was growing up because my parents never said “I love you” to me. That does not mean they did not love me. They loved me so much that they worked themselves to exhaustion in their new America. I hardly ever got to see them. When I did, they were too tired to be joyful. Still, no matter how weary they were, they always made dinner, even if dinner was often just boiled organ meat. I grew up on intestine, tongue, tripe, liver, gizzard and heart. But I was never hungry.

The memory of that visceral love, expressed in sacrifice, is in the marrow of my bones. A word or a tone can make me feel the deepness of that love, as happened to me when I overheard a conversation one day in my neighborhood drugstore in Los Angeles. The man next to me was Asian, not handsome, plainly dressed. He spoke southern Vietnamese on his cell phone. “Con ơi, Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” He looked a little rough, perhaps working class. But when he spoke to his child in Vietnamese, his voice was very tender. What he said cannot be translated. It can only be felt.

Literally, he said, “Hello, child. This is your father. Have you eaten rice yet?” That means nothing in English, but in Vietnamese it means everything. “Con ơi, Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” This is how hosts greet guests who come to the home, by asking them if they have eaten. This was how parents, who would never say “I love you,” told their children they loved them. I grew up with these customs, these emotions, these intimacies, and when I heard this man say this to his child, I almost cried. This is how I know that I am still Vietnamese, because my history is in my blood and my culture is my umbilical cord. Even if my Vietnamese is imperfect, which it is, I am still connected to Vietnam and to Vietnamese refugees worldwide.

And yet, when I was growing up, some Vietnamese Americans would tell me I was not really Vietnamese because I did not speak perfect Vietnamese. Such a statement is a cousin of “love it or leave it.” But there should be many ways of being Vietnamese, just as there are many ways of being French, many ways of being American. For me, as long as I feel Vietnamese, as long as Vietnamese things move me, I am still Vietnamese. That is how I feel the love of country for Vietnam, which is one of my countries, and that is how I feel my Vietnamese self.

A thoughtful perspective on being Vietnamese American. My Vietnamese is also not perfect; therefore, I have been relearning it in the past few years. It is such a joy rediscovering my native language. I encourage the young Vietnamese generations, especially those who are born in the States, to learn Vietnamese. It is a very special language.

Terry Gross tells Jolie Kerr:

Say, “I don’t want to answer that,” or, if that’s too blunt, hedge with a statement like, “I’m having a difficult time thinking of a specific answer to that.” Going the martyr route with something like, “I’m afraid by answering that I’m going to hurt somebody’s feelings and I don’t want to do that,” is another option.

The entire article is worth-reading.