Bright Wall/Dark Room Contribution – “We Contain Multitudes”

I’m thrilled and honored to announce I have a piece in this month’s issue of the remarkable Bright Wall/Dark Room!

I wrote about my life-long emotional connection to the protagonists of Studio Ghibli, and you can find it on BWDR’s website. I highly encourage you to subscribe if you can. Their content is masterful and worth your support.

Here’s an handy-dandy excerpt from my piece:

If we accept the auteur theory at face value and cite the director as a film’s primary architect, then Miyazaki’s are fashioned from the ground up on foundations of love. Acutely, irrevocably so—too many captured echoes of life’s intimacies to absorb with casual detachment. Reciprocal human kindness and painstaking hand-drawn animation form their bone marrow; their DNA, the compassionate self-discovery of women. Venerating Miyazaki’s emancipated heroines may be old hat, but they are, effectively, stewards of my life. Inspiration. Aspiration. Ariadne and her thread, unraveling a path of actualization.

At different forked roads in my 27 years, I saw Miyazaki’s women and thought, I can? And each, in her distinct way, said Yes.