Donita Reason: Who is she??
Years ago (2006, I think) I went to the Rat City Roller Derby and was immediately taken by the names all the female skaters gave themselves—names like Sybil Unrest, Farrah Moans, Burnett Down, and Ida Slapter. My own alter ego / shadow identity came to me immediately: Donita Reason. I didn’t dare call myself a writer back then (at the time I worked as an ad sales rep at an alt-weekly), but now I know the truth: I’ve always been a writer. No one needs permission or a reason to call themselves one.
These days I write mostly about mothering and care work, which I find endlessly fascinating and important, though absolutely not what I imagined as my beat. I started out as a food writer, but I’ve always been an insatiable consumer of media—television, radio, Sassy magazine, commercial jingles, the Sunday Times, poetry, nonfiction, thrifted cookbooks, pop music, NBA basketball, and even more television. I’ve come to accept that for me it’s all life and it’s all research and it’s all inspiring and constantly commingling in my brain; I’m low-key always trying to figure out new ways to connect and put ideas and together. Increasingly I’m interested in exploring care, collective care, deservedness, middle age, love, Filipinx American identity, embodiment, liberation, and physical pleasure.
In this newsletter, I give myself permission to follow whatever paths my mind needs to take—to write about whatever I want, just see where it takes me, where it takes us. I’m always happy to hear from you—what you’re thinking about, what these letters bring up in you.
Thanks for being here.
Why subscribe?
When you subscribe (for free!), I get an email telling me you’ve done so, which is an embarrassingly thrilling—and deeply encouraging—sign that my work means something to you and that we’re already in conversation in some way. It’s a deliberate step towards being in relationship and it means more to me than you could ever know. Also: if you subscribe, every essay goes straight to your inbox and you don’t have to check back here for updates.
Donita Reason is free for now and likely always will be, but I believe all of us should be paid for our work (and happily pay other writers for their newsletters), so there is a paid subscription option (and a discount for annual subscriptions!) Watch this space!
In the meantime, if you’d like to support my work in a tangible way, you can purchase my books Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change and/or Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy.
