Rachel Vorona Cote
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rvoronacote.bsky.social
Rachel Vorona Cote
@rvoronacote.bsky.social
2.9K followers 670 following 1.6K posts
Author of Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today. Freelance book critic all over the place. Get in touch: [email protected]. @RVoronaCote on Instagram. She / Her.
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rvoronacote.bsky.social
Happy Halloween, my four-year-old is dressed as Shaun the Sheep today.
Four-year-old white male child wearing a sheep costume with a red Shaun the Sheep short-sleeved tee over it to indicate which sheep he is.
October 31, 2025 at 2:59 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
All that said, HELL YEAH to Tramell Tillman’s win.
Tramell Tillman beams at the camera. Pictured from the chest up, he is wearing a white tux shirt and black bow tie. A pair of hands are visible, straightening his collar.
September 15, 2025 at 3:30 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Until an unfortunate collision with the vacuum cleaner, this was a tall, baroque tower of magnetic tiles. I am in deep shit when my son comes home.
Multicolored magnetic tiles—squares and rectangles, mostly—strewn across the floor
August 15, 2025 at 4:08 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
I’ve decided that this is my wide-brimmed era.
Woman with shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair wearing a cream colored canvas wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a light green tank top
August 10, 2025 at 12:20 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
This is like Wuthering Heights by way of Georges Bataille.
Audience reaction inside the theater was largely mixed, with some visible restlessness, while others were won over. The film, described by one attendee as aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive, leans hard into Fennell’s now-familiar brand of stylized depravity. It’s a deliberately unromantic take on Brontë’s novel, stripped of emotional nuance and full of salacious detours that serve shock value. There’s hyper-sexualized imagery — far more explicit than any previous adaptation of this material. The film opens with a public hanging that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy. A nun even fondles the corpse’s visible erection. Later, a woman is strapped into a horse’s reins for a BDSM-tinged encounter. There are several masturbation scenes shot in that now-signature Fennell style—intimate, clinical, and purposefully discomforting. The camera lingers on suggestive textures: egg yolks running through fingers, dough being kneaded with quiet aggression, a slug sliding slowly down glass.
August 6, 2025 at 12:28 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t tell anyone, but there would be signs.
A light blue Smythson planner (called the Soho Weekly Journal). It costs $375.
August 5, 2025 at 12:24 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
If United States' willing entanglement in this genocide were not already obvious, the paper of record has now "revised" their account of this precious baby's death in the classically American manner of a rejected health insurance claim.
July 30, 2025 at 7:55 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
I am becoming unglued.
After rendering Gaza largely uninhabitable, Israel is systemically starving the people fighting to survive there. This is only their most recent tactic; it’s been clear from the start that Israel is committed to the mass extermination of Gazans. Now we are seeing footage of babies whose limbs are the width of their fragile bones. All this carnage, made possible with the United States’ prodigious financial support. I’m writing this post because I feel desperate and enraged — not because I possess unique goodness or sensitivity, but because I am an American tax payer, a mother, and a half-Ashkenazi woman who sees the reality of this situation and finds it unbearable. And yes, I do think we should all find it unbearable. More importantly, we should all be doing everything we can to mitigate the effects of this genocide and to put pressure on our federal representatives to end it. So, I am begging everyone reading this: Do something right now. Donate to Palestinian organizations like @thesameerproject, who are fighting to nourish starving Gazans. Call your representatives repeatedly. Post on social media, and do that repeatedly too! Let @msrachelforlittles be your example, especially if you are any kind of public figure. Let your followers know what is in your heart—what I hope is in your heart—and urge them to act as well. Do you recognize yourself and your loved ones in the sweaty playground selfie I posted of Jack and me? Surely many of you do. We are no different, our lives no more precious, than the ones being ravaged in Gaza. We are running out of time to help. Please, please raise your voice and do everything in your power to end this manmade catastrophe. A selfie of my three year old son and me. He is leaned over so that his face is almost upside down
July 24, 2025 at 5:43 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Sending this to any and all of you when you displease me.
A scene of trees and hills with white text superimposed that reads “well that’s not very in love with me of you”
July 19, 2025 at 12:01 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Poor bastard needs to free himself from the prison inside his mind
Page from Robert Lopshire’s children’s book, Put Me in the Zoo in which a large yellow, vaguely feline creature with red spots asks two zookeepers, “Will you keep me in the zoo? I want to stay in here with you.”
July 2, 2025 at 11:28 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
You can’t whimsy your way out of this one, guy.
A silver cybertruck with a pair of googly eyes on the front
May 19, 2025 at 1:51 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
This means there was a tie for Pope.

(Just looking for an excuse to post a still from one of my favorite movies in recent history, The Worst Person in the World)
Julie and Eivind from The Worst Person in the World, shotgunning smoke
May 8, 2025 at 6:13 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Me: Where have all my pens gone?

Every book I’ve left around the apartment:
Two books in a stack, each with a pen inside, holding my place
April 30, 2025 at 4:00 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
A kind stranger made me aware of this:
Two images of a whippet, the first with the word “whippet” next to it, and the second with a red Devo cap on its head with the words “whippet good” next to it
April 27, 2025 at 6:54 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Just learned that this is my three-year-old’s favorite Peanuts special 😐
Snoopy driving a sled with Charlie Brown in the harness
April 20, 2025 at 9:35 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
They gave this pretty, pretty man a gold tooth and decided that was sufficient for his transformation into a Brontëan antihero. Amazing critical reading skills. Impeccable cinematic instincts. Good work, everybody.
Jason Elordi in costume as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. He has a gold tooth. It's very silly.
April 15, 2025 at 3:23 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Parenting, man.
Screenshot of google search: "how to explain concept of time to a toddler"
April 15, 2025 at 12:05 AM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Also, please take some time to contemplate this gorgeously melancholy art, which Book World commissioned for the piece.
A shadowy abstract image in two shades of green: one grayish, the other a bit tan. It almost seems as if you can make out the tall trunk of a tree.
April 10, 2025 at 3:27 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Retire the comedy and tragedy masks and replace them with Walter Goggins
Walter Goggins as Uncle Baby Billy in The Righteous Gemstones Walter Goggins in The White Lotus
March 17, 2025 at 5:23 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Apple TV+’s Frog and Toad animated miniseries rewrites the story of Frog looking funny in his bathing suit so that all of the animals get bathing suits that are identical to his. Weak shit. A narrative totally defanged! Arnold Lobel is writhing in his grave!
A scene from the Frog and Toad animated series. Frog is standing on a rock and looking at his animal friends in the water. They, like Frog, are wearing purple striped bathing suits.
March 11, 2025 at 9:51 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
It’s hard to believe that Too Much was published five years ago today. I’m a different person from the one who wrote her, and necessarily so. But I’m very glad I did, and grateful to everyone who has read and shared her. ❤️
Me holding a copy of my book in front of my face (the book features a closeup of Frederick Augustus Sandys’ painting of Helen of Troy — she has curly red hair and is scowling).
February 25, 2025 at 10:42 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
So, no art that does not serve the purpose of propaganda. It’s truly nauseating to see this in writing.
February 22, 2025 at 11:58 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Coming in May 2025 from @sandtclassics.bsky.social , @sarahweinman.bsky.social and I introduce Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s wild ride of novel, Lady Audley’s Secret! This much-needed series brings so many lesser read, yet very worthy 19th C novels to readers, and I’m grateful to be a small part of it.
A book cover with a green urn on a maroon background. Underneath, on a cream background reads Lady Audley’s Secret, then Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and then in smaller type “In conversation with Sarah Weinman and Rachel Vorona Cote.”
February 6, 2025 at 10:57 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
This 2004 excerpt from Howard Zinn’s “The Impossible Will Take a Little While” is helping me today. Maybe it will help you too.

www.thenation.com/article/poli...
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
February 5, 2025 at 3:33 PM
rvoronacote.bsky.social
Here is the addendum to my institution's diversity and inclusion statement that I include in my syllabi and read to my students at the start of every term. I've especially emphasized it this week. Please feel free to use it if you like. These are scary times, but we must stand for what's right.
All that said, not all views merit equal space in an academic conversation. In our classroom, we will strive to cultivate an anti-discriminatory space. Comments driven by misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, classism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all other ideologies that turn on the oppression of vulnerable groups of people do not belong in this classroom. Please let me know of ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or other students or student groups.
January 30, 2025 at 4:40 PM