King Lear Masterpost

cultural academia pt. 2

here’s pt. 1

This is a continuation of spreading cultural books to end eurocentrism in academia. There’s definitely more “dark academia” books that fit the aesthetic this time around! Thank you to everyone who added books in the notes of the first post- I just put all those suggestions together in this list so complete credit to everyone who made these suggestions <3

Chinese: 

Shen Congwen

Geling Yan

From Emperor to Citizen 

Life and Death in Shanghai by Niem Cheng

Jin Ping Mei by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng

Japanese:

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Sonezaki Shinju by Chikamatsu Monzaemon

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

Works of Oe

Tosa Nikki by Ki no Tsurayuki

Torikaebaya Monogatari 

Ise Monogatari by Ariwara  no Narihira

A Fool’s Love by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro

The Golden Death by  Tanizaki Jun’ichiro

Hell Scene

I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki

The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Edogawa Ranpo

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

The Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Flower Tales by Yoshiya Nobuko

Books of Hayashi Fumiko

Books of Enchi Fumiko

The Demon’s Sermon on the Marrial Arts by Issao Chozanshi

Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

Fool’s Life by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Thai:

Garin’s Uncanny Files

Irani/Persian:

Disoriental by Negar Djavadi

Mesopotamia:

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Pakistani:

Poetry of Allama Iqbal

Works of Saadat Hassan Manto

My Feudal Lordand Blasphemy by Tehmina Durrani

The Reluctant Fundmamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Raja Gidh by Bano Qudsia

Four Tragic Romances of Punjab (Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiba, Sassi Punnun, and Sohni Mahiwal)

The Crow Eaters by Bapsi Sidhwa

Indian:

Ramayana by Valmiki

Nonviolent Soldier of Islam by Eknath Easwaran

The Wildlings by Nilanjana Roy

Sivagamiyin Sapatham by Kalki Krishnamurthy

Chitralekha

Chandralekha

Rabindranath Tagore’s short stories

Works of Satyajit Rai

Byomkesh Bakshi

Munshi Premchand (Godan, Gaban, Nirmala)

The River Sutra

Mehlua

(comics)

Nagraj

Chacha Choudhary

Lotpot

Champak

Nandan

Vikram Betal

(poets)

The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu

Gitanjali

Works of Ruskin Bond

Mahadevi Verma

Hajari Prasad Divedi

Arabian:

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufail (he lived in Al-Andalus but was Arab I believe)

Filipino:

Works of Nick Joaquin

Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan

The Eight Muses of the Fall By Edgar Calabia Samar

Isabelo’s Archive by Resil B. Mojares

Noli Me Tangere by Dr. Jose Rizal 

El Filibusterismo by Dr. Jose Rizal

Indonesian:

Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Saman by Ayu Utami

The Years of the Voiceless 

Beauty is Wound by Eka Kurniawan

Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan

(poets)

Sapardi Djoko Darmono

Chairil Anwar

Sustardji Calzoum Bachri

W.S. Rendra

Taufik Ismail 

Wiji Thukul

NH Dini 

Dee Lestari

Mira W.

Malaysian:

Garden of Evening Mists

Brazilian:

O Ateneu by Raul Pompeia

Ursula by Maria Firmino

The Hidden Cause; The Alienist by Machado de Assis (short stories)

The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma by Lima Barreto

Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos

Child of the Dark by Carolina Maria de Jesus

Rebellion in the Backlands by Euclides da Cunha

Macunaima by Mario de Andrade

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado

Captain of the Sands by Jorge Amado

Auto da Compadecida by Ariano Suassuna 

City of God by Paulo Lins

Budapest by Chico Buarque

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis

Poems by Vinicius de Moraes

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Antologia Poetica by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Senhora by Jose de Alencar

Colombian:

Works of William Ospina

Chilean:

Works of Isabelle Allende

Mexican: 

Poems by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Laura Esquivel

El Vampiro de la Colonia Roma by Luis Zapata Quiroz

(authors)

Gerardo Murillo

Ruben M Campos

Maria Enriqueta Camarillo de Pereya

Aura by Carlos Fuentes

El Llano by Juan Rulfo

La Casa Junto Al Rio by Elena Garro

Amparo Davila

Guadalipe Duenas

Ines Arredondo

Fransisco Tario

Max Aub

Bernado Couto Castillo

Amado Nervo

Adriana Diaz Enciso

Emiliano Gonzalez

H. Pascal (poetry of vampires and ghosts)

Tequila Gotico: Literatura Gotica en Mexico (published in magazine/good intro to gothic lit in Mexico)

Argentinian:

The Invention  of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges

Nigerian:

Americanah by Chimamanda Adiche

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo 

Malian:

Fatoumata Keita

Senegalese:

Amadou Kane 

Cheik Anta Diop

Sudanese:

Season of Migration to the North

Native American:

Works of Leslie Marmon Silko

Canadian:

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (Ghanan-Canadian)

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (Indigenous Canadian-Ojibwe)

Birdie by Tracie Lindberg (Indigenous Canadian-Cree)

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican-Canadian)

British:

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Jamaican-British)

American:

Works of Gwendolyn Brooks

Works of Langston Hughes

A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava (Colombian-American)

Once again, if your country wasn’t included, that doesn’t mean it’s not important!! Please continue to add more books with their countries in the notes and correct me if I’ve made a mistake!!

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online library so far:

margaret atwood

the brontës (the complete works is a MASSIVE file fyi)

anne carson

hélène cixous

bell hooks

clarice lispector

audre lorde

virginia woolf

compilations

feminist theory

academic writing (both books and articles)

everything here is in pdf format so you should be able to download and read it on any device. it’s slow going because i have a lot of epubs that i have to convert before uploading and the folders i’ve listed here are neither complete nor comprehensive, but it’s a start! 

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winter book recommendations ❄️

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin

buy me a coffee

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in which i recommend books like the netflix algorithm

you wanted it, you got it, babes! caveat: this list is long (seriously, sorry about the length) and i can’t write blurbs for everything, but i highly recommend going and looking at anything that sounds interesting. some books will fall under multiple headings, so i’m listing them twice. i am linking to their purchase pages on bookshop.org, because amazon sucks and bookshop helps support indie booksellers, but if your local indie bookstore offers delivery or curbside pickup, buy it there. and i’m trying to keep this list confined to pretty recent titles, so even though a few older ones might slip in there, it’s definitely centered on releases from the past few years. okay let’s do this.

if you want a book that feels like a primal scream:

godshot by chelsea bieker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (short stories)

trust exercise by susan choi

my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell

the rehearsal by eleanor catton

indelicacy by amina cain

the answers by catherine lacey

the mars room by rachel kushner

the love affairs of nathaniel p. by adelle waldman

if you want clever social commentary and/or hilarious female protagonists:

you too can have a body like mine by alexandra kleeman

the new me by halle butler

queenie by candice carty-williams

prep by curtis sittenfeld

the idiot by elif batumen

my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh

oksana, behave! by maria kuznetsova

where’d you go, bernadette by maria semple

convenience store woman by sayaka murata

nothing to see here by kevin wilson

made for love by alissa nutting

the pisces by melissa broder

the herd by andrea bartz

if you want to start reading the unhinged women canon (not all recent):

mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf

the awakening by kate chopin

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

gone girl by gillian flynn

rebecca by daphne du maurier

white oleander by janet fitch

cousin bette by honore de balzac

wide sargasso sea by jean rhys

play it as it lays by joan didion

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek

valley of the dolls by jacqueline susann

postcards from the edge by carrie fisher

if you liked the secret history:

if we were villains by m.l. rio

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the basic eight by daniel handler

the incendiaries by r.o. kwon

bunny by mona awad

hex by rebecca dinerstein knight

if you like speculative/dystopian fiction:

the dreamers by karen thompson walker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

severance by lin ma

gold fame citrus by claire vaye watkins

the farm by joanne ramos

followers by megan angelo

the power by naomi alderman

the glass hotel by emily st. john mandel

if you want a book that reads like a good fanfic:

normal people by sally rooney

fame adjacent by sarah skilton

stay up with hugo best by erin somers

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid

circe by madeline miller

the nobodies by liza palmer

evvie drake starts over by linda holmes

if you like dark stories about complex relationships between women:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite

baby teeth by zoje stage

dare me by megan abbott

eileen by ottessa moshfegh

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the worst kind of want by liska jacobs

the girls by emma cline

oligarchy by scarlett thomas

devotion by madeline stevens

baby by annaleese jochems

marlena by julie buntin

bunny by mona awad

necessary people by anna pitoniak

if you like stories about complicated families:

red at the bone by jacqueline woodson

the care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls by anissa grey

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

bee season by myla goldberg

bowlaway by elizabeth mccracken

everything i never told you by celeste ng

the nest by cynthia d’aprix sweeney

the grammarians by cathleen schine

ask again, yes by mary beth keane

if you like smart and thoughtful books about relationships between women:

my brilliant friend and the neapolitan novels by elena ferrante

such a fun age by kiley reid

gingerbread by helen oyeyimi

the female persuasion by meg wolitzer

the burning girl by claire messud

expectation by anna hope

the animators by kayla rae whitaker

if you want something queer that isn’t YA:

my education by susan choi

permission by saskia vogel

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

real life by brandon taylor

after dolores by sarah schulman

patsy by nicole dennis-benn

wilder girls by rory power

enter the aardvark by jessica anthony

less by andrew sean greer

exciting times by naiose dolan

you just want something good and are willing to take a chance on one of these books i love (these are not all recent, i just like them a lot):

dept. of speculation by jenny offill

the interestings by meg wolitzer

godshot by chelsea bieker

play it as it lays by joan didion

the bonfire of the vanities by tom wolfe

wolf in white van by john darnielle

things you would know if you grew up around here by nancy wayson dinan

sex and rage by eve babitz

wise blood by flannery o’connor

leading men by christopher castellani

saint x by alexis schaitkin

the cosmopolitans by sarah schulman

lake success by gary shteyngart

odds against tomorrow by nathaniel rich

the great believers by rebecca makkai

good citizens need not fear by maria reva (short stories)

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poems about the moon 🌒

Worm Moon by Mary Oliver

Moon Song by Roy Ivan Johnson

To Catch the Moon by Chong Bum Kim

Morning Song by Sara Teasdale

Not The Moon by Margaret Atwood

Everyone Is Asleep by Enomoto Seifu-jo

The Sweetness of Dogs by Mary Oliver

The Moon Looked Into My Window by E. E. Cummings

Dear Moon by Warsan Shire

The Poet Of Ignorance by Anne Sexton

Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later by Margaret Atwood

Will You Come? by Edward Thomas

If My Hands Could Peel by Federico García Lorca

Days Of Kindness by Leonard Cohen

The Moonlight by Noah Buchholz

The Moon was But a Chin of Gold by Emily Dickinson

What We Have by Warsan Shire

buy me a coffee

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175+ non-Western literature recommendations to diversify your academia, organized by continent + country

I love world literature, and I’ve been frustrated by the lack of representation of it in literature + academia communities on tumblr, so here are some recommendations. I haven’t read all of these myself yet, but the ones I have are excellent and the ones I haven’t come highly recommended from Goodreads and are on my to-read list! 

With the exception of anthologies of older works, all of these books were written before 2000 (some literally thousands of years earlier), since I’m less familiar with super contemporary literature. Also, I only included each writer once, though many of them have multiple amazing books. I’m sure there are plenty of incredible books I’m missing, so please feel free to add on to this list! And countries that aren’t included absolutely have a lot to offer as well–usually, it was just hard to find books available in English translation (which all of the ones below are.)

List below the cut (it’s my first post with a cut so let’s hope I do it right… and also warning that it’s super long)

Seguir leyendo

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Journals, articles, books & texts, on folklore, mythology, occult, and related -to- general anthropology, history, archaeology. 

Some good and/or interesting (or hokey) ‘examples’ included for most resources. tryin to organize & share stuff that was floating around onenote.

Journals (open access) — Folklore, Occult, etc

Culutural Analysis - folklore, popular culture, anthropology — The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture

Folklore - folklore, anthropology, archaeology — The Making of a Bewitchment Narrative, Grecian Riddle Jokes

Incantatio - journal on charms, charmers, and charming — Verbal Charms from a 17th Century Manuscript

Oral Tradition — Jewish Folk Literature, Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics — Nani Fairtyales about the Cruel Bride, Energy as the Mediator between Natural and Supernatural Realms

International Journal of Intangible Heritage 

Studia Mythologica Slavica (many articles not English) — Dragon and Hero, Fertility Rites in the Raining Cave, The Grateful Wolf and Venetic Horses in Strabo’s Geography

Folklorica - Slavic & Eastern European folklore association — Ritual: The Role of Plant Characteristics in Slavic Folk Medicine, Animal Magic

Esoterica - The Journal of Esoteric Studies — The Curious Case of Hermetic Graffiti in Valladolid Cathedral 

The Esoteric Quarterly

Mythological Studies Journal

Luvah - Journal of the Creative Imagination — A More Poetical Character Than Satan

Transpersonal Studies — Shamanic Cosmology as an Evolutionary Neurocognitive Epistemology, Dreamscapes

Beyond Borderlands  — tumblr

Paranthropology

GOLEM - Journal of Religion and Monsters — The Religious Functions of Pokemon, Anti-Semitism and Vampires in British Popular Culture 1875-1914

Correspondences - Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism — Kriegsmann’s Philological Quest for Ancient Wisdom 

— History, Archaeology

Adoranten - pre-historic rock art

Chitrolekha - India art & design history — Gomira Dance Mask

Silk Road — Centaurs on the Silk Road: Hellenistic Textiles in Western China

Sino-Platonic - East Asian languages and civilizations — Discursive Weaving Women in Chinese and Greek Traditions

MELA Notes - Middle East Librarians Association

Didaskalia - Journal for Ancient Performance

Ancient Narrative - Greek, Roman, Jewish novelistic traditions — The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel

Akroterion - Greek, Roman — The Deer Hunter: A Portrait of Aeneas

Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies  — Erotic and Separation Spells, The Ancients’ One-Horned Ass

Roman Legal Tradition - medieval civil law — Between Slavery and Freedom 

Phronimon - South African society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities — Special Issue vol. 13 #2, Greek philosophy in dialogue with African+ philosophy

The Heroic Age - Early medieval Northwestern Europe — Icelandic Sword in the Stone

Peregrinations - Medieval Art and Architecture — Special Issue vol. 4 #1, Mappings 

Tiresas - Medieval and Classical — Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages

Essays in Medieval Studies  — The Female Spell-caster in Middle English Romances, The Sweet Song of Satan

Hortulus - Medieval studies — Courtliness & the Deployment of Sodomy in 12th-Century Histories of Britain, Monsters & Monstrosities issue, Magic & Witchcraft issue

Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU

Medieval Archaeology — Divided and Galleried Hall-Houses, The Hall of the Knights Templar at Temple Balsall

Medieval Feminist Forum  — multiculturalism issue; Gender, Skin Color and the Power of Place … Romance of Moriaen, Writing Novels About Medieval Women for Modern Readers, Amazons & Guerilleres

Quidditas - medieval and renaissance 

Medieval Warfare

The Viking Society - ridiculous amount of articles from 1895-2011

Journals (limited free/sub/institution access)

Al-Masaq - Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean — Piracy as Statecraft: The Policies of Taifa of Denia, free issue

Mythical Creatures of Europe - article + map

Folklore - limited free access — Volume 122 #3, On the Ambiguity of Elves

Digital Philology -  a journal of medieval cultures — Saracens & Race in Roman de la Rose Iconography

Pomegranate - International Journal for Pagan Studies

Transcultural Psychiatry

European Journal of English Studies  — Myths East of Venice issue, Esotericism issue

Books, Texts, Images etc. — Folklore, Occult etc.

Magical Gem Database - Greek/Egyptian gems & talismans [x] [x]

Biblioteca Aracana - (mostly) Greek pagan history, rituals, poetry etc. — Greater Tool Consecration, The Yew-Demon

Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - [x]

The Gnostic Society Library — The Corpus Hermeticum, Hymn of the Robe of Glory

Grimoar - vast occult text library — Grimoires, Greek & Roman Necromancy, Queer Theology, Ancient Christian Magic

Internet Sacred Text Archive - religion, occult, folklore, etc. ancient texts

Verse and Transmutation - A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry

— History

The Internet Classics Archive - mainly Greco-Roman, some Persian & Chinese translated texts

Bodleian Oriental Manuscript Collection - [x] [x] [x]

Virtual Magic Bowl Archive - Jewish-Aramaic incantation bowl text and images [x] [x] 

Vindolanda Tablets - images and translations of tablets from 1st & 2nd c. [x]

Corsair - online catalog of the Piedmont Morgan library (manuscripts) [x] [x]

Beinecke rare book & manuscripts  — Wagstaff miscellany, al-Qur’ān—1813

LUNA - tonnes from Byzantine manuscripts to Arabic cartography

Maps on the web - Oxford Library [x] [x] [x]

Bodleian Library manuscripts - photographs of 11th-17th c. manuscripts — Treatises on Heraldry, The Worcester Fragments (polyphonic music), 12 c. misc medical and herbal texts

Early Manuscripts at Oxford U - very high quality photographs — (view through bottom left) Military texts by Athenaeus Mechanicus 16th c. [x] [x], MS Douce 195 Roman de la Rose [x] [x]

Trinity College digital manuscript library  — Mathematica Medica, 15th c.

eTOME - primary sources about Celtic peoples

Websites, Blogs — Folklore, Occult etc.

Demonthings - Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project

Invocatio - (mostly) western esotericism

Heterodoxology - history, esotericism, science — Religion in the Age of Cyborgs

The Recipes Project - food, magic, science, medicine — The Medieval Invisible Man (invisibility recipes)

Morbid Anatomy - museum/library in Brooklyn

— History 

Islamic Philosophy Online - tonnes of texts, articles, links, utilities, this belongs in every section; mostly English

Medicina Antiqua - Graeco-Roman medicine

History of the Ancient World - news and resources — The So-called Galatae, Gauls, Celts in Early Hellenistic Balkans; Maidens, Matrons Magicians: Women & Personal Ritual Power in Late Antique Egypt

Διοτίμα - Women & Gender in Antiquity

Bodleian Library Exhibitions Online — Khusraw & Shirin, Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-Place of Cultures

Medievalists — folk studies, witchcraft, mythology, science tags

Atlas Obscura — Bats and Vampiric Lore of Pére Lachaise Cemetery 

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Classic Horror Novels That Are NOT Frankenstein Or Dracula

The Vampyre by John William Polidori

Carmilla by J. Sharidon le Fanu

The Flowers Of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer by Patrick Suskind & translated by John E. Woods

The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll & Mister Hyde by John Louis Stevenson

Complete Stories & Poems by Edgar Allen Poe

The Picture Of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wild

The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James

The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

The Hounds Of Baskerville by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan le Fanu

Melmoth The Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin

The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

*Note these are all novels published BEFORE the 1900s -- I've got a whole other list of those. If you're interested, hmu.

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vaguely academic things to do to keep yourself entertained

go down a wikipedia research hole by clicking the first term you don’t understand

binge a crashcourse series end to end (personal recs: world history, history of science, big history, philosophy)

find free books on project gutenberg

download some western classics for free

borrow books and audiobooks from the libby app or borrowbox

start a commonplace book

take a khan academy course

browse MIT’s free online course materials

teach yourself to code

go on a google scholar essay dive

try the open access button to avoid some paywalls for academic media, or install unpaywall that does a similar thing

research the history of the place you where you live

tempt the wrath of the duolingo owl and learn a language

search for online streams of the local tv in your target language’s country and use as background noise for immersion points

print and scrapbook favourite poetry and literature quotes

improve your handwriting by doing handwriting exercises

learn philosophy with the philosophize this! podcast. actually just check out all the educational spotify podcasts there are many good ones

start a weekly club with friends to share new and interesting things you’ve learnt that week

clean and reorganise your study space, physical or digital

check out online museums

fave educational youtube channels that I adore: vsauce, crashcourse, smarter every day, kurzgesagt, school of life, tom scott, r. c. waldun, vsauce3, primer, mark rober, veritasium, asapSCIENCE, scishow, TED-ed

hopefully you’ll find something to enjoy! happy learning x

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(instagram: myfairesttreasure)

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