I spend so much time and energy on the work I share at Sunderland University, one or two sessions, out of their social work studies that I’ve decided the share what I create over on my Patreon in a special collection.
It’s just the power points for now. I’ll go back in at some point and share the resources as well. But I just thought it might be of some use for someone else. I’m not expert either. And my style and message has changed over the six years of doing it. I’m mighty please withy last one, November 2025, because I just centred blackness all the way. I was unapologetic and intend to stay this way.
I was reminded that I had this book in my stash while listening to Marquis Bey talk on an episode of This Is Hell!, titled ‘ To steal one’s life back: On the power of fugitive Blackness’
It made me run straight to the book and start reading it with the hope it will support my fugitivity practice as well as provide some juicy quotes for the workshop I’m facilitating with WOC Azadi Collective this Sunday about my fugitivity and visual journaling practices.
It’s all sold out but you can read about it here and get in touch if you’re interested in coming along to some other sessions in 2026.
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark is a book I can’t get out of my head since I finished reading it.
A dark gothic southern historical fantasy novella set in 1920s Macon, Alabama, just after the 1915 film The Birth of the Nation which is being used to grow the KKK but to another level of Ku Kluxes. Monsters upon monsters.
And who is there to fight them and save the day if not three black women armed with blade, bullets and bomb. Helped with special powers and kinship with Gullah women and the supernatural.
Published on October 13, ( my birthday) 2020, this book blurred all the genres, redefines narratives and timelines and had me hooked from start to finish. It messed with my expectations and just left me wanting more.
I hope there’s going to be a sequel as these characters are too powerful and inspiring to be left in one novella.
I’ve got a reading streak going on with kindle – not including the physical books I’ve read this year.
I’m at about 210 days and 70 books done. I surpassed my projection of 50 books on kindle.
Anyway when I get sick, I get to taking it even slower and instead of watching pap TV I turn to books to escape from my uncomfortableness and irritability.
It soothes me to read a good book. And I’ve been getting into speculative fiction. I would have said I’m crime fiction and romance fiction till I die. But once I’ve come to realise, really see how both of these genres prop up the capitalist, white supremacy, patriarchal, colonialist system, I can no longer read them with joy.
I can no longer read them full stop. So to fill the void, I’ve been reading non-fiction by black authors and speculative fiction by black authors too.
If I’m gonna be buying this shit then let me buy the shit that supports my people and continues to help me get free.
I really appreciate it when you’ve bought a book and are ready to dive into it, but you’re just not feeling it. You can’t get into it. So onto the book shelf it goes, collecting dust. Maybe even taunting you.
And then, over time, into a different time, you pick up said book again and you dive into this time, deeply. It’s singing it’s message through you mind, body and soul.
This practice happened for me with Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and here it’s happened again with What is antiracism? by Arun Kundnani.
It’s that time of year again where I’m due to go back into Sunderland University and lecture within the Social Work Department around anti-racism. This started in 2020, in the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprisings around the world. Up until this point there had been no addressing of race and racism within social work training. And you could still say this is the case as one session, 2-3 hours long, is hardly making a dent into racism and its consequences. But I digress.
Anyway each year, my thinking and practices have changed as I’ve read more and developed more as an anti-racist, anti-capitalist agitator, organiser and activist.
I share my learnings and findings as I want to bring about change for everyone. And this transformation can’t be just limited to working on a personal level as the usual anti-racism training/ education would have us believe.
The problem is not just on an individual level, our unconscious biases etc, the problems are structural and are engrained into the bedrock of our societies, countries and communities.
Anyhow, this book What is antiracism? is not only giving me the historical evidence of racism, the term and practices, but is also sharpening my argument around how racism and classism go hand in hand and that you cannot have a revolution without black workers leading the way. As black workers have always fought for freedom and the dismantling of capitalism for everyone, not just for (white) workers as the revolutions within Europe have done.
We have the French Revolution in the 1700s, lead by the urban masses. We have the Russian Revolution lead by the vanguard party for the proletariat. But we have the Saint-Domingue Revolution in the 1700s lead by the enslaved for abolition of all enslavement in the colonies and Europe, in tandem with the French Revolution happening in Paris. The first time that black and white workers were fighting a common cause together on this scale.
Which revolution succeeded?
The revolution lead by the enslaved, black forced labour, which created the sovereign state of Haiti, a black revolution which had at its heart radical action to transform all societies.
This week saw me on my travels again as I visited Liverpool. I was there to see Of Monsters and Men, and the release of their new album, All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade at Jacaranda Baltic. Which was awesome. Intimate and heartfelt.
Before I met up for lunch with my son, I took a walk around Albert Dock and came across the sea barriers full of love locks. Apparently for years, people have come for miles to attach their own lock as a message of unbreakable love. There are some people that think this is an eyesore and that they are damaging the barriers. I say, WTF.
What does it really matter if people want to add to the tradition? What really is the problem? They’re metal barriers there for people’s safety why not add some locks to them as a symbol of love? They don’t weaken the barrier. Probably make them stronger.
Isn’t love supposed to make us stronger? Yes there’s pain and suffering, but a whole heap of joy that comes with it. I’m learning about love at the moment as I read All About Love, by bell hooks, in collaboration with a friend. We read and talk about it. And I’m finding this most useful in developing a new understanding of love. And I suppose I come from the perspiration that I talk about love as the foundation of all that I do/ {BE}. But how can I say this if I don’t really know what love is? Talk is cheap but true understanding and embodiment of love is another story.
I love me a good crime novel. Or even a romance. I’ve loved them from time. I’ve used them as escape, distraction, research even as I’ve always harboured desires to write them. I’ve been on a reading spree this autumn and these genres of fiction have been my go to. Devouring them in a matter of days. Now I see how I’ve been checking out. I’m not dissing the genres, the writing, the individual books. But I am dissing their intention. Yes they’re for escape but they are also there along with consumerism and mainstream media to numb us. To help us stay muddled in thought and actions, propping up the racial capitalist system. I’m taking back my time and attention and I’m starting my personal study curriculum.
I’m back into Patreon. I need to have another notebook, a place to joint downs ideas, mull over readings as I dive deeper into fugitivity with a personal curriculum around black study.
What does this mean? Well it means I’ve going back to my roots in more ways than one. Read W.E.B Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Winter etc . Those who are named as the foundations of black study. Who rendered our stories and drew inspiration from Africa and the Caribbean. Those who looked beyond Western disciplines and knowledges to explore black livingness.
Anyway, I need to continue to feed my own disruption from white supremacy culture/ racial capitalism. I need to keep the flames alive of believing and practicing other ways of {BEING} as it hard trying to make a way out of nowhere in the edges. It’s hard.
Living Wild Studios 