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.
For my birthday, my beautiful and talented daughter gave me 107 Days by Kamala Harris. I might have dropped some hints beforehand but boy was I pleased to receive this gift.
As soon as I heard Harris had published a memoir all about her run for the President of the United Stated of America, I knew I had to read it.
During that remarkable time from 21 July 2024 to the election 5 November, when Harris was propelled into the run for office, given such a historically short time for campaigning, I was hooked.
Hooked into hope. Having a black/ brown woman as president of the United States wouldn’t just be radical and amazing it would change the world. Harris would change the world, not just through what she stood for in terms of policies, but more importantly what message her face in the White House would say about us to the world. Thanks once again to a black woman stepping up, caring and making changes not for egotistical, selfish gains but for the benefit of all
I’ve always been in conflict with Black Feminism, in that reality that black women receive the worst treatment from everyone within society and yet we go to bat, stand up and fight for everybody’s freedom. We lead from a foundation of love while at the same time surviving and thriving within a world that does not give that same love in return.
We are destroyed on the daily and yet we still love ourselves and each other. That is what we have to do, love ourselves in the face of being unloved by others.
So here I am reading 107 days, feeling as if Harris is talking directly to me because of her writing style and because I’ve watched far too many of her speeches and interviews to hear her voice while I’m reading, I’m taken back to that time of campaigning and I’m crying when I’m reading.
I’m crying for what Harris had to go through during this time and after. The behind the scenes undermining and neglect, to the public abuse and questioning of her credentials, intelligence and race, by her opponents as well as those who were supposed to be her supporters.
How there’s nothing more revealing of what is within a person’s heart as when a black/ brown woman walks into a room and what that individual says or does in response. Do they see the black/brown woman? Do they recognise them for who they are/ as a human being or do they operate through a stereotypical, misogynoir lens?
I’m crying because during those 107 days, I bought into the whole Harris campaign. I had to. No choice. I knew that to get a black/brown woman elected as President was a long shot, was believing in unicorns, was hopeful, blissful dreaming for groundbreaking change.
And I was all in. I had to be. I had to believe it was possible otherwise what’s the fucking point! what would that be saying about how I viewed myself and my place in this world?
I’m crying now not just because of all those hopes and possibilities being dashed when Harris didn’t win. But also because of what the world is like now because she didn’t win and the dick for an arse who is now in control of the White House and what a fucking mess he’s making of the job, the country, the world. how many people he’s hurting and killing because he didn’t give a fuck. Because he doesn’t and never will care. Harris cared and cares.
I’m crying because my heart was broken then when Harris didn’t win and it’s breaking now as I read how Harris was graceful and joyful in her appearances and actions during the campaign while dealing with racist, sexist shit behind the scenes.
Harris was used just like any other black/brown woman, brought in to repair and save the day, without given the proper support or time or resources to do so. But expectations were and still are there to excel beyond anyone/ everyone else while given less than in terms of resources, grace, the benefit of the doubt.
What Harris achieved in 107 days was remarkable and historical and downright amazing. But does she receive her rightful credit and accolades? Not a fucking chance.
I’m crying because I still have hope in the face of such shit. I’m hurting with hope.
Hope is a practicing and we have to keep practicing.
“Reading across our curiosities, the story and imagination are testimonies grounded in the material expression of black life”
Excerpt From Dear Science and Other Stories Katherine McKittrick
I’m a multi-passionate Creatrix ( I don’t use artist because it’s a term historically linked to imperialism and colonialism and we need to unlearn that shit!).
Reading feeds these passions. I can get myself lost up in a book or trip on many different subjects/ disciplines .
Today I was reading a crime novel, then a self-help book around self-sabotage, a healing and grief article, a Substack newsletter on erotic engineering, permaculture design, a Black feminist thought anthology, and instructions on a tube of Polyfilla!
I’ve always been curious. I got beats as a child for asking questions. For asking why?
For me fugitivity flourishes in and with having the time and space to lean into my multi-passions without anybody else telling me to stop, or move along or get back to ‘work’.
During my favourite season of the year, I’m leaning into my reading. I’m devising my own reading list of self-study around getting free.
I’m reading across disciplines and I’m reading into black studies and black livingness. I realised today, while, reading Katherine McKittrick, what I’m doing and have been doing is searching for and following the breadcrumbs that are shared through the writings and practices of black scholars, creatives and beings that have at their centre/ purpose/ inspiration black freedom.
Living Wild Studios 