I’ve written and deleted a large chunk of something not to be read in these parts; some rants should remain private affairs. Less from me, here are a few articles and essays I’ve returned to many times over and over again about prison abolition, some more broadly related to solidarity and coalition-building. (There’s a useful Google Drive folder with many resources as well.) I admit feeling a little sheepish about sharing such a meagre list, but I wanted to recommend only what I’ve really processed and have fully discussed with my peers and committed to memory; learning, of course, is not a contest, I am only reminding myself.
Dylan Rodriguqez’s 2006 essay, “Asian-American Studies in the Age of the Prison-Industrial Complex”, on “the historical linkage between model minorityism and the militarized cultural production of the ‘law and order’ state.”
Hyejin Shim on the limits and effects of Asian-American allyship: “In a moment where it’s held as true that “the personal is political,” what kind of political acts & strategies (or lack thereof) do the emotions of guilt and shame shape?”
Many writings by and interviews with Ruth Wilson Gilmore in the New York Times, a transcript of a podcast she did with The Intercept, an interview with Historical Materialism, a talk with Paul Gilroy, a podcast on “true decolonization” and literacy with The Funambulist, and an article in Social Justice Journal.
A galvanizing interview with prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba (Prison Culture), and her op-ed for the New York Times. “I’m on a 500-year clock right now. I’m right here knowing that we’ve got a hell of a long time before we’re going to see the end. Right now, all we’re doing is building the conditions that will allow the thing to happen.”
Robin DG Kelley for The Intercept, and an earlier one in Black Ink.
Books:
I finished Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, which is one of those books I never read despite encountering it around every corner of the web—the PDF is available for free—because I knew I’d be committing to something we can call a “difficult time.” Feinberg separates the act of naming—sifting through terminologies, wrestling through meanings—from the truth of those who are named, and that, for many, is a huge growing pain. I cried at home, I cried at the park, I cried in the shower…
I am reading a biography of the painter Milton Avery by Barbara Haskell, and skimming a career overview of Octavia E. Butler by Gerry Canavan that offers detailed information about her archives at Huntington Library. Both were reclusive but rebellious, and are two heroes of mine, though not only for those reasons. The Haskell offers far more in terms of synthesis and logical conclusions regarding Avery’s “pictorial logic,” specifically his use of color. The Canavan is what I’m reading as supplement to what I really want, which is a thorough biography of Butler’s life.
Skipping around some books of poems: Wallace Stevens, June Jordan, William Carlos Williams… “In summer, the song sings itself,” writes Williams, and so I’ve been sitting outside trying to listen. I really don’t like Walt Whitman but here he offers what that song might be, and his words make me feel like this:
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
…
This is the press of a bashful hand—this is the float and odor of hair;
This is the touch of my lips to yours—this is the murmur of yearning;
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face;
This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.“A Transparent Summer Morning”
Movies:
Ocean Waves (Tomomi Mochizuki, 1993): When I watched this in high school, I felt this nothing feeling of staring at a mirror reflection, and I never had any introspective response besides flat recognition. Much less is familiar to me now, so maybe that gives the movie a different kind of depth. The aggressive and confusing ways that teenagers will pursue their feelings without knowing what it is that they feel, the fear of uncovering the crush as just another annoying classmate, how fighting escalates and extends over months and even years until everyone forgets what even happened in the first place, and despite that crush being circumstantially wrong-sighted and ill-timed, the total conviction that it is definitely love, and that no one can stop you.
Summer vacations between semesters, as is the case here, become extracurricular activities with repercussions that seep into school almost immediately. I laughed a lot and thought about how I absolutely did not find this movie funny as a teenager, I took it very seriously. I still do, but part of the movie, I think, is also about the absurdity of adolescence and heat-induced, hormonal lapses in judgment, which, for whatever reason, feel a bit more forgiven in the summer.
Tomomi Mochizuki, Ocean Waves (1993).
Hope everyone is well.
Recent writings:
I wrote on Werner Herzog’s latest film, Family Romance, LLC. over at MUBI.