kusama pyjamas
Titled for Yayoi Kusama, who is the cat's pyjamas.
the new issue of women & performance: ”punk anteriors: genealogy, theory, performance.” it was co-edited by fiona ib ngo and beth stinson and features articles by mimi thi nguyen and kate wadkins, plus a review of alice bag’s book violence girl. this image is by allison hamilton.
*Issue of WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Spring 2014 – DEBT*
*Guest Editors – Meena Alexander and Rosalind Petchesky*
* *
CALL FOR PAPERS
How do we make sense of debt? What does it mean to live in a world of debt – whether you are a college student in the United States, a struggling farmer in India, a homeowner, a country? What does it mean to forgive a debt? How have these meanings shifted over time? Do ancestral debt, ritual sacrifices to the gods, tribal and national vendettas, debts to parents and children, colonial debt, slavery and indenture hover as foreshadowings of the late capitalist turn, *when* *debt becomes a way of life*? Whether seeking justice or imposing injustice, debt has its own temporality, compressing and bringing forward pasts, reconfiguring and elongating futures.
As student loans in the US surpass $1 trillion, is student debt becoming a form of training and disciplining bodies, an apprenticeship in “debt enfranchisement”? Has debt become the newly normal way of performing citizenship? Under conditions of neoliberal globalization, green card holders and naturalized citizens find themselves beholden to the nation state; indeed this becomes an unwritten part of assimilation into America. Those without debt (mortgages, loans, credit cards) by definition have no credit—are discredited, literally disenfranchised and placed in a kind of moral and political state of exception at the extreme end of which reside undocumented migrants and refugees. What are the racialized, gendered, sexual, and generational effects, and affects, of these contemporary realities?
Yet debt also makes powerful ethical and historical claims on us that contain seeds of feminist, anti-racist, and progressive transformation. Demands for reparations or redress for the descendants of slavery and victims of apartheid or occupation are based on an assumption that, as Stephen Best and Saidiya Hartman write, “assessing debt and calculating injury [may] itself [be] a formula for justice.” But is the language of debt (“You owe me!”) sufficient to encompass ethical bonds and social justice? And what happens when debt overwhelms moral obligations, de-moralizing both debtor and creditor?
We invite contributions to an issue of WSQ on “Debt” that will probe these contradictions and their reverberations in economics, politics, poetry, visual arts, popular culture, and everyday life. Submissions may address, but need not be limited to, any of the following themes, keeping in mind how they involve relations of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality:· Student debt, universities in debt
· Debt as a moral and/or political language
· Mythic, ancestral, psychic dimensions of debt
· Debt across generations (within countries, families)
· Colonial debt
· National and transnational debt and deficits (US, Eurozone, elsewhere)
· Managing debt through micro-credit, micro-lending, structural adjustments· Household debt and homelessness
· Medical debt
· Securitization of debt; banks as vampires
· Occupy initiatives around debt (StrikeDebt, Rolling Jubilee)
· Reparations and redress (for slavery, occupation, torture)
· Debt as injustice or justice
· Aesthetic dimensions of debt
· Sexual debt
· Trauma and debt
· Gift vs. Debt
· The female or transgender body and debt
tumblr bell hooks fans:
Wild Fig Books will be hosting a signing for bell hooks on Nov. 19th as she promotes her new poetry collection, Appalachian Elegy. If you would like to prepay to reserve a signed copy to be mailed to you or a loved one, then please message us at wildfigbooks@gmail.com, or through facebook.com/thewildfigbooks or call us at the store at 859-381-8133. The book is 80 pages with 66 poems and is $19.95 + .06% state sales tax and $2.29 domestic shipping ($23.44 total). Books will be sent out November 20-21. Please feel free to email us if you have any questions.
“Women are constantly being killed by their husbands, lovers, brothers, and fathers—it’s reported every day, and in a way, the frequency of the reporting normalizes the murders. Terror and anger and helplessness come when I think of all that goes unreported, either because it’s not known to the media or because it isn’t quite murder yet. When I first started writing Mr. Fox I was interested in something that’s coded into the way these stories are reported: the ever-present potential for violence that seems to lurk within the love men have for women. Is it real? If so, how can we survive it? Can the violence be overcome once and for all, or is it something that dies down and has to be renegotiated every time it flares back up again?”
Najva Sol is a Iranian-American writer, photographer, and multi-media artist. She was born in the DC area, and received her BA in Creative Writing from Eugene Lang The New School For Liberal Arts. Since then, she has worked at various non-profits that deal with some combination of art presenting, queer empowerment, people of color, social justice, and education. She co-founded an artist collective called The Lowbrow Society for the Arts in NYC, where she curated various underground events, including a renegade art show on a subway car. She is currently an MFA drop-out in poetry at the California College of the Arts. Her writing has been published in Look Look Magazine, AM New York, Release, Inprint, Periwinkle, Bitch Magazine, and more. Her other work was recently featured in the National Queer Arts Festival (2010 2011), Femina Potens Gallery, Commonwealth Club, and The Red Poppy Art House. Lowbrow Society has appeared in Nerve.com, New York Press, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Time Out New York. (via Bio | ; & })
Has so many projects I don’t know how to describe her practice. Anyway, one of the artists on tumblr who’s also feat in Love Inshallah.
Everyone seems to have an opinion about Muslim women, even (especially!) those who have never met one. Co-editors Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi thought it was about time we heard directly from Muslim women themselves. You’ll be captivated by these moving, funny, provocative and surprising stories, each as individual as the writers themselves. (via Love, InshAllah)
New queer fiction by me. Also check out the interview about the piece at the bottom.
Here is a proof copy of my forthcoming book, Urdustan (A Collection of Short Stories). The book will go live on MONDAY and be available for sale, insha’allah. In PRINT only.
Please stay tuned to my blog, website, and Facebook page for information on where you can purchase a copy, and what my book is exactly about. There will also be a new interview and review, so stay tuned. Thanks for your support.
#reppin’ self-published DIY Desi / Deaf / Muslim Punk Authors
(via bad-dominicana)
(via The People’s Apocalypse by Ariel Gore — Kickstarter)
so i along with a bunch of wonderful writers will be published in this book. please support this project. i am so excited.
*so cool, excited for you*
hope you’ll consider following my poetry/creative writing blog at:
http://blkcowrie.wordpress.com ♥ ~ just scroll to the bottom of the screen and press follow. thx!
(via blkcowrie)
definition: Aya de Leon looks at the process of Bay area spoken word artist Aya de Leon, whose work is at all times political and certainly fresh. Whether dissecting images of women in hip hop, or exposing the constructs of gender and beauty, Aya de Leon makes you think, makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you listen. To learn more about the phenom’s work, check out the docu-bio, which explores the writer/poet/activist’s artistic process, and the lives she touches as she moves through the world.
* definition: Aya de Leon is Directed by Jennifer Ongiri Produced by Marla Renee Leech and Shalonda Ingram. via Purchase definition: Aya de Leon | Nursha Project
Sarah Pinder and I are putting together a zine!
Call for Submissions:
Penpal Adventures! A Curated Zine on the Experiences of Girls as PenpalsWere you a pre-teen or teen girl in the late 80s and early 90s? Do you remember penpal ads and slambooks? Did you collect stationery, address labels and have a special pen? Did you spend hours writing pages and pages to people you had never met and would probably never meet?
We want to hear about it!
We are looking for personal essays, nonfiction prose, comics, letters/excerpts, photos and ephemera from your days of pre-internet correspondence.
Possible topics include:
- Collecting penpals
- School penpals
- Writing to strangers vs. writing to people you had met
- Stationery and presentation
- Your letter writing persona
- The transition from letter writing to email, websites and social media
- The privacy of pre-internet communication
- Classified ads
- How letter writing informed real life friendships and perceptions of how relationships should work
The zine will be half size and double page spreads are encouraged for visual work.
Deadline: February 1st 2012
Please send submissions to: penpal.zine@gmail.com
Pass it on.
Were you? I was. Let’s do this.
For those not in the know, there is a new resource available to queer desis at globalqueerdesi.wordpress.com and it is inclusive of queer desis of all south asian origins and all diasporas. They are looking for contributions and writers!
To contribute info regarding orgs, queer history, coming out, religion, publications, books, films, and any skills or graphic design that may benefit the site… contact them at: advocacy@trikone.org or geita@riseup.net
They are also looking for queer desi writers and activists. They want writings that “question South Asian norms and gender conformity” as well as writings that address homophobia, family/cultural pressures, and coming out. They’ve also expressed interest in news/politics/current events pieces, and coverage of events. If you’re into any of this, drop them a line.
-Anurag
(via jhameia)
Incidentally, “having fun” might seem like an obvious measure of success. And yet, in some ways, it isn’t.
Firstly, sometimes writing is not fun. Secondly, some writing manuals can be quite prohibitive and anti-fun in tone and/or approach. We are told that writing requires “discipline”, that we must not be self-indulgent when we write, etc. Fortunately for me, writing Look Who’s Morphing was largely a very fun, probably self-indulgent experience that produced a very fun, probably self-indulgent book.
In fact, I had some of the best times of my life writing that book. More than award shortlistings, there’s something almost intravenous about how writing itself can make a writer feel so good about themselves so very quickly.
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