Staycation feelings. My face indicates that it has obviously come to an end.
Hey there folks, I was supposed to send over the interview with Bárbara Paes this week but! change of plans as this interview will go up on an outlet (surprise) and so I’ll wait for that to get published first and then share it again on the newsletter. Turns out that my own editorial calendar is still second to the *formal editorial calendar* because a girl’s gotta get paid.
That means next week will be an interview with someone else who I’ve had the pleasure of working with, Ngozi Cole, founder and editor of Poda-Poda, a home for diasporic and Sierra Leonan stories and literature. Wait for that, and in the meantime, here’s a roundup of what I’m reading this week:
Thanks Sharon Yam for the shoutout and focus on young feminist-led pro-democracy activism, I am a fan of her research and activism as a diasporic Hong Konger and academic in the US, and still have her book, Inconvenient Strangers, which is about how intersecting systems of power marginalize transnational subjects and dominant citizenship on my long to-read list. I’ve been exploring the role of young women and young feminists in recent social uprisings around the world, from Lebanon to Hong Kong, and I hope to continue doing so, as neo-fascism and authoritarianism is on the rise. In Thailand, that looks like a monarchy that has been repressing youth-led pro-democracy protests for years. Recently, these protests have been growing and gaining even more momentum - and young feminist-led demands and visibility.
“This is the first time that LGBTQ activism has organically emerged within Thailand’s democracy movement.” This SCMP article goes a bit deeper into the feminist activism and demands than the New York Times article, which concentrates a bit too much on “gender equality” and “representation” (in the military and police?!?!) for my taste. It’s important to highlight that young feminists are increasingly vocal about queer identity and LGBTQ rights, which is especially sensitive in the Southeast Asian context.
If you're a journalist writing about abortion right now (or an editor assigning coverage) and it's not your usual beat, Marie Solis’s guide for VICE on how to write about abortion without using stigmatizing and inaccurate language earlier this year might be helpful.
In that same line, Shreya Ila Anasuya, one of my favorite feminist writers and the Managing Editor of Skin Stories, gathered this list of style guides on gender, sexuality, and disability. I still need to take out some time of my week to make my way through all of them.
In colonial India, the term “prostitute” was used to describe virtually all women outside of monogamous Hindu upper-caste marriage. Check out this deep dive into empire and degradation by Rafia Zakaria, who’s a new columnist at The Baffler.
“I don’t know exactly where I fit in it, but I do know that I want all workers to be treated with dignity and respect — a small, humble ask that requires an unending amount of work. And I want all people who are unable to work or unable to find work to also be treated with dignity and respect. I want to become more active in organizing, I want to be a resource for those looking for guidance in their careers — at least while we’re living under capitalism — and I want to make enough money to be able to throw some of that money at the world’s problems. My medium-size dreams for myself may be getting smaller, but my ambitions for the greater wide world have to be enormous. It’s the only way to get through.”
Where did my ambition go? by Maris Kreizman.
"Our Voices" is a feminist zine that features submissions from artists in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It captures women telling stories on topics not previously identified under the 12 critical areas of the Beijing declaration.
A community hub in Tororo, eastern Uganda, will provide an inclusive space for women to build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Milestones lost to coronavirus leave young adults with unclear path forward by Rainesford Stauffer. Traditional rights of passage of adulthood have been universalized as experiences, but they aren’t representative or accessible to everyone. This is a piece that celebrates ditching the timelines that we think that we need to follow and embracing your own path. Rainesford Stauffer is an amazing writer on young adulthood and I’m following a lot of her leads about the particular nuances and details of Gen-Z and millennial anguish and joy.
News from me:
The article with Bárbara Paes coming out! Expect that in the second or third week of October (first on social media, then here).
I’m starting a monthly radio show with The Lot Radio, an online radio based in New York City. So once a month, I’ll send you all a set. But since I always want to include music in these newsletters, here’s a DJ edit that I’ve been loving. Some edits are too hard, obvious, or much, but this edit relaxes and extends the original ‘96 Bollywood track ‘Sundara Sundara’ and just relaxes me in general.
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