Resource Roundup #2
For the week of April 22nd.
Happy Thursday friends. It’s cold here again suddenly, and I’m sitting in my unheated classroom wearing every layer I could find in my car and writing this. The sun still shines. Lots to look forward to. Lots to be grateful for. I’m grateful for all of you, and this little internet space that we’re carving out to talk about things that feel important.
A reminder that if you have been responding to our prompts, we would love to feature your work! Or any other story you would like to share. This is a collaborative space, not just an echo chamber of my thoughts. You can email stories to goodfolksonly@gmail.com. Feel free to also reach out with places we should talk about, people we should talk to, or any other topic you’d like addressed in this newsletter.
Now, onto the Thursday Roundup…
I first heard this song in a TikTok video, and it stopped me in my tracks. The Low Blow is a band out of Nashville, comprised of Pat Long, Connor Stith, Josh Selby, and Taylor Wood. They write candidly about queer sexuality, gender expression, and mental health. The part of this song where the lyrics swell at the end— “Name and gender, smear my lipstick / I can change and still feel homesick / Picture perfect body image / Pronouns, guns, and chilling visage / Tattoos, piercings, revolution / I’m my New Year’s resolution”— is incredible. I’ve been hearing I’m my New Years’s resolution on a loop in my head all week.
You already know I love Leslie Jamison, but this is a great read from her for The Atlantic about art and incarceration. Especially this paragraph:
“When art emerges out of conditions shaped by injustice, inequality, and brutality, we—and by “we,” I specifically mean people viewing the art who are not subject to the conditions under which it was produced—may reflexively expect it to be a transparent vessel delivering the terrible news of its own origins. From that angle, we risk seeing its creators as ethnographers, duty-bound to deliver the particulars of their dehumanization. But not all art that emerges from injustice wants to transcribe it; art can glance obliquely, using stolen sewing pins and tea-bag curtains to suggest longing and determination—to say, You can’t have all of me.”
This quote from James Baldwin’s Another Country:
This profile from Texas Monthly, on The Relief Gang, a volunteer group in Houston headed by rapper Trae tha Truth and DJ Mr. Rogers, which speaks well to the need for on-the-ground activism and mutual aid.
“Hope Is A Discipline,” a discussion with organizer and educator Mariame Kaba, has been floating around my media platforms this week, and I promise it is worth the listen. If you’ve ever wondered about the intersection between prison abolition, community, and the revolutionary power of hope, this is for you. I can’t stop thinking about this bit:
And that became a mantra for me in terms of when I would feel unmoored. Or when I would feel overwhelmed by what was going on in the world, I would just say to myself: “Hope is a discipline.” It’s less about “how you feel,” and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning. And you’re still going to struggle, that that was what I took away from it.
It’s work to be hopeful. It’s not like a fuzzy feeling. Like, you have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision. It’s a hard thing to maintain. But it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible, to change the world. You know, that we don’t live in a predetermined, predestined world where like nothing we do has an impact. No, no, that’s not true! Change is, in fact, constant, right? Octavia Butler teaches us. We’re constantly changing. We’re constantly transforming. It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good or bad. It just is. That’s always the case. And so, because that’s true, we have an opportunity at every moment to push in a direction that we think is actually a direction towards more justice.”
I want love like the kind Jeanette Winterson writes about:
This New York Times profile of Seth Rogen, in which is discussed: fame, youth, weed, ceramics, and finding happiness.
OK, that’s all for today. See ya’ll Sunday. Go celebrate the earth today. Stand barefoot in the grass. Put your hands in the dirt. Remember that we are a part of everything.