The Week 14 Listicle
Reading and listening for change
Thanks for reading peninfist.
Every 7 weeks I take a break from regular writing and recommend some stuff I’ve been reading and listening to over the past couple of months. Feel free to share!
Karen Dubinsky: “The Only Tourist in Havana”
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on oral history in Cuba in memory of my dear friend Liz Dore, who died in early May. This piece by Karen Dubinsky borrows its title from a 1961 poem by Leonard Cohen. It’s a bittersweet account of going back to an eerily quiet Havana in December 2021 for the first time since the pandemic started.
“Four Activists Walk Into a Studio”: Sharon’s Anti-Racism Newsletter
This is one of the substack newsletters I read regularly. In this post Sharon Hurley Hall tells us a bit about what happens when four Black women anti-racist activists hang out together, and what they talk about: privilege, how to balance lived experience with bringing people together, white supremacy in different contexts, “love, respect, and sisterhood”. This white activist learns a lot from Hurley Hall’s words.
Love Activism with Stacy Russo on Our Hen House
Activist, author and artist Stacy Russo talks to Jasmin Singer on my favourite vegan podcast about how to do activism and life in loving ways, for ourselves and others. Necessary medicine to tune into.
“Why I Don’t Read Self Help” on the Read, Watch, Binge Substack
I recently discovered Luiza Beirão Campos’s newsletter Read, Watch, Binge. This piece on the “unhealthy obsession with self-improvement” captured many of my own reservations about this movement. There’s a lot to say about the importance of self-care for activists (see above links from Sharon Hurley Hall and Stacy Russo), but the focus on the individual in much of the self-help literature raises as many problems as it purports to solve.
Caballo de Nietzsche: Animal rights on the right and left in Britain and Spain
For the Spanish speakers reading this: El Diario online newspaper from Spain has a regular blog on animal rights called “Nietzsche’s Horse”. This piece tackles a great question: “Why is the British right more in favour of animal rights than the Spanish left?” The title is a bit misleading, but the piece addresses fundamental challenges for animal rights activists in both countries.
“How to Find Time to Read” by Oliver Burkeman
Lately I’ve been struggling to find enough time to read, both for pleasure and for my writing (related but not the same!). Burkeman wrote a regular column called “This column will change your life” at the Guardian for many years. The tongue-in-cheek title suggests a healthy scepticism about the self-improvement industry even as it buys into it. The advice here is simple (don’t read listicles!) but also offers some philosophical thoughts on why our high-speed productivity-oriented culture makes it hard to find time to read.
Daaminic HK Beaudry: Anishinaabe History and language on Twitter
I’m hopeless at social media, but I’ve spent enough time on twitter to find my favourite tweeter. Beaudry is an educator from Wikwemikong Unceded Anishinabe Territory on Lake Huron and he regularly tweets timely translations of English words into Ojibwe. June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada and Beaudry tells us that the Ojibwe word for June is Waabgonii Giizis (pronounced Waub-go-nee Gee-zis), which also means blooming moon. If you follow anything, follow this.
Any recommendations for reading and listening?
I’ll be back next week with some thoughts on what we might learn from political rants…