The Week 49 Listicle

A hodgepodge of activist reading – and some poetry

Photo by Antonio Scalogna on Unsplash

I started a temporary teaching job last month, so I’ve been doing a range of reading over the past few weeks. Here’s a sample of things that have caught my eye.

1)    Jacqueline Rose, On Violence and On Violence Against Women

I’ve been a fan of Rose’s writing since I read The Haunting of Sylvia Plath thirty years ago. Rose is a feminist literary scholar who uses psychoanalytic theory to analyse fiction and poetry, as well as contemporary politics, from post-apartheid South Africa to Palestine/Israel. In On Violence she takes on the problem of violence against women and trans* people. I especially recommend the chapter “Feminism and the Abomination of Violence”, which draws on the work of Hannah Arendt and Melanie Klein to explain why Rose believes it is no coincidence that the past few years have witnessed the rise of both the #metoo and anti-trans* violence. Sometimes tricky, always a great read.

2)    Decolonizing psychedelics

Psychedelic facilitator and teacher Charlotte James talks about the Psychedelic Liberation Training Program and the importance of anti-racist work in psychedelic spaces. The latest post on the important, informative newsletter The Microdose, which covers developments in the world of psychedelic research and activism.

3)    A Lamentation for Songbirds by Lindsey-Trout Hughes

Remember the birds. A haunting story from The Rumpus.

4)    How to Make Peace with Canada Geese

I grew up with Canada geese. One winter day years ago my father and nephew counted 900 of them on the riverbed in our hometown. Now these beautiful beasts – who glide through the sky in perfect triangles – have taken over the world with their squawks and huge turds. An ode to human-goose cohabitation by Tom Jokinen, in The Walrus.

5) Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

I try not to spend too much time thinking about what’s happening in the United States of America because it’s all too depressing. But this month is Black History month in the US and American defenders of Black lives and history have their work cut out for them. Last week, the Boston Review published a series of essays by Black authors that newly re-elected Republican Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t want primary and high-school students in Florida to read. They include feminist legal and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, the late feminist scholar bell hooks, and prison abolitionist Angela Y. Davis. Last week I taught Davis’s seminal abolitionist text, Are Prisons Obsolete? Compulsory reading for all social justice activists. 

6)    Growing Chains: Prison Agriculture and Racial Capitalism in the United States

Sticking with the theme of prison abolition and racism in the US, here’s an excellent and educational story map developed by the people at the Prison Agriculture Lab & Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University. The next time you’re in the States, remember to ask where your food comes from.

7)    Poetry Today Newsletter

We all need some poetry in our lives to help us get through these late-winter days. A few weeks ago I discovered this newsletter by Maya C. Popa, poetry editor at Publisher’s Weekly. The poem Lifeguard by Claudia Emerson popped up on my feed a few Fridays ago, and since then I can’t stop reading. 

Pen in Fist is written by me, C Lou Hamilton, aka Dr Carrie. To find out more about my activism, follow me on twitter. You can access my other writing, and information on my editing and translating work, on my website. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Pen in Fist for free here.