On this day commemorating incomplete emancipation, I offer you this unfinished blogpost in the form of three unanswerable questions: How many Republican sheep does it take to maintain Trump’s regime? How many armed militia statue-protectors does it take to maintain settler colonialism? How many commercial prisons does it take to maintain racist injustice? This blogpost […]
Even now, in the memory, she dazzles, must be circled about and about. We may perceive her indirectly, in her effects on others … Ah, the dead, the unended, endlessly ending dead: how long, how rich is their story. We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we […]
In the museum or the university, the story remains the same. On the one hand, an institution’s strong physique is measured in outsized philanthropy and thick endowments, as administrators make public-facing boasts of rich collections and academic excellence. On the other hand, internal messaging is one of dispossession and precarity, from cuts and layoffs to […]
While in the cradle, every parent, grandparent and god-fearing aunt wants the best for the new baby, hoping to keep the Evil Eye at bay. Over the years, their prayers for safety turn into dreams of success as the child grows and starts on the path through school to college. Now, bursting with pride at […]
A voice comes from somewhere (or within), braying: Well, listen to him! So sanctimonious in his white wokeness and so-called decolonial critique (whatever that is)! We see what you’re doing, writing this out loud for strangers’ ears, but inwardly, under your typing tongue, you murmur, “Oh, let the old guard suffer, so I can profit!”. […]
I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. It is that vague time between the COVID-19 lock-down and the great reopening. With the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery on my mind, I scribble the following oddly formed questions into my notebook: what position is left for, or forced upon you, […]