Conversations

In true tumblr tradition, here’s an ongoing list of things and people I am currently in conversation with (most recent to oldest).

– More definitions: “I am amazed by peace / It is this possibility of you /asleep / and breathing in the quiet air” (June Jordan, “Poem for my love”)

– Love is a dangerous word, collected poetry by the forever young poet Essex Hemphill, who died of AIDS in 1995 and whose furious, sexy work I need.

– Baldwin. A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs: a perfect, tender read, revisiting one of my favourite ancestors as the year draws to a close, remembering love, as Baldwin writes of the painter Beauford Delaney: I do know that great art can only be created out of love, and that no greater lover has ever held a brush.

– Die Schwestern, Jonas Hassen Khemiri (english: The Sisters) – a recommendation by my beloved German editor and simply a major hit

– Blood Veins (in Berlin Review, Reader 3): an essay in which Fatima Abbas situates sexual violence in the current war in Sudan within the country’s larger history, layers of colonialism and constructions of race, culture, Arab- and African-ness. A clear and clarifying, necessary, generous read.

– Ist hier das Jenseits, fragt Schwein. Gifted to me by Robert Renk who thought i would love it, and love it I did, for its smart and funny freedom.

– this tab that’s been open on my laptop forever. I don’t know why I’m drawn to this Allen Ginsberg “4 AM Blues” recording, I’m not even sure I am, but maybe it’s the combination of irreverence, playfulness and anger?

– Keith P. Feldman, A Shadow over Palestine. The Imperial Life of Race in [North*]America and in particular its chapter 5: “Moving toward Home. Women of Color Feminisms and the Lebanon Conjuncture”

– Maud Ventura, Mon mari – a playful, strange read that turned a four-hour plane delay into a fun time-out.

– Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, which I had to put away so often since I first started reading it (actual years ago) because each time it dragged me towards wounds I wasn’t ready to lick. Re-re-re-reading it now for an essay I’m writing, and feeling endlessly grateful for an ancestor like Feinberg.

– one of the freshest French books of the last few years, Djinns by my friend Seynabou Sonko, which I’ll be discussing with my students at the university of Halle. Seynabou is currently in Rome working on text, music and more, and I recommend following her work if you’re into soulful, inspired and inspiring things.

– this portrait of Ta-Nehesi Coates whose Between the world and me I loved, who was then described to me as too conservative to be radical, to popular to be relevant, and who’s now put a lot of it on the line to write about Palestine. I’m very interested in how he speaks about the whole experience, the status he’d acquired, publishing fiction vs. non-fiction, and having a sense of injustice and complexity. At some point Coates is described as ‘a very public learner’, something I think I strive to be.

– some classics of lesbian cinema: The Watermelon Woman and Carol.