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introductions, leaving instagram, responding to the "what about the rapists?" question, teaching craft for the first time, & podcasts on anti-trans legislation
Reader, thanks so much for joining me. I went back and forth on whether or not to start a newsletter; I wondered if it was, I don’t know, self-indulgent? Obnoxious? Embarrassing? Sure, maybe, whatever, and at the same time, I was excited about a digital space in which I could reflect on and share some of the really amazing resources I get to engage with when I do Radical Roadmaps work, the powerful short stories I do deep dives on with my students here in Richmond, or all the weird ideas bopping around in my head as I work on my own fiction.
I, like many artists, feel exhausted by using Instagram “professionally,” its algorithms, and the pressure to post and/or engage in specific ways. And, while I’m grateful for the folks who found my work through that platform, small, bite-sized infographics are not how I want to create work or have folks engage with it. I’ve often said that I hope my graphic recordings are an opening, an invitation to explore and engage more deeply, with more intention; I hope folks look at the visual notes from a webinar and are inspired to watch the whole thing, read a book that it mentions, or research a topic that sparks their interest— I don’t think Instagram encourages that type of engagement. I am lucky that many of the folks who reach out to collaborate with me are not doing so because of Instagram; I know many artists are not in the same position. So, knowing this, I’ve been interrogating my hesitancy to abandon, archive, or even delete an account just because it has a certain amount of followers; what is that saying about my own value as an artist, a person? In the end, I decided to move forward with a newsletter in the hopes for better opportunities to engage in deeper conversations with readers and fellow artists or writers.
In full transparency, I’m not sure how this will work out, but I have some ideas. I plan to write a monthly letter, no more and hopefully no less. There are will be a few categories that may or may not appear in every newsletter, but will be clearly sectioned for the readers who may have more of an interest in writing fiction and less in graphic recording, or vice versa. The categories are:
drawing: a focus on my graphic recording & illustration work with deep dives on specific projects/events I had the opportunity to work on.
writing: any publication updates, things I’m thinking about while I’m working, residencies, opportunities for other writers to check out, etc.
teaching: materials i’ve been using in my teaching practice, books/articles/stories/essays that have been guiding me, resources I’ve shared with students when questions come up.
reading: a list of, and maybe some reflection on, what I’ve been reading
learning: a list of, and maybe some reflection on, political education resources/media that have been helpful to me recently
scouting: a monthly photo of my dog, Scout.
Now that, that’s all out of the way, I’ll proceed—
drawing
I took most of December off from Radical Roadmaps and things still felt slow(er) through most of January. As a full-time freelancer/consultant, moments of slowness can stir anxieties of scarcity, but I did my best to lean into that slowness and to take on jobs that aligned with my values and centered longer-term relationship building.
One of the relationships that I cherish most is the one that I have with the organizers of Project NIA and Interrupting Criminalization. I feel grateful to be one of their collaborators, definitely, but am also just grateful for the multitude of resources, tools, and spaces that they create and cultivate for abolitionist organizers working on defund campaigns, building out transformative justice practices in community, and more. The Abolitionist Toolbox Series started in September 2020 as a way to share resources to “build daily practices to move us closer to a world free of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance,” and I’ve had the opportunity to watch, listen, and create notes based on all 19 sessions since.
One of the more recent sessions was based on a zine called “What about the Rapists?” written by Eva Nagao and Mariame Kaba. This zine is a tool to support folks respond to the “what about the _____” question when talking about police and prison abolition in their communities. In the session, Mariame reminds us that when this question is asked in good faith, it is an opening to be in conversation about how we can better address harm in our communities; she also reminds us to stop arguing with people on the Internet with the people who are not asking in good faith.
There was so much goodness in this session and I hope my graphic recording provides a glimpse into it since it was not recorded. As a person who worked in sexual and domestic violence response and prevention at both the local and state level, I remember struggling on a daily basis with the ways in which the tools I had available to survivors and the professionalized responses to gender-based violence (and its funding) are tied to policing and prisons. It was only when I first attended a transformative justice training (facilitated by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan) in 2018 and found the work of abolitionists that I felt a sense of clarity. As Mariame said in this recent session, “How am I going to be anti-rape and support prisons when they’re deep sites of harm?” I realized that there was no way that I could say that I truly cared about or centered all survivors without an abolitionist framework when I know that “as many as 94% of some women’s prison populations have a history of physical or sexual abuse before being incarcerated” or that “sexual violence is the second most frequently reported form of police violence after excessive force.” The “What about the Rapists?” Zine would have been such an illuminating tool for me that first year of rape crisis advocacy and I’m so glad I can share it with everyone I know now.
Another things that struck me (and that I already talked about on Twitter), is how Mariame Kaba collaborates with artists of all kinds in her organizing. I always see her working with visual artists, zine makers, illustrators, and graphic recorders on resources, books, toolkits, etc. (have you spent time the gorgeous and powerful Anguilla Prison Massacre Quilt created by Rachel Wallis as Project Nia’s first artist in residence yet??), and in the many workshops I’ve gotten to graphically record, I always notice how Mariame invites participants to listen to and reflect on a poem. In the “What about the Rapists” session she played a video of Junauda Petrus reading her poem “Give The Police Departments to the Grandmothers.” I loved this particular poem, but also just have deep love for the practice of using poetry and art in our movements. Like I said on Twitter, “shout out to poets and abolitionists and abolitionist poets.”
Finally, if you were ever curious where most of this drawing and note-taking happens, I had the opportunity to illustrate my home work space for Anomaly’s blog. You can check out the full, annotated version here.
writing
I spent the New Year at my first low-res MFA residency at Randolph College. I could write a whole letter about my MFA ~*journey*~ and how I landed at Randolph, but what I really want to emphasize is that I chose this program because of its faculty— brilliant writers, so many of them writers of color (!!!), whose work I admire and love.
I have lots of time to reflect on the program as I move through it, so for now, here is a photo of me with my first semester mentor, Maurice Carlos Ruffin (have you read We Cast a Shadow yet?) and the other folks also working with him. Maurice and I built a reading list for my semester that I’ve been making my way through (more below in “reading”) and I’ve been sending him packets of my work-in-progress.
Also, in the world between drawing and writing, I was asked to create a flyer for a South x Southwest Kundiman reading featuring Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman, Susan Nguyen, E.M. Tran, an Elizabeth Lee. Since the world is small (especially the Asian American literary world? Especially in the South?), I had the pleasure of editing one of E.M.’s stories over on Joyland back in 2018. Take a minute to read “Peaches” because it’s great and maybe check out the reading/discussion if you have the chance on the 22nd! Register here.
teaching
I finished teaching my first writing class at The Visual Arts Center here in Richmond just last night. The class was all about “sharpening our craft” and focused on elements like character, plot, setting, point of view, etc. For the first four classes we did a deep dive on a craft element with some group discussion and then we did generative writing exercises. My goal was to build our confidence when talking about what we read and our own writing from a craft perspective.
In the last three sessions, we read stories and put our new craft vocabulary into practice. I assigned “Eula” by Deeshaw Phillips, “New Fruit” by Te-Ping Cheng, “What it means when a Man Falls from the Sky” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, “Feast” by Dantiel W. Moniz, and “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado. We then spent a good chunk of time writing; I almost forgot how much I love working silently in a room with other people, each of us typing away.
I used Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Craft by Janet Burroway, and Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin as scaffolding and guide posts for our discussions. I’d say Matthew Salesses’ definition of craft as a set of non-neutral expectations was the one we came back to most.
One of my students asked some good questions about writing from perspectives that are not our own. To help him with his thinking, I sent him these two essays:
I’ll be teaching the class again this Spring and it’s already full! Excited to keep building and refining this class and connecting with writers here in Richmond. I’m planning on taking a break from teaching in the Summer, but will be proposing this craft class again and a class on writing ghost stories for the Fall.
reading
Future Feeling by Joss Lake
Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh
Without giving too much away because maybe that’s bad luck (?!), I’m working on a dystopian project, so Maurice and I put quite a few novels that felt like my project could be in conversation with on my semester reading list. Future Feeling by Joss Lake was my first read of the year, and I’ve been describing it as a prickly novel with a soft, gooey center. Super funny, weird in a great way, I loved the way it explores the possibilities of trans & queer community care. Blue Ticket is about reproductive justice and motherhood while also being a road trip novel; it helped me think about dystopian world building and how a novel can give a reader limited information on how larger systems/laws/policies are working while still giving them enough to feel grounded in place and connected to character.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Other Black Girl and My Sister, the Serial Killer both feel like they defy genre categories. I’ll be honest, I had no idea where The Other Black Girl was going and I still feel like I need someone to talk about that ending with me! It’s dark, twisty, and really skewers the publishing industry, but also white liberal institutions, in general. My Sister, The Serial Killer took me a few times to get into, but then I ate it up; a sharp narrative style that made me think a lot about P.O.V. and building tension.
still working on/just started:
Border & Rule:Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
learning
The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality by TransLash Media and Movement Memos: “Trans Youth are Facing Right-Wing Attacks and a Solidarity Shortage” hosted by Kelly Hayes with guest Chase Strangio: I’ve been listening to these podcasts to better understand the historic number of anti-trans legislation being introduced in states across the country, most of which target trans youth, and the solidarity this moment demands of us cis folks.
Building the World We Want: A Roadmap to Police Free Futures in Canada assembled by Robyn Maynard: I, like so many folks in the US, always need to be better about moving beyond my US-centered understanding of liberation movements and freedom struggles. Here’s one resource, to start, on the fight to defund police in Canada.
“Cop City and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Micah Herskind on Mainline Zine: I’m not going to say much on this one right now because an upcoming Abolitionist Toolbox session will be focused on it, but Micah offers a really concrete example of how the PIC manifests in Atlanta and documents the ways in which local organizers fighting it.
scouting
When I asked a few friends what they thought about me starting a newsletter, they mostly demanded that I share at least one photo of my dog Scout in each letter. Here you go and you’re welcome.
Thanks for being an early subscriber and for experimenting with me. I hope this creates more opportunities for connection and less for scrolling.
talk soon,
laura