Tag Archives: Resistance

 

~

After the dismal, if predictable, election results, I am trying not to get sucked into the vortex of constant doom scrolling. The incoming administration’s motto seems to be “A fox in every henhouse,” and they want us shocked and incapacitated. The fascist clown car is coming for us all, with immigrants at the top of the list for unspeakable cruelty. We’re going to be running around putting out fires on every corner, and it really has an end of empire vibe. Perhaps the scariest prospect is their plan for an extractavist carnival when we have such a short time to turn climate catastrophe around. Everyone I know is thinking about how best to organize for resistance—I keep hearing Mariam Kaba’s advice: “Choose your lane, find your people.” I will continue working on Palestine and immigrant justice, lanes where I have connections, some knowledge, and a few skills.

 

I am still mentoring three young writers in and from Gaza—two are still in Gaza (one in the north where starvation is rampant and ethnic cleansing is underway, and one in central Gaza where regular missile attacks and food scarcity hold sway) and the third escaped to Malaysia. Each morning, I check my messages to make sure they and their families have survived the night. Their suffering is immense, but the bravery and ingenuity with which they face each day are remarkable. My mentee Nadera Mushtha wrote an eloquent piece about giving English lessons in her home to  young students whose schools had been destroyed.

 

The situation in Lebanon is also heartbreaking where my friends in Beirut are being terrorized by drones, planes, and missiles. Israel continues using its Gaza playbook—targeting hospitals, medics, and civilian apartment buildings, while pulverizing entire villages in the south. There is talk of a ceasefire deal, something that is being reported as a planned gift from one depraved authoritarian to another.

 

While immediate and medium-term prospects are bleak, we must find ways to keep ourselves sane and ready for action. I have shifted away from spending time on Musk’s increasingly hostile X/Twitter, which has been losing prominent users, to more hospitable Bluesky, which now has over 20 million users and has seen traffic increase by 500% since the election. You can find me on Bluesky here. You will also find me walking in Central Park and on country roads, looking for birds and mushrooms.

 

We need to gather in the real world with like-minded people and build the power of our groups and institutions to protect ourselves and others. We will need to defend public libraries, public schools, universities, Social Security, immigrants, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, Palestine, and the planet. Choose your lane, find your people. Friends and comrades are and will be our refuge.

 

Yours in struggle,

 

Nancy K

 

 

RECOMMENDED READING

 

In response to thirteen months of genocide in Gaza, over 7,000 writers, myself among them, have now pledged to boycott complicit Israeli cultural institutions.

 

Mosab Abu Toha’s new poetry collection, FOREST OF NOISE was published last month. You can listen to an excellent and moving interview with Mosab on the LARB Radio Hour.

 

Swedish climate organizer Greta Thunberg penned a powerful op-ed in The Guardian decrying the hypocrisy of the petro-dictatorship of Azerbaijan’s hosting COP29. She went to Armenia, where she visited the genocide memorial and later learned how to make Jingalov Hatz.

 

Wasafiri 120, an issue of the UK literary journal devoted to Armenia and Armenians, is now available for pre-order. My new essay about my father, entitled “His Driving Life,” is included.

AGBU’s ARARAT Magazine has been digitized, including the special CHILDHOOD supplement that I edited in 1999.

 

I was happy to see that my upcoming novel THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD is included in The International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Holiday Book Guide. You can preorder it here.

 

 

 

Yesterday when I started drafting this blog post, I ended up spending two hours writing about the December 11th killing of Barnard Freshman Tess Majors in Morningside Park and the subsequent NYPD Security Theater outside my kitchen window. I realized there was nothing edifying, informative, or helpful in what I had written, although it was cathartic for me, and so I put it in the failed drafts folder.

We made it through a turbulent 2019, and we’re now into a new year that started with an illegal and provocative assassination of an Iranian General and, if anxiety and incertitude are a measure of length, this very long year will continue with the longest Presidential election cycle in human history. So herewith is my “listicle” of ways to maintain sanity and equilibrium in 2020, which was composed in part in the middle of the night as I turned in my bed like a rotisserie chicken.

1. ORGANIZE: Housing is a Human Right

Read about #Moms4Housing in Oakland, and how community organizing turned a violent eviction into a big win. This is an inspiring story, and something to build upon.

2. ORGANIZE AGAIN: Why We Need A Green New Deal

Listen to The Dig Podcast Episode “Planet to Win,” a detailed and hopeful discussion about how the Green New Deal might change America for the better.

3. WATCH A GOOD FILM

Go see Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a brilliant and dark film about one day in the life of the junior assistant of an abusive boss. It’s not just about predation—it’s also gimlet-eyed view on capitalist exploitation of young people. The film is poised to become part of a movement to change the culture of Hollywood. Watch the trailer here. Opening in NYC and LA on January 31, theaters and show times may be found here.

4. MAKE COMFORT FOOD

Order a copy of Lavash: The Bread That Launched 1,000 Meals, Plus Salads, Stews, and Other Recipes From Armenia, and cook an Armenian meal for your loved ones. You can read more about the book and try sample recipes here and here.

5. ORGANIZE SOME MORE: #NotMeUS

Read this Jacobin piece about why Bernie Sanders is the candidate who can beat Trump, watch this moving campaign video, and join the #NotMeUs movement.

6. LAUGH

In response to the New York Times’ ridiculous double endorsement of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren for president, read Alexandra Petri’s hilarious takedown, “In a Break From Tradition, I am Endorsing All 12 Democratic Candidates.”

7. LISTEN TO MUSIC

Onnik Dinkjian’s many decades of performing Armenian folk music is covered in this piece from Houshamadyan, and it includes recordings of some of Dinkjian’s most beloved songs.

8. SEEK OUT WISDOM

Listen to Grace Paley read her short story “Traveling”, and read Walter Mosley’s loving remembrance of Toni Morrison. Read also these beautiful poems from Kurdistan.

9.  LEARN SOMETHING NEW

American linguists have recently voted the singular “they” as the word of the decade. And Ivan Coyote’s 2014 piece “Fear and Loathing in Public Bathrooms” helped expand my thinking about the tyranny of the gender binary.

10. LOOK FOR BEAUTY

Last week I went to the Whitney Museum to see Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019. There were a lot of great pieces in the show, but I was absolutely bowled over by Liza Lou’s KITCHEN, a life-sized beaded room filled with furniture, appliances, pots, pans, cereal boxes, and more that took the artist five years to produce. The show is up through January 2021, and a new show of Mexican muralists will be opening at the Whitney in February so you could take in both.

11. GO FOR A WALK IN THE WOODS

I’ve been reading out-of-print books by naturalist and writer Alan Devoe, who lived down the road from our house in the country from the 1930’s to the mid-50’s. In the middle of World War II, which was a time of destruction, violence, and despair on a global scale, Devoe wrote, “It is good, for instance, just to shut off the radio for a while, throw away the newspaper, and go out into the warm darkness of a country night and listen to the frogs.” He also recommended listening to the wrens singing, and said, “They are singing directly into our aboriginal ears, an information that all the pessimists and pedants are mistaken, and the life adventure is a greater and gladder thing than mere learnedness might ever surmise.”

Nancy Kricorian