Yasmin Nair - Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator

Time 2021-01-02 02:04:20

Web Name: Yasmin Nair - Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator

WebSite: http://www.yasminnair.net

ID:153584

Keywords:

Writer,Nair,Yasmin,

Description:

This is the brand-new website! There are still some things to sort through, and still dozens of reports and pieces from the archive to be uploaded, but a good chunk of my work over 500 pieces or appearances is now available for reading, viewing, or listening. If you d like to get regular updates on my writing as well as new material that gets uploaded here, please contact me here.If you re new to me and my work, you can find out more at my About page. And this, Forty Pieces: A Sampling of My Work, takes you to some of my representative writing and some of the interviews I ve done. Starting April 7, you can expect a new update post nearly every Tuesday week telling you what s new on this site and in my life and work. I ll be writing a chronicle of the pandemic over the next many weeks or months, as long as it lasts. Let s all hope it s not years. This site has been generously and kindly and diligently set up for me by Pink Frankenstein; I cannot thank him enough for what amounts to a whole new abode on the web. He s the architect, carefully making sure there are no leaks in the roof, that the plumbing is all in shape, and that the lights will stay on! I m simply the one who moves in with ease, placing my cushions and artwork here and there. If you would like to engage him as a consultant for your own website, please contact him directly. If you have any questions, or if you see some problems here, please let me know. I’m taking a break this week to put various kinds of houses in order, including my literal one. L. wrote last night that she felt inexplicably sad. We talked till late at night. It was odd, we concurred, that for two people not invested in Thanksgiving except as an opportunity to get a break mid-week and hang out with friends and eat, that we felt as sad as we did.It was as if a pall hung over everything, as if a fog of sadness and longing and grief had risen up from the lake and quietly made its way up our stairs and through our windows and settled in gently around us.Thanksgiving here is strange, stranger even than Christmas, which can claim more of a “season” and, because of commercial interests, now begins roughly around Halloween. It’s a day of joy for many, certainly, a chance to meet with people they don’t see all year, but for many others it’s also a time of dreaded anticipation, of having to navigate and negotiate and be worn down by the stress of avoiding people you fly or drive hundreds of miles to visit.This year, all of those contradictions seem to come to the fore as the threat of pure and absolute death crashes against us. The pandemic has proven that we, at least in this country, have no systemic structures that can possibly help us: everything, it turns out, is as we have long suspected and as many of us have warned for years, is broken. The fantasy of America as first in everything is proving to be true only in the worst way, in that we lead in infections and deaths. The lack of structural solutions to anything — a lack of healthcare, a lack of education, even a lack of food as millions go hungry — has meant that we are left to snap and carp at and berate each other for not taking precautions. I walk through the streets of my tiny neighbourhood, often boiling with resentment at the unmasked, trying not to snap at those who come too close.But anger is induced when things break to a point where only that emotion can seem like a wall of safety. If I can be angry at you, I am still capable of feeling, I am doing something to keep myself safe, I can stop thinking about all the broken-ness around me. To let ourselves be sad, instead, to enter a period of deep mourning for things we cannot explain even though we can understand how they came to be this way: that seems like an impossible burden. But how else might we survive?The piece you just read is original to this site, and free to you. Such work can often take take months to produce, unfunded by any publication.  If this made you think, changed your mind or even made you angry, please be sure to donate (even a small amount) or subscribe to support me, or send me an item from my wish list! Please cite my work directly (not just in links) if it informs yours. Do NOT steal it.  You can find out more about me here. In a sense, every statue of a male intellectual has him with his schlong out, even if you can’t actually see said schlong. Instead of raging only about the larger political system, look closely at the institutions that have for so long granted access to matters like health and education and demand more from them. Tell people that “Mother Earth” is wounded and needs their help, and wallets open. Tell them that the problem with the environment is a result of multiple capitalist systems crashing and burning at once, and eyes glaze over. Fixing the publishing industry will require eliminating exploitation, not just improving representation.

TAGS:Writer Nair Yasmin 

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Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator

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