June Announcements
~ From My Writerly World ~
I created this art journaling piece at Unfold Your Creative Spirit Studio in Cotati during the 2016 election. The text reads: Whose America Is This?
Silence = Violence
Last weekend my wife and I joined 500 people protesting the unjust and brutal slaying of George Floyd “and the history it carries,” walking from a public park to the police station in Petaluma, a Sonoma County town where African Americans make up roughly 1% of the population. Just one among many nationwide actions, this daily march was begun by Lilly McCoy, a local 17-year-old champion wrestler.
Facing a busy boulevard of passing vehicles, the crowd took a knee for nearly nine minutes. Time stretched into stillness during a poignant moment of embodied remembrance.
The LA Times reported in 2019 that “being killed by police was a leading cause of death for young black men in America,” according to SFGATE.
Most passersby honked or gave a thumbs-up in support; some threatened with revved engines, which added a heightened sense of vulnerability, reminding us of the potential dangers people of color face in a city whose demographics are 80% white. A Black family of four bicycled past, joining the refrain “Black Lives Matter,” and there were the occasional but inevitable retorts that “All Lives Matter.”
White as default = white dominance = white supremacy = systemic racism. This is not new.
While stepping out with our community (still masked) felt heartfelt and humbling, to condemn ongoing racialized violence requires much more than performative allyship:
Examining my positioning is one thing I can do to disrupt rather than reinforce my privilege. As a white, able-bodied, middle-class, educated, Brazilan-born, Jewish-American, queer, cisgender woman, I am revisiting the ways many aspects of my intersectional identity—most significantly my class status and perceived whiteness—benefit from the “privilege of assumption.”
For instance: when cis-women like me avoid using gender-inclusive language, such as naming our gender pronouns, we benefit from the privilege of others’ presumptions based on our presentation (not necessarily afforded to nonbinary/genderfluid/nonconforming people).
Last week, to mark LGBTQ+ Pride in the month of June, Black Lives Matter founding member, Kei Williams (who identifies as queer and transmasculine), acknowledged the rise in fatal anti-transgender violence:
The following names, among others, were brought to light at a march from the Stonewall Inn:
Monika Diamond: shot & killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, March 18
Nina Pop: stabbed & killed in Sikeston, Missouri, May 3
Tony McDade: shot & killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida, May 27
Add to these the murders of two more Black trans women just this week:
Dominique Rem’mie Fells: found dead & dismembered in Philadelphia, PA on June 8
Riah Milton: shot & killed in Liberty Township, Ohio, June 9
“Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?" — Audre Lorde in Sinister Wisdom (1978)
I had an excellent introduction to race-class-gender-sexuality at UC Santa Cruz 30 years ago in such undergrad Feminist Studies courses like ‘Women of Color in the U.S.’ with Akasha Gloria Hull and ‘Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective’ with Anna Tsing, both of whom centralized non-white women’s voices. Now I heed the call to (re)educate myself on the legacy of racial injustice and heteropatriarchy.
Make no mistake: “Institutionalized racism is a white problem, not a Black issue.”
BLM: Teachers March
Local educators Dot Kowal, Kim Ribeiro, and Megan Malone are organizing a teacher-led demonstration: Sunday, June 14 at 11 am, starting from Acre Coffee on Petaluma Blvd.
“It's important for our community to see teachers expressing solidarity and it is crucial that our students of color see their teachers actively protesting.”
Teachers, students, and community members can join (as socially distant as possible, wearing masks). Bring signs that express teacher support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Resources: Antiracism, Racial Justice & Transphobia
My wife, Kristen—a middle school teacher and avid reader—selects a theme each year for her summer reading: the prison industrial complex; Indigenous America; transgender voices; White privilege; Buddism; Judeo-Christian views on God; and death; just to name a few covered so far.
This week I began reading The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness by law professor and Zen practitioner Rhonda V. Magee. I’ve also ordered the book My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem.
A few other resources on offer:
Racism in America: Police Brutality and the Movement for Change—a panel discussion with Dani McClain, Brian Copeland, Aya de Leon, moderated by Paula Farmer.
Higher Learning biweekly podcast with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay (a former Bachelorette), who dissect the biggest topics in black culture, politics, and sports.
Raising Antiracist White Kids Course: A step-by-step guide to parenting for racial justice by Rev. Dr. Jennifer Harvey.
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
All The Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some Of Us Are Brave, edited by Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith
Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family by Mitchell Jackson
What It Is: Race. Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues by Clifford Thompson
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
Publication News
Last month About Place Journal published my long essay “Please Don’t Climb: Controversy at the Heart of Australia". This work of narrative nonfiction in the Practices of Hope issue includes research and reportage to probe the historical roots and repercussions of Australia’s colonial occupation of Aboriginal people through the lens of its most photographed natural and cultural icon!
My essay “Fallen” was accepted for publication at The Rumpus, to appear in the Voices on Addiction section this summer. Hypertext Review will feature “Politeness Will Not Protect You,” a 2020 essay contest finalist. This publication is a project of the Hypertext Magazine Studio (HMS), a social justice writing workshop nonprofit committed to teaching creative storytelling and writing skills to divested Chicago-area adults and to publishing these stories—alongside established writers—online and in print.
“Porch Time” was published at The Dewdrop, a Zen-based online literary journal, under Isolation Shorts. I wrote (and revised) this poem during one of my writing workshops, based on the prompt: Observe your surroundings. Draw upon the senses. Take note. The journal is seeking personal essays about love in any form.
Grateful AF: Ellen Bass & Roxan McDonald
The Art of The Ode, The Prayer, and Savoring the World As It Is
June 13, 2020, 9 am – 5 pm PT / 12 – 8 pm ET
How do we live in the world as it is? How do we live with ourselves as we are? How do we live in gratitude in the midst of so much suffering? These are the questions that writers have grappled with throughout time. In this workshop, we’ll grapple alongside the best of them!
10% of the profits go to Marcus Books, the oldest black-owned bookstore in the country, and 10% to the initiative of The Academy of American Poets to support nonprofit poetry organizations and presses that center Black, Indigenous and Poets of Color.
Supporting Emerging Writers
S. Isabel Choi, a friend and fellow University of San Francisco alum I call my ‘writer-wife’ since we often swap feedback, was longlisted for the 2020 First Pages Prize! She was one of 36 writers selected from 600+ submissions from 43 countries in an adjudication of the first five pages of a manuscript-in-progress. In addition, she was one of 7 finalists selected for the inaugural Sandra Carpenter Creative Nonfiction Prize awarded in conjunction. CONGRATULATIONS!
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, featured on Vela’s Women We Read This Week, and recognized as a Notable Mention in The Best American Essays series, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Slice, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, The Underwater Railroad, and The Rumpus. Isabel is at work on a family memoir on the legacy of loss and illness, inspired by the story of her grandfather, the Chief Justice of South Korea’s Supreme Court from 1981 to 1986.
Discovered Redux: Zoom Reading
“Mosquito bites. That’s what my older brother called them, taunting me the day I got my first ‘training’ bra.”
So begins my essay “Late Bloomer,” which appeared in the 50th ‘Milestones’ issue of Halfway Down the Stairs in March. Last month I participated in a public online reading with several recipients of Creative Sonoma’s 2019 Discovered Awards for Emerging Literary Artists alongside judges Elizabeth Stark and Ellen Sussman. My part begins 53 minutes in, recorded here on YouTube.
Writing From Memory or Imagination
My writing workshops follow the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method, which defines a writer simply as "someone who writes." The philosophy: Writing is an art form that belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level. The 6-week series for newcomers (May 27–July 1) filled, as did another series with nine continuing participants. Initially held at The Sitting Room, all workshops are currently held virtually via Zoom. For more information, please fill out an Inquiry Form. At the AWA blog, find a sample of prompts that I used at a donation-based session in May during Write Around the World, an annual fundraiser.
COVID Lit: Food For Thought
"What a privilege it is—during a time when millions are losing their jobs and livelihood while thousands are dying, struggling to find a meal, incapable of affording a doctor’s visit, etc.—to be able to focus on our art."
This sentiment comes from Brian Druckenmiller, founding editor of COVID LIT, a new journal he calls a philanthropic endeavor; all submissions require a donation to a nonprofit of one’s choosing. I submitted a piece called “Spring Routine” and donated to Food For Thought, a local food bank providing healing nutrition and compassion to 850+ people affected by AIDS/HIV and other serious illnesses in Sonoma County, including a COVID-19 Healthy Nutrition Program. (I used to volunteer delivering groceries as a ‘food fairy.’)
This pandemic, like all health disparities, disproportionately affects BIPOC populations. Latinos now account for 75% of Sonoma County’s coronavirus cases, a rate nearly three times higher than the share of the local Latinx population. In May, an article in Self Magazine reported:
“Black Americans who comprise only 13 to 14 percent of the population account for more than half the infections and nearly 60 percent of COVID-19 deaths.”
Some 5,200 Native Americans, who make up less than 2 percent of the population, were confirmed positive and “the Navajo Nation has surpassed New York for the most cases per capita.” Since Indigenous populations have faced pandemics before as a form of germ warfare and genocide, are these times truly “unprecedented” for all?
Science journalist Laura Spinney, who wrote Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, doesn’t seem to think so. According to the description by Book Passage:
“As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted—and often permanently altered—global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war.”
Support FFT or The Okra Project (which pays Black Trans chefs to go into the homes of Black Trans people to cook them a healthy, home-cooked, and culturally specific meal at not cost)—among 700+ organizations for Give OUT Day on June 30, the only national day of giving for the LGBTQ community.
Letters of Love
Love for the Elderly is in need of people to write a letter to an elder. This nonprofit organization was started by Jacob Cramer, a 19-year-old college student who lost his grandfather at age 10. He addressed his grief with a way to bring joy into the lives of seniors, some of the most vulnerable populations, often socially isolated—especially now. Can you take 5 minutes to write a letter to a stranger? They’re asking for kind, handwritten letters to mail to senior facilities. In addition, check out the Senior Storybook: “a way to share seniors’ stories that is both heartwarming and inspiring.”
Comments? Contact me: https://www.nicolerzimmerman.com/contact/