Shabnam Nadiya's Blog, page 6

Another friend tells you you have to learn not to absorb the world. She says sometimes she can hear...

Another friend tells you you have to learn not to absorb the world. She says sometimes she can hear her own voice saying silently to whomever–you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it. Your friend refuses to carry what doesn’t belong to her.

You take in things you don’t want all the time. The second you hear or see some ordinary moment, all its intended targets, all the meanings behind the retreating seconds, as far as you are able to see, come into focus. Hold up, did you just hear, did you just say, did you just see, did you just do that? Then the voice in your head silently tells you to take your foot off your throat because just getting along shouldn’t be an ambition.

–Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

Call for Submissions: Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture

roxanegay:

Victims and survivors of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse have been taught by this culture that whatever horror they have endured could have been worse. At least you weren’t touched. At least you weren’t raped. At least you weren’t killed. This world effectively silences those who have been violated by demanding their first reaction be gratitude for what did not happen.

Not That Bad is an opportunity for those whose voices were stolen from them, to reclaim and tell their stories. This anthology will explore what it is like to navigate rape culture as shaped by the identities we inhabit.

Contributing to this anthology is a chance to own your own narrative with all of the complexity of reality without shame or condescension. Because too many of us have lived this truth, there is no one way to tell this story.

We warmly encourage submissions from people from all walks of life and across the gender spectrum.

If you would like your essay to be considered for this publication please submit via Submittable at notthatbad.submittable.com. We are accepting essays, 2,500 - 7,500 words in length. We are not accepting queries. Please submit your work as a Microsoft Word file. Please submit your best work. We will be accepting approximately twenty essays so please be patient with us as we take the time to consider your work.

Submissions will be open until December 15, 2015. We hope to respond to all submissions by March 15, 2016. All accepted contributions will be paid.

Not That Bad will be co-edited Roxane Gay and Ashley C. Ford and will be published by Harper Perennial.

SUBMIT HERE

Potential Topics (a brief list, not a prescription)

Testimonies of what “not that bad” looks like
Critical examinations of rape culture
What it’s like to negotiate rape culture as a man
How women diminish the sexual violence and aggression they experience and the effects of doing so
What “not that bad” looks like in popular culture—film, television, and music
Resisting rape culture
Combating sexual harassment, street harassment and cat-calling
How sexual harassment and violence erode women’s privacy

"I had no answer to his question. I confess that I do not know what brought me to make my confession..."

“I had no answer to his question. I confess that I do not know what brought me to make my confession to him. Or, rather, I did not know then, but perhaps I do know now. I had worn my mask for so long, and here was my opportunity to take it off, safely. I had stumbled to this action instinctively, out of  a feeling that was not unique to me. I cannot be the only one who believes that if others just saw who I really was, then I would be understood and, perhaps, loved. But what would happen if one took off the mask and the the other saw one not with love but with horror, disgust, and anger? What if the self that one exposes is an unpleasing to others as the mask, or even worse?”

- The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

"Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every..."

“Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every possible route into the darkness of our own interiors.”

- –The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

life:Children of photographer W. Eugene Smith walk hand in...

life:

Children of photographer W. Eugene Smith walk hand in hand in this iconic photo best known as: “The Walk to Paradise Garden.” (W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #tbt #throwbackthursday

so-i-sailed-away:yungp0ny:Such an important vineThis is so...

so-i-sailed-away:

yungp0ny:

Such an important vine

This is so peaceful and perfect can I please be wherever this is.

itstartswithhope:A Day at the ZooBy Shabnam NadiyaWhen they...

itstartswithhope:

A Day at the Zoo
By Shabnam Nadiya

When they pulled the young man into the back of the truck
he banged his head twice –
once against the step, once against the bars of his cage.
He had been jack-hammering the streets with others of the same breed,
punctuating the thick summer air with gunshot slogans, sticks and stones,
trying to exorcise hawk-heads and jackal-butts.
Until tit-for-tatting green-and-blues, khakis and combat gear puppies
forwarded him: return to sender, address unknown.

We all wept.
Tear-gassed and blind we sipped our afternoon tea
and listened to the early evening news
remembering the young man
who was disappeared into the dark yawn of a truck.

The woman they pulled in by the hair
as she screeked and bird-flapped her way to nowhere.
Early middle-age, mustard bright sari,
mother of two, part time teacher
fulltime activist. Her left breast was
a secret earth-creature braving
the grasp of the left hand that was his:
black bandannaed, sunglasses awry,
husband of one, father of none,
full-time uniform.

Confusion was king as we watchers mourned. A fleeting glance
at the angry haloes enflaming the heads of
those in their final run to death:
nostrum for our desperate hearts.

This poem originally appeared in The Daily Star. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

"Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and..."

“Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland.”

- The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

"I had sat on exactly such a splintery toilet seat throughout my childhood and remembered very well..."

“I had sat on exactly such a splintery toilet seat throughout my childhood and remembered very well the catfish jockeying for the best seat at the dining table when I assumed the position. The sight of an authentic outhouse stirred neither any sentimental feelings in me nor any admiration for my people’s environmental consciousness. I preferred a flush toilet with a smooth porcelain seat an a newspaper on my lap as reading matter, not between my legs The paper with which the West wiped itself was softer than the paper with which the rest of he world blew it’s nose, although this was only a metaphorical comparison. The rest of the world would have been stunned at the luxurious idea of even using paper to blow one’s nose. Paper was for writing things like this confession, not for mopping up excretions. But those strange mysterious Westerners had exotic ways and wonders, symbolized in Kleenex and double-ply toilet paper.”

- The Sympathizer, VIet Thanh Nguyen

"…I kept my tone upbeat about life in Los Angeles. Perhaps unknown censors were reading..."

“…I kept my tone upbeat about life in Los Angeles. Perhaps unknown censors were reading refugee mail, looking for dejected, angry refugees who could not or would not dream the American Dream. I was careful, then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness–that’s a great deal. Bu a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it.”

- The Sympathizer, VIet Thanh Nguyen