Speaking Out of Place: SARA AHMED discusses The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

Speaking Out of Place: SARA AHMED discusses The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

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Author of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook
Independent Queer Feminist Scholar

You're more likely to progress if you say yes. It's a reproductive mechanism, which is why feminist culture knows so much about everything. We can explain how it is that institutions keep being reproduced in the same way. So what then do you do? Where do you go if your no has nowhere to go? And I think when you say no to the world, and you're pushed out by it, you still find your people. And that there's the world-making is in the people who find in the refusal of the institution a common ground.

Speaking Out of Place: CHING-IN CHEN & KATE HAO discuss the cancellation of the Asian American Literary Festival 2023

Speaking Out of Place: CHING-IN CHEN & KATE HAO discuss the cancellation of the Asian American Literary Festival 2023

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on the cancellation of the Asian American Literary Festival 2023

This August, the Asian American Literary Festival was to take place in Washington, DC.. The longstanding event had been on hiatus because of the pandemic, so this year’s event had generated a lot of buzz.  Organized by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), the event had already garnered substantial investments and expectations from both national and international groups and states. Ching-In Chen is a poet who was curating a festival event featuring books by trans and nonbinary writers. Kate Hao is a program coordinator who was on contract with the Smithsonian for the festival.

Highlights - Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

Highlights - Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

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Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. –Fury Young

I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario. – B.L. Shirelle

Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

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Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. –Fury Young

I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario. – BL Shirelle

(Highlights) TREVA B. LINDSEY
TREVA B. LINDSEY
(Highlights) CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
DR. G. SAMANTHA ROSENTHAL
MARK SELIGER

MARK SELIGER

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Photographer

I always tell people the worst picture can ever take is one you don't take. And that is a simple philosophy. If you don't go out there and do the work, then you will never know. You may think there's going to be another great snowstorm. You might think there's going to be another great moment where a block is going to have a certain kind of rhythm or a culture is going to have a certain amount of innocence or a musician is going to be as reluctant or vulnerable or sympathetic. You just have to embrace the moment and do the work.

(Highlights) DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

(Highlights) DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

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Singer · Author
1st African American Actor on Children’s TV · Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.

DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

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Singer · Author
1st African American Actor on Children’s TV · Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.