"Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad

 I recently finished working through Me and White Supremacy which is a book based on an Instagram challenge designed for individuals to work though and address how they are complicit in white supremacy. It's the first book of its kind that I've read, even though I've read most of the big books about racism (White Fragility, How to be an Antiracist, etc). This book is inherently very interactive and personal as a result. 

The structure of the book is simple, each day contains information about a concept inherent in white supremacy and a list of prompts to journal and think through for each day. Even though the reading is short, each day is designed to be intense and for you to really go through and think about your actions and feelings in relation to each topic.

Having read other similar books before, I found that this book didn't expose me to many new concepts around white supremacy. They all interweave and so it can be pretty similar. However, going through and thinking about how each concept affects my life makes the experience radically different. For example, I never really think about my conceptions and prejudices around Black children, but there's a whole day dedicated to that in this book. 

What I also really liked is that the book contains an appendix about how to lead meetings discussing the content of the book. It's not something that I've seen many other places, but it's a cool way to make sure that people respect the work going forward.

Another aspect of this is that I've been reading this book along with a Discord server dedicated to discussing and meeting and working through this together. It's been great having a community to talk about these issues and recommend resources and get advice. Having a community is so important for this work, and it's a great reminder that we aren't alone in this. Our actions affect and can hurt others around us, but we can also enact great change. Would highly recommend that anyone read this and do the work to improve their mindset before taking on the world.

This Is Beautiful: Chris and Jack sketches

 Alright well I did it, I went through Chris and Jack's podcast and now the sketches. In case you missed it, Jack is Jack De Cena from "Avatar: The Last Airbender" as well as "The Dragon Prince" and Chris Smith is his writing partner. They've been friends forever and write sketches that they put up online. 

So you can find all of their stuff on YouTube at this link, and it's a lot of fun just going through these. Most of their sketches revolve around their relationship as friends, and it's super cute. They're very comfortable with like hugging each other and expressing their affection (I talked about this earlier as well haha) and that's lovely. They're also hilarious! A number of sketches involve them collaborating with Dante Bosco (voice of Zuko on "Avatar") and other friends. They also have a bit where they want to make Julysixth Park a day to celebrate Jurassic Park and that's always amusing somehow. Give them a watch! Most sketches are less than 10 minutes so it won't take you long to just watch a few.

"Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai" by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard

 I started this book for a book club, but doesn't look like the meeting will eventually be happening so I guess I read this for nothing. Anyways, this book was largely kind of odd to read in that I'm unsure what it was trying to be. I'm not sure whether the author wanted this to be non-fiction or historical fiction. The narration jumps around in time and supplies details that may or may not be historically accurate such as what different characters are thinking or saying. I have no doubt that this is all based on history but the result is that it reads with super flowery language and often enters the realm of speculation.

This is a book about Yasuke, a Black man who came to Japan in the sixteenth century with the Jesuits with the goal of being a bodyguard for individuals who are trying to spread Christianity. He then is gifted to a Japanese warlord and stays by his side for many years, and becomes a samurai under his service. When the warlord is overthrown and betrayed by one of his allies, Yasuke disappears from history.

The end of the book gets into adaptations of Yasuke's story and how he's influenced characters and stories. He's made a few appearances in anime which is really cool since there aren't many Black characters in general in anime. And he's appeared in video games. I think part of the reason why this book was suggested is that there's a Netflix series coming out about him soon! And that was really cool to read about.

Plus there's an Author's Note at the end that talks about how cool this story is in that here's a Black man that manages to travel across the world, speak multiple languages, and be bestowed the highest honor from another culture. It's a really cool way of looking at history and not focusing on exclusively white men. And that makes this part of history really cool to learn about!

Having said that though, I think the author is also a Black man, but a lot of the time Yasuke is described as being really "exotic" and wild. Part of that doesn't really sit right with me since many POC are called that in modern times to fetishize them. Maybe a clearer distinction between how Yasuke is being described and how people of the time described him and would have seen him could have helped. 

So this was a neat book to read and learn about, but the overall reading experience was pretty average. I'm happy that this story is being amplified, but in terms of its value as a book, I think you could get the same info from a Wikipedia article.

This Is Beautiful: Community

 This past weekend, I had a meeting for a group called "Aces Committed to Anti-Racism" which is a Discord server dedicated to members of the a-spec community that want to work against racism, both in general and in the community. A lot of it consists of reading the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. It's a really good book, and I'll definitely blog about it eventually. But being able to have a more face-to-face conversation with the other members was really refreshing and invigorating! It reminded me of what we're all working towards and how we can lift each other up throughout this process. 

I tend to be really pessimistic about my interactions online, and while I still definitely am that, it was nice to remind myself that we are still people. And that we can talk to each other. And we aren't alone in this journey.

New Leviwand Video

 Roughly once a year I make a new leviwand video using choreography that I developed, music that I cut, and footage that I shot (well that last one is just since the pandemic). It's really nice to see how my thoughts and creativity around this has changed. For this piece, I really wanted to shoot the same footage in many different places (had to get cut down to four) and mix those together. And of course the song is "Chasing Pavements" by Adele. It's just really nice to focus on this for a bit and make some art!

Anyways, the video is below, hope you like it!

This Is Beautiful: Annabeth Chase is Black!

 This has probably been talked about by others who know more specifics, but I am honestly so thrilled with the casting of Annabeth Chase in the Percy Jackson TV series as a Black woman! From what I've seen the author, Rick Riordan, has been pulling hard for this casting and has been given a lot of autonomy from Disney, and I'm so glad that he made this call. It will mean so much for Black children everywhere, whether they grew up with this series or are just discovering it now. And it makes me excited for the production as a whole, after the flop of the 2 movies I have been nervous. But if they can pull this off with all the racist haters out there? They can pull off anything. I can't wait to finally watch it.

Being Outside

 I'm in a production of Shakespeare in the Arb this summer (think Shakespeare in the Park but in an Arboretum) and we just started having outside rehearsals. I was excited sure, but I also thought it'd be really draining to be outside for that long. It's been amazing to be honest, I'm having such a good time with this production, and I think a big part of it is that it's outside!

Being outside has done amazing things for my mood. I can feel my mood getting better just from being there and breathing that outside air. It really clears off the weight of the day from my shoulders. I think also part of it is that I'm outside and away from a computer or wifi haha, you cannot get ahold of me even if I wanted to respond!

I think it's also the fact that the production has set up this culture of respect of the environment and the space that we're in. One of the first meetings was walking through the Arb and looking at where we'd be working and noticing the local plants and things like that. It's been stressed that we have to be careful with this space, that it's "a living museum" and we need to treat it as such. It's environmental theater with a conservationist goal.

The play itself is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which is arguably the first conservationist text. Shakespeare spends a lot of time describing the forest and the magic of the environment! He was writing this at a time where a lot of wood was being chopped down for fuel and materials, it's likely that there was an environmental crisis happening in his day as well.

It's been amazing putting this production together, I can't wait to see what we make!

This Is Beautiful: Small Conferences

 This last week we had a small conference for my lab and our collaborators. It was actually really nice, we could all fit in a room and see each other clearly, plus the presentations were short. It allowed for us to get short snippets of what everyone is working on without getting bogged down in what the details are. Plus it's all very similar so the presentations would kind of build on each other. 

My previous experiences with conferences have been fine, but I usually emerge exhausted and overwhelmed. This was refreshingly the opposite, and makes me want to seek out these conferences more often now!