Woman of Letters

Tag: activism

General Principles

May 27, 2014

Do writers of color avoid discussing existential problems?

My portion of the internet has been abuzz with Hiromi Goto‘s and N.K. Jemisin’s Guest of Honor speeches at Wiscon. Both are very political speeches.Both deal with what it means to be a writer of color in a predominantly white milieu, and both positioned the current moment as a time when people of color are…
General Principles

December 28, 2013

There has to be something more to activism than this same old intellectual framing

Because I am a well-educated dark and queer person who is in the humanities, I was automatically enrolled in the activist internet, even though I really don’t do anything to participate in it. And I am okay with that. I enjoy reading peoples’ blog posts about how eating quinoa means that you’re killing Bolivian peasants…
Politics

July 11, 2013

Why it’s sometimes a good idea to use a negative tone against people who agree with your political opinions

The other day (or was it today?) my twitter peep T.S. Christian was writing about how she doesn’t understand the tone argument (i.e. the argument frequently made about activist postings–that the tone is too controversial or strident): after all, the tone doesn’t invalidate the content. And I was thinking, you know, this is a common…