Worms Best Reads of October

PIERCE ELDRIDGE

I’m between books. I’m filtering my interests as they emerge. At the moment, there’s urgency in some of my reading, at other times I feel more able to take rest in a novel. I feel more able to put a book down if it’s not exciting me, I feel okay having multiple tabs open bouncing between theories, ideas, and styles. I love it when people read to me, I love being able to read to people. I go to my room to find Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruffle and read ‘On Beginnings’ at a breakfast over the weekend in my home, five faces peering at me. What they can’t see as I read this essay is the passages underlined, little drawings I’ve made on the paper that show models of thinking around Ruffle’s thinking. Those secret, now not so, phrases include: self-consciousness is its own pretension … theatre requires that you draw a circle around the action and observe it from outside the circle; in other words, self-consciousness is theatre … my favourite: we each only really speak one sentence in our lifetime … and finally: a poem is a semicolon. We labour in the sharing before a friend takes out a book they're reading, i never knew what time it was by David Antin. They read a passage about art related to mouse traps, related to the aristocratic tendencies and differences between peanut butter mice and jelly mice, and we all giggle. I love hearing words written that are meant to be spoken. The multiple candles we have lit for Palestine flicker with our chatter as the remaining food goes cold. I begin reading Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Anglea Y. Davis, I watch a video where she says, ‘if we say, as we do, abolish the prison industrial complex, we should also say abolish apartheid and end the occupation of Palestine.’ It’s a nice reminder that systems beyond systems are still inextricably linked. I watch another video, it plays as I clean the dishes after kissing everyone goodbye, called Black Feminist Writers and Palestine. I feel tender to listen. I go to bed, I light another candle, and I read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I can’t read much of this though, I’m too afraid of what awaits me. I feel protective of Jude, I almost convince myself I’m in love with Jude, I think mostly because I feel I could help him; but, maybe I couldn’t. I fall asleep after reading a chapter, I wake up to the sound of rain. I open my computer and watch the first episode of Al-Nakba, a series on the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures. I see how complicit Britain is in the occupation of Palestine, I see threads back to the Balfour Declaration. I listen to Wiser World’s series for further details.

Enya Sullivan

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time contains two essays by Baldwin: ‘The Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation’ and ‘Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind’.

The second essay, ‘Down at the Cross’, takes up the majority of the book, charting Baldwin’s experience with the church as a black youth in Harlem, his time as a Christian preacher and his experience meeting Elijah Muhammad, the leader of The Nation of Islam. Although it’s short, the text is deft, written as if it is ready to be preached in the pulpit. My boyfriend recently said that he feels like Baldwin’s essays are biblical, not in the fact that Baldwin writes like a preacher and references the bible, but that it illuminates different truths and meanings throughout different points of history and the reader’s own life. I wholeheartedly concur, I believe I will keep returning to this essay, and Baldwin’s other works, for the rest of my life. One of the things I have taken from re-reading the essay is Baldwin’s insight into how religions and nations are used as fantasies intended to evade death, and that we should instead confront “with passion the conundrum of life”. In particular, Baldwin is making a plea to white people to take of our “masks” of power, those “that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within”, he is asking for white people to act with love: “if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will.” It feels cheesy, and in some ways pathetic, to write about love as an answer to war or to racism especially as we witness the siege on Gaza. I’ve been reading a lot of Jacqueline Rose at the moment, in The Last Resistance, she quotes Joan Riverie “Our hate is distributed more freely than our love.” Rose argues that hate feeds upon itself, as a deeply satisfying emotion for the psyche. Hate builds up barriers, it protects the ego, it induces false stability, it reinforces power and reinforces the dominant and domineering fantasies of nationhood, religion and race. Both Baldwin and Rose warn of the awful results of hate, that breeds more hate. A clear plea to demand peace and justice, to call for a ceasefire, to let the Palestinians live on their land freely. The title of Baldwin’s collection comes from the African-American Spiritual Mary Don’t You Weep:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign

No more water, the fire next time

As the sky is set ablaze and bombs rain down on Gaza, Baldwin’s essay is a clear and sombre warning against the evils of humanity, and a demand (not just a call) for humanity’s kindness. The fires of hate will burn on, and we must do our best to put them out. I will keep returning to Baldwin to understand the hatred of the world, and the ugliness within myself, in the hope of being anchored by love and compassion for one another.

I lent my copy out so couldn’t take a photo, I hope this will do instead.

Arcadia Molinas

Wound is the Origin of Wonder by Maya C. Popa

What happens when desire is mired in complications like mortality, the future, the past, goodbyes and death? Because desire, although powerful, is not unfree from complications and contradictory feelings. Maya C. Popa is not unwounded by the throes of desire and curiosity, but she makes the point in her poems that "the wound is where the light enters us" (that’s so good! like are you kidding me!!!).

This whole collection sizzled with symbols; the snow, animals (owls, peacocks, ghost crabs, the whole of Noah's ark), reflections, places. All the poems were in communion with one another, echoing each other, past or future lives of each other. It is clear that despite the reservations Maya C. Popa has towards language "I worry I'll only / have words with which / to tell the story of what mostly / occurred outside language" she can use it to cast lasting imprints on your mind. What a pleasure to read.

I’ve also read this resignation letter from the director of the UN’s New York office.