WORMS DIGEST
Caitlin MCloughlin
Like everyone, I’ve felt completely horrified by the racist riots that we’ve seen in the UK in recent weeks and equally disgusted by the government response which has so far feebly avoided any direct challenge to the blatant, violent islamophobia and racism at the root cause of these pogroms. Here are some of the books I’ve turned to in the last couple of weeks:
My friend bought me a copy of this a few years ago, I haven’t looked at it for a while but reached for it again last week in a despairing and rage filled fugue. Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s work aims at troubling our understanding of knowledge, race, history and violence, interrogating narratives around Islamophobia, gender, feminism and colonialism. Postcolonial Banter collects poems she wrote over eight years that she had mainly only performed as spoken word or slam poetry and is about many things from the important people (often women) in her life to the pitfalls of Islamophobic state policy such as Prevent. It’s both direct in its address whilst not sugar coating the ugly realities of racism and islamophobia—but also generous in its accessibility and clarity. Many of the poems have footnotes that offer powerful contextualisations and references for further reading.
Last week Manzoor-Khan wrote this beautiful and poignant article for the Guardian about the painful, timeliness of her new play Peanut Butter and Blueberries and the importance of Muslim love stories even when that seems impossible: “In times of increased racism and the accompanying hypervisibility that comes with it, loving others often feels a vulnerable thing to do. The more we love and the more people we choose to love, the more we expose ourselves to the potential of pain as our worry must widen its wings and our concern extends beyond what we can actually control.
While much of my past writing has dealt explicitly with racism and Islamophobia – dissecting and exploring them in the long view of history, and beyond their obvious manifestations – this play does something slightly different. I wanted to look less at the violence that shapes our lives and more at the love, care and lightness that we experience and choose to engage in, in spite of surveillance, policing and racism.”
Manzoor-Khan’s website also has a reading list with links to tons of books and essays that have informed her work and thinking.
I’ve also revisited Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain which was collaboratively written by members of Brixton Black Women's Group Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe. It was originally published in the 80s but was reissued by Verso in 2018. Heart of the Race is a detailed revision of British history that centres the experience of Black women (where so often they have been erased); from the history of Afro-Caribbean immigration to the UK, to the constant struggle that characterised their experiences as Black women in the UK, to the “personal and political struggles they have waged to preserve a sense of identity and community.”
As islamophobia goes unchallenged, peaceful Palestinian protests are characterised as ‘hate marches’ and immigrants from non-European countries are demonised, the seeds for the racist violence that has erupted the last few weeks were sowed long ago. Now, as always, seems like a good time to be reading about Palestine:
I just read Recognising the Stranger by Isabella Hammad, the document of a speech she made at the Edward Said Memorial lecture in 2023 in which she navigates the relationship between Palestinian struggle and narrative and the importance of not looking away.
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance by Rashid Khalidi is an essential and rigorous primer on the history of Palestine and the way that British and American imperialism is at the heart of the Zionist project that wants Palestinians removed from their land and strip them of their rights.
In other reading, I’m part way through Missouri William’s The Doloriad which is fucked up and completely disturbing but also the prose is weirdly, unsettlingly, quite beautiful?!
I read Lot by Bryan Washington a couple of weeks ago which is completely stunning, mesmerising, beautiful.
Enya Ettershank
Majazz Project and The Palestinian Sound Archive is an archival record label, putting out old cassettes from Palestine, mainly from the 1960s-1990s (post Nakba). The label and project was founded by Mo’omin Swaitat in 2020 when he went to visit his family in Jenin, and found himself stuck in his family home. Under his childhood bed Mo’omin rediscovered a cassette tape, which he took back to London with him and digitised. The tape was a recording of one his uncle’s gigs during a family friend’s wedding in Jenin refugee camp. From there, Mo’omin began to collate more and more tapes and vinyl, some from the tape shop in Jenin that suddenly closed its doors after the second intifada, digitalising them to preserve Palestine’s rich history and culture.
You can listen to some of the digitised tapes at the Southbank Centre until the 1st November. It’s free to visit, in their archive studio. Although the section is physically small, you could spend hours there, listening to music from Beaudoin weddings, field recordings from the Palestinian countryside, revolutionary folk songs and poetry, jazz and electro synth. The tapes are on display, all printed very bright and vivid, similar to riso colours. The music is accompanied by looping archival footage from Palestine, of both the city and countryside, alongside snippets of speeches and poetry from famous revolutionaries and writers.
What struck me the most was one track, and the video accompanying it. The yellow subtitled lyrics flashed across the black and white footage of the country:
‘I’M FROM JERUSALEM, THE OLD CITY /I’M FROM YOUR STREETS, MY BELOVED PALESTINE’
The simplicity of naming a place that you’re from, proudly, I found strangely reminiscent of a Grime or Drill song; it’s claiming of a city. But it also jumps away from the singular hero’s journey of Grime, as a place that is shared: ‘I’M FROM YOUR STREETS’. It made me think about this exhibition being placed in London, and London being the city that Mo’omin now resides. How proud people are to be from London, especially those who have faced hardship and have risen above the ashes. The song itself is from the 80s, with synths accompanying its revolutionary zeal, 40 years from now and 40 years after the Nakba. There is something unbearably painful about it being bookmarked between two especially inflamed and tragic periods of Palestinian history in its fight against occupation, really highlighting the constant struggle and pain scored across time. But the simple proclamation of I’m from HERE and I SHARE this with YOU evoked such a strong feeling within me, that to be Palestinian is to be proud of your home, your country, and your people and to share this with others and to continue to share it.
Of course it’s political, and of course that is personal. Throughout the exhibition, Mo’omin’s personal narrative of his home and the people living there, making and distributing music, is woven throughout and deeply integral to the exhibition and his project. It’s deeply integral to how we understand the genocide, how we resist politicians and news outlets who treat human suffering as a number, or an abstract piece of legal legalisation or as part of their election campaign. A reminder for those who haven’t to read Nadia Bou Ali’s essay Ugly Enjoyment which reminds us that genocide does not pay attention to law or reason, and that the state in turn fails to see or protect the lives of Palestinians or children by merely responding with abstract, pick and choose legal responses. Ali argues tha if those committing genocide and the state both fail to see the legibility of life, that we must persist to keep highlighting and fighting for it, like those who always spent their entire lives living under occupation. Mo’omin’s project is one of the many many ways we must be fighting for Palestinian legibility, history, culture and humanity. The Majazz project also has a monthly NTS show called The Palestinian Sound Archive, that those outside of London can listen to. You can also support his work and buy the music from the Majazz Bandcamp.
Summer Moraes
Black Meme by Legacy Russel
Black visual culture from 1900s to the present is a long and complex journey. Legacy Russel takes us by the hand, expertly illustrating how iconic images inform our understanding of the Modern World.
Her book portrays the impact of black people in our visual and digital culture explains how it would not exist in its current form without their influence.
Brilliant and utterly riveting, Legacy writes in a way that feels poignant in these turbulent times.
BLACK MEME is an important read, now and forever.
The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky {2008}
I first discovered the movie The Wrestler from a guy I was chatting to on Hinge.
Mickey Rourke became a household name in the 80s yet by 1991 his Hollywood career had collapsed and he had self-destructed. An easy target for the tabloids, Rourke became widely known for his botched-up plastic surgery rather than his indisputable talent.
The Wrestler marks the return of Rourke’s acting career.
This photo of Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke tearfully smooching each other shortly after finding out Mickey won best leading actor at the BAFTAS is my favourite image on the internet.
Other bits I have been loving this month
- The Whole Picture by Alice Procter – this book explores the colonial history of the artworks displayed in museums.
- Mark Fisher The Weird and Eeerie- the book I wish I had written.
- Slow Pulp and Babeheaven- two bands I have been listening to on repeat this month, particularly the songs Seabird and At home.
Arcadia Molinas
It was around the time that I read Love Me Tender by Constance Debré that I knew I needed a change. Or maybe it was reading Love Me Tender by Constance Debré that made me realise I needed a change. Enter: my summer of rage and reinvention. My friends Sophia and Phoenix happened to pick up a copy of the French novelist’s book at the same time and a similar spirit invaded them: it was goodbye to our old selves and goodbye to any and all attachments. We were shedding our skins and allowing ourselves to float lightly on the waters, any waters, maybe the waters that Debré insists on swimming in every day. Since then, although the spirit has somewhat waned, I urge myself to remember the feeling of lightness, the feeling I scribbled in my notebook to: “be more myself”. To me this means being louder, taking up more space, tapping back into those flames in me I doused with water because I felt they were unpopular. It is being “cringe but free”. I’ve started writing poetry again. As I write this I’m in my childhood’s summer haunt on the Catalan coast and there are memories here pouring out of every crevice. Why not embrace all those dimensions? I am a very interesting person to get to know.
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames by Charles Bukowski
I put a poem of mine into Chat GPT and asked it to tell me what poets it reminded it of. Charles Bukowski was first on the list so I picked up this collection from Reference Point, carefully recommended by Phoenix. I wasn’t a huge fan of the American poet as a teenager but perhaps as I’ve grown, so have my worries and overall down-and-outness. I’m loving them, I love the book’s design and the crassness, the drunkness, the cigarettes - my poor notes app has grown twice in size since I’ve started this.
Naked by Mike Leigh
Misha Honcharenko’s new book, published by the loveliest P Eldridge and Caitlin McLoughlin over at Sissy Anarchy, Trap Unfolds Me Greedily, launched this August at Housmans. During the inspiring talk between himself and Octavia Bright, Misha mentioned some of his main references when writing the book and beyond, and the first on that list was Naked by Mike Leigh. I’ve been very interested by body horror and knew Misha’s appetite for it too so I hungrily wrote down his recommendation and when I went home I watched it that very night. Naked is not for the faint of heart. A morally ambiguous charter at its center, Naked tracks Johnny, a performance of a lifetime by David Thewlis, as he wreaks havoc around London, following equally destitute characters like himself, lecturing them on philosophy and the hopelessness of the world. David Thewlis as Johnny is truly spectacular - an engrossing character whose every word tasted like poisoned honey. Truly unforgettable.
Breath by Kim Ki-duk
Another great watch, another great discovery. This time, via a writing workshop spearheaded by the Chilean author Paulina Flores, the Korean director Kim Ki-duk. His movies (I swiftly followed Breath with a viewing of his most popular film 3-Iron) are masterclasses in silence. Often, key characters hardly say a word, if they even speak at all. In Breath, a woman finds out her husband is cheating on her, again, and in response, seeks out the man on death row she has been obsessing over ever since he attempted suicide in his cell. It is evident, despite it not being spoken, that she relates to him on a deep level, she’s drawn to him voraciously. She visits him in prison and tries to make something out of his final days - is her act one of kindness or inane cruelty? Incredibly sexy and passionate, this bizarre film will suck you in like a fire.
