Content that opened my heart this season

Winter 2024

Happy Spring, readers! It’s time for the seeds we’ve planted this winter to sprout, to bloom into the flora we’ve dreamt about through these dark months. 

Astoria, NY, March 2022

After I published my first content round-up at the end of 2023, a couple people asked if it might become a series. I am a person who enjoys organizing links and ideas, and like I said in December, I love a good resource list. Monthly felt too frequent, but seasonal, just right. A moment to honor the passing of a season and the change that unfolded within it. 

So here’s a list of resources that opened my heart in Winter 2024. I’ve been engaging with a lot of content this season, so I really tried to align with the theme and recall which content opened my heart – i.e., it made me cry, expanded my perspective, or gave me hope. May it do the same for you.

Community Events

Before we delve into content, I want to share that this season I attended two virtual events hosted by

Chetna Mehta

of MosaicEye Unfolding. Both connected me to my heart-space and ignited my creativity. I highly recommend you check out their spring offerings.

Podcasts

1. Organized Labor, Unions, Strikes and Palestine, with Zaina Alsous, Getting to the Root of it with Venus Roots. The analysis on

   Venus Roots
   podcast is always on point, but phew, this episode expanded my thinking and cracked open my heart. Zaina’s poise, clarity, and steadfastness is humbling. Her clear explanation of what a strike really is was also a reminder that I misused the term when I referenced “my commitments to the Palestinian call for a general strike” back in January. Walking away from capitalism in whatever ways we can manage is important, but it is not inherently a strike. Listen to Zaina for more.  

2. "White Reconstruction" - Dylan Rodriguez On Domestic War, The Logics of Genocide, and Abolition, Millennials are Killing Capitalism. Wow, there’s so much in this episode. It didn’t just expand my perspective, it blew it up, infused it with power, and then put it back together. 

3. Care must be a collective practice of survival, not a site of profit extraction, Movement Memos. This episode delves into so many of the inquiries that inform the care culture newsletter: What is care? Who is a care worker? How does care get co-opted by capitalism, and how can it be an antidote to the violence? In what ways was the non-profit sector designed to undermine care? How might we reclaim it through community?

“The rallying cry that we are all Palestinians must abandon the metaphor and manifest materially. Meaning, all of us—Palestinians or otherwise—must embody the Palestinian condition, the condition of resistance and refusal, in the lives we lead and the company we keep. Meaning we reject our complicity in this bloodshed and our inertia when confronted with all of that blood. Because Gaza cannot stand alone in sacrifice.” — Mohammed El-Kurd

Articles & Essays

There are a lot of important things to read about in the world right now, but I have been captivated by the daring, gripping writing by Palestinians in recent months and feel it is a gift we should not take for granted. I try to imagine daily how heavy it must feel to be a Palestinian person in this world right now, especially one engaged in the unimaginably vulnerable and laborious act of publicly sharing their experience. The courage. The transparency. The generosity. I try to pay attention to this work as much as I can. 

1. Are we indeed all Palestinians?, Mohammed El-Kurd

2. “A Thousand Eulogies Are Exported to the Comma.” Of Syntax and Genocide, Nicki Kattoura

3. Can the Palestinian Mourn?, Abdaljawad Omar

4. A World Without Palestinians, Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud

5. On Love, the Palestinian Way: Kinship, Care and Abolition in Palestinian Feminist Praxis, Sarah Ihmoud

6. What Does it Mean to be Palestinian Now?, five Palestinian writers

Let Us Descend inviting me into its magic on a beach in Sardinia on Christmas Day, 2023

 Books

1. Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward. Jesmyn Ward’s mystical, captivating writing is my favorite, and her newest work is exceptional. Just be ready to have your heart broken and put back together over and over again.

2. 1919, Eve L. Ewing. This has been on my to-read list for too long. A book that only this multidisciplinary, radical, visionary Chicagoan could write – a historical study delivered as poetry.

Film

1. Palestine is Still the Issue. Created in 2002 by a British filmmaker, this brief film weaves together interviews with Palestinian and Jewish people to form an anti-Zionist history and analysis. But more deeply than that, it brought me into the broken-heartedness and pain experienced by so many people trying to survive this genocide.

2. Shayda. Parenting is a feat. Finding agency in the aftermath of abuse is a feat. Adapting to a new country and culture is a feat. Together, they seem unimaginable. But the protagonist of this illuminating film does all three with resolve and grace. If you’re a woman, try to watch the film with another woman and be prepared to talk a lot after (shoutout to my sweet friend Kat who was this person for me).

Music

1. PHASOR, Helado Negro. Walking is an important ritual for me, and this new album has been the perfect background music for moving energy as I put one foot in front of the other. 

2. I Put a Spell on You, Nina Simone. I recently had the privilege of seeing Nikki Giovanni live at the Schomburg Center, and as I walked through a hazy, wintry Harlem night after the show I felt a longing to listen to this album. The blend of deep, guttural tones with the rapture of a song like “Feeling Good” has made it a delightful soundtrack for the transition from winter to spring.

Astoria, NY, April 2023

As we wind down this list, I hope the sun is radiating on your face and the scent of spring is pleasing your spirit. And as you go forth into this new season, I invite you to consider how the content you’re consuming is preparing you for the radical transformation that’s underway around us. Are you finding words and melodies that open your heart? In what ways is your attention supporting your capacity to shape care culture? 

With care,

Alyssa