Content that opened my heart this season
Autumn 2024
Happy Winter Solstice ❄️ I’m arriving at this season full of tenderness and gratitude after a busier-than-usual Autumn. I thought my content engagement was minimal in these busy months, but when I looked back on my list it was long and juicy again. I hope you enjoy the pieces I plucked from it.
Workshops
I engaged in a few workshop spaces this month that were particularly notable and led by people I recommend following.
Storytelling with ជាតិ Cheate and ចិត្ត Chett: Tasting the Land with an Open Heart, Kalyanee Mam and Emergence Magazine. Wow, wow, wow. It’s hard to find words to describe how open and loving my heart would feel in and after the four sessions Kalyanee guided us through. I highly recommend following her to learn about future offerings if you have any interest in storytelling, ancestral healing, connection to land, or just being an open, compassionate human.
Practicing for the Pluriverse Symposium, Courage of Care. What a gift to be invited to guide a collective journey of shaping new worlds in this magical space. The whole day of workshops felt like an embodied experience of home. And after the Symposium I joined Courage of Care’s “Like Water” workshop in Brooklyn, and it was a transformational day. The next gathering in this series, Like Fire, is in February and I plan to attend again. Let’s go together!
Next season I’ll be co-facilitating a workshop on Ancestral Connection as Anti-Racism Practice in The River. I’d love to see you there, and in The River in general! It’s a nourishing space for those of us experimenting with ways of being outside of capitalism and dominant culture.
Articles & Essays
A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation, Fady Joudah. Everyday for 15 months the cracks in my heart have opened wider, my spirit has yearned more than I knew possible for an end to the senseless, grotesque annihilation of Palestinian people, land, and culture. I know the same is true for many of you. This stunning meditation was written in Autumn 2023, but I just came across it in Lit Hub’s “selection of pieces from a dark and devastating fifteen months.” May the writing stir us to courageous action.
How Do You Forgive the People Who Killed Your Family?, Clint Smith. Before I learned about the Palestinian genocide, Rwanda’s history of genocide had already cracked open my heart. As I built relationships with Rwandese health workers through my time in GlobeMed at GWU, I also centered much of my public health and human rights studies around the country’s history and repair. On the 30th anniversary of this horrific genocide, the tough questions still don’t have easy answers, but this piece illuminates Rwandans’ commitment to healing through the tension.
Return to Kíłááhíí, Darcie Little Badger. Another story of attempts at healing beyond genocide, this time on “American” soil. This is a heartfelt reflection of how ritual, land, and community can come together as vital ingredients of a more peaceful future.
Daylighting a Brook in the Bronx, Emily Raboteau. Humans are so focused on our own complex dynamics that I think sometimes we forget we also have an ecocide crisis. In the Bronx, there is an attempt at repair with the waters we have damaged. This piece is a love note to that process, with deep resonance with this Hopi prophecy that was introduced to us at Practicing the Pluriverse.
When the Prince of Heaven Sleeps, Roger Reeves. Our complex, violent past and present are too heavy, too exhausting, too painful, especially for those who descend from the bearers of the weight. This piece demands space for deep rest for those descendants, particularly Black men. My wish is for every one of you to be given the space for long, uninterrupted sleep in this dark winter season.
Books
Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Deep gratitude to sweet s for a signed copy of this monumental biography of Audre Lorde by one of my very favorite writers. It is not just an ode to Lorde, but to her friends, lovers and mentors, the Earth, the Universe, and the energy that binds all of these forces together. Truly a stunning piece of work.
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072, M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi. I loved this speculative fiction so much!! I picked it up in a sweet indie bookshop in Beacon, NY not knowing anything about it, and couldn’t put it back down. And then I realized all the queers and anarchists were reading it, which made me feel like I was in on a delightful little secret. But even if you aren’t queer or anarchist or even a fan of speculative fiction, read it! It will expand your imagination toward our inevitable post-capitalist future.
Films & TV Shows
Taste of the Land, Emergence Magazine. This film by Kalyanee Mam offers breathtaking visuals of her ancestral Cambodian lands, and invites viewers to reflect on your own relationship to land, food, and culture.
Most of the content that I watch is in support of my Italian language learning journey, but these two shows stand out as more than worthy of your time even if you’re not on that journey.
Le Fate Ignoranti, Hulu. I loved this show so much!! Just 8 episodes, full of friendship, chosen family, romance, death, poetry, and a lot of laughter. Very enjoyable.
My Brilliant Friend, HBO Max. The fourth and final season has concluded! This series is based on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, the first of which is titled My Brilliant Friend, which the New York Times has deemed the best book of the 21st century (so far?). The books are obviously fantastic, and surprisingly I enjoyed the TV series just as much.
Music
Dunya, Mustafa. I learned of Mustafa through this article by Hanif Abdurraqib and then repeatedly listened to Dunya. An album that poignantly captures the political moment and opens space for grief.
Dance, No One’s Watching, Ezra Collective. I had fun grooving to this album this season, mostly while chopping veggies and stirring sauce in my kitchen.
🌀for the spiral in our spirits🌀, a playlist by Mimi Zhu. As Autumn transitioned to Winter I felt pulled inward and this playlist supported the slowness required for that shift. It includes a few artists I turn to for solace, including Beverly Glenn-Copeland, who I had the pleasure of seeing live at the TRANSA album release party in September.
Grazie mille a tutti, for the recommendations & gifts, the notes about how my writing is resonating with you, and the conversations that shape my perspective and give me life. It’s humbling to be witnessed by each of you. I can’t wait to see what collective insights emerge in 2025. And until then, as Kalyanee said to us in her final storytelling workshop, “Take care of each other. Maybe that’s all there is.”
With care,
Alyssa