Writing Excerpts

“Meet the LGBTQ Prison Abolitionists Leading the Way to a Better World” from In These Times

The gathering gave a platform to people who rarely have one. Speaker after speaker stepped onstage and explained that they were not used to talking in front of an audience. “I actually thought it was going to be a story that was going to never be told,” Love said of the attack she survived and her incarceration.

The power of Black and Pink’s work also derives from its communitarian nature. Event organizers encouraged attendees to give what they could and take what they needed, from donations to homestays to transit passes to the labor of setup and cleanup. When people referred to the organization’s network of prisoners, former prisoners and free world allies as the “Black and Pink family,” it did not seem like a platitude.

When brought onstage to receive an award, formerly incarcerated activist Afrika Queen Lockett explained that she wanted to be as available as possible to fellow trans women, urging them to call or write her if they needed anything. Black and Pink’s goal of transformative justice is ambitious. Within the organization itself, members strive to create a microcosm of the society they want — by recognizing human worth and meeting everyone’s needs.

Black and Pink is also undergoing some transformations of its own. The organization recently achieved 501(c)(3) status, a shift which outgoing national director Jason Lydon insisted would not change their priorities. Acknowledging the existence of a “nonprofit industrial complex,” in which corporate foundations often suppress radical ambitions in the groups they fund, he assured the audience that Black and Pink is “not accountable to corporations.”

With Lydon on his way out, Johns is set to replace him as National Director. Their goals? “In five years,” Johns told In These Times, “I want some transgender, queer man or woman to be in some obscure prison in some obscure state, not getting their medications or being beaten, and they tell the warden, ‘I’m calling Black and Pink to advocate for me.’ And the warden go back to his office and hang his head and say, ‘I don’t feel like being bothered with Black and Pink. Just give them what they need.’ I want Black and Pink to strike fear of equality in the minds and hearts of every warden.”

“A Materialist Approach to Translation” from Reading in Translation

The invisibility and annihilation of the translator stand out as distinct phenomena only because of translation’s proximity to a form of cultural production that we put on a pedestal. If one brings translation into the light, it takes on an uncanny role because it is evidently work, and yet it engages with literature, a form of work we’d rather pretend is not work but something else—that amorphous, exalted category of “art.”

By arguing that translation is art, translation theory seeks to make room for translators on this pedestal. If translation were, in fact, “a trade, like cabinet-making or baking or masonry” (Weinberger 27), then one would have to fight the translator’s invisibility by fighting the alienating working conditions of capitalism—one would have to challenge the broader de-valuing of labor. Translation theory understandably takes an easier ideological tack, harnessing the translator’s role as a cultural worker to argue that translation is art. According to this framing, the translator’s alienation from the product of their labor is harmful not because alienated labor is harmful across the board, but because translation occupies a particular expressive role which deserves to be acknowledged.

**“7 Climate Change Hands-On Activities to Keep Kids Engaged” from SubjectToClimate Blog**

When you think over your time in school, what classroom activities do you remember the best?

I’d be willing to bet that for a lot of people, the answer involves building something, cooking something, taking something apart, planting something, pouring one substance into another…in short, getting your hands dirty. Hands-on learning invites students to discover the world by engaging with it directly, something our brains are geared towards on a profound level. Why not harness this powerful pedagogical method to teach students about one of the most pressing issues of today: climate change?

Of course, when selecting climate change activities for students, you want to make sure that they really complement the material you’re covering. A well-chosen hands-on lesson can liven up class time, engage your students, and help them to understand the subject matter more deeply— plus, it’s likely to be fun. Building climate literacy in your students can be a lot of work, but we’re here to help. To start, check out these seven climate change hands-on activities.

Poetry published in Contemporary Verse 2, Volume 44, Issue 2: 9 Illusions

The following “trompe-l’œil” poems, inspired by Georges Perec, consist entirely of bilingual homographs— that is, each word has one meaning in English and another in French.

Arrive à voyager.

Arrive à protester.

Arrive à chanter.

Arrive enchanter.

Main lié,

pièce mince,

sang part/out.

Tend,

fend,

rend,

pend pendant:

corps ascendent

& déscendent.

An âcre,

un/lit.

Quotidien pain.

Son regard me

derange me tire me

rend vigilante—

fair crier, hurler.

Grâce à pire

son sang chant

travers d’une

rue null part.

Nu-ages relevant

souvenir averse

retire souvenir

caché.

(nu-ages relevant

souvenir averse

retire souvenir

fatigué)

Chose a/mère

dire pain.

Découpage Corps:

Haïr

temples

regard

n’ose

dents

bras

main

loin

bite

	pied.