Sunday Bookmarks #9
Good evening friends, enjoy this week’s rambling, sparse on the illness front, as when in a pain hole myself, it is hard to ponder something thoughtful to say about it, as you try and survive minute by minute. Safe to say, there have been plenty of tears this week.
READING //
I devoured The Startup Wife, by Tahmima Anam, in just a couple of days. I reached for it assuming it would be light enough to pick up during a week of deadlines and pain flares and was caught off guard with its constant questioning of the status quo, the future of tech and the male chauvinism visible in even the most progressive spaces. It is the first fiction book I have read, that weaves in the pandemic and nails the experiences of the unknown we all felt in those first weeks. Yesterday over a drink with friends I had not seen in a year, we retold our experiences of where we were and what we were doing, when we first heard about the virus, for everyone at the table, it was visceral. what we were eating, what tube station we were at, what we had on the telly and who we called.
I drifted back to my time teaching last April, the faces of the children as we tried to explain why they must sing happy birthday whilst washing their hands, why they must no longer share things in the classroom, why I could no longer hug them goodbye. Last night we recalled other defining cultural moments of our own upbringings, where we were at 9/11, 7/7, the wall street crash. Although we were all so young, the memories are stuck, they play on loop in my head; The TV being wheeled into the classroom, hushed whispers about parents working in the city or relatives living abroad, frightened chatter and an almost nervous anticipation. My friend remembered her headmistress standing grimly at the front of the assembly hall, in front of 100’s of young girls, to wish everyone’s families well, as ‘the recession always hit the north first’. In Anam’s book, the impending pandemic our characters witness in March 2020, felt like a cultural reference, a background character. Although it is far from over, the spring of 2020 will be planted in the minds of children, as a cultural marker of their childhoods, just like those others were for us.
The Startup Wife is out on the 3rd of June from Canongate books. I was kindly sent a free proof copy to review.
This weekend, I am binging
WATCHING //
During a pain spiral, I revert to two kinds of entertainment, David Attenborough’s nature documentaries or old Disney films. I was previously of the opinion that those who obsessively consume Disney as adults were odd, and although I will not be visiting Orlando, or hosting my future wedding at Disneyland Paris, I can find comfort in the nostalgia, and maybe those other people do too. This week I rewatched the original mary Poppins and followed it with mary Poppins returns, which. As the - out of the loop of actual pop culture kind of person I am, I totally missed Emily Blunt’s tip-top performance as the magical nanny, when it hit cinemas in 2018. The original Mary Poppins brings back visceral memories of my grandad. It is something about the old Disney films, the ones with real actors, not cartoons, that reminds me of him. The way the men dress, the sticks they carry, the handkerchief that’s always in a coat pocket and the mention of sardines and toast, all remind me of Ron.
I see him, sitting at our dining room table in a small terrace house up a hill, opposite a tiny patch of grass with a conker tree. He hooks the curved top of his wooden cane on the back of the farmhouse chair, top of the table, his favourite seat. a frozen dinner is in the oven, I am still in my school uniform, a plaid navy and black skirt, two sizes too big. I’m looking at the shelf of VHS tapes, and select Mary Poppins, a strong contender as a favourite, he likes the singing, I like the dancing. He hums along, always out of tune, I spin around in front of the large silver box, that crackles if you stand too close. Nanny calls us to sit down for food, we reluctantly switch the TV off, and the large silver box slowly fades to black.
(Mum and Grandad, circa 1990)
The interesting thing about re-watching childhood films as an adult is the total change in perspective, that causes you to notice so many details that flew over your young and naive head. I was ignorant to the fact Mrs. Banks, spends all of her time supporting the women’s equality movement. She dons the iconic green and purple sash, and talks of tying herself to postbox and pillars, supporting the jailed protestors, and feeding the other women. It is mentioned several times throughout the film and I never once took notice as a child watcher, either I was an ignorant little thing, or it was disney’s way of keeping current with the adults who would be at home watching the VHS on repeat, just like Ron.
READING (ONLINE) //
In a week that feels months long, I have lent my limited attention to reading short-form journalism articles. It often feels like if you are a person who shares opinions online, you must be across all news and social justice. I only experience a fraction of what it must be like to exist with a platform that has 10’s or 100’s of thousands of followers, but still, the noise to say something, regardless of its substance, often seems louder than the cause itself, and I often wonder what it would be like if none of us existed on the internet at all. I can somewhat understand the responsibility in sharing information if your platform is directly concerned with, or profits from, any kind of social justice led agenda, but without fact-checking and ensuring you have a competent understanding of what it is you are speaking about, it can sometimes be in vain.
I am not convinced by a lot of social media activism (others have created more in-depth and eloquent pieces on it in the past here and here) and I believe the carousel of bitesize buzzwords, alongside the Instagram infographic industrial complex, often does more harm than good in its spreading of misinformation. I believe in action, in practical attempts at challenging injustice, and I do also believe that Palestinians deserve worldwide support and recognition for their ongoing struggles against Israeli occupation. With protests around the UK this weekend, most inaccessible to disabled folk (a longer article is brewing, watch this space), it can be hard to feel like anything done online makes an ounce of difference, if it is circulating the same 5 images. With that being said, I am signposting you to the Palestine Campaign database, to search if any current or previous university you work / study / interact with, has unethical investments. I will be contacting my future university Kings College London, and asking them to divest the current 5 million pounds they have invested in companies that support the Israeli Defence Force.
I thoroughly enjoyed a brilliant article from the Disability Visibility Project, the mother of the essay collection under the same title, with co-editors of Sincerely, Your Autistic Child. As an education student, one whose leanings are geared towards children who are marginalised by our limited education system, I welcomed this child-led perspective on SEN needs. I will be ordering their book once my current bedside non-fiction stack, shrinks a little more. Whilst browsing the project page I was also elated to see, Alice Wong, a Disability justice activist, founder of the projector and editor of the aforementioned essay collection, is releasing a memoir in 2022. Year of the Tiger will be experiences from Wong’s life, expressed through words, photographs, horoscopes and artwork. I am looking forward to it already.
Finally is Ash Sarkar’s most recent piece published on her relatively new news platform, Novara media, founded to balance the ever-shifting Overton window of the U.K mainstream press, as it moves even further to the right. Following Starmer’s blunders as the leader of the labour party, as it failed to gain much traction in recent countrywide elections, sarkar writes “Everybody is Doing Identity Politics, Even If They Think They’re Not. Merely referring to 'the working class’ every ten seconds can’t conjure a shared political identity”, it is an excellent read on the ever-present theme of identity as the defining feature of personhood, levied across political parties and social justice campaigns alike. A useful if not slightly depressing reckoning.
Catch you all on another part of the internet,
Hannah