Resource highlight of the week: ‘James Baldwin on the Creative Process and the Artist’s Responsibility to Society’ on The Marginalian.
If you’re only hearing about Maria Popova now, she is known to be an elegant cross-pollinator of the arts and sciences. With a poetic density, she walks us through the historical ecosystem of authors, scientists, poets, artists, and religious figures in the early 19th century and back whose relationships and creations intermingled.
I’m thrilled for you to get to know her! I read her book Figuring once a year.
Some updates:
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and I are doing a collaborative series on the topic of home from a migrant experience. The first piece of our series is now live. There, we talked about liminal spaces, the cost of pedestalizing migrants, migratory populations in ecology, and so much more.As part of the series, we want to hear from you. If you have any questions and thoughts on the piece we wrote, Ayesha and I will address them on an online conversation to be broadcasted in the near future.
I’m excited about what’s to come of this series. Conversations like this never cease to emerge in my lifetime — a lifetime of unanswered questions about home I’ve learned to accept more than I solve.
- For my latest on YES!, I interviewed Kyra Knox, Garry Mills, Mark Mims, and Allen Iverson on the award-winning documentary feature Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia. The film platformed on-the-ground organizations, Shoot Basketballs Not People and Mothers in Charge, that strive to prevent gun violence in Philly. Days ago, the film won Best Documentary Feature and the Tubman Award: Activism Through Art at the Hip Hop Music Festival.
I’m proud to say this only feels like the beginning for them.
- I shared my childhood memories about climate anxiety with Whitney Bauck on Atmos, co-published with Rappler. I’ve never publicly opened up about my experience with eco-anxiety until this piece.
- Even in the aftermath of a rather full weekend, I managed to create this Instagram post on grief and creation. August has always held a particular heaviness for me. In the past, it marked the beginning of another school year, which meant flying back to the States from the Philippines when I was an international student.
My body has stored this yearly custom as an indelible memory, bracing itself for another farewell at the airport. The kinds of farewell that felt long and never long enough at the same time. It is also around this time two years ago when I left my chosen family in the US— so suddenly due to racist immigration policies in America.
With this month comes a deep-seated sorrow which some characterize as depression. But I believe it’s nothing more than diasporic blues, or a willingness to sit with the grief that longs for both geographical stability and the friends and family I left behind across oceans and borders.
So yes, I reflect on grief— a companion, not a hindrance or nuisance, to our creations.
It is serendipitous to reflect that months ago, I had scheduled to publish the IG post on grief around this time, when it coincided with the migration series with Ayesha.
It feels like my unconscious and the universe teamed up for the timeliness of all this.