NOTES
A key component of practical empathy, is a commitment to to not be empathic to everyone. […] “It’s not for you.” is the unspoken possible companion to “Here, I made this.” There’s nothing wrong with the non-believers, they’re not stupid. They’re just not interested in going where you are going.
-Seth Godin, The Practice
Gloria Arojna PhD
La Madre Malinche
(translated to English)
Not a traitor, betrayed history
punished you it’s silenced you
you the one with the voice
it silenced you Malinche, the one with the voice
sold as a child by your mother,
to some merchants,
who sold you to the Mayans,
who gave you to the Spanish conquistador
he used you as his concubine, interpreter and mother of his son,
Martin, the bastard whom he took from you
he married you to a soldier
whom did not love, but you reinvented your life
from master to master you were passed
from Aztec Mayan, Spanish,
and pretty soon you learned the invaders game.
Oh soon, you knew the trap of the usurper,
and although history,
white and masculine judges you
as a traitor Malinche,
it was you who was betrayed t
he dark-skinned woman
who embodies us all
Madre Malinche,
this song is for you
BLACK FUTURES
By Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
I’ve been a fan of Jenna Wortham’s through her Podcast “Still Processing.” I was excited to finally get into her book “Black Futures.”
It’s REAL life Sci-Fi
This book recognizes that our current time and place was once an imagined future, and it stops to capture what the reality of this one-time imagined future actually is. The specific lens of imagination is from that of the people who led movements of abolition, liberation, and civil rights, with the conceptual goal of reflecting the results of those efforts back to that time period. Guidance for navigating this book is provided in the introduction:
“We invite you to read this book alongside a device so you can search out names in terms that intrigue you. See where they lead. Our intention is to encourage readers to follow their interest into a deep warren of rabbit holes and discoveries. This is not an art book. This is not a scholarly journal. This book is a series of guideposts for current and future generations who may be curious about what our generation has been creating during times defined by social cultural, economic, and ecological revolution. Like us, this book is not linear. Like us this book lives and breathes beyond temporal western frameworks. There is no past present or future, nor is there a beginning, middle or end start where you please.”
There is a rejection of participating in the act of closing the cognitive dissonance for the audience that resonates deeply with what I am doing in my own work. As an 80s kid, obsessed with television, I was often disappointed to discover that not every problem or conflict could be neatly resolved in a 30-minute timeframe. I think that is a quintessential part of the problem with America. America is uncomfortable sitting with cognitive dissonance, holding space for two seemingly opposing truths—at the same time. We are in such a hurry to produce a sanitized portrait of our lives and culture—that we rug sweep all of the nuance that could actually make us great if we honored it.
The Look of the Book:
JACKETS, COVERS, AND ART
AT THE EDGES OF LITERATURE
By Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth
I chose this book to help re-orient my thinking around book jackets, covers, and formats. One of the coolest images (I should have scanned), was the mechanical designed by Jan Tschichold which guided the design process for the infamous Penguin Orange paperbacks.
A nice reminder of basic anatomy.
This series felt like a good visualization of Yoon Soo’s comment on “data vizualization” which I understand as highly effective use of semiotic language.
This is also a nice reminder of what makes a “series.”
