7 months ago
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It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
— Agatha Christie (via edithshead)
8 months ago
'The Baseline Is, You Suck': Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women
- The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
- Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.
10 months ago
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The problem is that money has no roots. A banana tree? Cut the fruit, it grows again. Money - once you use it, it’s gone.
— JEAN-LOUIS SAINT THOMAS, a Haitian who received a payment after his farm was seized for a new industrial park.
1 year ago
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There are some things about myself that I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail, the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared, I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.
— Haruki Murakami, A Slow Boat To China (via 250cc)
1 year ago
Two very good and/or entertaining political posts (there’s your warning)
“As a Muslim, I’m sick of people asking me how I feel about 9/11. What do you want me to say, seriously? Do you want me to say, “It was a great plan, mwahahaha!” before I fly off on a magic carpet? I was born and raised in this country and was just as shocked as everyone else to learn there were people on this earth so vile as to commit such a horrific attack - or to even think about doing it. But I didn’t do it. Neither did 99.999999999 percent of the roughly 1.5 billion people in the world who also call themselves Muslims. So why should I or any other Muslim apologize for what happened? Nickleback is planning on releasing another album. Should I ask white people to apologize for that?”
—
Aman Ali (via ispyalexa)
I am keeping all of the tags because they are awesome and accurate.
(via drunkonstyle)
#i will make you apologize for colonization where in the name of god gold and glory you decimated entire populations and enslaved the survivors #i will make you apologize for drone strikes in pakistan and afghanistan as you kill innocent civilians on a daily basis #i will make you apologize for genocides where millions perished including bosnia where the serbs raped the muslim women and massacred 8000 men and women in a single day #i will make you apologize for imperialism where people all over the globe suffered and still suffer from its effects #i will make you apologize for jim crow and apartheid while you took away the dignity of minorities and made them second-class citizens #i will make you apologize for slavery and the brutal treatment of blacks and making them no more than property you sold at your whim#i will make you apologize for the iraq war which was based on a lie and killed more civilians than 9/11 ever did #if you ask me to apologize for 9/11 i will make you apologize for the crusades where there was a river of blood flowing up to the crusader’s knees #let’s look at it this way #my people’s blood #you have no right no right whatsoever to make me or my fellow muslims apologize for a crime we’ve never committed.
(via chromatomic)
