💜[11/21] the creativity for good friday five

1. How Mira Nair Built the World That Made Zohran Mamdani (Mira Jacob for Harper’s Bazaar)

One of the best parts (though obviously there were many) of Zohran’s run for mayor was watching so many people make the connection between Zohran and his mom, Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair. Nair is one of those filmmakers who has the kind of signature worldview you can’t help recognize once you see it, and it’s one you can tell she passed along to her son:

What world are you trying to build through your work? What are the values that shape it? What makes your perspective unique? How are you passing down the wisdom you’ve learned from those who came before you?

2. The Trans Remembrance Project (created by Advocates for Trans Equality)

Yesterday, November 20, was Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is always a poignant, meaningful day, but what stands out to me the most, year after year, are the ways in which this day has become not just one of memory, but of creation. So much powerful work has come out of TDoR, from poetry to visual art to music to interactive digital storytelling platforms and memorials like this one.

Projects like this remind us that just like there’s no one way to memorialize someone, there’s no single way to create something beautiful out of memory.

What forms of creative work do you associate with memory — or not? How does memory show up in your work? Have you discovered elements of memory in your work when you didn’t realize it was there when you were making it? What was that like, and what did it teach you?

3. Remembering Alice Wong: Writer, Advocate, Friend (Steven W. Thrasher for Lit Hub)

Continuing along the same lens of loss: The disability community lost an absolute powerhouse this week. Alice Wong was an activist, advocate, journalist, and truly brilliant thinker — as well as a beloved friend to so many. I never met her, but my life, like so many others, was deeply touched by her work.

Reading this tribute to Alice by her friend Steven Thrasher (not to be confused with her death announcement, which she wrote herself like the fucking boss she was), what stood out to me wasn’t just Alice’s humor and warmth, but also her steadfast devotion to justice, solidarity, and community care. She spent the last few years of her life fiercely advocating for Palestinians, refusing to take the road of “just” focusing on disability justice in a way that could be palatable or mainstream, even when it resulted in death threats.

When I remember Alice and her work, I’ll remember how strongly she believed in the idea that there is no freedom for some of us without liberation for all of us. That we are all inherently connected to one another, and made so much stronger when we come together in solidarity than when we try to tear each other apart. May her memory always be for a blessing.

When you look at your body of work, whatever that might be, what legacy do you think it leaves? What could someone learn about you — your passions, your values, your beliefs, the causes you’d go down fighting for — from looking at what you’ve created? Are you creating the work you want to leave behind? If not: What’s stopping you?

4. i’m sure i’m in here, somewhere (Wil Wheaton on his personal website)

I’ve written in the past about writing through depression, including for this newsletter. But I can’t remember the last time I read something that so perfectly captured that swimming-uphill feeling of trying to recapture, rediscover, or unlock a creative energy that used to flow like water but has suddenly turned into quicksand — and then stayed that way. Wheaton’s piece here is deeply personal, but also profoundly relatable:

We talk about cycles and seasons quite a lot in creative circles, but there’s something deeply uncomfortable about that idea — that sometimes, your creativity needs to lie fallow, and in that time, there’s really nothing you can do about it. Creatives, in my opinion, are often little control freaks (myself included) and to release our grip on something as inherent to us as our creativity is terrifying.

But it’s also, at least in my experience, liberating. Because if we can give up that control, and turn that energy toward openness, toward internal work, toward healing — what can we gain?

When was the last time you felt disconnected from your creativity or unable to create? What was that experience like, and what did you learn from it? How did it change the way you think about your creative process? Your goals? Your identity?

5. The Case for Child Liberation Through Children‘s Books (Madeline Lane-McKinley for Lit Hub)

Back in October, of my oldest friends had her first baby. Shortly before he was born, she mentioned to me that she didn’t feel like she knew what kinds of books to get that would really convey who she was as a parent — the kind of books she could read to make sure he knew, from the very first time she read him a story, that she would love him no matter what he grew up to be or who he grew up to love, and that theirs would be a family that would always show up for other communities, no matter what.

I thought about this as I browsed through my own children’s bookshelves, making a mental list of our family favorites to buy for her new little one. Looking at the colorful colors, I saw titles like A is for Activist and Anti-Racist Baby and Love Makes a Family and And Tango Makes Three (my toddler’s current fave).

It made me think about the way my now-almost-six-year-old knew, when she was just barely four, that she would be safe, and validated, and loved when she told us that she was a girl. How when she was two and three and four, when my father-in-law (z”l) transitioned from a wheelchair to a power chair and later lost the ability to speak or move, she would point to the characters in Bodies Are Cool who used assistive devices and say, “Like Saba!”

Reading this piece by Lane-McKinley — which is much more academic than I expected when I clicked it, but still very much worth you checking out — I thought not just about how literature can be a tool of control or liberation for children, but also for adults. And it made me wonder: How do the choices we make about what to read, or what not to read, open our minds to possibility, creation, and liberation?

Or, to a different point: How do the choices we make close us off, instead?

Think about the last ten books you read. What do they have in common — and how are they different? What did you take away from them, or did you come away without discovering anything new? When was the last time you read a book that took you outside of your comfort zone, made you consider a new perspective, or challenged your biases or beliefs? How do you feel about that? How do you think it might (or might not) inform your own work?