1. Professor Goffe

2. she / her

3. London + NY (Queens / Manhattan)

4. Dark Princess

5. Wrote a book on climate crisis in the Caribbean and Afro-Asian ecologies called DARK LABORATORY.

Chapters 3 and 4.

Also available as audiobook.

Which stops did you travel between?

What are your observations in taking the ferry?

What has it taught you about naval infrastructure?

What can you imagine regarding the past and Native infrastructure?

1. How does Toni Morrison define the dark? What is the Africanist presence?

2. Name 10 of the New York Islands.

3. How does Baraka define the "technology of the West?" What sort of futurist speculative invention can you imagine making for the final project?

4. In the article by Nyla Iqbal Muhhamad, she ends on the quotation, "“We are part of a river of grief. And we are never alone.” Expand on what this means.

5. Based on Chapter One of Dr. Goffe's book, answer the questions - 1) what is the river you were born closest to? 2) what is the name of the river you drink your water from every day?

Discussion questions will be posted on Padlet and Brightspace. They are not required, but recommend as a guide for your reading. 

1. Kashfia (feel free to call me Kash for short, your preference!)

2. she/her

3. Bronx, NY

4. Race after Tech + Dark Laboratory

5. This summer I was incredibly lucky to be able to attend University of Ghana for a Gender and Tech course

Working in the climate movement while trying to process climate grief can be difficult for people of colour, whose voices are so often silenced and ignored."

Nylah Burton's article begins with this concept of climate grief, and to address it the author made the stylistic choice to gather the opinions and words of people of color in the climate justice space. However, they seem to avoid depth by not expanding on other people's thoughts or doing further research. A lot of bold claims are made by the author that are not substantiated beyond each person's words. For example, the author includes Heglar's statement "hope is such a white concept" because it is impactful, but instead of expanding a little more on why this might be, they quickly connect it to the current outcome/fact that minority voices are often silenced and ignored (and then moves on to the next quote). To me, this is a very obvious surface conclusion that can be drawn and is evidence that the author tried to include many "impactful" statements to sound important without deeply analyzing why one would say a certain thing or the cultural and historical context or implications of such statements. If this question is discussed in class I would love to provide more examples of discrepancies I found. I appreciate the author's idea that voicing collective trauma is important to creating change, but I struggle to see where this article would fit in in regards to the action versus inaction portion of her argument. This article comes across to me as a random collage made by a person who expects the audience to deeply understand and listen to the climate crisis from the perspective of indigenous/poc people while not knowing much beyond the general study of climate change themselves. Based on this, I wanted to ask what are the benefits and drawbacks of an article that simply strings together a diverse group of people's opinions? Were the authors intentions just to single out the privileged reader or was there an actionable outcome implied, specifically related to the understanding of climate grief?

2. She/her

3. New Paltz, NY

4. I am interested in Nylah Iqbal Muhammad, People of Color Experience Climate Grief More Deeply than White People, Vice News, May 14, 2020. 

5. I went to Costa Rica and learned about medicinal plants!

QUESTION:

1. How does Baraka's vision of futuristic technology, driven by spirituality and a humanistic morality, differ from the morality of Western technology, and what does he propose that Black artists and technologists do to avoid the emulation of Western technology that can 'degenerate and enslave people'

Hope to see some of you there tomorrow!

2.        What are the origins of the Seminole Tribe? How have their surrounding ecologies been a source of refuge that continues to shape their future as a maroon tribe in conversation with the BIA, Florida, and US governments?

3.        Grace Dillon writes of multiple and nonlinear timelines. Describe how a sense of Anishinaabe apocalypse informs her vision of sci-fi and speculative fiction.

4.        Compare and contrast the worldbuilding methods of Beth LaPensee and Skawanetti.

5.        What are the six moves to innocence that Tuck and Yang list? How are they in conversation with Frantz Fanon and the context of colonization in his native Martinique and chosen Algeria?

“What concepts, memories, and things from the past can we discard, and what do we want to bring with us to the future” - text from the artists description of Four Kings Revisited.

I would just like to mention that my question highlight’s this quote from the “Four Kings, Revisited” art piece but has to do with a large portion of Skawennati’s artwork and mission as an artist. Skawennati’s work uses the virtual world to create a new reality where Native Americans (specifically the Iroquois) can reclaim past cultural knowledge and traditions that were systematically wiped from the northern American consciousness. A reason I was drawn to writing about Skawennati’s work is because she is interested in future making, and in this course we are trying to understand what the future can look like outside of an imperialist perspective. She creates many worlds and alternate realities for people to reimagine our future despite lived or erased traumatic histories, as well as physical proof (through live displays) that creativity creates real doors between the virtual reality and ours. One such way she has done this is by reimagining traditional Iroquois stories in the context of another peaceful motherplanet from which we all came from, “skyworld”. Skawennati often plays with the past because reimagining the future using only the past we know might be limiting. However, her works denote a tangible transformation to story telling in our real lives. Just like clothing from the virtual world can be brought to life, the histories she retells can also come to life as new knowledge for an audience. My question starts with how much of the past can we make up (reimagine) to fuel our imagined futures before it starts to become counterintuitive to progress? How does she prove that reimagining the past is not replicating the act of forgetfulness for future generations?

A shorter question in that same vein I had was: We all know that people in power cherry-pick truths to suit the best narratives for them, and while Skawennati reclaims this practice in good faith, we might still regard falsifying the past as an unethical act that always creates division of some sort. Does Skawennati project that the endless possibility of a virtual world alllows us all pockets in which to reimagine our lives and coexist at the same time?

As Tuck and Yang suggested it might be, this reading was uncomfortable, challenging, extremely illuminating and powerful. Honestly, my questions feel initially limited by an uncomfortable but undeniable anxiety surrounding the ideas of settler futurity. I hope to come to a better understanding of the necessities for real solidarity through their discussion. 

What place is there, if any, for questions or conversation about the reality of dismantling of settler futurity, as the article clearly defines that “decolonization is not accountable to settlers or settler futurity”? Is it even possible to ask this question before all land has been restored to Indigenous people? As Tuck and Yang say "The answers are not fully in view and can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers as we get there."

How do we navigate conversations about this question in the general public, as the fundamentally unsettling nature of decolonization will bring it up?

What does this definition of decolonization mean for conversations surrounding reparations for enslavement within the context of US settler colonialism?

In the spaces where decolonization has “a measure of incommensurability” with other social justice frameworks, what do the “meaningful potential alliances” look like?

What stood out to me is how they talk about “moves to innocence” where settlers and even non Indigenous people of color use the word decolonization in ways that make them feel good but let them avoid the hard truth that real decolonization would take giving something up like land or power. This part made me think about how often social justice movements focus on feelings representation or small reforms but not on the root structures that keep inequality in place.

So my question is: What would it look like for us as students teachers or activists to take decolonization seriously in our own work not just as a metaphor but in ways that really respect the authors’ point about land and life? Do you think it is even possible inside schools and universities which are already part of settler institutions or does it have to happen somewhere else? And if decolonization requires giving things up what might that mean for people who want justice but are also part of the settler system themselves?

The film showcases the historical journey of European colonizers who built Western Civilization. It showcases all the horrific acts that humanity is capable of committing, carried out by white Anglo-Saxon/European settlers, conquerors, monarchs, tyrants, who exploited the world's most valuable resources for corporate greed, power, and superiority that we call white supremacy, who colonized the world's majority territories externally and internally. Everything that we consume today, the materilatic world we live in, is built on the backs of exploited free or cheap labor, genocide of indigenous people who lands were invaded and stolen, natives who forced to leave thier lands,  families torn apart, human rights that have been taken awy and later moved into coroporate capitalistic slave machine that continues exercizing its power in 21st century. This film showcases the truth, historical fragments of reality that many countries like Germany had to face during the Hitler regime, Cango under Leopold, the second ruler, and European colonizers who colonized many African countries and made their way to the United States.

Everything we studied in school in the 1980s and 1990s was lies and manipulation. What would be different if they had not suppressed the knowledge? What if we could rewrite history again? What if we lived in a different Civilization where there are no white saviors and missionaries? What would the future look like without genocide in Rwanda, Turkey, and the Holocaust? What if Native Americans had maintained their lands, power, and wealth, and created a different future? What if we had never run the race? How would the world look like without an imperial hierarchy that lusted over power, greed, and superiority and called the rest of the world savages, killers, and  Brutes? What if we had one interpretation of the bible without manipulating scriptures and literature telling the tales of white missionaries who were about to save the aborigins, rather than oppressing and torturing them? Slaving women and children for free labor in gold mines, rubber plantations, cotton fields, penitentiaries, Mexican borders, Indian reservations, and catholic churches built on top of shallow graves of slaughtered indigenous people. What if white settlers had never stepped into the foreign land and tried to eliminate and 'exterminate the Brutes'

This docuseries, raised a series of questions for me and reignited some curiosities I had of my own about generational/racialized trauma, specifically ones related to colonization. It answered a lot of historical questions I had, having received a very pre-packaged, euro-centric, and propagandized history curriculum with cavernous pits of missing stories and perspectives, and I found myself replaying and hanging on a lot of Raoul’s words.

I also took a lot of detailed notes about the truths and historical threads that Raoul chose to hone in on. But his filmmaking style sparked a lot of reflection for me. The use of personal stories, home videos, his own directed scenes, historical evidence, interviews, and more to depict such an enormously haunting history, was unique but also importantly helped connect the personal to the political. In the past, when consuming historical films and even curriculums, their content can feel much more removed, distant, and animated. I felt forced to confront the truth of our history in all of its ugliness with the structure of this film.

The docuseries opens with a highlighting of the truth that “fear is timeless.” This is the tactic that the west historically and perpetually weaponizes to retain its inauthentic and stolen power. We saw a glimpse of this truth in a nightmare that an unnamed white male character experienced at the conclusion of the 4th episode. He played multiple roles throughout the film (American solider massacring indigenous people, slave master on a rubber plantation in Congo, etc) who seems to travel with the viewer through time. In this scene, he is driving a motorcycle through a landscape, and suddenly crashes. He is then noticed by a group of Black people, which causes him to become consumed with fear, running away into the trees and bushes near him. He frantically stabs and paws at the ground searching for something he buried. He finds it, and its a stash of firearms and explosives, none of which seem to work after seemingly being there for a long time which causes him to panic. The people he ran into on the road catch up with him, and begin to attack him. He defeats them, but as he kills the last person, about 50 more begin to appear from the trees, encircling him, with his breath being the only thing we hear.

I was curious if this character was meant to represent that “knowing” that Raoul ruminates on throughout the end of the fourth episode. And if that were true, that this scene was Raoul’s satisfying prediction/hope that the destruction and theft of life that has been committed by the west cannot be out-runned, that they (those who colonize) are in-fact outnumbered, and their time in power is expiring. This scene, and many scenes with this unnamed character felt like a haunting that they were experiencing. It also felt very intertwined with the messaging of the Charlottesville nazi riots, “you will not replace us”, this desperate clutching to whiteness and privilege. I noticed the repetition of scenes where the character was bathing, one, the blood out of an American flag in a stream, another, a Congolese woman bathing him, with the creaking of bodies swaying from the trees playing in the background, and the final scene where he frantically enters the stream to bathe himself after massacring a Seminole tribe. I see these scenes to represent the urge to be cleansed, absolved of, or to forget the atrocities they committed.

A question I want to pose is: Where can true decolonization work begin when our nation has such an unwavering desire to forget? Even for those who have the urge to remember, and do the work to begin to decolonize the land, their minds, and their lives—academia, our government, and our programming chooses to silence dissenting anti-colonial voices, and this repression is only expanding. All of this goes to say, I have a similar question as Kashfia: What does it look like for us to begin actual decolonial work? Must we begin on the individual scale and graduate to the communal scale?

Part1:

Brutes mean Animal Status

Europeans called Africans Beast because they were rude & beastly.

Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen 1949 (on the town) who we are today & what we become. What side of the truth

Exterminate means from the Latina external is  death & vanish for life

Sven Lindqvist wrote the book Exterminate all the Brutes and January 1825 he was attacked

German photographer name Martin V. Miller gave the name America the the whole continent

Giovanni da Verrazzano has a bridge named after him in New York and was the first European explorer to sail through and discover New York Harbor in 1524

Part2:

Mexican General Antonio Lopez been in more battles than Napoleon and George Washington combined

1492  Christopher Columbus was born into a merchant family and join other European navigators completing for Gold and other commodities

The word “Negro” (Black) refers to color of Latin Niger Valueless, stubborn, wicked & Black slaves

86 treaties in the United States for Indian tribes

Part3:

Chinese people discover gun powder and casted the first canon in the 13th century

Europeans was masters at canon and killed long before the weapons of their opponents could reach them killing them from a distance

Charles Darwin founder of evolutionary biology, 1859 he published a book called origin of the species and that all species adapt to their environment through natural selection

In the 19th century, Germans demonstrate in South Africa master an art that Americans, British and other Europeans the art of Extermination of other people in fierary countries

Part4:

Navy seal team members carried out the assassination of Osama Bin Laden may 2 2011

Code name Geronimo intelligence officials reason with the boss was a mystery to the Black Opps mission and is a master at colonialism the army to kill anything that moves marching across the continent

He is a great freedom fighter by the Apache and some native Indians

Slave bodies was use as a commodities and was more profitable than lands, banks, railroads, factories and gold products

Eve Tuck & Wayne Yang argue that metaphorical uses of the term strip it of its true meaning and centers on the repatriation of Indigenous land and life. They contend that applying decolonization metaphorically allows settlers to avoid addressing their complicity in settler colonialism and evade the core demand of returning stolen land and resources. the process in which societies everywhere reject their colonizers and pursue independence by leading to the establishment of self-ruling nation states. decolonization spread across the world & countries like India, Pakistan, and Malaysia where they gained their independence. However, they reject colonial legacies, embrace indigenous cultures, and navigate political, ethnic, and economic divisions. The purpose of this decolonization is to overturn the colonial structures & realize Indigenous liberation.

2. he/ him

3. New York City (Brooklyn)

4. "Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture" by Emma Dabiri.

5. Traveled to South Africa.

“One trend we have noticed, with growing apprehension, is the ease with which the language of decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences, supplanting prior ways of talking about social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches which decenter settler perspectives.” (Tuck and Yang, p. 2)

Tuck and Yan outline several “moves to innocence” that allw people t claim alignment with decolonization without engaging in real change. These include settler nativism, fantasizing adoption, colonial equivocation, conscientization, at-risking, and practices like re-occupation and urban homesteading. By pointing it out, Tuck and Yang push us to think more critically about how we use the term and how o pursue decolonization without reinforcing the very sytems it resists.

Frantz Fanon makes a similar point about the disruptive and historical nature of decolonization:

“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder… Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content.”
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p. 36

How can we approach a process we cannot fully understand from a settler perspective, while also recognizing the ways we might be complicit in the very systems decolonization seeks to dismantle?

What strikes me most is Morrison’s decision to call this out so directly.  It really makes me think about the obstacles she must have faced as a Black woman scholar in a overwhelmingly white institutions, and how much courage it takes to not only survive those spaces but also challenge the very frameworks they rely on.

Thank you Toni Morrison!

This idea that technology is touted as a means for positive development but is currently used for surveillance and discriminatory practices made me think back to the “Technology & Ethos” reading we did as it explained how western technology is a reflection of western consciousness and creative abilities. Ruha Benjamin continuously delineates ways in which technology aids in profiteering from racial inequality to reflect on how the the motivations and practices of white people during the Jim Crow era have transformed into something much less conspicuous. Since the end of slavery, white people in power have devised tactics to keep Black people at a disadvantage despite ongoing civil reform— and the Jim Crow era is a great example of this. According to Benjamin, post-racial sentiments around technology allow Black people to seem like they have a better quality of life despite not actually addressing systemic issues that inform technology. Similarly, the Jim Crow era privileged class believed their laws to be a progressive alternative to slavery, despite not addressing the dehumanization that allowed both systems to be put into place. Even though we think technology to be neutral and detached, the biases and discrimination of tech Benjamin exposes proves that our technology is an extension of the western consciousness. To me this means that technology is very human (as Skawennati has stated, it even relies on natural resources like we do). My question is how does the detachment prescribed to modern technology work to create a reality in which we believe technological innovation (the way we practice it today) equates to societal innovation? What role does the historical dehumanization of people play in this dynami?

Additionally, if technology is an extension of ourselves, can technology create real racial progress or do our existing racialized institutions and hegemonic societal values have to change first?

My question centers around the rise of AI technology in warfare and policing. What was originally proposed as a technology that would decrease human casualties has quickly proven itself to be horrifically racist and violent, whether it's used in drone strikes or by ICE to target civilians. What innovative solutions could there be for people to protect themselves from this type of surveillance, such as clothing or face paint that confuses facial recognition technology? 

Additionally, it is clear that technology companies are mining us for our data, perfecting ads and content for us individually which continue to uphold racist power structures. With technology designed to be highly addictive, some suggesting a similar power to crack-cocaine, can there be a shift in how the general public consumes social media and interacts with AI?

Ruha Benjamin connects the racial coding of names to the “digital caste systems” in technology, much like Alexander connects mass incarceration to Jim Crow laws in the South. How can examining something as personal as a name help us better recognize the hidden ways structural racism is repackaged in systems like technology or criminal justice?

Benjamin opens Race After Technology with a personal reflection on the difficult decision of naming her son. She wanted to give him a Muslim name but recognized the implications of doing so in a post-9/11 world. Through this, she argues that names are racially coded and that a name can shape a person’s fate.

Benjamin highlights how culture is often only celebrated when it aligns with whiteness, while anything outside of that framework is dismissed as “cultureless.” She pushes readers and her students to consider the question: What is a normal name, and what is not? This question helps to reveal how what is deemed “normal” perpetuates racial invisibility.

To understand a name, Benjamin suggests, is to understand how culture intersects with race, class, and social values. Those with greater privilege and social status have more freedom to choose names, whether traditional or not, without fear of repercussion. Benjamin situates this racial coding of names as a foundation for how racial coding operates in technology, producing what she calls “digital caste systems” that target the most vulnerable.

Her framework of the “New Jim Code” captures how technology has been weaponized against Black people, paralleling Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Alexander’s title was itself a deliberate play on Jim Crow laws in the South, showing how mass incarceration functions as a modern form of racial control. Similarly, Benjamin shows how technology, while appearing neutral, repackages and sustains structural racism. Both works expose how systemic oppression adapts across time, hiding in plain sight under new guises.

In thinking about the possibilities of the liberated forms of technology he calls for and his emphasis on the importance of this new technology being spiritually-oriented, how may this framework adopted by “engineers, architects, chemists, electronics craftsmen, ie film too, radio, sound, &c” alter the way we understand each of these practices/professions and the way they relate?

( welfare) consumer data that is accessible through computer systems that coordinate with Institutions that are targeting the population for discriminatory purposes to isolate, deport, eliminate, and exterminate by using " harmless" AI technology..

Question: Who decides what establishes racist behavior or outcomes in AI systems? And if it is to continue to serve white supremacy

How can it be reformed so that AI can make decisions in areas historically impacted by racial injustice (policing, housing, employment)?

(I ask because the monument is not just a historical reference point in time but is meant to teach a lesson about the past and is imbued with all sorts of symbolism. I don't think we can get ourselves to deeply care about uncovering the past without tying it to our current realities).

All the Bones of Our Inheritance (American Lawn)… shifts our view to the lawn where ships, and textiles surface alongside shadows of figures. Both works force us to think about what has been cultivated besides the grass for profit and violence. Callender’s series reminds us that the landscapes of the Atlantic World still carry the weight of slavery, colonialism, and capital.

The African Burial Ground here in New York feels like part of this same conversation. It reminds us that beneath ordinary landscapes are hidden histories of slavery and survival. Like Callender’s work, it asks us to see what has been buried, to honor what remains, and to recognize how these pasts still shape the ground we stand on today.

Callender’s work along with monuments like the African Burial Ground challenge us to change the way that we remember/think about the past. What does it mean for us to walk, live, and build on landscapes that carry buried histories of slavery and colonialism?

Question: How does generational trauma reflect on today's mental and physical traumas, and what roles of body politics does it play in the class and race hierarchy of the African American diaspora?

Moreover, what ecological exposure and environmental factors can we incorporate in today's working environments, and do body politics arise when we talk about having access to a clean environment, clean food, and clean water, and whose bodies are still undiscovered and rejected in cemeteries?

My question is what can be done to honor those whose graves are still being desecrated by the buildings of Manhattan today? Is it possible to restore dignity to these sites? What laws should be instated to protect the further violations and decreations of graves? Could we use a combination of historical records, modern technology, and community knowledge/history  to survey land before it is developed and ensure that we are not violating sacred sites by building there?

The video tour of the African Burial Ground showed us the memorial's multifaceted attempt to honor and remember those that were exploited and killed in the creation of this nation state. The map highlighting the triangular trade is of particular interest to me, as I think about the forced migration patterns of those displaced by colonial 'soft' power...coming here to escape sanctions, or indirect exploitation, only to be sent to prisons beyond this state's own borders... or disappeared altogether. The map both highlights the systemic nature of the slave trade, while also inheriting its obfuscation of countless communities traders and raiders striped from the African continent.

Also, when the tour guides showed us excavation diagram, the outlined sarcophagi almost floating in the whitespace and the abstract identities given to those found reminded of Alligator Alcatraz. Specifically the hundreds of people that were unaccounted for when the prison was ordered to close(order has since been overturned pending the completion of the lawsuit). Were they buried there for the convenience of the wardens? Were they sent to another prison abroad that is to be their grave?

If the world survives long enough, and the vines manage to devour these prisons, will a similar burial memorial, with a similar map be placed there to honor those that were lost to fuel the engine of empire? Will it be up to the indigenous communities where these prisons were built to steward these shrines? And are they fated to be just that? Shrines to compartmentalize our acknowledgement of injustices into the past, away from any present reckoning?

I was also surprised that George Bush actually signed the law to protect the site after public protests and advocacy from the African-American community. Honestly, I don’t usually think highly of U.S. presidents, so it felt kind of unexpected and powerful that activism could make him act to preserve this sacred place. I like how the architecture honors the people buried there (it feels thoughtful and respectful, showing that the space was designed to recognize and honor their lives)

Although I wasn’t able to physically join my class at the museum, it made me think of my trip to Ghana and seeing Cape Coast Castle, where the dungeons showed the brutal conditions enslaved people endured. Both experiences made me reflect on survival, memory, and the ways we have to fight to keep history alive.

Using presently tangible, everyday, yet historically consistent witnesses as subjects like the land, plant life, and blue tarp (symbolizing industrial development and capitalistic expansion) to place this history in our present context ties the metaphorical threads between our past and present, but also ties the viewer into the depicted context as well with these recognizable subjects.

A question that arose for me was: how can this sensation created by these exhibits be replicated in and carried on into our lives? On an individual level, we can educate ourselves to be able to cement this thread and inextricable reminder of our past in our consciences. But on a collective level, how can we execute this?

Question: Both collections combine imagery of native and industrialized grasses, water/waterways, and other ecological imagery with imagery that remembers the colonial history of the Atlantic world (both in the violence and the tenderness that has been lost). In thinking about Callender’s purpose, how does their choice in composition play a role in how the themes within their work are interpreted? How do the choices in materials and processes (cyanotype, synthetic indigo, image transfers) that differ from standard oil painting techniques impact this?

This article talks about how the violence related to wildlife trafficking is a symtptom of greater systemic violence. It strongly implies that in order for wildlife trafficking to stop, the government has to solve certain issues that cause political or economic instability. Since we read Dark Matters by Simone Browne alongside this article, I think it’s important to note how surveillance is contradictorily portrayed as a means to protect nature. This article advocates for greater government oversight over wildlife communities to protect them from poachers, yet greater government oversight has led to more violence in the form of “wildlife wars”. The article states wildlife programs should be better organized to promote regional economies, yet local communities feel their needs are being overshadowed by wildlife protection. The article reveals that the wild has transformed from the nature around us to a contentious place.

Elinor Ostrom proved that the “tragedy of the commons” or “resource curse” is a product of western development and not a natural law of resource management. Yet, many wildlife protection models that are currently being funded and promoted globally are formulated and assessed based on various violent western ideologies (i.e. promoting conservation as a means of creating hunting grounds, basing allocation of funding based on cost-benefit analysis). Clearly, increased government surveillance to protect wildlife has not worked, and has the negative effect of making communities experience unfair restrictions for “the greater good” which is still not clearly defined in terms of wildlife.

Since the countries listed in the article are mostly victims of European imperialism, we can use Browne’s framework to assume that the surveillance they experience have been structured out of inequality and the oppression of a second class. My question is how can we envision a future where wildlife poaching and other forms of violence that come from systemic issues can be solved without the use of increased government surveillance? Is there incongruity between stewarding communities (and nature) and the modern conceptualization of nations/countries?

Question: How does Browne locate the conditions of Blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted in the United States, and how does it intersect with the experience of the Third World Blackness?

All of this goes to say, this article raised a question in my mind that I will perhaps answer over time by noticing more: how else does this spiritual and ecological warfare show up in NYC ecologies? And do any of you have examples of how this hostility shows up in your neighborhoods?

Black people are often seen through the white gaze as suspicious or criminal if they are not laboring on the land, a perception that echoes the legacies of slavery and plantation economies. It’s a painful irony, considering that Black people have a profound ancestral connection to nature long before being trafficked to the Americas. What does it mean for Black people to experience freedom and leisure in spaces that were historically used to police and contain them, and is reconnecting with the land a way of remembering who we were before surveillance defined who we could be?  When I think about fields like ornithology and the rise of Black and Brown birdwatchers, I find it beautiful that communities are reclaiming and reimagining our relationship to the natural world taking up space, finding peace, and reconnecting with Mother Earth on our own terms.

The painting “American Lawn, Night Grass” painted by Alex Callender makes me wonder, where would this country be without the land the Western world stole? Just about all of the United States issues go back to land, the economy, race, gender, inequality, and much more.

2. Why does Raboteau place “the Apocalypse” in quotation marks? How does this framing influence how we understand her engagement with technology, futurity, and motherhood?\

3. In what ways does Raboteau interrogate the concept of “hope”? How does she balance despair and love, and what does this suggest about writing as a form of survival within Black and Indigenous ecologies?

4. Raboteau suggests that racial injustice, climate change, and pandemic life are deeply intertwined. How does she use personal narrative, travel, and reportage to illustrate these connections?

5. What role do bird murals play in the narrative? How do they function as ecological symbols and as a form of witnessing?

6. How does Raboteau intertwine the act of caring for her children with caring for the environment? What does this reveal about the relationship between race, technology, and survivability in a climate-charged world?

I also liked how my classmate Miranda noted that Hopkinson invites readers to think about self-identity as a rebellious form of resistance.Hopkinson shows identity not as a passive fact but as an active choice. Making and holding your sense of self in spite of oppression is its own kind of revolt and she makes that feel urgent and possible.

The chapter starts in a way that feels like a violent deliberate reclaiming of identity. The lines “I stole the torturer’s tongue. This tongue is yours too if you can take it” hit hard as they flip the script on power. Instead of being a passive victim, the character takes the tool that hurt her and turns it into a weapon and a gift. Language becomes both a tool of revenge and a way to heal.

Another moment that stood out to me was the conversation between Sadie and Tonton when the little animal shows up. Sadie asks “You are not afraid it is going to bite you?” and Tonton replies “No it is just the big ones you have to look out for.” On the surface it is a simple exchange but I think it works as a double meaning. She is not just talking about animals as “the big ones” might be colonizers, bounty hunters or simply those who hold control and hurt others. Hopkinson often mixes literal and symbolic danger and here that tension feels sharp. The small creatures are not the ones to fear. It is the ones who dominate and exploit that really bite. I liked how subtle that moment was because it seems like simple dialogue but underneath it is a critique of hierarchy and oppression.

Another line that really stood out to me is when Tan Tan is talking about the calf. She describes it as “hard to believe that something that looks so able to hunt and kill for its supper was a folivore harmful only if you frightened it or threatened it.” This felt almost like a metaphor for Tan Tan herself. On the surface she is gentle caring and protective like when she helps Sadie and feels pleased when she notices Sadie worried about her. But there is also the earlier moment with the tongue where she clearly shows she can fight fiercely when threatened. 

I obvious can't read Perry's mind and only have her text to work with, but what I am wondering is...what is the most effective way for me to discuss the implicit expectations on Perry as an academic without distracting from or undermining her actual voice. Better still, how can I cut through such hostile expectations when attention itself is part of our economy?

1. How does Perry address the intersection of race, gender, and class as she paints the narrative in blue?

   
   

Perry opens with how she became intrigued with the color blue, recalling the moment she noticed the color blue peeking through old and worn wallpaper in the ceiling of her grandmother’s house. Perry recalls all the different shades of blue her grandmothers’ house was adorned with, thinking about why she never bothered to ask her grandmother why she chose the color. Through these recollections she begins to question what meaning the color blue held for her grandmother and Black people. Perry’s memories of her grandmother led me to reflect on my own grandmother.  My grandmother too, surrounded herself with blue, for her it was a color that carried spiritual depth and serenity. For me, I thought of my own connection to the color blue, remembering when I first learned about Picassos ‘blue period, and how it inspired me as a painter to explore working with blues as a way to convey the sadness I felt as a teenager.

Now, in hindsight knowing that Picasso also went through and African period, and reading parts of this book, I question the connection between the two periods. I question why Thinking about Picasso’s blue period alongside Iman Perry’s writings highlights how European artist abstracted Black expression into artistic form while detaching it from its origins. Picasso made the choice to paint white people blue during his blue period, rather than combining blue black people with his African period.  On the other hand, the works of Alex Callender in his “American Lawn” and “Night Grass” collections, I recall all of the different hues of blue in several works to depict experiences of Black Americans being transported here through the Trans-Atlantic. Keeping artist like Callender and many others in mind, along with Perry’s methodology to fully explain the heart of blackness, I would agree that Blackness is something that is lived, remembered, and best told by those who carry its hue.

how the color blue is a symbol of both melancholy and hope throughout Black history and culture. It also explains how it explores the history of the color blue and Blackness and starting with the transatlantic slave trade, and connecting it to the blues music genre, the sky, water, and various forms of art. However, The book uses these connections to show how Black identity has been shaped by tragedy and resilience. The author Imani Perry deliberately chose not to include traditional scholarly elements like footnotes or an index to encourage the book to be read as a work of art or a novel, but is a significant departure from her previous academic works. she has aimed to create a cohesive, rhythmic narrative where different pieces of research come together like riffs in a jazz piece. Artistic inspiration is structured to resemble a collage or a jazz composition, Unconventional format is The absence of an index and footnotes is a deliberate choice to make the book feel more like a narrative story and less like a traditional academic text and Multi-sensory experience is intended for the book to provide a multi-sensory engagement, drawing on history, art, and personal experience to explore the theme of the color blue. 

Emergent Strategy offers a grounded yet imaginative framework for shaping desired futures and for recognizing the transformative potential of working together.

Emergent strategy is based on a few principles and elements
that inform both understanding and application of the method.
These principles include:

a)Small is Good, Small is All. Big systems work in much the same way as their smaller parts.
b) Change is Constant: Accept that things are constantly changing and be ready to adapt.

c) Right Work Timing: There is enough time for meaningful conversations and
for the work that matters.

Lessons from Failure: See experiences as chances to learn, not as failures.

Trust the People: When we trust others, it helps build trust and lets us move forward steadily.
Connections Over Mass: Prioritize essential connections to build resilience through relationships.
Presence Over Preparation: Reduced preparation can enhance presence and responsiveness.
Brown uses natural systems as metaphors
to illustrate emergent strategy principles, such as dandelions, as a metaphor for resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Brown says that dandelions undergo a rapid transformation, with golden blooms turning into delicate white globes. Each seed is equipped with a structure that enables wind dispersal.
This clever adaptation lets seeds travel far and wide on the breeze. Every part of the plant holds healing potential. Often regarded as weeds and removed from the ground, dandelions demonstrate significant persistence. Their deep taproots remain intact, facilitating regrowth.
These characteristics exemplify resilience, resistance, regeneration, and decentralization.

Brown emphasizes the importance of embracing change by recognizing the inherent opportunities in constant transformation rather than resisting it.
This approach requires the ability to plan and set expectations when faced with new challenges, and understanding that each change offers valuable lessons for personal growth. Emergent strategy practices encourage us to mirror the rhythms of nature, nurturing lasting change in social justice and community building. This approach challenges learned behaviors of competition and scarcity,
and instead encourages collaboration, growth, and respect for
the interconnectedness of all life.
Questions: By analyzing Brown’s suggested principles and elements, can we, as humanity, accept change without conforming to rigid rules and regulations that undermine our everyday existence, considering the existing power structure? What other elements and principles would you consider to speculate on the future power reconstruction, or would you envision any power at all?

Another thing that stood out to me is when she goes into things like the concept of destiny and imagination. She doesn’t talk about them in a mystical way, but as active, living forces that shape how we organize, dream, and move through the world. It makes you think about how much imagination plays a role in creating the futures we actually want to live in.

This was also my first time learning about concepts such as biomimicry and permaculture, and all the examples she gave—birds, caterpillars, oak trees, dandelions, cells, and even the Fibonacci sequence was super fun to go through. It reminded me of how everything in nature already knows how to self-organize and sustain balance. I love finding patterns like that on my own time too, and it also made me think of that experiment in Japan where scientists used slime mold to design a transportation network because it naturally found the most efficient routes. (link attached on top)

Reading her ideas about organizing also made me think about what’s happening now in terms of a lot of people's perception about the new mayor of New York. It feels like we live in a time where if someone genuinely believes in the welfare of all people, they’re seen as suspicious or unrealistic. It’s almost as if caring about everyone means you must have some hidden agenda, or that you’re naïve for believing in community and collective well-being. In a capitalist society built on competition and profit, caring for people as a principle gets treated like weakness. I think that’s part of what brown wants us to question i.e why we see greed as practical but compassion as radical.

One question from the author that I really liked was: How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?

And the question I came up with : What would leadership look like if we treated love and imagination as essential forms of intelligence, the same way we value logic or control?

Reading papers on emergence a decade ago inspired my interest in complex systems, and having been butting heads with the tech world I have seen how pervasive its fascination is with those same systems.

We've talked about how artificial intelligence is used in past classes, and how some of the models commonly used overstate their representation of genuine biological processes(e.g neural networks). So my question is, what are the ways that biomimicry is susceptible to misuse, specifically overstating a relationship with the natural world to justify harm?

Even though we often consider technologies engrained around us like our names, and even the western patriarchal technology of a last name, to be “matter of fact,” ordinary, necessary, or neutral; it does not erase the oppressive nature of them.

This section of Benjamin’s book makes me wonder if we can effectively reinvent our naming system to be more reflective of liberatory networks. After all, all names were made up at some point. This has already begun to take form, as there have commonly been movements of oppressed people renaming themselves (Black people, queer people, femmes) in an effort to reclaim their name from the system of oppression it takes root in. Should we collectively begin to build on top of these racist and patriarchal histories embedded in our names by selecting our own first/last names?

Is the use of poetry as a way to process grief inherently anti-colonial, particularly in a colonial society obsessed with data and qualifications and pathologizing? Can the practice of processing emotions and experiences through poetry be an emergent strategy for unlearning colonial thought?

I noticed that a lot of poems become positive when mentions of nature come up, and in my mind specifcally speak to the natural/ecological succession of forests over time. Below are examples i found:

• Poem 4: a dirge of lamentation / for earth to live again / earth that is all at once a grave / a resting place a bed of new beginnings.

• Poem 7: This wilderness within / urging me onward / be here /make a lath

• Poem 8: a cardinal framed in the glass / red light / calaling away despair / eternal promise / everything changes and ends

• Poem 21: store dreams / of a world without humans / a wet world everlasting

• Poem 29: alone untouched / sheer good fortune / guides one bear away / a gift of time / with no boundaries

• Poem 31: in everyday the blessing of weather / offering change / a constant passing / of life into death / and back again

• Poem 35: winds of fate /... / carry us toward / ... / past present future / change comes

• Poem 45: ghosts return to these hills / ... / ghosts gather here / make promises / of resurrection and return

• Poem 48: earth laments / cries out loud / that justice may come / that it is never too late

• Poem 50: lost in a world of green / all have been promised / wedded to morning / that will soon come

• Poem 58: earth spirit / recelain soil soul seed / all the living green / help us surrender / that we may live again

Although Hooks does not claim an identity as Appalachian, she expresses a solidarity and sense of belonging rooted in ancestors—Black, Native American, and white—all "people of one blood" who made their home in isolated landscapes, where they could invent themselves and taste freedom.'

In chapter 3, where we see the tension between freedom and captivity, Hooks introduces a 'black bear' navigating the landscape, symbolizing innocence and the fleeting nature of liberty. It alludes to a historical context of violence against nature, reflecting on the legacy of colonization and the inevitable return of hunters, suggesting a tragic cycle of

captivity and loss.

The chapter explores the tension between humanity's urge to control nature and the intrinsic freedom of animals, effectively highlighting the damaging effects of industrialization on natural landscapes. While hooks offers an interesting argument for the importance of wildness, it is essential to acknowledge that this viewpoint, though impactful, may overlook the intricacies of human-animal relationships and the vital role of stewardship in an evolving world.

How does Hooks argue for a more inclusive approach to environmentalism that acknowledges the intersecting impacts of race, class, and gender in Introduction: on reflection and lamentation?

His film, On Sanguine reflections on his intermediary position as both a father and son, alongside his own father and son. Additionally, several of his works use poems by others he has drawn from, such as Toni Morrison and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Yet he is aware of the limitations of his own experiences of these lineages even as he calls upon materials he would use throughout his life, and how they point to a history he doesn't truly have access to, explaining this through his use of shea butter. He resolves and owns this contradiction through his earnestness in its use as a material in his work now, as well as his own curiosity. Through this curiosity he is constantly bearing witness and actively participating in this lineage of his, and the exhibition is meant to allow us to bear witness as well.

The exhibition itself is meant to be shared via public events, and a piano is integrated directly into Sanguine itself so it can be used for live events. He wants ongoing conversations and encourages active participation with his work.

For me ideas of democratization and sharing have often felt overblown and almost coercive in the age of surveillance capitalism. Yet for the most part he is only exposing himself and everyone he draws from. So my question is: what are the opportunities he hopes to share with witnesses, what comes with those high expectations that come with bearing witness? What does sharing and democratization look like for him?

Some themes that stood out to me in her poems are:

• water

• a deep relationship with nature (soil, rocks, hills)

• animals like chickens and black birds

• strong colors and vivid images

• lamentation and crying out to mother nature

• seasons, day and night

• roots, culture, ancestors

• colonialism and genocide

• the constant presence of life and death

One other theme that really stood out to me was her use of ritual language and the way she treats certain places as spiritually meaningful. hooks often turns the land itself into a kind of sacred space. For example, in poem 31 she talks about “returning to sacred places” (pg. 41). In poem 39 she describes “ritual spaces” and writes about “altars in these hills, organic monuments” (pg. 49). Then in poem 49, she uses the word “anointing” when she describes starting the day with water. These moments made me notice how often she blends everyday nature with ideas of care, memory, and something almost ceremonial.

1. hooks writes that “the segregated world of my Kentucky childhood was the place where I lived beyond race.” How can a childhood be segregated but still feel like a space where someone lives “beyond race”?

2. What do you think she wants us to understand about returning to “sacred places” and creating “ritual spaces” in nature? How can those ideas shape healing or memory?

Recently, I came across an interview with Megan Kelly, who controversially implied that Black women "complain" about the time required for hair maintenance. She audaciously referenced Michelle Obama, accusing her of excluding White women from the conversation. Kelly's assertion that "spending money and time to take care of a woman's hair is not a Black thing; it's a woman thing" is a perfect example of how the media continues to promote a narrative steeped in White imperialism. How about not talking about it and instead emphasizing stereotypes and agendas? This narrative of superiority versus inferiority, and White hair versus Black hair, has been thrown around lightly by fake feminists, which undermines the historical and political history of the oppression that Black women have faced and endured for generations. Still, Bob Marley, Du Bois, and I would add Queen Nanny and Michelle Obama, who refused to see themselves through the eyes of colonizers. Marly's "The Redemption Song" is the "invitation" to "turn this shit down" and "reject that which rejected you." you do not need to further parpatuate psychotic colonial fantasies about who we are but here we are still reproducing the same norms""( Emma) The most important two sentences taht stuck with me and hopefully 300 years from now we get to live on this planet with unity and solidarity that reads: "We have freedom to design a reality of our own making one that recognizes our humanity and reflects our highest needs"

( Dabiri) We are once we have been waiting for"

Question: Does this book intersect with race, identity, and cultural appropriation across different societies? And if so, how can we connect other cultures, genders, and body politics to untangle the issues on a global spectrum?

My question is this; Dabiri talks about the connection with the past and the present through hair within Yoruba beliefs. With this in mind, what role does hair play in afrofuturist imaginings for the future?

Towards the end of her book, she talks about the way that hair braiding practices assume and impart knowledge of fractals, how to calculate distances, and then weaves this into a contrast between Africa's rich but oft forgotten history of mathematics with that of the West while also tracing parts of the later back to the former historically. She then describes her own relationship to mathematics through her hair as well as the tragedy of many whose talents went unrecognized. She also goes over mathematical concepts that were once neglected but now very relevant to computer programming, such as infinity.

It seems to me as if whiteness imposes legibility of practices, and yet, even as we look at the act of braiding as applied and embodied mathematics, the braids themselves were a meaningful means of secret keeping from plantation owners in the era of chattel slavery. Although she spoke on map making through hair directly, I am interested in to what extent Black epistemologies depend on illegibility toward whiteness, and how much these practices and their somatic inheritance has evolved around secret keeping for protection.

For Dabiri I wonder what it means to uncover this knowledge and express it beyond the body, in such a way that a reader like myself can try to understand this.

This incident also reminded me of something I have heard my professor, Dr. Oza, say many times, which is that education everywhere is about compliance. It raises the question of why hair should matter in the first place. Why would schools, places that claim to focus on learning, feel comfortable policing Black girls’ hair unless the goal is to shape them into a dominant standard. It shows how these institutions do more than teach content. They teach what is considered normal, acceptable, and valuable, and in this case the default ideology is one rooted in whiteness and hegemonic power.

Another thing I would like to mention is the part where Dabiri talks about Alice Walker coining the term colorism in 1983. I did not expect it to be that recent, and it made me think about other terminology I have learned in WGS and how new many of these concepts actually are. For example, the word gender only entered widespread academic use in the 1970s, and before then the word sex was used to describe both biological difference and social category. Sex could also refer to sexual activity, and sexuality was used to describe what we would now separate as sexual orientation. Over time, people created new language to name identity, experience, and the difference between body and desire. I find it exciting to learn how language shifts like this in gender studies and Indigenous studies, because it helps me understand how knowledge is always expanding.

Question : What would the world look like if Blackness did not have to negotiate for permission to exist?

I’d also like to say I added this picture because this was fascinating to learn about (also because it goes hand in hand with Mati’s point and what Marinella says in her post in the beginning  - I didn’t know exactly how to describe and understand this before Emma Dabiri’s breakdown because I definitely noticed that people of all races can have curls but after a certain curl pattern, that hair type is only unique to black people. Fascinating! Feeling kind of dumb writing this cause it seems like something I should know but yes 

I see this same idea being highlighted in the tech realm in respect to race in Benjamin’s book from pages 17 to 19. Things that look neutral are often targeting someone. Something as simple as a name or a hiring algorithm can shape opportunity without ever announcing its bias. That connects to her definition of the New Jim Code which she describes as new technologies that reflect and reproduce inequality while appearing objective or progressive. It is discrimination with cleaner language and better branding.

Looking at it this way helped me understand a larger pattern across history. If slavery was the first form of racial control and mass incarceration was the second then algorithmic bias feels like a third. The technology is new but the logic is old. Instead of chains or sentencing disparities we have automated hiring systems that filter out names. We have gang databases that list infants as criminals. We have systems that categorize people before they even enter the room. Racism did not disappear. It adapted.

I am also intrigued by Jasmine’s question and Marinella’s response in the discussion post. The part about drone strikes made me think about how technology itself is not separate from us. The way we build it reflects who we are and what we value. Just like media imitates life, technology imitates us. The tools look new but the intentions inside them come from older systems. Marinella mentioned that the possibilities are endless which is true in both directions. There is potential for harm but also for resistance and redesign.

And so I think about Jasmine’s question a lot. Technology companies are mining us for data and tailoring content back to us in a way that reinforces bias. At the same time people are creating tools to interrupt that cycle. There are apps that limit scrolling or block certain platforms during specific hours. That tells me that even if systems are built to control us there are always people building ways to break those patterns too and that is where personal choice comes into play. Personal choice has a big role in how we respond to the systems that shape us.

If technology mirrors us, not just our intentions but our biases, what would it take for technology to reflect liberation rather than control? Is it a design shift or a social shift first?

He also says that learning Western science should not be the final goal. I agree with this as it reminds us that Western knowledge is only one kind of knowledge, not the standard for all people. He asks us to think about invention through a Black lens, built from Black history, Black needs, and Black imagination. This made me think about how much of what we call facts or progress come from one side of the world. When only one group has power and resources, their machines become the default for everyone else. Baraka invites Black creators to take that power back.

One idea I keep thinking about is that machines carry the values of the people who build them. If the maker has a violent history, the technology will show it too. If the maker values life, the technology will reflect care. Baraka believes a new Black centered technology could focus on healing, feeding, and raising consciousness instead of harming land and people. I agree with this and I think it opens a new way to imagine the future. We already know Black people have invented so much, often with no support and no resources. If this is what was built under pressure, what could be created with room to breathe. What could technology look like if invention came from care, abundance, and cultural memory instead of survival. What would the world gain if Black creativity was fully supported instead of limited. I have 2 questions : 

1. If technology reflects the values of its creators, what responsibility do we have in choosing who gets to build future machines?

2. How might technology change if it was designed to heal communities instead of control them?

That is also why the courage to birdwatch matters, because it pushes against a history that tried to keep Black people from leisure, nature, beauty, and quiet. Joy becomes a way of saying We belong here. The image of people strolling through the preserve, practicing yoga, touching soil, spotting birds, all feels like a refusal to disappear. It shows that being outside is not just recreation, it is reclamation. Joy is not soft here, joy is political. When a Black person watches a bird, they are doing more than observing flight. They are returning to land, to breath, to curiosity without permission. That courage becomes a way to rewrite who gets to rest, who gets to wander, and who gets to look up.

If birdwatching is one small act of freedom, what other forms of joy could be reclaimed next?

How might our future change if rest, nature, and ease were treated as birthrights instead of rewards?

When I look at everything we read as a whole, I notice how many threads connect them. Raboteau mentions places we physically visited such as the Guggenheim, and the African Burial Ground, but also thematically, there is so much overlap across the syllabus. Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, Moby Dick etc come up multiple times, so did Yoruba cosmology, which appeared in this book and also in Black and Blues and Twisted. We see recurring themes of birds, water, earth, the body. We see the land speaking. We see the city breathing. And one theme that I think became a constant throughout this course is that play is revolutionary. That rest and joy and being outside and watching birds or waves is not optional. We already know colonial violence happened, we know what it did and continues to do, and instead of debating reality or trying to prove pain over and over, the next step becomes living and building our own communities and futures. All of it feels very connected, like we were never reading separate works but one long deep conversation ( I know it was thoughtfully done and didn’t just happen so thank you to Professor Goffe).

One of the reasons ending here feels right is because the book is rooted in New York and so many of us are from here. We know the places being referenced. And the fact that Emily Raboteau is a CUNY grad makes it feel even more relatable. 

I would also like to mention that I truly enjoyed seeing the different murials and realizing I’m not looking around enough. I like doing things like following signals, paying attention to the city, and noticing details. And so when Raboteau mentions John James Audubon and Washington Heights, I was so excited cause earlier in the semester when we downloaded the Audubon app, I remember thinking how coincidental it was that I had just moved out of my family’s home in the Bronx and onto a street named Audubon. And now, reading this section, the connection feels clearer. It is one of those synchronicity moments where something clicks that you did not realize was connected before. ( I attached the photo of the murial that's closest to my new home!)

There was also a lot in this book that I think about but never verbalized like when she talks about the high levels of cortisol and having stress induced health effects. I think so many of us live with that constant stress, especially in this time, but we do not say it out loud, allow ourselves to feel or even fully acknowledge it. Some more examples : On page twenty four, when she asks how much can a body take. Then again on page twenty six she brings another existential question forward, what do we do when we cannot just stop living. 

Another thought I had was that the writing kind of reminded me of Sex and the City. It might sound like a weird comparison, but it was something that stood out to me. In that movie, you barely see any men, and here the men who do show up do not exactly feel solid. Even her own husband is supportive at times but still wants to pull away to play Call of Duty when she is going through something big. And then there are the doctors, colleagues, and physicians, almost all disappointing, dismissive, or below standard. On top of that she draws parallels between Trump and predatory behavior, which just adds to the pattern. I really like her writing style overall. It is sharp, relatable, and honest.

How does it change things when the landscape of a book is not distant but shared ; when we know the bodegas, the train lines, the murals? Does literature become a form of communal memory then?

My experience working with techies and being one myself once, has shown me how much the entirety of our work obscures these conversations., and it may only be of specific value to those coming from those spaces, but I think more of us answering it would benefit everyone. What are encoding methods within our craft(s) that can enable multitudes rather than impose uniformity, address ? I am thinking of the field of cryptography that has some potential despite being developed largely within the military industrial complex and finance. It foregrounds mumbojumbo as a means of obscuring more sensitive information such that it cannot easily be found, and such measures can ordinary people from more powerful nation states or other actors relying on domination. Is there anyway that technologists can see the pervasiveness of codes beyond our commonly accepted craft as a rallying call to understand code all around us, and in doing so hack it in the pursuit of justice?

Skawennati’s machinima projections envision a future for indigienous communities enriched by science fiction crafted through their own lore. Her work owns its subjectivity as she, explicitly uses mediums and colors because she likes them, and centers her own Kanien’kehá:ka when discussing indigeneity, uplifts traditions that she thinks are benefitical and thinks would make the world better if everyone adopted them.

One interesting piece has xox, a character standing in for Skawennati, meeting king Charles, who then announces reparations for first nations communities in so called Canada. She has additional pieces where xox and her sisters met the late queen Elizabeth. In creating avatars for colonial and (allegedly) postcolonial British monarchs, she is further using her machimima to project what she would like to see others do as well. Even if it isn’t ‘realistic’ to expect a monarch to give stolen land back when he already gave it to colonists, she knows that there is a desire for control implicit in the use of avatars, which she actively explores in ‘she-is-dancing-with-herself’ and seems to be able to share her hopes and perspective with genuine humility through xox.

There seems to be a steadiness to her small, intentional scope of self in using the avatar xox that makes me wonder to what extent she envisions virtual worlds being spaces that can rewrite histories rather than simply carry forward or surface forgotten histories? After all, she seems very selective in what she is bringing into her Skawennati-verse.

without having read the entirety of the book, this backdrop just sticks with me and has been making wonder to what extent indigeneity is inherently pluralistic, or ways it can be defined outside of the colonizer-colonized dichotomy.

At first it seemed like the languages and locations were just meant to parallel the Caribbean with inherited European languages mixed in, and yes it seems like the Caribbean lore deeply resonated with readers with all the corresponding relations that come with bringing real world cultures together. Yet New Half-Way Tree makes me think lots about the Bronx over the past 50 years, which by necessity has had to separated ideas of indigeneity from colonialism(even if it can't do so with gentrification). A place where people are displaced to and stay several generations until finding a new home elsewhere. So now I need to ask what are the ways that indigeneity is a misleading concept when in addressing displacement and oppression after centuries of forced migration? I ask because of the ways I've seen it co-opted by businesses building their brands here while brining in displacing developers.