We at Apogee, like most of our community, are deeply troubled by this week’s election. We sense the resentment and bigotry targeted at so many in our community, and we fear the violence that this election represents and inspires. So many who are driven by oppressive views feel emboldened by this election.
We stand with and for the struggles to end white supremacy, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, transmisogyny, ableism, and patriarchy. We seek to empower, support, and defend artists, activists, and intellectuals who interrogate, subvert, and dismantle these pervasive norms.
We believe in art and literature as tools of resistance in times of strife. In her 2015 essay in The Nation, Toni Morrison recalls a conversation with a friend after the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush. Morrison is feeling despondent; unable to produce creative work, and her friend tells her, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work–not when everything is fine, but in times of dread!”
Our belief in the power of art to heal and empower compels us to offer this incomplete collection of resources–literature, arts organizations, and arts spaces doing work to create community, care, and resistance. We hope you’ll write us with more resources to add to this list, which we’ll be updating weekly, at editors@apogeejournal.org. We see you, we love you, and your voices matter.
POETRY
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Poem For The Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, An Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe In The War Between Races
AnaÏs Duplan, Blackness Which Was Always Moving
June Jordan, Poem About My Rights
Caspar Heinemann, angrycontingentgenderpoem (video)
Caspar Heinemann, Accessorize Industrial Collapse
Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again
Morgan Parker, All They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood
Adrienne Rich, 21 Love Poems
Danez Smith, Dear White America (text) (video)
Warshan Shire, Home
Rickey Laurentiis, Mood for Love
Patricia Smith, The President Flies Over
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, 5 poems
Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Fourth of July and Trans on the Brooklyn Side
Denice Frohman and Ms. Wise, Bodies (video)
Solmaz Sharif, Drown
Safia Elhillo, Alien Suite (video)
Martina “Mick” Powell, On Night Terrors
Kay Ulanday Barrett, When The Chant Comes
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Bodymap
Martin Espada, Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
Gwendolyn Brooks, Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle
NONFICTION
Toni Morrison, No Place for Pity, No Room for Fear (The Nation)
James Baldwin, Letter from a Region in my Mind
Zadie Smith, Speaking in Tongues
Caryl Phillips, The Atlantic Sound
Kiese Laymon, What I Pledge Allegiance To
Ocean Vuong Interview with Kaveh Akbar
radhiyah ayobami, what we volunteered for
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center
Margo Jefferson, Negroland
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Richard Rodriguez, Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Vievee Francis, Forest Primeval
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
FICTION
Paul Beatty, The Sellout
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
ART ORGANIZATIONS, SPACES, & RESOURCES
Asian American Writers Workshop
Bureau of General Services–Queer Division
CantoMundo (cultivating a community of Latinx poets)
Kundiman (dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature)
Hye-phen a collective and online magazine for radical, trans*, feminist, queer, anti-racist Armenians
Callaloo (a Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters)
For Harriet’s 12 Important Reads for Revolutionary Black Women
Macondo Writers Workshop at Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (San Antonio, TX)
New York Writers Coalition (community-based creative writing programs)
Studio Museum Harlem
- Citizen Artists Livestream (Nov. 17-19): “200 Citizen Artists are coming together in St. Louis for CULTURE/SHIFT 2016 to renew our determination to bring radical creativity and love to work for peace and justice. We will launch a policy platform to protect the right to culture. We will livestream much of the convening and will let you know soon how you can join by tuning in.”
- Story Circles: “Story Circles are deeply democratic modes of dialogue, allowing people to listen and be heard in safety, and can lead to powerful collective meaning-making, healing, and action. While the official week of Story Circles for the 2017 People’s State of the Union was scheduled for January 27-February 5, there is no need to wait. These extraordinary circumstances call on us to be together, right now. Learn more about Story Circles and get started by downloading the PSOTU toolkit here. Be in touch if you want help shaping your event.”
