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Friday, November 27, 2009

Power of an image



Just got this from the brilliant Zimbabwean artist, Chaz Maviyane-Davies. He created it as a contribution to Arts United 4 Iran.

There are images that make poetry, prose, all words, redundant. This is one of them.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Water. Hot.

The secret location where I am currently holed up completing my manuscript is a gift from the gods. A writers' grotto, courtesy of fairy godmother LX, who absorbed early in life the vital importance of A Room Of One's Own.

The one thing it lacks is hot water. It has cold running water in abundance. So to bathe, I fill the kettle and soup tureen and put them on two burners of the small electric cooker. When they are humming and steaming, I pick them up gingerly, with oven gloves, carry them carefully to the bathroom, and drop them into a large round washtub already half-filled with cold water.

The addition of close-to-boiling water plus immersion of hot metal containers gives me just enough water, at just the right temperature, for a bucket bath. The water cools quickly. So I squat, soap at high speed, scoop water over myself with a tumbler, towel down and dress before too many goosebumps rise on my flesh.

And I think how most of the world's women walk miles each day to fetch water. Then heat it on precious wood fires for basic needs. How four thousand children across the world die daily for lack of clean drinking water. How most of Kenya's population can only dream of a constant reliable supply of electricity, of heat, of the luxury of bathing in privacy.

I think too about all the Americans have never experienced life without hot showers. I recall an American friend who panicked when the water heater in his house broke down on a Friday. The prospect of a weekend without hot water on demand was so new, so terrifying, he didn't know what to do. He tried, bizarrely, to bathe his baby daughter in a tub of ice-cold water. The idea of heating up water up on a stove, sponging her down, never crossed his mind.

Naturally, she screamed blue murder.

This man has a PhD, has taught third-world literatures, is a dedicated community activist. Can discuss globalization, poverty, Marxism, with great fluency and insight. But he couldn't think his way through the challenge of how to clean an infant if he couldn't turn on a tap for an unlimited flow of hot water.

Art Is A Migrant

I said, in response to a question from Italian scholar, Emanuele Monegato. His interview with me is in the new issue of Altre Modernità (Other Modernities), the journal of the Cultural Studies section of Università degli Studi di Milano.

My favourite phrases from his description of my work:

In addiction to such a Kenyan origin.....

peculiar oeuvre that is Migritude....

the only way to portray Migritude is to use a net of definitions describing its multiple souls.


You can download the full conversation - scroll down the page to "Interviews".

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Say, Sing It, Dance To It

extraction

A phrase crossed my screen today which triggered my "language alert" radar.

an open letter to Samuel Kivuitu, written by Shailja Patel, who is a Kenyan of Asian extraction.....

The word extraction makes sense when talking about vegetable juice. Or the processing of mineral ores. Or even blackhead removal in facials.

But I'm not feeling it in the context of ethnicity or racial heritage. It suggests that I was put through a grinder of Asian, then filtered through a fine-mesh sieve of Asian, to arrive at - hey presto - my current state of freshly juiced, pulp-free Asian extraction.

Descent or heritage would be a better fit. Or just plain ethnicity. If you want to get really specific: phenotype.

The language itself is a pointer to the underlying question - why is my ethnicity relevant in this context?

Answer: It isn't.

Motion: That it be noted that extraction is a physical and chemical process - not a signifier of ethnicity or phenotype. That references to ethnic extraction be excised from descriptions of persons unless they have a clear and obvious relevance to the subject matter.

All in favour: Aye.

So moved.

Meeting of the Language Misuse Committee adjourned.
 
         
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