March 31, 2020

Part II: “I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing”—Four Writers on Poetry and Protest

by Mizna Intern | in Literary

The lines from Audre Lorde’s poem “New Year’s Day” serve as an inspiration for a Poetry Coalition collaboration. Image on left from Alaa Satir’s visual art series “We are the revolution”.

On March 26, 2020, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop + Mizna co-hosted a live-streamed reading with Andrea Abi-Karam, Romaissaa Benzizoune, and Sham-e-Ali Nayeem as a digital event on Facebook. The full video can be found here. A live-edited accessible copy of the program can be found here.

The four readers who were originally scheduled to read at the in-person event (including Susan Muaddi Darraj) were invited to contend with Lorde’s lines and answer a few related questions. Below is a link to the full blogpost and a snippet from each readers’ response.

Andrea Abi-Karam

Q: What’s on your nightstand? In your earbuds? and afraid of nothing.”

I’ve been reading as much queer fiction and memoir as I can to inform the work of my first novel, a trashy punk romance escapade. I just finished Fierce Femmes & Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom, have been slowly working through Jean Genet’s biography by Edmund White paired with Contagion’s edition of The Criminal Child by Jean Genet. I’m a DJ too, so always listening to new music, especially deep house, disco, grunge and punk.

Romaissaa Benzizoune

Q: Resistance requires resilience. What are some ways you make space for joy and self-care?

The main way I practice self-care is by allowing myself to not care about time so much. This isn’t a “productive” approach, but I feel the happiest when I allow myself to lose track of time. I love wandering around the city and visiting my favorite haunts: a handful of bookstores, cafes, and thrift shops that I feel a connection to. I have the freedom to do this as a college student, and it saddens me to think that this may no longer be possible if I work a traditional job that allows me, say, health insurance. Capitalism is really the worst. Besides that, I also like to do yoga, go jogging, and create watercolor paintings that I place on my windowsill because secretly I want people to see them when they come in. They’re not great, but they’re very colorful.

Susan Muaddi Darraj

Q: What is your reaction to Audre Lorde’s lines, “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

This feels like the mantra of every woman of color in my life.

Sham-e-Ali Nayeem

Q: Resistance requires resilience. What are some ways you make space for joy and self-care?

This feels like the mantra of every woman of color in my life