Threadings‪.‬ Ismatu Gwendolyn

A letter written for Bisan, circulated to my constituency:
Peace.
I write to you from the floor of my bedroom in Sierra Leone. Two days ago, Iran launched successful counter-attacks against the apartheid regime occupying the land of Palestine, currently known as Israel (which bombed their embassy in an open act of war on April 1). I can hear construction workers breaking rocks outside my window and the children of the house playing and running and the noise of Freetown traffic in an endless rise and fall. I always find it pertinent to name the moment clearly, as I am always certain tomorrow will not look like today; the things I consider commonplace will be precious and long gone. Some of my mind firmly plants itself in yesterday already: gone are the days where I can see children running and playing in the street— in any street, anywhere in the world— and I do not think of Palestinian children massacred in front of each other. I am in a permanent after. I kneel to pray and recall accounts of young Sudanese women messaging their local religious leaders, asking if they will still be permitted into paradise if they commit suicide to avoid rape from occupying soldiers. I am in a permanent after.
Today is April 15, 2024. Tomorrow will not look like today.
Bisan Owda, a filmmaker, journalist and storyteller, has called the world to strike on several occasions for the liberation of her homeland, Palestine. I feel about Bisan (and Hind, and Motaz, and many others) like I feel about my cousins: I pray for them before bed, asking for their continued protection, wondering for them— the same way I prayed for my family as a child, during Sierra Leone’s own neocolonial war of attrition, or when Ebola came like the angel of death. This is the way I pray for Bisan, and for Palestine: with this heart beating in me that is both theirs and mine. She is my age. Bisan! You are my age! I wish we could have met at university, or at an artists workshop; I feel we would have long conversation. I understand more now about what my auntie dequi means when she says sister in the struggle— that’s how she speaks of indigenous womyn, about Palestinian womyn, about womyn across the colonized world that use every tool they have to resist. Sisters in the struggle. It’s never felt like an understatement— I just feel it in my body now. Sisters (n.): someone who you most ardently for. Someone who you care for such that it compels you to action.
I’m certain many of you feel this for me—this long distance, cross-cultural, transcontinental kinship. Rhita, a stranger turned friend via instagram DMs, had me over for tea on a long layover in Morocco, and we spent at least two hours talking about blooming revolution and healing through art (she’s a musician and she helps pave the way for musicians in Morocco, who fight for their royalties as well as their right to exist. Brilliant). Sisters in struggle: your lens on the world changes mine, and I am grateful for it. Today we are among war; I mobilize and I organize and I pray for a day where we might sit down for tea.
I write to Bisan with the attention of my own constituency to shine light on her calls for a general strike, one of which occurs today, April 15 2024. These urgent asks have been met with lots of skepticism across the Western world: how do we organize something this fast? Does it really matter if I participate? How will one strike solve anything? I write to throw my pen and my circumstance behind you, Bisan. I lend you all (my constituency) my lenses as a teacher, in hopes that I make plain to you why these questions of feasibility assume there is another way out of our current standing oppressions. We have no other option for worldwide liberation that does not include a mass refusal to produce capital.
We occupy a crucial moment of pivot as a species. Victory for the masses feels impossible from the complete waste they lay on anyone who dissents to their power. This feeling is

an essay nearly entitled, “the orange trees teach me art-making.” This essay is a continuation of my prolonged look at revolutionary healers in practice to become one— where healing also includes artistry. What is my role as an freedom-minded artist, this side of revolution? Check the link to donate to the universal basic income program for Ebola Survivors in Kenema, Sierra Leone below!
https://msha.ke/ismatu
Theses:
A (art-making) = B(world-making) = C (truth-telling)
(1) One of the greatest powers held in the human sovereign world is the power to create and destroy: to make, shape and reshape the world and what we know to be true. I call this world-making.
(2) We are currently at war and (I would argue) in the exposition of a new world.
(3) This world is still actively being made. What constitutes power in the hands of the masses? What methods of world-making are truly available to us?
All sources available at ismatu.substack.com.
Jazz of the Episode (sampling):
Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis
For All We Know x Ahmad Jamal
Why, Buzzardman, Why? X Alabaster DePlume
Tezeta x Mulatu Astatke
My Odoh - African Lofi x Lofi Afrobeats



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Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.
Author: La Marr Jurelle Bruce
Hyperlinked above is their academia.edu page, which has a lovely biography and two more brilliant articles available to read. Remember that orienting oneself with the author (who wrote it? for what reason?) aids in understanding their arguments. There is no one viewpoint of objectivity.
Presented in audio is a reading of pages 1-11 of How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind. The full chapter has been made available by Duke University Press right here, so you can listen and read along! I highlyrecommend this method of learning for maximum absorption.
Dr. Bruce also gave this illuminating talk with Farah Jasmine Griffin at the Barnard Center of Research on Women. Author talks are also phenomenal resources for digesting academic prose (or in this case, prose poetry).
Remember the questions we ask when we consider a set of claims critically:
(1) who wrote it?
(2) for what reason?
(3) for what audience?
(4) what’s missing?
Additionally, while not provided here, this book has one of the most stunning acknowledgement sections I have ever read. And I do own this book in physical copy. Just saying. We’ve been chatting in the discord, which I am apparently bad at hyperlinking but I will ask someone to share the right link in the comments :)
post script: i did not have to ask, someone did post a link in the discord! thank you!
happy reading ig
This reading is only available for a limited time, as per the wishes of Dr. Bruce!! Don’t hesitate don’t procrastinate!


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.
Author: La Marr Jurelle Bruce
Hyperlinked above is their academia.edu page, which has a lovely biography and two more brilliant articles available to read. Remember that orienting oneself with the author (who wrote it? for what reason?) aids in understanding their arguments. There is no one viewpoint of objectivity.
Presented in audio is a reading of pages 1-11 of How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind. The full chapter has been made available by Duke University Press right here, so you can listen and read along! I highly recommend this method of learning for maximum absorption.
Dr. Bruce also gave this illuminating talk with Farah Jasmine Griffin at the Barnard Center of Research on Women. Author talks are also phenomenal resources for digesting academic prose (or in this case, prose poetry).
Remember the questions we ask when we consider a set of claims critically:
(1) who wrote it?
(2) for what reason?
(3) for what audience?
(4) what’s missing?
Additionally, while not provided here, this book has one of the most We’ve been chatting in the discord, which I am apparently bad at hyperlinking but I will ask someone to share the right link in the comments :)
happy reading ig

This reading is only available for a limited time, as per the wishes of Dr. Bruce!! Don’t hesitate don’t procrastinate!


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

captioned live! we took one hour to read four paragraphs together. excerpt from: Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Thabiti Lewis. I don’t usually save my lives because (1) that requires editing and I am already drowning in administrative work and (2) I enjoy existing in temporal space for only a moment in time, rather than being replayable and rewatchable and forwardable all the time. it’s a weird thing to watch happen to your personhood. but this one i found to be really lovely and helpful, so here it is. i hope you enjoyyy.
correct video transcript available at ismatu.substack.com.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

In which we engage the following theses:
(1) the ruling class benefits from illiteracy.
(2) short-form video entertains more than it sticks.
(3) reading is a discipline distinct from listening, watching, or other forms of literacy. It’s a skill that needs to be honed separately.
(4) Absolutely no one comes to save us but us.
Full and accurate transcript available at ismatu.substack.com. Thank you for listening Jazz of the Episode:
The Jordan River Song x Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Lena’s Song x The Sweet Enoughs
Sunset and the Mocking Bird x Duke Ellington
Abusey Junction x Kokoroko
Udo x The Cavemen.
Muziqa heywete x Getatchew Mekurya
Mogoya x Oumou Sangaré
Drume Negrita x Andy Bey
Tony x Larry Morezo, Dennis Tini
Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis
Spring Yaounde x Wynton Marsalis


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe