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Or, Art Friends
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Please send or (help) buy me a phone if you can! Phones sitting in drawers most welcome!
My phone fell and died yesterday so I’ll be unavailable for a bit 😭
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Thank you!
Reader,
I am still getting down from the high of 3 consecutive days full of art. First off was the first meeting of the Zine Club helmed by 32°East which will be meeting at Cheche Books and Coffee in Nairobi and other locations across the world. Rosie Olang', who led the Nairobi group in thinking and making, is the ur-zinester in my life and it's always such a pleasure to think and make with her. The Zine Club is an invitation to think with a short text (Tending The Soil–Lessons For Organizing by Ricardo Levins Morales) and it was another reminder of the particular joy that comes with encountering writing with other people. You can find out more about the club in the poster below and start your own via this form.
I then went home and took part in Sarabande Books’ Zine Lunch!. I'm no longer the youth I once was because the walk I took before I got home (slow but sure ascent, per Strava) wiped me out so much all I could do was make a bowl of instant noodles and sit at my desk during the meeting. If there's one thing I've learnt this year, it's the power that is in showing up (even if one leaves!) so I am glad I attended. Going forward, the plan is to be home by 1800 at the latest so I have time to decompress before the meeting begins.
On Saturday, I received a delightful gift from a friend - a new strap (actually a set of straps) - for my smart watch. What Xiaomi gives (a watch with numerous modes and cute watch faces), Xiaomi takes away (this strap replaces the second strap on my second watch, the first having been lost to their finicky closing mechanism) so I'm glad to be back in the world of Velcro straps. Anyone who's known me since childhood (waving at my Mum, my OG reader) knows how much I love Velcro anything. Asante sana to the friend who gifted them to me.
Once the straps were secured, it was off to Wajukuu Art Project's space in Lunga Lunga for Mika Obanda’s artist talk. I helped build a library with the group in 2014 so they'll always have a special place in my heart. Saturday left me asking myself questions about that special place and it was edifying to speak to a dear friend who is an art worker about my feelings earlier today. The show on display is about femicide and was conceptualised during the #EndFemicideKE protests. While it features work wonderfully rendered, it also left me with questions I’m sitting with— which I guess is the work of good art. It closes this Saturday so please see it if you can.
The homies and I ended up at a Chicken Inn where they talked as I participated in the Radical Books Collective discussion of Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas. Before it started, I was reminded of my age (the friend whose phone I used gets better data deals than I do because of their age) and the ways in which one makes their device their own in small and big ways (when was the last time the Bluetooth device users among us connected them to something new?). The discussion was very generative and I hope to be able to participate in future ones.
Then, on Sunday, I went to see more art. This time, the last day of the Affordable Art Show at the Nairobi National Museum. The space was packed and it felt almost…claustrophobic to be surrounded by art from all sides. You think you’re an art lover till you’re hemmed in by art and other art lovers; then you start to ask yourself how much you love art. Thankfully, we were able to sit and decompress on the museum grounds after the fact (genuine question: why are there roped off sections in the garden?) where I bumped into the writer and chess player Mehul Gohil when I walked over to him because I’ve started a thing I once maintained a Tumblr blog for: talking to strangers reading in public. He was reading A Walk in the Night by Alex La Guma and that chat led to us talking about his recommendations from among the short stories in Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara, in which he is featured.
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Quick news/ things that may be of interest:
Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online
If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!
The fantastic Abigail Arunga has a new book out. It’s open access so have at it!
Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!
Sign the Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions letter
The Queer Liberation Library, everyone
Free Palestine: A Verso Reading List (includes some free ebooks)
You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya
I have finished five books since I last wrote to you - 3 e-book titles: Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas, So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle (translated by Aleshia Jensen) and Doing It All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood by Ruby Russell as well as 2 physical books (trying to read those for at least an hour a day to work through my stash): Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad by Firoozeh Dumas and Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History by Danzy Senna (done as a hybrid read; the audiobook is narrated by Carrington MacDuffie). I hope to get back to making videos soon so I can share my thoughts on these titles.
As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.
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Thank you for reading 🙂
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Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!