Some news, as they say: I’ll be teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the spring semester of 2024. Which means that for about three and a half months of the new year, I will be splitting my time between Iowa City and Brooklyn. It’s a very cool gig and I’m excited for it. I’ve been thinking about what it means to come from a family of teachers, which I do, what it means to teach at all—the honor and responsibility of it.
My mom is an adjunct ESL lecturer at a community college. She helps recent immigrants learn English and acclimate to their new country. Many of her students have stayed in touch with her over the years. From watching her, from considering the educators who shaped me, it has been clear to me that teaching isn’t about a transfer of knowledge but an enaction of care and challenge and seeing. To teach well, at the highest level of the act, is to partially midwife another person’s transformation.
In an instance of satisfying temporal symmetry, I got my contract for the Iowa job sent to me on the seven-year anniversary of the day in October 2016 that I decided that I was, in fact, definitively going to apply to MFA programs, something I had been considering for months but had not truly pulled the trigger on. I remember the day because multiple stupid things happened that functioned as a quiet galvanization of okay let me at least try. It was also the anniversary of my arriving in the U.S., which I always note privately.
That evening, I came home late from work in a frenzy of resolution, began to write what became my application statement of purpose, and— rare for me—did not stop until it was done. I wrote through the night. I remember feeling so afraid: of leaving my D.C. life, of losing my hard-won economic stability and social world, of attempting this thing that I wanted so much—which was to write one good book, some day. As dawn licked my window, I climbed into bed to catch an hour or two of sleep before my workday began, wondering what would become of me.
some things I’ve been reading etc
This deeply moving sermon and lament from a Palestinian Christian pastor preached in Beit Lahour and Bethlehem three weeks ago: God Is Under The Rubble In Gaza.
Ezra Klein’s illuminating and thoughtful podcast conversations: with Palestinian policy analyst and writer Amjad Iraqi, Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi, and Palestinian-American scholar Amaney Jamal; great individually, better together.
These transcribed voice memo testimonials from Gaza tore at my heart, and reminded me that the greatest horror likely still lies ahead, with mass deaths from starvation, cholera, and dysentery on the horizon, if something does not change. Also, here is a place to send e-sims to Gazans.
The first song off the new Mitski album has such a gorgeous arrangement, I’m obsessed, forever a stan—
A fascinating (to me!) and meaty piece in Dissent about new ways to consider and structure the economy.
I reread this Isaac Chotiner and David Feldman conversation in The New Yorker about the nature of antisemitism after talking with friends about various recent incidents in NYC we found quite troubling, ranging from unprovoked physical assault, to swastikas spraypainted on Jewish businesses and homes, to a young person Seig Heiling at Orthodox Jews in Borough Park. I’ve been thinking, too, about someone I know who had hot coffee thrown at him and his literal baby at a Clinton Hill playground because a woman was so incensed he was wearing a keffiyeh in solidarity. In my eyes, it really matters for people on the left and center to pay attention to and care about antisemitism and Islamophobia, to not be glib or dismissive of either even in these moments of deep crisis. For reasons of solidarity, movement strategy, and simple decency alike. Obviously, it’s not antisemitic to oppose or critique the regime in Israel. But also, for my fellow non-Jews on the left, to not give a shit about antisemitism proximal to us is to, among much else, reify a core propaganda from the very state that we protest: that only other Jews, and especially only the state of Israel, are invested in protecting Jewish life and safety. Anyway, here’s the piece again.
A conversation between Delia Cai and Esther Perel, who thinks amateur therapyspeak makes us lonelier. I’m mostly just hype that Esther Perel, like me, dislikes therapyspeak.
Until next,
STM
n.b.
Come listen to me and my brilliant friend Mallika Rao talk this Saturday in NYC. Or take a generative craft class with me on writing parental figures, also this Saturday.
Congratulations on the teaching position! <3 I loved how you encapsulated the essence of being a teacher. Also, that writing space is gorgeous!
I love the cover photo and the line about helping to partially midwife another person's transformation. Congratulations on your Iowa teaching position!