Radicalism Begins in the Body

May 11, 2017 11:42 AM

Ash Wednesday, a new experimental memoir by Samuel R. Delany in the Boston Review.

Accompanying the piece is an interview with Delany by Junot Diaz:
This interview is published in dialogue with Samuel R. Delany’s short work of experimental memoir, “Ash Wednesday.”

posted by kittensofthenight (5 comments total)

may as well add a NSFW to that
posted by thelonius at 11:47 AM on May 11, 2017

Yep. Delany is The Truth. On another note, it seems like Junot Diaz is everywhere I look these days!
posted by Bob Regular at 12:24 PM on May 11, 2017

Every few years I get to be pleasantly surprised that Delany's still alive. I hope that trend keeps going for a while!
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:44 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

The infantilizing, the devaluation of experience, the stigmatizing, the economic punishment is all learned with women and applied to the others. Although the group I tend to concentrate on and have for the last thirty-five-odd years is gay men, because it is the one I belong to, I have been aware since my teens that prejudice against women is the main source of our political dilemma. Fix that, in terms of transgender women, gay women, black women, Asian women, poor women, and cisgender white women, and you go a long way toward fixing the whole machine.

I've read him saying similar things before and every time I am pleased but say hmm. because I -- even I! I who am not afraid to weigh and name and blame every gram of misogyny I find in the world, whether i find it in a man, a woman, behind the refrigerator, under the couch cushions -- hesitate to say it, although I do think it fairly frequently. I'm pretty sure it's true but I'm not entirely sure. I like how sure he is, even as I resent his sureness a little bit.

but I do not resent him, he's great.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:12 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

This struck me for some reason:

All the cars speeding in the opposite direction are grey, black, or white, with a few eccentric reds or blues. My old friend Abe, when we were young, would complain I wrote using too many colors. And yet, back then, the colors were what I loved. Now, true, they don’t seem as interesting as they did, if only because this is no longer an intensely colored land.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:57 AM on May 12, 2017