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FEBRUARY 2021
Contents
Palestine +100: Can Our Pasts Write Our Future? Review by Reena Bakir
Letter on America No.2: The Curious Case of the GameStop Short Squeeze by Emmett Sullivan
Why ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is a Must-Read Novel for Lockdown No.3 by Harriet Dipper
5 Ways to Keep on Top of Your Mental Health during the Lockdown by Kimberley Johnson
PALESTINE +100: CAN OUR PASTS WRITE OUR FUTURE?
REVIEW BY REENA BAKIR
February 26, 2021
‘The past is everything to a Palestinian writer; it is the only thing that makes their current existence and their identity meaningful.’ In her introduction to Palestine +100, editor Basma Ghalayini sets the stage for the importance of historical writing in the scope of modern Palestinian literature. Using the past as a springboard, the collection asks a single question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in 2048? The anthology of short stories features the subsequent predictions, fears, and projections of these writers into the future of their homeland, one hundred years after the 1948 Nakba – which translates to “the catastrophe” in Arabic.
In a preservation and validation for the existence of their land before its occupation, Palestinian writers have often felt an obligation to write deeply into the past of their country. Writers such as Ghassan Kanafani, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, among many others use the present as a looking glass into history. Considering this, the anthology thus poses the question of how stories set in the future are also writing through the scope of the past and present.
Fact and fiction often overlap in contemporary literature emerging from Palestinian writers; many displaced refugees and exiles have never visited their homeland, only savouring its memories through recitals and tales which are passed down generations. Fictional narratives can be written on the backs of real, lived experiences. In Palestine +100, this notion of an interweaving of what is true and what is imagined is palpable. The short stories use realities of the present and the past – including exile, displacement, imprisonment, and occupation – to reimagine a future. This allows for an infiniteness of genre: the limitless imagination for what has not yet occurred.
Science fiction brings to life the new realities of Palestinians in 2048. Familiar cases of family displacement, loss of loved ones and control of movement are reshaped in world of VR universes, digital uprisings, interdimensional teleportation, drone swarms and alien invasions. In Majd Kayyal’s N, a scientific apartheid keeps a mother from her son in two virtual lands of Palestine. A Song of Birds by Saleem Haddad was inspired by a real teen suicide in the city of Gaza in 2017 and transforms the story through a girl consolidating the death of her brother in a simulated 2048 Gaza.
The multi-layered narratives of these short stories touch on the importance of the past in creating new futures. Samir El Youseff’s The Asssociation showcases a world where the study of the past is forbidden, historians are considered deceitful and branded as extremists, and the country is pushed into a collective state of amnesia for the sake of peace. The protagonist, a journalist investigating the suspicious death of a historian, finds himself on the path to uncover the people’s ‘right to remember’. Such a tale offers a deeply personable critique of the socio-political restraints felt by the author, offering a relatable reality to non-Palestinian readers as well.
Truths of pasts and presents trickle into these fantastical futures. In the midst of these twelve-imaginary tales, the essence of remembrance is simply tangible: the Palestinian story lives on.
LETTER ON AMERICA NO.2: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE GAMESTOP SHORT SQUEEZE
BY EMMETT SULLIVAN
INTRODUCTION
You knew that Boden and Fleck’s 2019 movie Captain Marvel was set in the 1990s: Brie Larson’s character is seen crashing through the roof of a Blockbuster. From a position of once ubiquity, Blockbuster is now a metaphor for business models of the past, outmoded by taste and technology. If you want to rent a film on physical media at Blockbuster, you will have a journey: the one remaining store in the franchise is in the town of Bend, right in the middle of Oregon. It is a knowing joke in Captain Marvel for a cynical generation – you know this is the past immediately. In a downloading world, who needs a shop for your videos?
There are many around the world, twelve months into a global pandemic, who would like the liberty to pop down to the local shops to buy or rent a video. The face of retail may be forever altered by Covid-19, including in that post-Second World War cultural staple of North America, ‘the mall’. Deloitte in Canada have published a report speculating how ‘the mall’ would have to adapt to a ‘post-pandemic world’. Sourcing and buying online, becoming the norm in any case, has accelerated over the past year, with more of us turning to ‘The FAANGs’ – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google – and their like. These are the Standard Oil, U.S. Steel and Bell Telephone of the twenty-first century. In contrast, Business Insider highlighted that more traditional retail firms were likely to go under in the ‘retail apocalypse’, and named U.S. chains with 8,300 stores likely to go under in August 2020. Amongst those marked for closure in the article was the 450 stores of GameStop, the Blockbuster of the U.S. gaming world, and a business name few in Britain would have heard of before January 2021. At which point, the financial pages around the world were full of the share trading involving GameStop.
RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
GameStop had its origins in the 1980s, and had evolved over the years to a greater degree than Blockbuster was able to. By concentrating on high-end retail – Xbox, PlayStation and the like – they kept a niche in the market when the games themselves became available online. However, as the impact of the current health crisis deepened, and footfall began to decrease on Main Street, U.S.A., Wall Street analysts couldn’t see a future for this retail outlet, and a number of investment houses started ‘shorting’ the stock.
Shorting is a fairly common speculative practice: investors borrow shares from their owners, for a fee; and then frequently sell these borrowed shares on the stock market. They are speculating that at the time they have to return the shares to the actual owners, the stock price would have fallen, allowing investors to buy at the lower price, and returning a tidy profit. If this seems to be a form of gambling, you would be correct. Long-run stock market investment can be profitable and promote growth. Not profitable enough, or quickly enough for some: it may be better to consider day-to-day trading on the world’s financial markets as a form of ‘advance gambling’, where a U.S.$1B is considered to be ‘small change’. As with all betting, there are risks. However, with shorting, there is a contractual obligation to return the shares: if the price of the shares rise, and are higher at the time of the return, you are out of pocket.
Melvin Capital Management retired its GameStop position at the end of January 2021, with suggestions that the company had lost around 30% of its hedge fund value over the year, a figure over $4B. GameStop losses contributed to this, with Melvin Capital Management having had to raise $2.75B to refinance their fund. In April 2020 GameStop shares were trading at $3.25; on 27 January 2021, those stocks were worth $347.51 each, giving the company a net value of $22B. Wall Street traders used to style themselves as ‘Masters of the Universe’. Four years ago, CNN claimed that they had reclaimed that status. Perhaps not, if they could misjudge the market for GameShop so badly. How did this come about?
It is not a surprise to see a wave of memes based on Leonardo Di Caprio’s portrayal of Jordon Belfour in The Wolf of Wall Street being posted to social media at the hight of the press coverage on GameStop. The idea of ‘rugged individualism’ as a means to success – and achieving the ‘American Dream’ – is still revered. For the small investors who put their money in GamesStop shares over months around the turn of 2021, they hoped that they might just achieve it. If not, they had a second motive: they wanted to ‘stick it to “The Man”’, and at least give some of corporate America a bloody nose.
TAKING ON THE FAANGS
The Reddit group WallStreetBets forum had other ideas about how the balance between corporate America and the public should be redressed: they started trading in the GameStop share, deliberately increasing the price, knowing that at some point Wall Street traders were going to have to buy GameStop shares back. What the press were covering with GameStop was something close to a ‘disordered market’; but how that is defined is debatable. What status does a social media discussion board have? We are likely to find out in the coming months: the U.S. Department of Justice is reported as investigating the nature of trading in the shares, and to question the actions on both sides of the equation, including Robinhood, the trading app through which most of the price rallies took place.
At which point ‘it is alleged’ might preference any further discussions. The small traders were enraged when Robinhood stopped GameStop trading; that was reinstated after Robinhood secured an additional $1B of financial backing. The co-founder of Robinhood denied that the previous suspension was due to pressure from Wall Street hedge funds. Most likely the pause in trading was due to warnings from financial regulators; but the small investors are suspicious, and on a number of counts. Their questions are best summed up by asking if this was a game on a level playing field to begin with? When Ryan Cohen bought 13% of GameStop in September 2020, and wanted to convert the company to a digital challenger to Amazon, some of the GameShop investors might have hoped to have gotten on at the basement stop of a challenger to the FAANGs, a long-term bet. In the meantime, the temptation to make a short-term killing at the expense of Wall Street may have just been too great.
Not that any of this is new, of course. During the Great Recession Reuters’ noted that German car manufacturer Volkswagen had become – briefly – the most valuable company in the world based on its share price, as a result of shorting, with the total value of the company reaching €298B, and the share price reached €1,005 (from €34), making Volkswagen bigger than Exxon Mobile, the U.S. based oil company.
Porsche has shorted its own shares, and then effectively bought them back, squeezing the market for them down to 5% of the total – leading to a scramble by investors to buy shares - to return to Porsche. As The New York Times put it ‘Porsche reinvents the short squeeze’. Though legal, this rebounded on Porsche ... who are now owned by Volkswagen.
Joe Kennedy liquidated his Wall Street holdings in September 1929, saying famously ‘only a fool holds out for top dollar’. Given what happened on Wall Street in October 1929, and in the U.S. in the ‘Devil’s Decade’ which followed, this seems sensible advice. At the time of writing, the GameStop shares are trading at U.S.$52.40. That is 250% of the price at the beginning of January 2021, but only 25% of the peak price at the end of that month. The standoff between the small investors and the Wall Street shorters couldn’t have gone on for much longer in any case. Hopefully some smaller investors took their gains at the end of January, and walked away – leaving them a little closer to achieving the ‘American Dream’, and with the funds to fight another day.
ZOË HUTBER
WHY WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING IS A MUST-READ NOVEL FOR LOCKDOWN NO.3
BY HARRIET DIPPER
February 26, 2021
As we find ourselves in another lockdown period, it is undoubtedly the small victories that get us through each day. Whether that be a walk, or simply completing daily tasks, it is certain that for so many of us, the parameters of life are much smaller than before. Delia Owens’ debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing tells a much-needed tale of liberating isolation, bravery and self-reliance. It reminds its readers to take pleasure in the small things around us and to treat people with kindness – a particularly apt message for this moment in time.
Where the Crawdads Sing follows the maturation of Kya, the novel’s fascinating protagonist, from a young age into adulthood. This elusive ‘Marsh Girl’ grows up with her family in a shack-like home, located on the isolated marshes of North Carolina. One by one, first her Mother then each of her siblings, desert this young girl until she is left only with her abusive, alcoholic Father. Devastatingly, when Kya is ten, her Father too abandons her. She is marooned without friends or a caring family unit, only being left a little motorboat, which she must learn to use in order to explore the marsh around her. Her isolated existence tells a tale of self-reliance and upmost bravery. Without any formal education, she gleans an expansive knowledge of the natural world from her home in the marshes and finds companionship in the gulls of the sky. In a society that has shut her out, she finds calm and security in the natural world around her.
As Kya grows into a beautiful and wild young woman, she attracts the attention, good and ugly, of the local townspeople. She is dismissed as ‘Swamp Trash’ by the local town and is unkindly treated as such. After her family leaves, Kya befriends a local storeowner (or as local as anyone can be on the marsh, as the only mode of transport is by boat) known as Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel. They are a kind black couple who experience much of the same social exclusion as Kya, highlighting the terrible social and racial divisions of 1960s Southern America. The humanity of this couple displays to the reader how goodness prevails, Owens reminding us of the power of simple, unselfish kindness towards others.
When Kya’s beauty catches the eye of two local boys, a whole host of unknown feelings and situations arise for our beloved heroine. For the first time, Kya encounters friendship and more. She navigates through adolescence and relationships with no Mother to guide her, equipped only with her knowledge of the natural world. Owens is an American wildlife scientist by profession, combining in her narrative her extensive biological knowledge with hauntingly beautiful imagery of the natural world. This is seen as Kya manoeuvres through the unchartered territory of relationships, using objects such as rare feathers to communicate her feelings poignantly.
When the much-adored jock of the local town, Chase Andrews, is found dead at the bottom of the old fire tower on the marsh, rumours circulate wildly with many eyes pointing towards the ‘Marsh Girl’. Despite the turmoil this causes, one thing that never leaves Kya throughout these accusations, is her love for her natural environment.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens effortlessly combines this thrilling crime narrative, love story and coming of age novel, in a beautifully executed synergy that is in an ode to the natural world. Owens’ novel is undoubtedly as compelling as it is beautiful to read. Where the Crawdads Sing teaches lessons of resilience and kindness to others in the most unique ways, prevalent themes which are unendingly important when amidst this pandemic. Kya clings to what she knows she can rely on in nature, reminding us to take pleasure in all that we see. So, when on your next lockdown walk, I entreat you to take a leaf out of Kya’s life and absorb the beauty of the small things, and your day may just be made that little bit brighter.
MUSICAL BULLETIN: NEW RELEASES
BY MUSICAL ISOLATION
Ghetts – Conflict of Interest (Album)
East London MC Legend Ghetts returns with his seventh commercial project named Conflict of Interest.
The project sees the MC team up with an array of collaborators including Skepta, Stormzy, Giggs and Ed Sheeran among others. The album sees Ghetts continue to use his impressive skill of elite storytelling through spitting on well-crafted production. There is a good balance between the high impact beats and introspective moments on the record. Ghetts has got to be one of the best MCs to ever do it right?
Did I mention that the production on this album is insane?
Recommended:
Crud ft Giggs
Mozambique ft Jaykae, Moonchild Sanelly
Proud Family
Kartell – Daybreak EP
French producer Kartell returns with an EP after a four year absence that consisted of taking a break to focus on his family and growing the co-founded French Label Roche Musique, which has found recent success and continues to impress music fans outside the French isles, with their stacked roster of talented producers including Darius, Crayon and Dune making bangers left, right and centre.
Described as a journey through an everlasting sunset, a pause on its lights and colours, Daybreak EP is a 6-track time capsule that impresses in its approach to make it the project feel like you’re living in the 70s and 80s yet brings it alive and modernised through the use of currently relevant features .
The instrumentation used in the EP, especially the synths, explores a nostalgic pallet that has been resurrected by a plethora of artists in the electronic production sphere of recent times.
Songs such as ‘Time’ and ‘All In’ experiment using British Rappers Coops and Che Lingo respectively to complement upbeat funky tunes to dance to while isolating yourself during, hopefully the last national lockdown the UK finds itself in.
‘AWAKEN’ is the instrumental that requires attention. Sublime funkiness
Whatever Kartell decides to delve himself into next, the electronic community will be listening. I highly recommend his back catalogue of songs and collaborations.
Recommended:
Time
All In
Crossing Paths
AWAKEN
SG Lewis – times (Album)
The long awaited debut album of British production prodigy SG Lewis has been released in the form of ‘times’. The 10 track album finds the producer stepping out front and centre, as he takes listeners on a voyage through soaring electronic dance and kaleidoscopic future disco, with the help of a few friends along the way.
The concept behind the album in his words are:
“After reading about 70’s New York and the birth of Disco, I became infatuated with the euphoria and escapism that the music from that period created, and the safe spaces the clubs at the time provided for people to express themselves,” said Lewis. “I aimed to create a world musically that captured those same feelings, and to imagine the music that would be playing in those rooms if they were to exist today.”
As well as reading into the birth of Disco and the emotions that came with the genre, Lewis decided to speak to Alex Rosner, a Holocaust survivor and the creator of the first ever DJ mixers. Those mixers were introduced around the era of disco when clubbing as we know it today first appeared using sound systems and PAs as ammunition for sound to blast out of speakers, rumbling the floor ravers used to shuffle on. His words about his time living the disco era are sprinkled all over the album.
Chad Hugo (The Neptunes and N.E.R.D) assisted lead single ‘Chemicals’ was first released in April 2020 during the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK. The song gained traction throughout the year amassing more than 25 million streams on Spotify. The following singles ‘Impact’ with Robyn and Channel Tres, ‘Feed The Fire’ featuring Lucky Daye and ‘Time’ featuring Rhye all took us along the journey of being on the dancefloor metaphorically while we are locked in our rooms.
The purpose of this album has changed now that we don’t find ourselves on the dancefloor these days. ‘times’ connotes the feeling that we don’t have a lot of time on this earth and one thing the current situation is reminding us, is to cherish every moment celebrating music in a live context because those days are not always guaranteed. Highly recommend.
Recommended:
Time ft Rhye
Feed The Fire ft Lucky Daye
One More ft Nile Rodgers
Chemicals
All We Have ft Lastlings
Arlo Parks – Collapsed In Sunbeams (Album)
Arlo Parks was previously featured in the ‘Up and Coming’ section of this magazine in the August 2020 issue. She has since had numerous plays on Radio 1 and has even had the privilege of performing on national television, in the form of the Graham Norton show quite recently.
‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’ is the name of her debut album which features ‘Black Dog’ one of my favourite pieces of music from 2020. The song was a hit in the UK due to the hidden meanings about Mental Health which resonated with many due to numerous lockdowns and increase in loneliness for some. ‘Black Dog’ is wrapped in a musical blanket with 11 other songs that evoke similar emotions. Each song takes the listener at a time in her life where her beliefs and feelings were questions, be it her sexuality for example.
Collapsed in Sunbeams was written and recorded in various apartments, with the finishing stages being held in an Airbnb as Parks and her producer present focused on fleshing out demos and crafting sketches to full-fledged songs. A fascinating process that involved.. Pasta and watching Netflix in between writing and recording sessions to come up with a lyrically superb collection of work.
The album blends indie/alternative music with moments of soul sourced from the vocals and keys instruments used throughout the project. Lyrically, the album is a work of genius with poems written by the singer inspiring the lyrics for each of the 12 songs.
The London singer songwriter has a bright future ahead of her, with music award gongs such as the Brit Award or Ivor Novello prize potentially heading her way next year.
Recommended:
Hurt
Black Dog
Too Good
Porta 400
Green Eyes
AJ Tracey x Digga D – Bringing it Back (Single)
West London rappers AJ Tracey and Digga D have come together for the lead single of the latter’s upcoming Mixtape named ‘Made in the Pyrex’. The drill track pays homage to the styles and flows both artists used during their come up in the UK scene.
The music video is one for those that enjoyed their early work.
The video ‘brings it back’ to AJ Tracey’s Packages Freestyle, while Digga D’s pays homage to the infamous ‘Next Up’’ freestyle with the River Thames in the background. The way both artists bounce of each other so seamlessly accelerates the idea that these two could make a collaborative project together that would please listeners of both camps and beyond. UK Drill fans, this is for you.
MEDIUM MUSHROOM
'I go by medium mushroom, it's my brand name and how I publish illustration and paintings. I'm based in the coutryside of georgia, united states. I work digitally, with traditional media, and design and produce things like bags and accessories. I want to explore cuteness in popular media and how it relates to our daily lives and struggles.'
ENTERTAINMENT SNIPPET: 5 FILMS & SHOWS TO WATCH IN MARCH
Now that February is ending, lockdown seems to be coming to a steady end with it. But sadly, we’ll have to wait until 12th April for even a drive-in cinema experience and then 17th May at the earliest for cinemas themselves. We’re getting further and further into 2021 and it already feels like an endless number of films have failed to open on time and it isn’t stopping anytime soon. But thanks to streaming, we’ve still had loads of great movie releases so far and endless TV shows to enjoy with them.
Netflix has given us Pieces of a Woman, The Dig, News of the World, Malcolm & Marie and The Disappearance at Cecil Hotel to name but a few. Disney+ has been drip-feeding WandaVision throughout the course of lockdown having recently released a whole new roster of over 300 movies and shows in the form of ‘STAR’. Amazon Prime Video has released the brilliant I Care A Lot starring Rosamund Pike and even freeview has kept morale high with All4’s It’s A Sin, ITV’s Unforgettable and the Small Axe film series on iPlayer.
2021 hasn’t been all doom and gloom in terms of where we can access our entertainment and there’s loads of stuff releasing in March that you can see wherever and however you want. Here’s 5 that are worth getting excited about but bear in mind even more will probably be made available as HBO Max looks to shift releases like Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Godzilla v Kong into UK streaming channels.
COMING 2 AMERICA - PRIME VIDEO - MARCH 5TH
Thirty-three years after the beloved original, Eddie Murphy is back in the role of Prince Akeem from the fictional African kingdom of Zamunda. In this sequel, Murphy’s newly crowned King Akeem must return to America in search of a male heir to the throne (previously held by James Earl Jones). In his search he goes back to where it all began, Queens.
The original 1988 movie is widely held as one of the 80s’ 24-carat comedies, a classic from the time period that injected a lot of new ideas into Hollywood. Murphy and his co-star Arsenio Hall will return to taking on multiple rib-tickling roles under heaps of prosthetics and there’s a slew of returning characters as well as plenty of new ones to get you laughing. Will it do justice to the original? Who’s to say? But it’s not a bad way to kick off the month at all.
CHERRY - APPLETV+ - MARCH 12TH
Teaming up for the first time since the most commercially successful film of all time (Avengers: Endgame), The Russo brothers have re-joined Tom Holland for their new AppleTV movie - Cherry. Based on the novel of the same name by Nico Walker, Cherry’s about an Army medic who suffers from PTSD and becomes a serial bank robber after an addiction to opioids puts him in debt. It looks fun, but it also looks tragic.
It’s going to be a big year for Tom Holland. He’s starring in this, Uncharted, Chaos Walking and Spider-Man 3 all in 2021 (probably). It all starts here, and he doesn’t look bad at all in Cherry. The Russo brothers have attested that their latest film is very much in the spirit of the French New Wave of filmmaking. They’ll mix comedy heavily with tragedy and interchange a variety of filmmaking tools to convey the character’s tumultuous state.
THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER - DISNEY+ - MARCH 19TH
Even with cinemas closed, The Marvel ‘Cinematic’ Universe has found a way to ensure it’s at centre stage, growing and prospering amongst audiences. WandaVision has been a huge hit with fans of the Marvel franchise and their next entry will come basically straight after it.
Following the finale of Avengers: Endgame Captain America bequeathed his seemingly unbreakable shield to his friends, Sam and Bucky (Falcon & Winter Soldier). It seems, however, that without their mutual friend to guide them they’re a completely mismatched duo. But they’ll team up nonetheless to stop the villains on a seemingly epic buddy-cop mission across the globe, testing their ability to trust each other and do right by their friend’s legacy.
SKY ROJO - NETFLIX - MARCH 19TH
Coming to Netflix in March is Sky Rojo, a fast-paced Spanish crime series about three prostitutes who flee from their pimp. The women embark on a journey facing dangers of every kind but discover the meaning of true kinship along the way. It looks like fast, sexy, chaotic, frenzied fun with the potential to have a lot of heart but definitely a lot of great action sequences.
It’s been developed by the creators of Netflix’s ground-breaking Money Heist so it’s a fair bet that our central characters will wear their hearts on their sleeves and incite action wherever they can. It’ll be a perfect binge watch too. With two seasons confirmed at eight 25-minute episodes per season, it’s not an overwhelming length making it perfect to keep dipping your toes into.
INVINCIBLE - AMAZON PRIME VIDEO - MARCH 26TH
Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead franchise, has brought together a star-studded cast featuring the likes of J.K. Simmons, Mark Hamill, Steven Yeun, Seth Rogen, Sandra Oh, Mahershala Ali, Justin Roiland and many more. They make up the cast of Invincible, an animated superhero drama based on Kirkman’s esteemed comic book of the same name.
At first it appears to be quite an ordinary superhero series with a unique animation style and all the usual cliches. A young boy learns about his powers and has to learn to use them under the supervision of his superhero father. It’s a tried and tested routine. But then you realise it’s far more violent than anything you’ll see from Marvel or DC and features a whole universe of its very own heroes and villains with a free-spoken sense of humour.
NEV
Alarmageddon
Make your eyelids kiss each other
Sitting there with a hand in your hair;
No one thinks about the other,
And we are all going to hell.
It might happen like tomorrow
What a cruel, dirty, sorrow;
Thrilled that you are on my side
I wish we had a place
From which we could watch
and hide
Turning mould into gold
Left home
19 years old;
With a smirk on my face
And your hand to hold
We’ve been singing our song
For God knows how long
I was never so right
I was never so wrong
BOOK REVIEW
BY KATHY BALDOCK
WASHINGTON BLACK - ESI EDUGYAN
February 26, 2021
Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born.
When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist.
He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him.
What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic, where Wash, left on his own, must invent another new life, one which will propel him further across the globe.
This is a book that I just had to re-read. I loved this the first time around and I just had the urge to read it again. I initially read this during Black history month a few years ago. This was not something I would have normally read and was way out of my comfort zone.
I simply adored Wash, he is incredibly endearing and a character that very much leaves a mark on your heart long after you have finished the novel. His innocence and naivety pulled on my heart strings. That coupled with Titch treating Wash with the very basics of human decency, something that Wash had not experienced due to living on the plantation. As a result, it was heart-warming to see Wash grow in confidence and strength throughout the novel.
Esi Edugyan takes you on a very real and raw journey, she describes Wash and Titch’s adventures in so much detail you see it unwind in front of your eyes like a movie. I highly recommend this to anyone.
"I will only say that if I have acquired any wisdom from Big Kit, it is to live always with your eyes cast forward, to seek what will be, for the path behind can never be retaken."
NEVE CLARKE
Neve Clarke is a visual Fine Artist currently based in Falmouth, UK where she is studying Fine Art in her Third year at Falmouth University.
Clarke’s work explores relationships between the human and the non-human. She does this by forming collaborations with the land and non-human entities that exist within it; exploring the consciousness of plants and giving the non-human a narrative in her work. She aims to form visual conversations with these living, organic forms, and uses printmaking, drawing and painting to visualise these encounters. Her work has a sensitivity present within it, exploring the quiet and untouchable essence present when forming these visual encounters. Each of her prints represents a unique ‘conversation’, with the marks on her work acting as a visual lettering within the language she has created. Clarke acts as the translator between herself and these non-human entities.
Her series ‘In the silence I hear you’ is about a more tactile and physical understanding, and was created as a further development upon forming these non-verbal conversations. Clarke gathered rubbings from the non-human forms within the landscape, and then responded to these marks using intuitive, varied drawing techniques. These were then turned into embossings. With the absence of form, each print creates a space for the viewer to interpret the abstract visual language of the non-human in a contemplative and intimate way. This allows for the viewer to connect and engage with the land through her work. She keeps the work reductive here, attempting to say the most with the least.
Clarke is currently unable to produce any prints due to the current lockdown prohibiting her from having access to her University Facilities, however is currently still developing her work and these themes with painting and drawing.