Last night, shabbes, as the stars began to appear as a comforting canopy above my evening walk, I listened to the final minutes of a tender @judaismunbound podcast with @chava_lah, revolving around “zines as torah.” The nonhuman ecosystem is the community I turn to most often these days to somehow try to cope with, for shorthand, the fascism griping too many humans. Yet Chava, definitely a human, and a quite caring one, gifted me a coping “tip” I needed to hear—as someone who usually feels compelled to make art, via words and picture-posts, but has felt so stuck, and seemingly fittingly so, about engaging in the craft of wordsmithing during a genocide.

Citing Jewish critical theorist Theodor Adorno’s famous quote “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” Chava leaned into its full meaning: art making in and after a genocide can end up being complicit in the culture that’s capable of such extermination. Chava then gave an example of a Holocaust survivor who, as antifascist action, wrote in the language of the perpetrators—German—to fully reveal the sound of the barbarity.

Chava’s reflections reminded me that art can and should be a weapon in a time of fascism. And art, too, can and should supply us with sparks—ones we tend to, including with art.

Since #ConstellationsOfCare’s (@plutopress, w/cover by @eff_charm) recent publication, I’ve been unable to feel good about my latest edited anthology, or tie its many voices into this moment. But Chava underscored for me that we must toss our sparks into the night sky. What’s at stake is precisely knowing there are other possibilities.

“We need, as we always have, the ‘YES’ of our practices: constellations of care, where each and every one of our still-beating hearts, in concert, rebelliously speaks louder than words, forming unmistakable patterns of different cosmologies, different worlds, life against their death machine. … We’re guided by billions of points of our own self-generated light—all the resistance that came before and is shining brightly now—even as those who seek dominion strive to extinguish our luminosity.”

I’m honored to soon visit @charisbooksandmore and @community_books_ga! Join me: May 17 at Charis Books, 7:30 pm, in Decatur, GA, and May 18 at Community Books, 4 pm, in Stone Mountain, GA.

🔥🖤🩷🌿

“Constellations” is a beautiful gift to communities of freedom-minded people, offering a glimpse into many worlds of possibility. Across the many authors and experiences represented, deeply resonating themes of nurturing love and fierce resilience intertwine in a tapestry of hope.
—Kai Cheng Thom, author of “Falling Back in Love with Being Human”