I was on The Rundown on TVO this evening talking about imagination and resistance. Check out a clip and go catch the rest of the show: www.instagram.com/reel/DUogtSR...
12.02.2026 00:59
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I was on The Rundown on TVO this evening talking about imagination and resistance. Check out a clip and go catch the rest of the show: www.instagram.com/reel/DUogtSR...
In order to really understand racism, it's necessary to understand the origins of racism. The trope that "racism is universal and natural" is pseudoscience PROPAGANDA. Blood quantum, the act of measuring racial ancestry in percentiles, is also propaganda. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-prehistory...
A collection I edited, African Ghost Stories, has been named one of the 100 Notable African Books of 2024. Check out the rest of the amazing list here: brittlepaper.com/100-notable-...
“All … instances of systemic racism have their roots in the legacies of European colonial domination and the racist ideologies on which they were built. This era … saw atrocities … from the erasure of Indigenous populations to the transatlantic slave trade.”
www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...
My Essay, “The Case for Reckless Climate Optimism” is now available in Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures, published by MIT Press and the Center for Science and the Imagination. Get your copy at:
mitpress.mit.edu/978026255366...
Corporate landlords are driving gentrification by deliberately targeting Black and other racialized neighbourhoods across Canada. breachmedia.ca/financialize...
This is going to be great!
Our understanding is that Brandon is going to share a secret family recipe!
TUNE IN!
Thrilled to announce that I’m one of the four winners of the Morland Writing Scholarship for 2025. Thank you to the judges; I’m so deeply honoured! And congratulations to fellow winners: Monique Kwachou, Adeola Opeyemi, and Carlo Saio!
milesmorlandfoundation.com/morland-writ...
But imagine what would happen to a capitalist society if we were outraged at the condition of every unhoused person we came across. If the very fact of poverty in the face of wealth drove us apoplectic with rage. What would happen to white supremacy if white people saw black people as… people?
I can’t force white people to offer black people kindness. Even if it’s as small as seeing their pain and acknowledging it whether you can alleviate it or not. It is a form of empathic violence many of us are conditioned to perpetuate in order to allow the systems we live in to function.
And the damage is hard to shake off. It lingers, like the deepest traumas do, because it’s such a fundamental repudiation of your humanity. The knowledge that the same white people who would swarm each other to help a lost dog would blithely let you die in the wilderness, alters you.
And it is incalculably harmful. In every case where I’ve experienced this brutal form of erasure, I walk away seemingly whole only to explode in pain later. Like a decapitated body that doesn’t at first realize that it has lost its head until it’s taken a few steps.
This form of violence isn’t limited to black women, obviously. We extend it to the unhoused, to the mentally ill. But it’s particularly vicious because its passivity allows its perpetrators to maintain an illusion of moral wholeness - an idea of themselves as good - even when committing harm.
The list goes on. I haven’t always been able to intervene in every case I’ve witnessed - often I’m not able to get to the person in need. Instead, I’ve watched those who can help steadfastly refuse to do so. Refuse to even *see* the need.
I’ve seen a black mother with crying children fending for herself because no one will acknowledge that she needs help. Just this evening, a black woman on the bus fell over when the vehicle braked too hard and no one offered her a hand, or even inquired to see if she was ok.
I’ve seen this happen to others: an older black woman, clearly ill and fragile, forced to stand on a crowded bus in a predominantly white part of the city because no one would acknowledge her presence enough to offer her a seat.
When I finally joined the group, sweaty and upset, there was no apology for the act. There wasn’t even an acknowledgment of what could have happened to me and my baby in the wilderness. My distress was made invisible and it was utterly devastating.
I’ve experienced this form of violence. On a group hike with my then 2yr old, I had to slow down because my child was upset. The group lead, and the other mostly white hikers, chose to forge ahead, leaving me and my child behind. But for the kindness of one other hiker, they would have stranded us.
I think this is more than a microaggression, but rather a form of violence that is designed to reduce the person in distress to something less than human. Because it tells them that they matter so little that even the basest level of empathy that can be given to an animal is not available to them.
So there’s a particularly pernicious form of racist microaggression that recently came to my attention. One where white people will see a black person - particularly a black woman - in distress in public and refuse to help them or even acknowledge them.
When you drag a woman by the hair, beat her and force her to kiss your flag, that’s how you tell the world you are the Good Guys
Tonight, from 6PM - 7PM ET, I’ll be part of Word on the Street’s annual "Creating Time & Space to Write" workshop, an online panel where I’ll be joining fellow writers to talk about how we get our work done. Registration is here: www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-wo...
Book cover for As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories (House of Anansi), with a bee in neon blue, pink and purple against a black background. Edited by esteemed poet Terese Mason Pierre, this bold and innovative anthology of speculative short fiction reveals and uplifts the spectacular imaginings, reveries, reflections, experiments, and hopes of Black writers in Canada. Featuring stories by the editor, Trynne Delaney, francesca ekwuyasi, Whitney French, Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Chimedum Ohaegbu, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Chinelo Onwualu, Lue Palmer, and Zalika Reid-Benta. Ten breathtaking stories explore natural and urban landscapes, living and dead relationships, economic catastrophe, love, and desire--all while celebrating the persistent and ever-changing self, and envisioning beautiful Black futures. https://houseofanansi.com/products/as-the-earth-dreams
Book cover for Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi), with a photo of palm trees in a setting with water and mountains in the distance, manipulated to make the colours more stark, and with a series of concentric circles in the sky as if the sun is getting bigger. The much-anticipated debut collection from the multi-talented Terese Mason Pierre weaves between worlds (‘real’ and ‘imaginary’) unearthing the unsettling: our jaded and joyful relationships to land, ancestry, trauma, self, and future. In three movements and two interludes, the poems in Myth move symphonically from tropical islands to barren cities, from lucid dreams to the mysteries of reality, from the sea to the cosmos. A dynamic mix of speculative poetry and ecstatic lyricism, the otherworldly and the sublime, Pierre’s poems never stray too long or too far from the spell of unspoiled nature: “The palm trees nod / at the ocean / the ocean does / what it always does / trusts the moon completely.” https://houseofanansi.com/products/myth
This anthology looks amazing: As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, ed @teresempierre.bsky.social, the author of Myth (both @houseofanansi.bsky.social). Available for pre-order, out in October!
#DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #SmallPress #books ... a 🧵 1/12
Amazon Ring is introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-stream access to people’s home security devices.
Helllll no. If you have one of those things, get rid of it. Kill it with fire
From June 23rd to August 7th the University of Guelph’s Zavitz Art Gallery is hosting Manufactured Ecosystems, an immersive exhibition that explores speculative futures where art and technology converge to address the climate crisis. Do check it out!
www.manufacturedecosystems.com/press-release
So excited to announce that my latest short story will be featured in the Black Canadian spec fic anthology, 'As The Earth Dreams', edited by Terese Pierre. Published by House of Anansi Press, it’s coming out in October. The lineup is stacked, y’all! I can’t wait! houseofanansi.com/collections/...
#booksky
Facebook is taking down this story, but you need to hear it: youtu.be/8uutscijGdQ
You’ll love it.
That is not true. The interviewer’s tone of voice and phrasing showed she was not coming with honest intentions. She just wasn’t prepared to be played like that. And as a grown woman in my 40s, you can never insult me by calling me old. I’ve earned every single one of my years.