Roxane Gay, a cultural critic, and feminist writer has been publishing her novels, short stories, and essays since 2011. Her most recent, “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body” and “Difficult Women” were published in 2017 and both made their appearance on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Her most popular work, “Bed Feminist” was published in 2014 and has been taught in classrooms across the country. It contains a collection of essays that will most likely be on any feminist reading list you can find on the Internet.

Gay was also one of the first two black women to write for Marvel. She co-wrote a Black Panther comic, “World of Wakanda,” with Yona Harvey, which focused on the romance between female characters Ayo and Aneka.

If you want to know more about Roxane Gay, listen to this interview about her latest work, “Hunger”, on NPR (her voice is very soothing to listen to, though the subject matter is not), or follow her on Twitter (she is hilarious and confronts her trolls head on).

Amber Tamblyn will be joining Gay in conversation at the Englert. Though she is most known for being an actor, she is also a very accomplished poet.

Tamblyn has published three collections of poetry titled “Bang Ditto,” “Free Stallion,” and “Dark Sparkler”. In “Dark Sparkler,” she analyzes 25 female actors who died before their time in a collection of poetry.

She has also written for the New York Times (read her articles “I’m Not Ready for the Redemption of Men” here), and wrote and directed the upcoming film “Paint It Black,” which will be released in June of 2018.

Carrie Brownstein will also be joining Tamblyn and Gay for Mission Creek Festival 2018.

Brownstein is best known for co-directing, co-starring, and co-writing popular television show “Portlandia.” “Portlandia” has won multiple Emmy Awards and is extremely popular for its hilarious commentary on hipster culture.

She also wrote a memoir published in 2015 titled “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl” about how music became her therapy.

Brownstein initially gained attention as a member of the rock band Sleater-Kinney, a group well known for the feminist revolution of punk rock in the 1990’s. You can listen to their most recent album, “No Cities to Love,” here.

We can’t wait to see you all at the Englert for a conversation between Roxane Gay, Amber Tamblyn, and Carrie Brownstein. Keep your eye out for more information on Mission Creek performances on KRUI’s website!

Check out the Mission Creek Festival website, here.

The post Promo: Carrie Brownstein + Roxane Gay + Amber Tamblyn In Conversation appeared first on KRUI Radio.

While the title of the panel may have been “Invisible and Ignored,” the phenomenal women who partook in the panel itself were not. Rather than having their voices silenced and subjugated to conform to a society that disregards outliers as deviances and threats, these women stood tall and proud as they challenged the homogeneous conceptualization that steadily poisons our society.

Panelist Lisa Covington, Sofia Mehaffey, and Deborah Whaley, came together to discuss the impacts of living and working in predominantly white spaces and environments while having the experience of finding their own voices in isolation as women of color.

Beginning with the initial quote by Audre Lorde to the vibrant paintings crafted by Whaley, each panelist established and maintained an environment that shamelessly brought attention to the trials and tribulations that not only women of color, but other minorities as well, face while living in white America.

Being a woman of color myself, I will admit that I never had the privilege of possessing the reassurance regarding the perception that I am an equal in the eyes of my counterparts, specifically my white counterparts, as I have today.

When I initially decided to attend this panel, I was under the impression that I will receive the same iteration of what it means to “truly” be a woman of color and having to uphold that “strong black woman” concept we praise within America.  

Mehaffey, however, spoke to me in a way that I have never been spoken to before. Coming from a background that didn’t initially set her up for a successful career, Mehaffey explained that if she could go back in time and speak to herself, she would preach to her younger self that she will overcome all trials and tribulations that would come her way; however, she would make sure to tell herself that “[she] can have it all but they will still follow [her] around the store.”

Mehaffey’s recounts hit home because no matter what we do as women of color within our society, there will always be a subtle double standard regarding how we will never be enough.

Covington explained it better in a simple but poetic line: “Black women weren’t meant to survive in America, but I did.”

Through her passion to work in academia stemming from the notion that women of color cannot be as successful, Covington disregards this notion by working with young women of color in order to provide them with the reassurance and inspiration that they too can do more than just conform to the stereotypes that bind the homogenous conceptualization that our society deems important.

Alongside her vibrant paintings and harmonizing poetry, Whaley also adds to the notion that women of color are more than what our history simply chooses to tell us and what our educators deem important to speak on.

A woman of color is more than just a label and identifier, it is who we are from the soil we come from to the names our ancestors held. 

While I am also a woman of color and have been invisible and ignored by my white counterparts, after attending this panel, this will no longer be the case.

I too have found my voice and I will be heard just as Lisa Covington, Sofia Mehaffey, and Deborah Whaley have been.

Want to know more about these phenomenal women of color? Check out the links below!

Deborah Whaley teaches here at the University of Iowa! Early registration starts soon!
Lisa Covington is very active on Twitter! Subscribe to her tweets to stay informed!
Check out Presumed Incompetent, a book with pathbreaking accounts of the intersecting roles race, gender, and class have in the lives of women faculty of color in academia. I guarantee it’s a good read!

Want to see more panels?
Check out the line-up for Witching Hour here!

The post Witching Hour: Invisible and Ignored @ IC Public Library 10/21/2017 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The leader of the workshop, Tabitha Wiggins played Chance the Rapper and danced around the stage with a contagious smile, inviting attendees to join her up there. She looked at some of the workshop participants and asked “you don’t wanna dance?” as “No Problem” played in the background.

Although the workshop had an intense name, she seemed so carefree and happy. Maybe this surprised me because I felt nervous; I’ve had tons of negative experiences at workshops and settings like these where white liberals hijack the conversation for self-congratulatory purposes. She seemed like she was pretty confident, though. #goals.

She began the workshop by asking us to call her “Tab” since her mother calls her Tabitha when she’s in trouble. She clarified her pronouns and explained her position at the University of Iowa. At this school, she serves as the assistant director of equity and inclusion, and the project director of Being Black at Iowa.

Tab introduced the content of the workshop by explaining the importance of working together to dismantle oppressive institutions and narratives because “I can’t be free until you are free. Our liberation is interconnected.” Then she explained the main subject we’d discuss today: the ally-industrial complex.

After she discussed the commodification of social justice movements, Tab explained the important difference between an ally and an accomplice. An ally has become someone who only superficially oppose certain issues of injustice, and seek to become the heroes of the oppressed.

For allies, struggle becomes a commodity on which they can profit somehow where “allyship is a currency.” Tab brilliantly articulated, “an ally is disembodied from any real mutual understanding of support.” However, an accomplice works together with people at their sides without seeking additional “cookies.” Accomplices become complicit in the struggle without dehumanizing the people who suffer.

Before she proceeded, Tab explained that she found most of the content and framing for her workshop based on an article by an indigenous woman who did not disclose her name.

The rest of the workshop reminded me of a really substantive, illuminating and radical Buzzfeed article (which is arguably the opposite of everything Buzzfeed). Tab began to categorize the kinds of allies.

Salvation/Missionary Ally

This kind of ally has romanticized notions of oppression, and treats oppressed people like victims and tokens instead of humans. They engage in things like exoticization, whitesplaining/mansplaining/etc., and other microaggressive (sometimes macroaggressive) commentary.

Exploitive/Co-opting Ally

These kinds of people seek to impose their own agenda through acts of condescension. They attend rallies and attempt to change the focus from the group’s work to their own personal projects and their own sadness about systemic racism or something. This ally truly engages in another form of liberalism.

Self-proclaiming/Confessional Ally

This ally is mostly concerned about getting “ally points” or as Tab calls them, cookies. They have no intention of actually abolishing entitlement. Tab says that “anti-oppression values are like drapes in their home.”

Parachuter Ally

These people/organizations rush to the front lines of sexy movements to stay trendy and relevant. They essentially serve as missionaries with more funding, and often overlap with the savior ally. They engage in structural patronization.

Academic and Intellectual Ally

These kinds of people remind me a lot of myself a while ago (and sometimes still today). These allies use a lot of academic jargon and big words to talk about issues. They use knowledge and skills to patronize people who may not use complex language to talk about oppression. Academics are “fixated on unlearning oppression” instead of dismantling it. An academic ACCOMPLICE would use their resources and betray the institutions they previously belonged to.

Gatekeeper Ally

Gatekeepers seek to have power over others instead of with other people. They want powerful positions within organizations and make the work about their own resume-building and ego. They are known for withholding information and they have a tendency to create a dependency on themselves, such that a movement or organization lives and dies with them.

Navigator/Floater Ally

These allies familiarize themselves with the jargon and language surrounding anti-oppression, but have no meaningful dialogue about lived experiences and people who suffer from these systems. Other peoples’ oppression becomes their own personal projects. They fail to take responsibility for their own actions and are quick to be authoritarian figures about other peoples’ privilege. They dismiss confrontation and fail to see flaws in their own work.

After explaining a type of ally, Tab gave the participants some time to speak to their neighbors about experiences with these kinds of people and ways to intervene. She took a few minutes to ask people to share with the large group. The format of the workshop allowed the audience time to think for themselves and also connect with people around them.

Out of about 30 participants, only about a third were non-white passing people of color. I always feel a little disappointed when I find myself surrounded by mostly white people in a setting like that, but I have to remind myself of two things: I live in Iowa City, and white people will probably benefit from work like that.

Tab ended the workshop with ways to become an anti-colonial accomplice, but also reminded us that “no matter how free you are, we occupy indigenous land and we are still colonizers.”

Finally, Tab asked us to repeat after her as she chanted the famous Assata Shakur quote:

For more information on the ally-industrial complex, read the article from which Tab found her inspiration.

The post Witching Hour: You Ain’t Gettin’ No Cookies for Doing What Is Racially Just @ The Englert 11/5/16 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

I had done a piece on feminism and the anxiety that surrounds the thousands of topics that feminism covers. When I walked into the final critique to see what people said, I was confident that mine would be well accepted. People hated it. No one accepted it in its entirety, there were different ideas about how to change it, and every single person in the room had a different opinion. I was hurt for about thirty seconds until I realized that it was the best experience I’ve ever had in the art program. It changed what I wanted to do and how I want to work. Honestly, now I just want to piss people off sometimes, and let me tell you why.

Sometimes I wish that I could scream it from the highest peak on Earth: “ART ISN’T ABOUT PRETTY THINGS!” In fact, if you look at it the way that I do most of the time, the process of creating is more important than the product. The reaction of the audience is also extremely important, but only if we know how to react. Art is about more than “this looks good” and “I like what you’re doing here.” The most frustrating thing to hear during a critique or a discussion or in any type of conversation is “oh, ok, that’s fine.” If it looks good, or people just like what you’re doing, or if it’s fine, that means it’s forgettable. Plain. Boring. The best way to make people remember what you have created is to make them feel something.

For example, there are paintings like Robert Rauschenberg’s on the left that hold a whole lot of conversation while being completely plain. All that the artist did was paint three canvases white and hang them next to each other. And the work made it into the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. When I was there, everyone in the room was in front of these three white canvases talking about it. There was a multitude of reactions, from curiosity to frustration to confusion to anger. “Why are there three canvases and not five?” “It represents purity.” “My three-year-old daughter could make that.” Even though I don’t really like that three white canvases got its way onto the walls of a museum when there are artists with different work struggling to get by, it is still the only piece that I remember from that trip, and apparently I saw some of my favorite artists’ work there. The controversy of the art is what got Rauschenberg in an influential museum. Emotions were attached to reactions, so people remembered it.

For an example closer to home, we could look at a statue put up on the Pentacrest only a year and a half ago. Serhat Tanyolacar, then an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, erected a seven-foot tall statue of a Ku Klux Klan member made of newspaper clippings from articles about the KKKs attacks. Reactions were, as I would only assume, very mixed. Some would stand by Tanyolacar because he was being an artist. Some expressed hatred towards Tanyolacar because the racism put forth towards the KKK is a very touchy subject. What I find most interesting is that the artist was offended that he didn’t get a one hundred percent positive response. He was confused as to why everyone didn’t like his work. This is interesting not only because it is a very clearly controversial topic to be touching upon, but also because if you are going to put any of your art out into the world whatsoever, you will never ever ever get a one hundred percent positive response. I am confused by this piece as a whole.

This is exactly what is to be loved most about art. I can still sit here and write forever about a painting or a statue that I resent. I can create some kind of conversation about it and I can critique it, and I can love some parts of it and hate others. There are some pieces that other artists work on for days and months and years that I can look at and feel absolutely nothing about. That’s the art I hate the most.

The concept of a controversy changed the way I want to do things. I went from wanting to take senior photos for the rest of my life to wanting to do everything and see everything and make everything and talk to people about it and create a discussion along with a painting or a silent film or a drawing. Can we please, dear lord, stop playing by rules and being safe. If every artist in the community did things that were only safe and only looked pretty, the medium would be boring. There would be nowhere left to go. I am excited to create a controversy and to find out about other artists’ controversies and to form opinions about those controversies. At least that’s where I am on the spectrum of art at this time. Apparently enough so that I can write an entire column about it.

The Looking Glass is a bimonthly column that aims to educate, analyze, and share different aspects and forms of art. It will focus on sharing and analyzing different artists, works of art, exhibitions, etc. Along with this, the column will ask questions and point out interesting controversies. Art is a constantly flowing and vast part of our society and our culture that we are all submerged in daily, and discussion about the medium is a critical part of a full understanding and open mind.

The post The Looking Glass: Why Being Controversial Isn’t Always Bad appeared first on KRUI Radio.