She doesn’t have to be. Just wanted to share that her book is changing my life right now.

I think the most hateful things I’ve ever heard about myself as a black woman came from men - black and white - who seemed to dislike me with a passion beyond reason. And “loathing” is honestly the best way to describe it.

In her new book, @jamilahlemieux.bsky.social describes misogynior, a term coined by Moya Bailey, as “…the loathing that is uniquely experienced by Black women and girls on the basis of their intersectional identities as both Black and female.” That kind of broke me, tbh.

I’m reading @jamilahlemieux.bsky.social’s Black. Single. Mother. And it’s breaking my heart to see so many beliefs that I’ve never fully interrogated given voice.

I struggle with this a lot!

Me, to me: "Krystal, just because you read a name as ethnic, when they turn out to be in a melanin deficit, that does not mean they have committed fraud against you, despite how much it may feel like that to you, in your bones, along your spine, all the way down to the depths of your entire soul!" 🤡

Preorder The Fist Of Memory

Preorder the fist of memory

If you havent already, you can preorder my forthcoming novel THE FIST OF MEMORY from B&N at 25% off using PREORDER25.
Assassins. Aliens. Ancestors.
This is a book I've been working on for close to 15 years & is something special. Cant wait for yall to read it.
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fist-o...

‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate It’s easy to focus on authoritarians and their petty victories. But zoom out and the picture is more encouraging, says the woman who popularised the term ‘mansplaining’, whether it’s in feminism, or t...

This encapsulates my entire philosophy:
www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

I am a proud recipient of an @ontarioarts.bsky.social grant and I couldn’t be happier! It’s an amazing feeling to live in a place where the arts are recognized as something deserving funding for its own sake. This is a view under threat in many places. Let’s continue to keep the arts alive!

Instagram Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.

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...

A Prehistory of Scientific Racism The author of “Whiteness” traces the evolution of race as a social and political instrument, from its beginnings in ancient hierarchies through European colonial expansion and into contemporary times.

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-...

Sixty years ago, the world tried to stop racial discrimination and failed Decades after the passing of the UN convention on the elimination of discrimination, systemic racism is still rampant.

“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...

Climate Imagination When we think of climate, the stories we tell about the future are often catastrophic: megastorms, crop failures, and heat waves loom over us, sending a sign...

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...

Financialized landlords are targeting Black and Arab neighbourhoods across Canada ⋆ The Breach New research reveals how Canada’s biggest landlords squeeze racialized neighbourhoods for profit—buying undervalued housing, evicting tenants, and raising rents

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