The people of Ukraine, and President Zelinskyy in particular, have inspired millions with their refusal to back down from the overwhelming Russian forces bearing down on them. Have you heard of the tomato jar incident? The sunflower seed incident? This astounding courage from ordinary citizens seems to come out of nowhere. Most of them don’t have weapons. (Except for a jar of pickled tomatoes). They aren’t all soldiers trained in combat.

I do not have any military training, just like most citizens in Ukraine. But you know what we do have here at DIY MFA? We’ve got bad eyesight from reading too much. And we’re pretty frisky with the words, am I right? 

Poetry is Powerful

I bet you didn’t know that poetry is popular at protests and rallies. It’s true. Poetry, in particular, lends itself naturally to inspiring crowds. There is something magnetic, hypnotizing even about the cadence of spoken poetry that blends perfectly with the crowd’s energy. Just ask anyone at the Martin Luther King Jr  ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’ rally in 1963 where he spoke to the crowd gathered there about a dream he had, about a better life for his children. You know, the one we still hear sixty years later every Martin Luther King Jr day.

Words are powerful – words can change our minds, our laws, and children’s futures. Poetry is quick, visceral, packing a verbal punch that is compact and powerful. Talk about a magic bullet.

Protesting through Poetry: A Long History in America

Poetry as protest has a long history in America, including the famous W.E.B. DU BOIS. Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a doctorate and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His influential works protested the Jim Crow Laws, lynching, and the systematic discrimination in education, real estate, and employment in America decades before the more recent Black Lives Matter movement gained ground.

If you’d like to hear more recent examples of protesting through poetry, NPR talks to poets Kwame Alexander and Nikki Giovanni on the Morning Edition program. Both poets discuss what protesting through poetry means to them, and the conversation is a lively and quick 7-minute discussion of using poetry to highlight social injustice.

If you’d like a list of protest poetry through the years, check out this piece from the Poetry Foundation on Resistance through Poetry.

Creating Protest Poetry Yourself

If this is getting you fired up to try on your poet-activist super-hero cape, excellent. Like any good poem, protest poetry has layers. It isn’t just about using words to combat violence and social inequalities. It’s also about constructing a narrative around processing the trauma of conflict. Protesting through poetry is a way of creating a litany of tools we can use to break through the shell of shock, anxiety, or guilt about surviving. 

Poetry is the only therapy I know of that changes the person writing it and has the power and specific potential to change the reader’s life as well – not to mention the world in general.

If you’d like even more examples of protest poetry, the Poetry Foundation has assembled an archive of poetry about the Vietnam War, both during and after the controversial conflict. These poems were written by military veterans, medical personnel, journalists covering the war, and refugees.

If you don’t mind, I’d love to round off this piece about protesting through poetry by sharing a few poems about the war in Ukraine. First, I want to mention a poem by Simon Armitage (the UK Poet Laureate) called “Resistance” about the invasion of Ukraine. In the last few verses, Simon calls attention to the Ukrainian ‘woman in black’ who gives sunflower seeds to the Russian soldier, 

‘insists his marrow will nourish the national flower’

Simon ends the poem with hope – that the air-raid sirens can’t drown out the Cathedral bells. This detail reflects a small hope, like the sunflower seeds, but it is there and defiant, as all hope is, no matter how small.

Another recommendation I’d like to share is “A Poem from Ukraine” by Vasyl Stus, who, although he passed away in 1985, is considered one of the most significant Ukrainian poets of our time. Although he isn’t speaking of the most current conflict, his line about being on the battlefield;

‘Where all my soldiers are the words I wield’ – are as relatable today as when they were written.

If reading can be resistance, then poetry can certainly (and has been) a form of protest. We can’t all fight with weapons—sometimes, all we can do is wage war with words. And, maybe, pickle some tomatoes and have them handy in a glass jar nearby? Just a thought. Although with my throwing arm, I’m likely to leave a more significant dent in a nosy drone with a well-written protest poem. 

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever experimented with protesting through poetry?

Angela Yeh is an East Coast Canadian native that lives and works in the great state of Texas. Angela is a black belt wanna-be who loves to garden, write about magic, and eat cake. If you’d like to check out her first published novel, A Phoenix Rises, she will send you cookies (not cake – she’s already eaten the cake). She lives with her husband, two lovely human children, and three cranky fur babies. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram or her website.

The post Protesting through Poetry: Embrace Your Inner Poet-Activist! appeared first on DIY MFA.

What I questioned was what did the family unit really signify, and how did we connect that to social justice issues, as it relates to my people.

I braided stories of food and traveling with indentured people, immigrants, and migrants with my own stories of my journey to America as an immigrant which was in turn, influenced by my parents’ own journey as refugees out of what’s now Bangladesh during the 1947 Partition of India. 

The reason I did that is because all our stories are intertwined and informed by the traumatic event of the largest man-made human migration in the world in the 20^th century. It influenced what we remembered, what we ate, and how we kept a record—whether it was oral, lore, or passed down the generations as stories so fantastic it could be a myth or real and there was no way of finding out.

But my work has been informed over the years by writing from South Asian authors, be it fiction or nonfiction, primarily because of the way we tell stories. Brought up in the storytelling style of folk katha, or story, there is drama, there is fiction, there is even speculative nonfiction that gives each essay and incident the masala it needs. I used food as the vehicle to showcase what it means to lose everything and how we regain what we think is precious to us.

For years, my writing has been heavily influenced by these books, which highlight family, lyric writing style but also a nod to India lore, myth, and storytelling, be it through activism, social justice rally cries, science, food, or adventure, to create a fleshed-out exploration of what makes for a delicious insight.

Here are five books by South Asian writers that talk about family and belonging:

1. Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose

The title of this precise book of essays by Chew-Bose in 2017 is from an entry in A Writer’s Diary where Virginia Woolf wondered whether what she wrote or said was anything of value that anyone would want to listen to. 

Chew-Bose explores culture and identity in this group, but what she also does is ask us what it means to be part of a family and what is inherent in this structure. She writes, “A family is more than it shows. That the future’s unspecified terms provide a few recognizable basics, and that I might find, somewhere in me, a tension—the good kind—for tapping into what springs me forward, I reason, the hope.” 

This essay collection explores ways by which we immigrants assert our identity and what remains when one moves to another land in terms of culture. What happens to the family and how we hold together as a unit.

2. Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance and Social Change by Anjali Enjeti

Ambitious in scope, thoughtful, fierce and refreshingly direct, Enjeti’s book and her activism and passion for social justice has influenced my own writing for decades. In particular, the first section on identity informs us of what it means to be of mixed-race growing up in the American south, but also highlights her relationship with her doctor father and how he conducted himself while working under racially charged situations in the southern states. 

A reflection of what we think we understand as children of immigrant parents, and what we eventually do once we grow up, Enjeti’s work shows not only her mastery of the form, but helps us, the reader, understand how complex intergenerational South Asian relationships are. This in turn is an exploration of those relationships as they wax and wane in intensity over the years. 

But it is Enjeti’s activism and how she uses language that shake us into paying attention—a superb manner of waking us up, and asking us to react. In the title essay, she writes, “Like places, we too must take responsibility for our relaxed complacency and intentional obliviousness. We can be targets of racism while also upholding and benefitting from white supremacy.” We South Asians can be racists while we may also be victims of racial attacks.

3. Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. by Arundhati Roy

I consider Azadi, or freedom, a battle cry for the India we love. This call, a protest slogan used by Kashmiri activists to protest against what they consider Indian Occupation of their lands, is now a call used in all activist rallies throughout India to protest against Modi’s fascist and inherently Hindu nationalist government. 

This book isn’t a reflection of South Asian family dynamics but more a reflection of what has changed in my country of birth and why it’s imperative for us to keep asking the questions that have made it into an us-versus-them nation filled with zealous nationalists, pro-Hindu violent mobs. 

I still consider this writing about South Asian families, because it is about what’s happening in the country as we speak. In “There is Fire in the Ducts, The System is Failing,” Roy writes, “What we need are people who are prepared to be unpopular. Who are prepared to put themselves in danger. Who are prepared to tell the truth. Brave journalists can do that, and they have…And artists—beautiful, brilliant, brave writers, poets, musicians, painters, and filmmakers can do that. That beauty is on our side. All of it. We have work to do. And a world to win.”

4. In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

While Lahiri’s fiction is what draws most western readers to her lyrical style and masterful storytelling, I’ve always found her deep intense love for Italian and her navigation of that language fascinating. 

An American born of Indian immigrant parents, who moves to Italy to master Italian, writes in that language while challenging herself in asking what changes when one starts to write and then ultimately think in a different language. 

This is a reflection of “otherness” and what it means to be foreign in so many different ways. She writes, “I write in order to break down the wall, to express myself in a pure way. When I write, my appearance, my name have nothing to do with it. I am heard without being seen, without prejudices, without a filter I am invisible. I become my words, and the words become me.”

This isn’t a social justice cause, but truly a reflection of what it means to be othered in America. What happens when you’re brought up knowing English and Bengali and yet, you’re foreign in America and when you go back to India, they speak to you in English because the assumption is why would you know Bengali? The othering happens in multiple ways and regions. 

How Lahiri challenges the expectation of understanding and knowing languages and why, as an immigrant, breaks many walls of preconceived biases, and notions.

5. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

There really aren’t words to explain what it is one feels reading Kalanithi’s memoir on his lung cancer diagnosis, as a surgeon and physician and his eventual demise. There is loss, and tragedy even before one reads this memoir, but his scientific objectivity even when he’s looking at his own MRI scans, biopsies, and liver enzyme reports tells you we are watching a brilliant scientist who cannot give up on his patient. And that patient is him. 

When Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy gives birth to their daughter, Cady, he writes, “The cancer cells in my body would still be dying or they’d start growing again. Looking out over the expanse ahead, I saw not an empty wasteland but something simpler: a blank page on which I could go on.” 

The idea of death and dying in a family that welcomes a child at the same time highlights exactly what it is that makes us human, and how can we be objective about death at that time.

Madhushree Ghosh is the daughter of refugees, an immigrant, a woman of color in oncology diagnostics, and an activist. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Longreads, Bomb Magazine, Catapult, Guernica, The Kitchn, Serious Eats, The Rumpus, and others. Her work has been awarded a Notable Mention (Best American Essays in Food Writing), Pushcart-nominated, an Oakley Hall scholarship, and a Sirenland Positano residency (2020-21). Editorial roles have been in gastronomy (Panorama Journal) and international fiction (Del Sol Review). She actively mentors women leaders in science and hosts food and discourse events at her home in San Diego. Madhushree has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University. She is also certified in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from Cornell University as well as in Conflict Management and Global Negotiations from Thunderbird University, AZ. You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post #5onFri: Five Books by South Asian Writers on Family and Belonging appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Ace Atkins.

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-six books, including ten Quinn Colson novels and eight New York Times–bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker’s iconic Spenser series.

HBO has optioned the Quinn Colson novels with a series currently in high development and Atkins’ second novel for Robert B. Parker estate, Wonderland, was just made into a film with Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke.

A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Ace Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several publications, including Garden & Gun, the Wall Street Journal and Outside. Today we’ll be talking about his latest Quinn Colson novel: The Revelators

In this episode Ace and I discuss:

• How his books stand for social justice but are not necessarily political in nature.
• Why writers should be willing to voice their opinions and take a stand.
• What makes a character a hero or a villain.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-six books, including ten Quinn Colson novels and eight New York Times–bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker’s iconic Spenser series. HBO has optioned the Quinn Colson novels with a series currently in high development and Atkins’ second novel for Robert B. Parker estate, Wonderland, was just made into the film Spenser Confidential with Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several publications, including Garden & Gun, the Wall Street Journal and Outside. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

You can learn more about Ace by visiting his website, following him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The Revelators 

In this gripping new crime novel from the New York Times-bestselling author, Quinn Colson returns to take down a criminal syndicate that has ravaged his community, threatened his family, and tried to have him killed.

Shot up and left for dead, Sheriff Quinn Colson has revenge on his mind. With the help of his new wife Maggie, rehabilitation, and sheer force of will, he’s walking again, eager to resume his work as a southern lawman and track down those responsible for his attempted murder. But someone is standing in his way: an interim sheriff, appointed by the newly elected Governor Vardaman, the man who Quinn knows ordered his murder. Vardaman sits at the top of the state’s power structure–both legal and criminal–and little does he know, Quinn is still working to take him down.

Quinn will enlist the help of his most trusted friends, including federal agent Jon Holliday, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, and Nat Wilikins, an undercover agent now working for crime queen Fannie Hathcock. Since Quinn’s been gone, the criminal element in north Mississippi has flourished, with Hathcock enjoying unbridled freedom. Now as a bustling factory shuts down, a labor leader ends up dead, and Quinn’s own nephew goes missing, everything looks to be unraveling. Even an old friend from Quinn’s past, Donnie Varner, is out of jail and up to his own ways.

Quinn Colson and company have been planning for years, and now they’re finally ready to bust apart a criminal empire running on a rigged system for far too long. This is the Battle of Jericho, the epic showdown that’s been years in the making. Eventually, the war will end–for better or worse.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 322

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 322: Heroes, Villains, and Writing a Story That Matters – Interview with Ace Atkins appeared first on DIY MFA.