My favorite part of the year has arrived where I get to share all of my favorite content from the past year. Art always exists within contexts. It is viewed through the lens of culture, our individual life experiences, and world events.
This year, we are seeing the genocide of Palestinians in their homeland. We are seeing the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia around the world. But we are also seeing resistance on a global scale, from Muslims, Jewish folks, Palestinians, Americans, Canadians, Indians, Italians, and Germans.
Globally, we are standing up for humanity and urging our world leaders to stand up for Palestinians.
We are also seeing human rights violations in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Innocent people are facing the horrible effects of war and are being displaced in large numbers.
The world is engulfed in chaos, but where there is oppression, there is also revolution.
Bangladesh factory workers who make our clothes, won an increase in wages so they can improve their livelihood. We are turning up in large numbers and changing the wrongful narrative the media is pushing.
Workers in the U.S. are fighting against their employers, demanding fair wages and better working conditions. Unions such as the Writers Guild of America, United Auto Workers, and Workers United are rising against greedy, powerful organizations. They are taking on billionaires and the very systems that put them in positions of power.
Every single day we see ordinary people stand up against injustice and oppression in their own ways.
Resistance has many faces. It can be messaging your Palestinian friends, reading books, or going to protests. But it’s also important to find pockets of solace. I personally find mine in hosting a dinner party with my closest friends, knitting, and taking a walk with my dog. Art has been a profound way for me to engage with my world, move through my grief, and advocate for people facing oppression. It has provided me with hope so that I can continue to stand up against injustice.
Here are some of my favorite books, shows/movies, podcasts, and articles. I hope you enjoy and discover your own pockets of hope:
Articles
Before I begin talking about my favorite articles, I want to spend some time highlighting my favorite words written by Palestinians:
"The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era."Ghassan Kanafani
"We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth, mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her namelater became Palestine. My lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life"Mahmoud Darwish
"If I must dieRefaat Alareer
let it bring hope
let it be a tale."
"And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.”Suheir Hammad
Check out this list for some more books and words by Palestinian authors: https://lithub.com/40-books-to-understand-palestine/
Here are just a few of the articles I loved reading this year. This list is always so hard to curate since there are so many exceptional writers out there. Please let me know what your favorite 2023 reads were!
Click on the images to read the article:
Film/TV
A little bit about “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”
I can not believe it took me this long to watch “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” especially given that Buffy is an anarchist queen.
For those who don’t know, the premise of the show is fairly simple: a 16-year-old girl is a vampire slayer and responsible for slaying all forms of evil including vampires, demons, and other magical entities. The show starts with Buffy arriving in Sunnydale after burning down her previous school in an endeavor to rid it of vampires. We are then introduced to Giles, her watcher in charge of her training, and Xander and Willow, her non-magical besties. All four fight against evil together and are known as the “Scooby Gang.”
There have been scores of articles, including academic ones, written about the show – all for good reason. From the outfits and dialogues to the fighting, the show has no shortage of iconic moments.
And for young girls, it hits an entirely different chord, thanks to its titular character Buffy.
Played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy is a strong, independent young girl who struggles with juggling her normal “girl” life and her vampire-slaying life.
The vampires/demons don’t always show up as your gorey-blood-sucking monsters, but rather they take the form of other societal vices. In one episode, the demon is an invisible girl who is tired of being ignored and decides to take revenge on everyone who makes her feel like a waste of space. Is the girl really evil? That’s up for viewers to decide.
The lines between evil and good are often blurred. In fact, Buffy’s main love interest for a large part of the show is a vampire himself. The episodes make you question who is really “bad” and why we choose to follow arbitrary rules set by absolute nobodies.
Buffy is an anarchist in that she doesn’t blindly obey any of the authorities around her. She knows her duty is to slay vampires, but she doesn’t let anyone dictate how she should live her life and continues to fight for some sort of normalcy. Her disobedience doesn’t always play to her advantage, but she faces the consequences herself and she learns from them. In a world where girls are still taught to be subservient, Buffy exemplifies an option to question societal norms.
The show takes it one step further with Buffy going against more established authorities such as the government, the police force, and schools. Officers are either portrayed as clueless or willingly lying to the public for their own benefit. Same with the government. Willow also circumvents many governmental programs through her internet hacking abilities. These institutions are not protectors of civilians but just obstacles for the “Scooby Gang,”.
The evil forces of the show look similar to the ones in the real world. They are driven by authority, power, and the desire to get rid of everything standing in their way. Buffy, however, makes it clear that the real strength relies not in power but in community.
In the beginning, Buffy is prepared to do her slaying duties by herself but soon realizes that having friends isn’t a weakness, it’s a superpower. Giles, Willow, and Xander become essential to the operation.
We are used to seeing big, masculine men fight off evil but Buffy provides us with a complex, nuanced representation of female empowerment. If she’s not fighting vampires, she’s sporting the cutest outfits. And while she contends with the thin line between good and evil, she also goes on dates.
Buffy’s femininity isn’t a hindrance. Her strength coexists with her experiences as a teenage girl, and it’s pretty revolutionary.
Every teenage girl, at some point, wakes up her inner Buffy and that’s when shit gets done. We fight vampires, we disobey, and we rid the world of evil (all while looking stunning).
I would, however, be amiss if I didn’t mention the scumbag that is the creator of the show: Joss Whedon who has been accused of mistreatment by a whole slew of writers and actresses including ones from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.
Whedon was worshiped as a feminist hero who often cited his mother as his inspiration for creating women-centered art so the news of his accusations left many fans reeling (never worship a man besties, never!). Still, the show became its own phenomenon for young women who decided that they could easily slay Whedon away and reclaim Buffy for themselves.
There are a fair amount of shows created by extremely gross men, but end up becoming hallmarks of feminist media (“The Craft” was made by a man, sadly). Just like how communities of color reclaim words and language, women reclaim media. They make it their own and infuse it with the contexts of their collective experiences (the Buffy comic-verse is alive and well). Be it, fan fiction or articles (like this one), people build off the Buffy verse and make it better.
The disgusting men creating these shows/movies with female leads may be doing it for the wrong reasons (a money grab) but soon enough, the undeserving men in power will realize the potential of a female fan base. Soon enough, ONLY women will be in charge of telling these stories, and it’s already happening (“Jennifer’s Body,” “Barbie”).
Books
Similar to my articles list, this one was also very difficult to curate. Every year, the number of books I read is increasing which is amazing but also makes this list extremely difficult so this is just a short overview of some of my favorite quotes. I also had time to create a book log which is something I always have wanted to do! You can check that out here to read more about my thoughts on the books I read:
https://saumyamonga.blog/spartan-daily-articles/book-log
“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”
“If you do not admit kindness from others, you cannot be surprised when they fail to offer any.”
“This erasure, this Project of Unseeing, is sometimes a conscious political act, and sometimes comes from a place of such rarefied privilege that caste has not been stumbled upon, not even in the dark, and therefore it is presumed to have been eradicated, like smallpox”
“Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used — not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.”
““I put it to yo’, being a parson, and having been in th’ preaching line, and having had to try and bring folk o’er to what yo’ thought was a right way of thinking — did yo’ being by calling em’ fools and such like, or didn’t yo’ rayther give ’em some kind words at first.”
“Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow.”
“Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed…”
“Sense would resist delirium; judgement would warn passion.”
“Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel…And those who (late in life) have been feeling for two, three or a thousand different people…well, turns out they’ve had a leg up on everyone else all along”
“But the person who is willing to reconsider their assumptions? the hero who can sit down and reevaluate their life? Well, not that is a gemstone that truly glitters, friend.”
“She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them. Good. It should.”
“History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
“Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don’t need him to tell me the power of words. But I smile nonetheless.”
Podcasts
My work:
This year, I spent a good chunk of time freelancing which was an incredible experience. I really was able to just write for fun, instead of for school or a newspaper. Here is a list of some of my favorite projects:
I was also able to do social media and outreach for a “Poetry For Palestine” workbook created by my wonderful mentor (and friend) Sara and others at Ancestral Wisdom Anthology.
This was such an incredible opportunity to really contribute in some way to a cause I care deeply about. Words have always been a means of expressing my emotions and gaining knowledge about the world. I couldn’t think of a better way to support Palestinian freedom than work on a workbook dedicated to encouraging others to write as a way of processing emotions.
I hope you find it helpful and please consider making a donation. Here is the workbook:
Saumya Monga 