Sara Ahmed Quotes

When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about or if you went away.

Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does the feminist kill other people’s joy by pointing out moments of sexism? Or does she expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things, or could anger be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through objects get brought to the surface in a certain way?

The personal is theoretical.

We become a problem when we describe a problem.

Where we find happiness teaches us what we value rather than simply what is of value.

Rolling eyes = feminist pedagogy.

To live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable. The question of how to live a feminist life is alive as a question as well as being a life question.

When you have to fight for an existence, fighting can become an existence.

We are dismissed as emotional. It is enough to make you emotional.

a system is working when an attempt to transform that system is blocked.

There is nothing more vulnerable than caring for someone; it means not only giving your energy to that which is not you but also caring for that which is beyond or outside your control. Caring is anxious—to be full of care, to be careful, is to take care of things by becoming anxious about their future, where the future is embodied in the fragility of an object whose persistence matters. Becoming caring is not about becoming good or nice: people who have “being caring” as their ego ideal often act in quite uncaring ways in order to protect their good image of themselves. To care is not about letting an object go but holding on to an object by letting oneself go, giving oneself over to something that is not one’s own.

I think of feminism as poetry; we hear histories in words; we reassemble histories by putting them into words.

Every writer is first a reader, and what we read matters.

Queer and feminist worlds are built through the effort to support those who are not supported because of who they are, what they want, what they do.

Sexual harassment works—as does bullying more generally—by increasing the costs of fighting against something, making it easier to accept something than to struggle against something,

Indeed so often just talking about sexism as well as racism is heard as damaging the institution. If talking about sexism and racism is heard as damaging institutions, we need to damage institutions.

Those of us committed to a queer life know that forms of recognition are either precariously conditional, you have to be the right kind of queer by depositing your hope for happiness in the right places (even with perverse desire you can have straight aspirations), or it is simply not given.

When we have to think strategically, we also have to accept our complicity: we forgo any illusions of purity; we give up the safety of exteriority. If we are not exterior to the problem under investigation, we too are the problem under investigation. Diversity work is messy, even dirty, work.

The impossibility of 'fellow feeling' is itself the confirmation of injury. The call of such pain, as a pain that cannot be shared through empathy, is a call not just for an attentive hearing, but for a different kind of inhabitance. It is a call for action, and a demand for collective politics, as a politics based not on the possibility that we might be reconciled, but on learning to live with the impossibility of reconciliation, or learning that we live with and beside each other, and yet we are not as one

it is dangerous to be perceived as dangerous.

Among white people, black people are allowed to talk about their precarious lives, but they are not allowed to implicate the present company in that precariousness. They are not allowed to point out its causes. In “Sexism—a Problem with a Name,” Sara Ahmed writes that “if you name the problem you become the problem.”7 To create discomfort by pointing out facts is seen as socially unacceptable. Let’s get over ourselves, it’s structural not personal, I want to shout at everyone, including myself.

Let's take the figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. One feminist project could be to give the killjoy back her voice. Whilst hearing feminists as killjoys might be a form of dismissal, there is an agency that this dismissal rather ironically reveals. We can respond to the accusation with a "yes.

A significant step for a feminist movement is to recognize what has not ended. And this step is a very hard step. It is a slow and painstaking step. We might think we have made that step only to realize we have to make it again.

Feminist consciousness can be thought of as consciousness of the violence and power concealed under the languages of civility, happiness, and love, rather than simply or only consciousness of gender as a site of restriction of possibility. You can venture into the secret places of pain by recalling something. You can cause unhappiness by noticing something. And if you can cause unhappiness by noticing something, you realize that the world you are in is not the world you thought you were in.

When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it or if you went away. The charge of sensationalism falls rather quickly onto feminist shoulders: when she talks about sexism and racism, her story is heard as sensationalist, as if she is exaggerating for effect.5 The feminist killjoy begins as a sensationalist figure. It is as if the point of making her point is to cause trouble, to get in the way of the happiness of others, because of her own unhappiness.

These ways we have to settle. Moving house. I hate packing: collecting myself up, pulling myself apart. Stripping the body of the house: the walls, the floors, the shelves. Then I arrive, an empty house. It looks like a shell. How I love unpacking. Taking things out, putting things around, arranging myself all over the walls. I move around, trying to distribute myself evenly around the rooms. I concentrate on the kitchen. The familiar smell of spices fills the air. I allow the cumin to spill, and then gather it up again. I feel flung back somewhere else. I am never sure where the smell of spices takes me, as it had followed me everywhere. Each smell that gathers returns me somewhere; I am not always sure where that somewhere is. Sometimes the return is welcome, sometimes not. Sometimes it is tears or laughter that makes me realize that I have been pulled to another place and another time. Such memories can involve a recognition of how one's body already feels, coming after the event. The surprise when we find ourselves moved in this way or that. So we ask the question, later, and it often seems too late: what is it that has led me away from the present, to another place and another time? How is it that I have arrived here or there?

Doing diversity work has taught me that agreeing to something is one of the best ways of stopping something from happening. Agreeing to something is an efficient technique for stopping something because organizations can avoid the costs of disagreement.

To be a feminist at work is or should be about how we challenge ordinary and everyday sexism, including academic sexism. This is not optional: it is what makes feminism feminist. A feminist project is to find ways in which women can exist in relation to women; how women can be in relation to each other. It is a project because we are not there yet.

Once upon a time I had the light, time passed and I didn't realize my light was slipping away.. I just woke up one day and it was dark.

But think of this: those of us who arrive in an academy that was not shaped by or for us bring knowledges, as well as worlds, that otherwise would not be here. Think of this: how we learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us. Think of the kinds of experiences you have when you are not expected to be here. These experiences are a resource to generate knowledge.

Gentrification is a public policy for managing strangers: a way of removing those who would be eyesores; those who would reduce the value of a neighborhood; those whose proximity would be registered as price.

an institution being willing to appoint someone (to transform the institution) is not the same thing as an institution being willing to be transformed (by someone who is appointed). An appointment can even be about an appearance: being given a diversity mandate might be how an institution appears willing to be transformed.

Sara Ahmed Happiness is no protection, and certainly it is not a responsibility. The freedom to be happy restricts human freedom if you are not free to be not happy. But one can make of either freedom a habit, and only you know which you’ve chosen.

Someone says something you consider problematic. At first you try not to say anything. But they keep saying something. So maybe you respond, carefully, perhaps. You say why you think what they have said is problematic. You might be speaking quietly, but you are beginning to feel wound up, recognizing with frustration that you are being wound up by someone who is winding you up. The feminist killjoy appears here: when she speaks, she seems wound up. I appear here. This is my history: wound up.

The more nots you are, the more committees you might end up on. Not being not can mean being less likely to end up doing this kind of work. Given that diversity work is typically less valued by organizations, then not being not can mean having more time to do more-valued work.

Alienation is studious; you learn more about wishes when they are not what you wish for.

Individuals within the institution must act as if the decision has been made for it to be made. If they do not, it has not. A

Within the organization there is a gap between words and deeds, between what organizations say they will do, or what they are committed to doing, and what they are doing.

Perhaps sometimes we just can’t do this; it means being prepared to be undone, and we just don’t know if we are ready to put ourselves back together again,

Having evidence of being wronged does not stop you from being judged as in the wrong.

If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence; of how we inhabit spaces as well as “who” or “what” we inhabit spaces with.

So much feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended; that sexism and racism are fundamental to the injustices of late capitalism; that they matter.

Your own body becomes used as evidence that the walls of which you speak are not there or are no longer there; as if you have eliminated the walls through your own progression. You got through, so they are not there.

And then your frustration can be taken as evidence of your frustration, that you speak this way, about this or that, because you are frustrated. It is frustrating to be heard as frustrated; it can make you angry that you are heard as angry.

Away from home, my partner and I are on holiday on a resort on an island. Mealtimes bring everyone together. We enter the dining room, where we face many tables places alongside each other… I face what seems like a shocking image. In front of me, on the tables, couples are seated. Table after table, couple after couple, taking the same form: one many sitting by one woman around a ‘round table,’ facing each other 'over’ the table… I am shocked by the sheer force of the regularity of that which is familiar: how each table presents the same form of sociality as the form of the heterosexual couple. How is it possible, with all that is possible, that the same form is repeated again and again? How does the openness of the future get closed down into so little in the present?

By using the idea of sweaty concepts, I am also trying to show how descriptive work is conceptual work. A concept is worldly, but it is also a reorientation to a world, a way of turning things around, a different slant on the same thing. More specifically, a sweaty concept is one that comes out of a description of a body that is not at home in the world. By this I mean description as angle or point of view: a description of how it feels not to be at home in the world, or a description of the world from the point of view of not being at home in it. Sweat is bodily; we might sweat more during more strenuous and muscular activity. A sweaty concept might come out of a bodily experience that is trying. The task is to stay with the difficulty, to keep exploring and exposing this difficulty. We might need not to eliminate the effort or labor from the writing. Not eliminating the effort or labor becomes an academic aim because we have been taught to tidy our texts, not to reveal the struggle we have in getting somewhere. Sweaty concepts are also generated by the practical experience of coming up against a world, or the practical experience of trying to transform a world.6

A complaint can be how you live with yourself because a complaint is an attempt to address what is wrong, not to cope with something, not to let it happen, not to let it keep happening. You refuse to adjust to what is unjust. A complaint can be a way of not doing nothing. I think the double negative is often the terrain of complaint

It is certainly the case that responsibility for diversity and equality is unevenly distributed. It is also the case that the distribution of this work is political: if diversity and equality work is less valued by organizations, then to become responsible for this work can mean to inhabit institutional spaces that are also less valued.

I was profoundly shy growing up, and my sense of human sociality was of something from which I was barred: almost like a room with a locked door for which I did not have the key. Perhaps that was it: gender seemed like a key to a lock, which I did not have, or which I did not fit. Looking back, I think I decided to self-girl when I went to university, as I was exhausted by not fitting or not fitting in.

This kind of caring for oneself is not about caring for one’s own happiness. It is about finding ways to exist in a world that makes it difficult to exist. This is why, this is how: those who do not have to struggle for their own survival can very easily and rather quickly dismiss those who attend to their own survival as being self-indulgent. They do not need to attend to themselves; the world does it for them.

No wonder then that the social struggle within families involves a struggle over the causes of unhappiness. Perhaps the parents are unhappy as they think their daughter will be unhappy if she is queer. They are unhappy with her being unhappy. The daughter is unhappy because they are unhappy with her being queer. Perhaps the parents would then witness the daughter’s unhappiness as a confirmation of their fear: that she will be unhappy because she is queer. Even happy queers would become unhappy at this point.

To learn from those who try to intervene in the reproduction of something is to learn about reproduction. To stop a system from being reproduced, you have to stop it from working. You have to throw a wrench in the works or to become, to borrow Sarah Franklin’s (2015) terms, “wenches in the works.” When you throw your body into the system to try to stop it from working, you feel the impact of how things are working. We learn how those who try to stop a culture from being reproduced are stopped. But in learning this, we also learn that reproduction is not inevitable, nor is it smooth, despite the failure to stop something from working.

Sexual harassment is material. It is a network that stops information from getting out. It is a set of alliances that come alive to stop something; that enable a complaint to be held up or to become confidential, so that it never comes out into the public domain. And notice here: so many complex things are going on at the same time. It is not activity that is coordinated by one person or even necessarily a group of people who are meeting in secret, although secret meetings probably do happen. All of these activities, however complex, sustain a direction; they have a point. Direction does not require something to originate from a single point: in fact a direction is achieved through consistency between points that do not seem to meet. Things combine to achieve something that is solid and tangible; bonds become binds. If one element does not hold, or become binding, another element holds or binds. The process is rather like the cement used to make walls: something is set into a holding pattern. The setting is what hardens. Perhaps when people notice the complexity, or even the inefficiency and disorganization, they don’t notice the cement. When you say there is a pattern, you are heard as paranoid, as if you are imagining that all this complexity derives from a single point.

We need to tell each other stories of different ways you can live, different ways you can be; predicated not on how close you get to the life you were assumed or expected to have, but on the queer wanderings of a life you live. I would have liked to have known there were other ways of living, of being. I would have liked to have known that women do not have to be in relation to men. Of course, I struggled for this realization: I became a feminist; I found women’s studies; I met women who taught me what I did not have to do; I found women who helped me deviate from an expectation. Queer: the moment you realize what you did not have to be. We can become part of a widening when we refused to be narrowed. And each time we reject or widen the happiness script, we become part of an opening. We have to create room if we are to live a feminist life. When we create room, we create room for others.

Iris Marion Young discusses how some girls learn to “throw like girls”; they learn not to get themselves behind an action, exhibiting what she calls “inhibited intentionality.” She describes how girls often “lack confidence in their capacity to do what needs to be done.” She notes, “We decide beforehand—usually mistakenly—that the task is beyond us and thus give it less than our full effort.”Decisions we make about our capacities are not always our own. We receive messages all the time that tell us who can do what (and who cannot). If you are told you can’t do it, that girls can’t do it, you might doubt whether you can do it; you might not put all of yourself into it. And then when you don’t manage it, you don’t pull it off, the judgment that you are not capable is confirmed. Gender norms sometimes work through a reversal of sequence: we assume we do it because we can, or don’t because we can’t, but often we can do it because we do it, or we can’t because we don’t. Over time, girls learn to inhabit their bodies with less confidence, assuming what they cannot do as a restriction of a horizon of possibility.

En el transcurso de su obra, Lorde sostiene que no debemos protegernos de lo que nos duele. Debemos trabajar y luchar no para sentir dolor, sino para advertir aquello que causa dolor, lo que significa desaprender todo aquello que hemos aprendido a pasar por alto, a no mirar. Este trabajo es indispensable si queremos desarrollar un entendimiento crítico del modo en que la violencia, en cuanto relación de fuerza y daño, se dirige contra algunos cuerpos y no contra otros. Si bien podemos y debemos continuar el estudio que plantea Raymond Williams de las 'estructuras de sentimiento', creo que también deberíamos explorar los 'sentimientos de estructura': quizá los sentimientos sean el modo en que las estructuras se nos meten bajo la piel.

Those deemed tiresome complainers have something to teach us about complaint, to teach us about the politics of how some are received, to teach us what it takes to refuse a message about who is important, what is important.

To become a feminist ear is to hear complaints together. A feminist ear can be understood as an institutional tactic. To hear complaints, you have to dismantle the barriers that stop us from hearing complaints, and by barriers, I am referring to institutional barriers, the walls, the doors that render so much of what is said, what is done, invisible and inaudible. If you have to dismantle barriers to hear complaints, hearing complaints can make you more aware of those barriers. In other words, hearing complaints can also be how you learn how complaints are not heard.

Institutional fatalism tells you that institutions are what they are such that there is no point in trying to change them. That fatalism can be performed through warnings is instructive: after all, warnings are about how you can avoid certain consequences. The implication is that in order to avoid certain consequences, you should avoid complaint: to complain would be to hurtle toward a miserable fate, complaint as fatalism, to leave the right path, the institutional path, to bring misery upon yourself. A prediction that the consequences of complaint will be dire, not only that you would experience emotional torment but that you could render yourself even more precarious further down the line (“he could countersue me for defamation of character”), is also an expectation that those who are institutionally valued will retain their value no matter what, no matter who.

To sustain a commitment to the feminist killjoy, which is one way of thinking about killjoy activism, we need to hold that mirror up, to see what it reflects back to us, including what it reflects about ourselves: what we do, where we do it. We need to prepare to be undone by what we might see or what we might hear or what we might have to do.

Dismantling as a project might seem, on the surface, negative and destructive. But if, as we learned from the feminist killjoy as poet, possibility is built out of the system, we need to destroy what is built to make some lives possible, to make it possible for some people to get what they need.

My friend.. Today I missed you. I wanted to tell you what's going on with me, And hear what's going on with you, but something destroyed my phone And I lost my loved ones' phone numbers... I wonder.. Did something destroy your phone too? Is that why you lost my phone number as well? My friend.. Today I made a kite with some of the kids here. I attached a message to it, hoping it would reach you. And as soon as it flew freely in our sky, I let go of the thread and watched it flew farther and farther.. hoping it wouldn't lose its way.. Perhaps it's still remembers our city that has became unfamiliar! My friend.. It seems that my kite is lost just like the pigeons and the phone numbers are lost, and the way is lost, only a few dreams remain, or even less than a few... My friend.. I still watch the sky, and watch the children's kites, perhaps one of them carries a message from you to me... letters in wartime

This morning, my grandmother stretched out her hand to feel the air, then raised her head to the sky and said, “It's fig harvest time.” She sat silently for the rest of the day. My friend, it seems that we all yearn for even the smallest details and simplest things that were once a part of our lives. Like the fig trees and the day of their harvest. Do you remember the day my mother made me cut a large pot filled with figs to make jam for us, and you came to help me? Do you remember the secrets and stories we shared over that pot of figs? And do you remember helping my grandmother knead the cookie dough afterwards? The taste of laughter, the smell of the house, and the warmth of our hearts as we dipped those cookies in the fig jam. My friend, will we ever make jam and cookies together again? Or will we continue to long for our memories, loved ones, friends, and fig trees? letters in wartime

When we first left home, my little brother asked me, "Where are we going?" I told him, "Just a short trip." However, it turned out to be more than just a short trip, it was a big pain. It seems that I ruined the excitement of the trip for my little brother because after having to leave five or six times, he stopped asking and just got used to leaving without arguing. Do you remember our last trip? That day, my uncle gathered all the boys and girls, relatives and friends, made us sandwiches, borrowed his friend's big car, and took us to the beach. I wonder everyday if my kites will reach my uncle. His phone is still off. Or is he waiting for us under the fig tree at our old house? If you ever meet him, please tell him that my little brother needs someone to show him the true meaning of a trip. Maybe he can make him laugh again. - letters in wartime

My friend.. Do you remember when they told us that every flower has a meaning and every color has its significance? They say.. There is a red flower in a faraway land that symbolizes deep sadness. My friend.. Which flower can scream with longing and cry with yearning and take revenge for the broken laughs? Maybe those poppy flowers do that? Maybe we can hide inside of them like fetuses sleeping peacefully? My friend.. I have never held those poppy flowers before.. I don't know how they feel or smell but.. It seems that those poppy flowers dig into memories and summon tears.. - letters in wartime

صباح اليوم، مدت جدتى يدها تتحسس الهواء ثم رفعت رأسها للسماء وقالت “حان وقت حصاد التين” وجلست صامتة باقى اليوم.. صديقتى.. يبدو أننا جميعاً نَحِنُ لكل شئ، حتى التفاصيل الصغيرة والأشياء البسيطة التى كانت فى حياتنا.. حتى شجر التين ويوم حصاده.. صديقتى.. تذكرين يوم أجبرتنى أمى على تقطيع قدر كبير من التين لتصنع لنا المربى وجئتى أنتى لمساعدتى؟ هل تذكرين أسرارنا وحكاوينا فوق قدر التين؟ ومساعدة جدتى بعدها فى العجين؟ هل تذكرين طعم الضحك ورائحة البيت ودفء القلب بعد أن غمسنا الكعك بالتين؟ صديقتى.. هل سنصنع المربى والكعك معاً مرة أخرى يومٍ ما؟ أم سنظل نشتاق للذكريات والأحباب والأصحاب.. وشجرة التين؟ - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

عندما تركنا البيت أول مرة، سألنى أخى الصغير “الى أين نحن ذاهبون؟” أخبرته “رحلة قصيرة للجنوب”. لم تكن مجرد رحلة قصيرة، بل ألم كبير.. صديقتى.. يبدو أننى دمرت فرحة الرحلة فى قاموس مفرادات أخى الصغير، فبعد أن أضطررنا للرحيل خمس أو ست مرات توقف عن السؤال، وأعتاد التنقل دون جدال.. صديقتى.. تذكرين أخر رحلة لنا؟ يومها جمع عمى الأولاد والبنات، الأقارب والأصحاب، وصنع لنا السندويتشات، وأخذ مفتاح عربة صديقه الكبيرة، وراح بنا على شاطئ البحر.. صديقتى.. أتسائل كل يوم.. هل تصل طائراتى الورقية لعمى أيضاً؟ لازال هاتفه مغلق.. أم أنه ينتظرنا تحت شجرة التين فى بيتنا القديم؟ صديقتى.. إن قابلتيه يوماً أخبريه أن أخى الصغير يحتاج من يعلمه معنى كلمة رحلة، ربما يستطيع أن يعيد له ضحكته من جديد.. -رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى .. تذكرى عندما أخبرونا أن لكل وردة معنى ولكل لون دلالة؟ يقولون .. هناك ورد أحمر فى بلاد بعيدة يرمز لحزن عميق صديقتى .. أى الورود يمكنها أن تصرخ أشتياقاً وتبكى حنيناً وتأخذ بثأر الضحكات المكلومة؟ ربما تلك الورود تفعل ذلك؟ ربما يمكننا أن نختبئ بداخلها كالأجنة النائمة فى سلام؟ صديقتى .. لم أمسك مرة بتلك الورود من قبل أعرف ملمسها أو رائحتها ولكن .. يبدو أن تلك الورود الحمراء تنبش فى الذكريات وتستدعى الدمعات.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

طائرة ورقية صديقتى.. اليوم أشتقت لك. أردت أن أخبرك بما يجرى معى، وأسمع ما الذى يحدث معك، لكن شيئاً ما دمر هاتفى وضاعت أرقام الأحباب... أتسائل.. هل دمر شيئاً ما هاتفك أيضاً؟ هل لهذا السبب فقدتى رقمى أنتى أيضاً؟ صديقتى.. صنعت اليوم طائرة ورقية مع بعض الأطفال هنا. أرفقت مع الطائرة رسالة لعلها تصل لك. وما أن حلقت فى سمائنا حرة، تركت الخيط وراقبتها تبتعد وتبتعد .. لعلها لا تضل الطريق.. لعلها مازالت تألف مدينتنا التى أصبحت غريبة المعالم. صديقتى.. يبدو أن طائرتى ضاعت كما ضاع الحَمام وضاعت الأرقام، وضاع الطريق، وبقى من الأحلام القليل، بل أقل من القليل... صديقتى.. لازلت أراقب السماء، وأراقب طائرات الأطفال الورقية، لعل أحِدها تحمل رسالة منكِ لى… -رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. كيف حال أرضنا الصغيرة خلف البيت؟ هل لازالت قطعة من الجنة كما أعتدنها؟ وكيف حال الزيتون؟ هل لازالت أشجار الزيتون تزين الأرض والسماء هناك؟ صديقتى .. ذكرينى كيف كانت أغصان الزيتون وأوراق الزيتون ولون الزيتون.. صديقتى .. ذكرينى بطعم الزيتون ورائحة الزيتون .. صديقتى .. ذكرينى فلم يعد هنا من الزيتون غير رماده.. صديقتى .. ذكرينى فأنا أخاف النسيان .. وأخاف أيضاً أن أتذكر كيف كنت وكيف كان ما كان.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى .. الشمس من وراء الغيمات ما عادت تطل ونسيم الصباح البارد فى أعماق عظامنا وجد السكن صديقتى .. أنه الخريف اللامنتهى رغم حرقة الظهيرة صديقتى.. كيف تحول خريفنا الملون بأوراق الشجر لسنين عجاف ورماد ودخان فى كل مكان...؟ - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى .. تذكرى عندما كنا نتغنى بأغنية الوطن؟ والأرض والتين، والحلم والزيتون؟ عندما تغنينا بذكرى الأحباب؟ وبشوقنا للغائبين طوال السنين؟ صديقتى .. غنى لى أغنية الوطن مرة أخرى فالجميع هنا يصرخون صمتاً فى اليوم مئة ألف مرة.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى .. غدا نهر الدماء محيطاً وغدا الفراق رفيقاً .. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. أرتدى أخى الصغير قبعته اليوم ظناً أنها قد تقيه البارود وناره - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. فقدت الرغبة فى كتابة الرسائل هل حقاً تصلك الكلمات؟ هل أنتى بخير هناك؟ هل لازالتى تتأملين فى حديقة المنزل كل صباح - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. حتى ذلك الدب المحشو الذى كنا نحتضنه حباً أحياناً وخوفاً أحياناً أخرى أصبح مصاباً تحتضنه الأنقاض.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى .. هل لازلتى تحتسين القهوة بالشرفة كل صباح؟ هل تلك الشرفة مازالت تطل على نافذة غرفتى؟ هل تذكرين كيف كنا نتحدث طويلاً كل صباح؟ صديقتى.. لدى سراً خبئته لسنوات.. صديقتى .. لطالما كرهت رائحة القهوة التى تحسينها كل صباح بالشرفة ولكننى أحببت صحبتك أكثر فأعتدت رائحتها تدق نافذتى كل صباح.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. فارقنا الربيع بفراقنا للبيت صديقتى.. هل لازالت أزهارى تراقب السماء؟ أم .. أحرقت أوراقها نيران البارود هى الأخرى..؟ - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

لازال أخى الصغير يحمل كوفية عمى معه طوال الوقت.. يحكى لى “سيعود يوماً من أجلها” صديقتى.. هل تظنيه سيعود؟ وهل سنعيش لنرى ذلك “اليوم”... - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

السماء الليلة كاحلة لا نجوم ولا قمر يضئ الطريق والبحر هائج أغضبته الرياح فدفن المنارة تحت طيات أمواجه وحل الظلام سماءاً وبحراً وأرضاً أما أنا .. فأدعو بيأس لأرى الفجر كل يوم - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

رغم النيران وكل هذا الدخان لازالت أجنحة الطيور تحملهم لأعالى السماء - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

لا أعرف الصنوبر لكنى أعرف الزيتون والبرتقال والتين.. صديقتى.. أحن كثيراً.. لرائحة الأشجار وملمس الأوراق. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

كنا نحمل السلال نقطف الزيتون والتين اليوم نحمل الأجساد والأرواح على الأكفاف - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. يد أخى الصغير أصبحت صلبة أشفق عليه مما يحمله بقلبه الصغير .. فجاءنى اليوم بوردة أقتطفها وأحتضننى.. فأشفقت على ضعفى أمام أبتسامته وسط هذا الدمار - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. عليهم أن يغيروا معنى كلمة جبل فى القاموس عليهم أن يضيفوا صبر ومقاومة كل تلك القلوب من حولى عليهم أن يسمعوا قصص من عاشوا جحيم الحياة.. جبال صلبة تنتظر الصباح كل ليلة لتبدأ كفاحها من جديد - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. أشتاق لذلك الثوب الذى أهدتنى أياه جدتى أشتاق لملمس تلك الغرز التى أفنت عمرها تحيكها أشتاق لحيث أعتادت تجلس بجانب عصافيرها.. أشتاق لحديثها وسكونها.. لضحكتها وغضبها.. أشتاق لمحاولتى تعلم كيف أخيط الغرزة وراء الأخرى مثلها.. وأشتاق لحبها لقطعة القماش التى ترقد بين أصابعها بأمان.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

كنا تسعة وأصبحنا واحد كُسر جناحه وقُطع عنه طريق العوده - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

كنا نصنع البهجة من اللاشئ ونضحك من قلوبنا حتى الأمتلاء صديقتى.. صعبة هى البهجة وسط جبال من الأحزان تشربتها عظامنا بمرور الأيام.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. أحلم بـ يوم الجمعة. فطور العائلة. أبريق يعطر البيت برائحة الشاى. وأحاديث لا تنتهى.. - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

كان لليل سكونه وللقمر بريقه أصبح لليل نيرانه وللقمر دخان أسود يحجبه - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

صديقتى.. كم بقى لنا من أصدقائنا..؟ - رسائل فى زمن الحرب

The family is performed by witnessing her being wound up, spinning around.

What does it mean to redirect children out of fear that they would be unhappy?

To want happiness for a child can be to want to straighten the child out.

that in some parental responses to a child coming out, this unhappiness is expressed not so much as being unhappy about the child being queer, but as being unhappy about the child being unhappy.

Translation: happiness becomes proximity to whiteness. Camel Gupta (2014) notes how it is sometimes assumed that brown queers and trans folk are rescued from unhappy brown families by happy white queer and trans communities. We are not a rescue mission. But when you deviate, they celebrate. Even happy brown queers would become unhappy at this point.

You can kill joy by not looking happy enough. If

I looked in the mirror sadly and waited for a different version of myself to appear.

And note then: you can killjoy not as a deliberate or intentional act; you might even be trying to participate in the joy of others. You can killjoy because you are not properly attuned to the requirements of a social system.