Posts by Maria Martelli
Dark & Cold Water Worlds – The Deep & Blackfish City
I’m still softened by just having finished “The Deep” by Rivers Solomon, listening to Drexciya and trying to gather my thoughts, waving like seagrass. Just a few days ago I also finished “Blackfish City” by Sam J. Miller, which is why I’m writing about both of them now, still fresh in my mind. They both embody worlds of water, one colder than the other.
Read MoreDear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow or Dear Poetry, How Are You So Powerful
I read “Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow.” by Noor Hindi like one passes through a storm, intensely and hurried, and then I read it again with a close friend, N., slower, letting it simmer through us.
It is powerful, superbly formed, disruptive of anti-arab narratives,
Read More10 speculative fictions I read and loved in 2023
Because I love lists & speculative fiction & remembering what I thought about what I read, I’m making this one – it has no order except kind-of-a-chronological order? And it contains a bit of cheating because the last two I finished in 2024 and
Read MoreRead Palestine: Light In Gaza & Palestinian poems
In the essay “Gaza asks: When shall this pass?” poet and academician Refaat Alareer writes with force and vulnerability about the long-held resilience of Palestinian people, the reliance on saying “it shall pass” from grandmother to mother, transmitted intergenerationally. One form of resistance is storytelling, as he writes:
Read MoreA vegan view of Yellowjackets – Meat, Power and Belief
From the very start, we know where the show is heading, and we are left to answer the question of “How”. Just like in other tales, fictional or real, about cannibalism, it is the most interesting question: how did they get there? Below, I’ll unfold some of my thoughts on the symbolism of “meat” in Yellowjackets.
Read More„Praline” de Yigru Zeltil – un volum despre ceea ce nu poate fi consumat
Praline: sunt dulciuri mici, care conțin nuci și mult zahăr, după care se intitulează colecția de poezie a lui Yigru Zeltil […] tematica consumului, a acaparării capitaliste și a transformării în marfă a tuturor lucrurilor, inclusiv a artei, revine constant de-a lungul volumului, dintr-o poziționare rezistentă („umbra mea nu aduce profit / umbra mea nu vrea să aducă profit / nu vreau eu să aducă ea profit” /11).
Read MoreJourneying through “How High We Go In the Dark” – a constellation of mourning
One could even say this book is a study of mourning, an ode to life with its sticky closeness to an ever-coming end.
Read More“Abolish the family” – On the unfairness of kinship practices
As a child, who has not wondered why they were given certain parents, and not others? And maybe, our parents have wondered the same about us.
Read More3% – The Cult of Meritocracy and Imagining Otherwise
The first season (…) builds up to show us meritocracy is a lie – a cunning, deep lie, made to re-affirm those in power to everyone, including themselves.
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