Joy is an act of resistance

Story Doula: Nov '24

A lino print takes centre stage in my home. It’s a bouquet of flowers, covered in the words: Joy is an act of resistance.

An Etsy gift from my dear friend Emma. You can get it here— no affiliate links, I’m not that organised.

My friend saw it and said I don’t usually like slogans, but I like that. I told him I don’t like slogans either. But this isn’t a slogan. It’s a poem posing as an Instagram hashtag. The poet, Toi Derricotte, uses the line to begin The Telly Cycle, and as Austin Channing Brown writes, it revolutionised Black feminism.

The other week I sat around a table of women of varied life experiences, at a dinner curated by another friend and facilitator Gretel Van Lane. And after many conversations, I thought that the accidental theme of the night was productive rage— the hard-earned I don’t give a fuck of having lived, not a weight but a rocket, a desire to choose deliberately.

And I showed them the lino print as we discussed productive rage. It seems off-topic, but it is not. Because joy and rage are not opposites. They hum on the same frequency, an energy source you can direct.

And as we find ourselves asking what we can do now, in this age of so much suffering (though every age has had its suffering), what do we have left but to turn to joy? And to have it multiply as we turn our attention to it. To not capitulate to suffering.

To consume

— Pray Harder: a podcast about an Australian church called a cult by ex-members will be free and out in the wild on November 28th- but you can subscribe now on the Secrets we Keep feed to get updates (or download the Lisntr app and listen right now). I was the executive producer alongside Emma Lancaster (who not incidentally, very deliberately, gifted me the Joy is an act of Resistance lino print). It was hosted by investigative journalist Richard Baker and made by a fantastic team.

— This essay by Anna Krien is everything I have been mulling over about the internet for the past decade and would like to use some productive rage on in the decade to come.

— Excellent reporting on migrant women’s experiences of sexual harassment

— Ray Bradbury on how to work. Inject this in my eyeballs, recite this in my dreams.

— And to finish- the perils of newsletters