Two Nouns #24 -- Villlage Voices
Throat clearing for the new subscribers (and hello to the longtime readers): I’m Dayo, a Nigerian American living in London and working at the intersection of media and technology. I started this newsletter as a writing accountability strategy, to share offbeat links and thoughts, and for keeping in touch with my tribe. It is usually themed on whatever I’ve been gesticulating about at dinner parties, and sent roughly every month. “Two Nouns” comes from the naming convention of pubs in the UK. Have fun and click around.
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Good news that Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris, a senator from California with parents from Jamaica and from India, to be his running mate. This is cool because she is not a man -- and because no Black or asian woman has ever been at the top of a ticket with a shot at winning (recommending BBC series Mrs. America if you haven't seen Shirley Chisholm in action).
I'm paying special attention because in the UK nonwhite people get lumped together in the category of "Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic" or BAME. It covers everyone from Caribbean Windrush descendants to partition-era Muslim migrants to the Brits of Hong Kong. It's a much-criticized shorthand -- perhaps so generic it has lost meaning. Oddly, Harris might be the rare person to whom the catchall ambiguity of "bame" properly applies. (Stopped clocks are right sometimes.) Clearly we need to figure out how to showcase, not flatten, multiracial histories like hers. And maybe I've been under a rock but I'd love to see/hear/amplify examples of Asian x Black political coalition building -- other than this werk from Hasan Minhaj.
Now a small confession. I wrote a profile of Harris *ten years ago* -- one of the first with national readership. The reporting holds up well but alas, my headline called her "the female Obama" -- and I noted that she and the president shared a "greyhound physique." And then, reader, I described her outfit. I regret that this was not in the tradition of a subtle but revealing detail -- like, say, MIA's famous truffle fries -- but in the tradition of "it's sexist to care what lawmakers look like or what they are wearing." (I did this to Condoleezza Rice, too, mea culpa). I'm fessing up because recognising our biases and failures is healthy. And, per this open letter from watchdog/activist group "We Have Her Back," everyone in the media needs to improve their baseline coverage of women in politics -- and especially those from underrepresented groups.
Nonsexist comedy from Maya Rudolph on SNL
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My main focus these past weeks has been on community and friendship. So many loved ones and kind strangers reached out after I wrote about being a black pregnant person. It reminded me that the Internet can be a human place. And given 2020's tough conversations, elevated anxiety, and collective skin hunger -- I've spoken with many people examining their support framework from first principles.
I'm doing my best like everyone. But it's hard not to notice how much the society I live in prioritises biological connections -- especially nuclear families -- and romantic relationships -- especially marriage. That’s probably too narrow for the way we live now. If the pandemic hasn’t convinced you, there’s good evidence that friends and chosen family and neighbours and casual connections fuel our health and happiness. And a variety of integrated friendships also help you empathise with and affirm lives that aren’t yours -- an important tool in the fight for equality.
Two of my dearest friends, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow -- genius warrior women who can’t be reduced to shorthand like “podcast hosts” -- have written a book on the topic, Big Friendship, that’s absolutely worth your time. We taped an episode of their show on intentional friendship. Or as Amina puts it: “How do you solve the puzzle of where do people fit in my life and how do they fit in my life for a long time?” I have moved frequently as an adult, and straddle a few different social Venn diagrams (shout to my film people, my Africa gang, my Burning Man crew), which has forced me to connect across time and distance, and build human bridges where one is needed. Investing in friendship has paid off in my most triumphant and my most fragile moments -- and via social sonar, taught me who I am. I have learned so much from these ladies and you really should too.
Me, crashing the London book launch on Zoom
COVID has now triggered thoughts on community at scale. What does it mean to clap for health care workers, or to shield a stranger by wearing a mask, or to check in on someone housebound by fear? Rejecting the death cult of late capitalist individualism is a fine response to a public health nightmare. But will this wave soon break on the shores of convenience and solidarity fatigue? Jia Tolentino’s interview in Interview notes “The dream of collective well-being has to outweigh, day-to-day, the dream of individual success.” Yet I keep reading about wealthy people fleeing, again, to the suburbs, where houses are getting bigger and bigger "in part because they internalize more and more public amenities.” Not to be a drama queen but it feels we are all in the end making a choice between brave collectivism or becoming these people.
Barreling towards motherhood (yet stuck in place!), I am trying to build a community less geographically isolated, less waterlogged with expectation and guilt, interoperable with the world and especially different generations, professional aims, races, nationalities. Like friendship, this takes work. Fellow New America Fellow Mia Birdsong’s book on community formation (briefly mentioned in newsletter #20) is practical and intellectual. I loved reading about the podded group of parents where, every other weekend, one of the families gets all seven children. Actual #squadgoals. But I especially like how she frames marginality and scarcity as key to revolutionary arrangements. She shows us how queer, immigrant and minority individuals create chosen families that model interdependence, and resilience in times of stress. Let us learn from them.
The wall in my kitchen logging the height of visiting friends. We're moving, so farewell!
A few more inspirations on alternative entanglements I've come across:
- This Toronto family that casually raised 30+ adopted siblings under one roof
- The legal model of community land trusts that black farmers have used to build wealth
- How to Survive a Plague, the great documentary on activism in the early years of the AIDS crisis
- The real and honorary aunties who have helped parent me throughout my life
- Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, about a random family that springs from the dystopian America of 2024
- The near-parental fierceness with which three friends fight for one another in I May Destroy You
- The super interesting participatory social care project my friend Kate has been leading in East London
I’m open to believing the critique that "optimising relationships is just another facet of capitalist individualism” and not the affirming wellness pursuit that I think it is. But I'm going to give it a shot.
How are you hacking community these days? I can’t respond to everyone but I’d love to hear about it.
Dayo
This edition arrives in fond memory of Adegboyega Ayodele, Jr. *