Volume 2, Resources 20: Haitian Immigrants, Indigenous Allies, and Smarter in Seconds
Hi friends! Happy October, the month upon which I base my entire personality. This week I had my first piece published in the Alta Journal newsletter (it will be added to the website on Saturday 10/2) about my beloved local queer-owned indie bookstore. The Alta Journal is a Hearst publication (ooh la la!) which aims to be like the New Yorker, but for California. I’m a California girl through and through and while yesterday’s piece was my first, it hopefully won’t be my last. It’s a big reason why there was a fire under my ass to finally build myself an author website. This week is a resource week, so I’ll get to it after I share this actual footage of me at the stroke of midnight last night:
Quick note: Today I am sharing resources created and maintained by BIPOC creators. Whenever I share these resources, I try to send a tip to them if they supply a link for tips/donations. Thank you so much to those of you who send me tips or have paid subscriptions. You help offset the cost of writing and curating this newsletter and make it so I can keep it free for everyone. I appreciate you!
Resource #1: Anti-Racism Daily on Supporting Haitian Immigrants
I had hoped to do something more in-depth around this but I do not have the emotional bandwidth. This is so utterly depraved and disgusting that I need to take care of myself first. But I didn’t want to offer up nothing, so here is a link to the Anti-Racism Daily post on Supporting Haitian Immigrants. Their website design could use a little help because it is not clear that their post is full of links. The link text looks like any of the other text on their page. A screen reader should be able to pick up the links or I recommend hovering your mouse cursor around.
Resource #2: Indigenous Ally Resource List by Morgan Tsetta
I’m going to post their Instagram post on how to be a better ally to Indigenous peoples and communities below. It has a text for the link to this very large Google Doc of resources for Indigenous allies. Note: I do not know if the Instagram slides are accessible and I apologize. There are also a few images in the Google Doc that might not be accessible but the majority of it is text.
Resource #3: Smarter in Seconds by Blair Imani
Blair Imani is an educator, author, and influencer who is Black, bisexual, and Muslim. She has a book coming out at the end of this month, Read This to Get Smarter: About Race, Class, Gender, Disability, and More. I’m about ⅕ through it and I’m sure I’ll share more about it after it publishes. Being a reader is a big part of my identity (and self-care) so I’m always happy to share books as resources; however, I have many people in my life who don’t identify as readers but still hunger for information, which is one of the reasons I appreciate Blair Imani’s work so much. She does Instagram reels she titles “Smarter in Seconds” which are bite-sized videos of information to get someone started on their journey to learn more about a subject. She covers a wide variety of things like gender, gaslighting, rainbow washing, prison labor, cultural appropriation, and more. These are only about 15 seconds long and just enough to teach a couple facts and give someone an idea of what is being discussed. She has longer videos on her YouTube channel and I appreciate that she consistently captions all videos, whether they are on YouTube or Instagram. Here is an example of one of her Smarter in Seconds Instagram reels:
That’s it for this week! You can shop any books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481. If you want me to send you some happy mail, feel free to give me your address.
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That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
You can find our podcast, Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.