echolalia echolalia week 2 reflections

Hi everyone. This week I read "Tracking ICE's Profits" and the pieces from the "The Organization" section of echolalia echolalia, and I wanted to write out some reflections to get start thinking about our chat in an hour.

(I'm continuing to try the thing where I share some reflections and also remind you that we're meeting to chat about readings on the same day. If you'd rather hear my reflections on Fridays or earlier in the week, let me know and I'll consider it for our next book.)

If you haven't bought echolalia echolalia, you might want to just order our next book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton.

(Our next book after Tip of the Spear will be Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, if you want to order both and save some money on shipping! Proceeds from book orders placed with Open Books go to The Sameer Project via Workshops4Gaza, but if you can't buy from Open Books, please donate directly to one of The Sameer Project's campaigns if you can.)

reflections

Everything Shi's written in this collection has been pretty jarringly laid out, but the choices Shi made for "Industry of Caring" were comparatively ... arresting. My partner pointed out the endnotes, which I usually neglect to read (which is embarrassing, because it turns out all of the notes are very interesting), and I want to deal with that facet of it in a moment, because I think those endnotes are worth reflecting on in their own right.

"Industry of caring" and "industry of language" feel like two points separated by a chasm. Maybe Shi didn't want it to feel as dichotomous as that, but I found myself imagining wordless work that I've done for others like setting up food for a potluck and cleaning up afterward; and I contrast it with the effortfully wordy work that I'm doing right at this moment as I write these reflections. I try to draw that span closer, as in literally I'm trying to turn this work into getting people to buy the book and for that money to go to The Sameer Project, where they can use that money to buy food, tents, and other materials to keep people alive. But it feels different for me and I recognize the "ski resort vacation" feeling Shi evokes.

I also thought a lot about grocery bags. Grocery bags, and the deep grooves they dig into my fingers as I carry back groceries from the store or from my car, as they cut off my circulation and make my fingers hurt more and more every second. I thought about the grocery bags I've been collecting in my kitchen, tightly packed under the sink in preparation for some crisis. Or maybe I just keep them around because they hurt to carry inside, and I won't let them go that easily.

I dwelled a lot on these last lines:

equally. they were

fair. Eventually

you learned

your hand

I don't think she meant it this way, but I keep reading it like "you learn the hand you are dealt" rather than "learning something like the back of your hand" (although to be honest even that reading might not be where she was pointing with any of this?). I wonder what people think about any of this - if anyone had any of the same readings as me, or if this all sounds inscrutable. I'm looking forward to hearing if or how people read it.

I also really want to talk with people about where Shi sourced the words and phrases for this piece. For lack of better language, it's composed from disparate sources that looks like a ransom note, and in the endnotes she reveals that some of the words come from her own medical files as well as other bureaucratic racist authorities, like the text of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923. But then there are pieces of text apparently sourced from other literature, from what appear to be children's textbooks and workbooks for Chinese language learners, and from other intensely varied sources. I feel like I'd benefit from knowing which words came from which sources, but that's possibly asking for too much of a close reading.

Anyway, like I said, I'd like to hear what people thought of this piece, or others.

video chat details

In an hour, at 12pm ET, let's get together¹ and chat about whatever we've read. The link to join is here (if that doesn't work, the URL is below)

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

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