Thoughts on Reading and Writing as Resistance

Some thoughts and feelings, and some reading recommendations.

Good day, friends. This week, in light of the recent US election, I have been having a lot of thoughts about reading and writing—how for many of us, these activities bring comfort, joy, and escape, and how they can also be acts of resistance. In times like these, I have big feelings! It’s incredibly easy to feel powerless and downtrodden and not know what to do next; it can feel as if curling up with a book, or sitting down and writing your ‘silly little stories’, is a waste of time that could otherwise be used to do something “productive”. 

I would like talk a little bit about how I think reading and writing can go hand in hand with and be done alongside other means of community-building, aid, and resistance. Literature is, in my opinion, a powerful and disruptive tool that can help us re-evaluate, understand, and change the world around us. I think it can be a productive means of resistance.

“Now is not the time to stop writing or to write only to help our readers and ourselves escape reality. We can use our writing to fight our way out of what scares and overwhelms us. Some have labeled this “writing as resistance.” Yes, I want to resist injustice and intolerance, but I also want to foster understanding and build empathy… The best fiction remains a place where we can immerse ourselves in the world of characters who grapple with systems of oppression, demand agency, and struggle to make sense out of a complex world.” — Nancy Johnson (2018) 

You can read Nancy Johnson’s blog post about ‘Writing As Resistance’ here.

When I talk to my writing friends, we often return to the underlying feeling of helplessness we all feel in this time when marginalised people are re-victimized, rights are in danger of being stripped away, and publishing constantly says no to stories told by those who are the most systematically disadvantaged. I think it’s very easy for us to feel like there is no point even trying anymore, because who has the energy to keep beating a brick wall with their bare hands when it doesn’t seem to be crumbling? So, what? Why keep going? 

Well, I wrote a list. I encourage you to write a list as well, of all the reasons you feel compelled to write, to create, to share your stories.

1. If even one person like me reads something I wrote and feels seen, I will be happy.

2. I wish I had had stories like mine when I was growing up.

3. I remember reading fantasy books that taught me new things about myself. Being seen like that, and feeling like I saw and understood myself better, felt like magic. 

4. Living true to my values means writing true to my experiences.

5. Education is a powerful tool.

6. Everyone deserves to read stories that make them feel considered, valued, and seen. I want to try writing like that, to have my work be that for somebody.

I find writing lists of what I am chasing helps keep me focused, and enables me to keep going.

“I realize now that being an unexpected reader has turned out to be the most valuable gift of my intellectual life. The fact that I was an unexpected reader—an interloper, in so many worlds—meant that I was very rarely in any assumed complicity with a writer or the world she created. It meant that I was almost always lost, and always foreign, and always had to make my way through with the only tool I had: continuing to read.” — Elaine Castillo (How To Read Now)

I have recommended this book on my substack before, but Elaine Castillo’s ‘How To Read Now’ is a great essay collection on media and critically engaging with it. The ability to say “I just read for escapism” is a massive privilege—oftentimes the books that allow escapism for you, mean escape from my identity; I don’t exist in these worlds, so I don’t get the comfort of escaping to them.

When Elaine talks about how to read, she isn’t just talking about books, either. She talks about how to read movies, TV shows, and history. Reading critically, learning to question and dismantle the lenses of interpretation we’ve been conditioned to view the world through is incredibly important. So many ways of interpreting are “everywhere and unseen”, and only by being aware of them can we begin to challenge the harmful status quo. 

Reading as resistance doesn’t always mean reading non-fiction, but I will always encourage you to try picking some up! You will find a couple non-fiction and fiction reading recs at the bottom of this post.

a pile of colour-changing books in a tall stack, surrounded by yellow stars of different sizes.

I have a feeling most of the lovely people who read my substack will take little to no issue with the idea that books and reading are political, but/and I wanted to share some thoughts on this topic as well, in part because it’s knocking around in my brain and partly because I hope it might encourage some people to at least get okay with others reading differently. 

This week I saw multiple tiktok videos talking about how booktok (the umbrella for people who like to read books and post about bookish things on tiktok) is “for fun, not politics”. Other more wonderful bookish creators have already effectively pushed back against this, so I don’t have anything too original to say, but here is what it made me think about in the context of resistance:

1. Reading for fun, and being aware of the politics of a book’s content or context, are not mutually exclusive activities for a lot of readers. It is not a binary, either-or.

2. It is an immense privilege to be able to turn off your brain and “just read for fun”. As someone who is not able-bodied, finding worlds to escape into is bloody hard, and the reasons for that are, you guessed it, political. Oftentimes, people’s go-to popular mainstream fantasy escape books are worlds in which people like me don’t exist, are horribly oppressed, are treated like fodder, and or they are written to buy into and perpetuate the same systems that oppress me to this day.

3. When we start trying to stop people from talking critically about the media they consume, we are engaging in behaviour that seeks to suppress and silence opinions, invalidate feelings, and ultimately uphold whatever system is resisting critique.

4. Who benefits the most from trying to stop “political talk” in reader spaces? Who benefits the least?

5. Do people actually like and respect the work and or the author if they’re reducing it to purely unserious “brain-off” material, and ignoring what makes up that story’s foundations—that the author literally designed the book around?

6. Does everyone actually agree on a shared and understood definition of what “politics” and “political” mean? It seems like we don’t, otherwise romantasy books about war, imperialism, class exploitation, and sexism for exmaple, wouldn’t be so absolved of their own built-in politics by the very people shutting down “political talk” about them.

7. If not everyone has the privilege of escape, it follows that a huge community like booktok will include people who push back against that idea. If we really want booktok to be a place where people can escape, then we cannot be resistant to criticism, and instead must commit to the work: acknowledging hard truths, centering compassion, admitting [complicity in] harm, and listening, even when it’s easier to ignore.

Ironically, a whole host of ‘invisible politics’ is revealed through the desire to avoid politics. Whether we are openly critical, or telling people to keep it to themselves, whether we are interrogating fiction or undermining other’s attempt to interrogate, both are concerned with systems of policy, power, and procedure. Resistance to politics—that is, being apolitical—is still a political stance.

Personally, I prefer to be resistant to the resistance to politics, as part of my resistance. Resistingly. As well as:

🌷Helping disabled people resist by donating and supporting mask blocs!

🌹Supporting abortion access in the US by donating and supporting abortion funds!

“Writing and reading are not all that distant for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer’s imagination, for the world that imagination evokes. Both require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and responsibility.” ― Toni Morrison. (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination)

I’ve been trying not to lose my grip on myself and my goals lately, in part because I am so isolated (thank you, ongoing unmitigated pandemic), and in part because so much of the world seems to be falling apart. Plus, ‘resistance’ is a powerful word. It feels big, and I am just one person. It feels like something that demands more than sitting at a computer and typing up a story, or a blog post, or an email to my representatives, or a social media post of solidarity. Sometimes I think my efforts are inadequate, but these are the tools I have, and I wonder how much of my self-criticism in this area is driven by unchecked ableism. Reading and writing are some of my everyday forms of what some might see as ‘invisible’ dissent, when I cannot engage in serial and organized resistance.

We do the best we can. Doing my best means always trying to challenge the rules and expectations that are not designed to keep us safe and well, even if in writing about disability means that in the last 12 months I have recieved around 76% more rejections than I was when I wrote stories without it 🫣

Throughout my life I have been harmed by many of these rules and expectations, am being harmed by them, and have seen many others harmed by them. So, through writing, I hope I can (albeit slowly) create new worlds by and for me, and for people who don’t often have space made for them. Through reading critically and engaging in thoughtful conversations about media, I hope to be one of the many people who help call for change and uplift much-needed voices.

Maybe we can chip away at the wall, one story at a time.

What do you think?

Let me know! 💖

Now I leave you with suggested readings, both fiction and non-fiction!

• “How To Read Now” by Elaine Castillo. As mentioned earlier, I enjoyed these essays on media and critical engagement.

• “How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom” by Johanna Hedva. This is a hard-hitting essay collection about disability as lived experience, identity, as an intersection, and more.

• “Metal From Heaven” by August Clark. This is a queer sci-fi fantasy that I am 60% of the way through and LOVING. It engages with class, identity, and social justice, etc.

• “The Drowned Woods” by Emily Lloyd-Jones. This book is a YA fantasy I recently read and enjoyed. It engages with power, identity, and exploitation.

• “This All Come Back Now” (anthology) edited by Mykaela Saunders. I really enjoyed this short story collection by Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander writers. It engages with identity, racism, colonialism, and more. 

• I’m currently making my way through A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice by Katie Tastrom as well.

🌷 Help disabled people resist by donating and supporting mask blocs!

🌹 Support abortion access in the US by donating and supporting abortion funds!