Ayesha Siddiqi: 'We need to stop waiting for permission to write'
|
Version 0 of 1. Ayesha Siddiqi spurs conversations across the internet. Whether she’s working in her capacity as editor in chief of the New Inquiry, an online magazine, or tweeting about the ethics of pledging allegiance, Ayesha plays an important role in advocating for the work of anti-oppression and anti-racism. I spoke with Ayesha not about only about Twitter and love of Kanye West, but how her Muslim identity informs her framework for justice and how she brings her values to the New Inquiry. How did you begin writing online? I joined Twitter to tell jokes that I couldn’t get away with on Facebook. I began to accumulate a following mostly because comedians would retweet my jokes. After a certain point, my awareness of that audience fostered a sense of responsibilty. I had grown up in communities where a lot of issues, which defined my experience and the experiences of others like me, were never discussed. People were, and are, being bombed with impunity in Pakistan, where my family is from, and no one here knows about it. Between the jokes, I would mention that. I’m never really inclined to share personal details, but I knew that surveys found that people who have a fear and distrust of Muslims correlated with people who do not know Muslims. I thought, “Well, here’s a few thousand of you,” many probably like the ones I had grown up with who didn’t know of a lot of Muslims, and now at least they knew one. The reactions were encouraging, but underscored the mystification around Muslim identity: ‘Oh wow, you know pop culture.’ It’s like, ‘Oh you’re Muslim too? You don’t seem oppressed, or brainwashed, or unhappy or anything like that.’ I’ve been so grateful for the opportunity for dialogue. But we don’t have the time to hold someone’s hand and walk them through the basic fact of someone else’s humanity everyday. I’m less patient with going through the motions of that, and now I let things speak for themselves a bit more. Your work often deals with how white supremacy impacts the lives of people of color. How do you believe it hinders people of color who want to write? Because I am a Pakistani-American immigrant, the media wasn’t something I ever imagined was available to me. Every creative person of color I talk to, whether it’s friends of mine or Lupita Nyong’o, their career wasn’t something they aspired to, let alone felt entitled to. It wasn’t until they saw something that gave them permission to do it that they did it. I always think, what if that moment hadn’t happened? What if Lupita Nyong’o had never seen The Color Purple? We are foreclosing so much available talent. One of the many tragedies of oppression is this vast untapped potential, not just on an individual level, but as a culture. Your writing often focuses on American pop culture. Why? I talk about Kanye West a lot, as a model for not just overcoming self-doubt, but insisting on your own greatness in a society that insists on determining your value for you. There’s almost a fake it ’til you make it aspect to it. These celebrities, we don’t know them intimately, but our reactions to them speak volumes of our larger relationship to sex, race, class. I became interested in pop culture as part of the conscious discovery to find what constitutes being “American”. When I’m talking about these figures, I’m never really talking about them, I’m talking about us. How do you bring your vision to the New Inquiry as editor in chief? We put out things we would want to read, whether that’s a supplement featuring Kenyan writers on the elections or different takes on a small film like Spring Breakers. What makes this platform rare is that we get to make it whatever we want. It’s just kids, no parents. The title plays on what very established old literary magazines sound like. I’m so appreciative for TNI’s community, whose impulse is to publish emerging voices from Ferguson or Palestine and then go out in the streets that night in solidarity with them. The main challenge as TNI grows is how to remain extra-institutional while becoming an institution. I’m optimistic because the people behind TNI are so firmly committed to not calcifying. We’ve never had a shortage of submissions or people willing to write for us. We insist on paying, but we don’t have much to give. There’s a reason that someone would bring a piece to us as opposed to someone who could give them more. Often it’s because there’s no other publication willing to take the risk of their idealism. How do you use Twitter to engage with your audience? Oftentimes, I’ll take ideas to Twitter that I would not prefer to present in a single essay or article. New platforms like Twitter are also more accessible to people who have been traditionally marginalised. I have to do a great deal of justification before I write or publish a piece: am I adding something that is truly original to the conversation? Very few people seem to share that sense of angst. When so much of your experience is erased and silenced, to insist upon it requires a great deal of daring. Even something that can feel inconsequential as an essay about pop culture can feel like a particularly audacious gesture of insistence on your personhood. Under white supremacy, the existing social environment, it will take a lot for that ever to feel natural. What’s required online is the basic concession to our own culpability and corruption, the fact that it’s possible for me to be anti-black, since we live in an anti-black society. The value in a platform like Twitter is that I know if I mess up, I’ll get called out. I’m so grateful for that because you have everything to gain when you’re open to that critique. The vocabulary of anti-racist and anti-oppression work has been brought to greater prominence through the online communities seeking refuge and space to discuss these issues. Academia only exists within a certain space. Work that’s meant to liberate all people cannot be presented in a language available to very few. We often take Twitter for granted; we do live in a world of digital divide, access to smartphones and access to Wi-Fi are not equally distributed. What has been your experience writing online? You can see my follower count drop by at least 10-15 people a time if I mention Muslims. I can say anything about white people, but if I acknowledge Muslims or that they are targets of bigotry, there is an absolute refusal to listen. It’s deeply hurtful. Someone once messaged me: “I hope you’re one of the virgin terrorists raped in heaven.” And others have messaged me “Stop pretending Islam isn’t a cult, I know you really want to be with white men instead.” When we talk about the harassment that women receive online, I think most conversations are dominated by the experiences of white women. Let’s talk about the harassment that black women receive, a woman wearing a hijab in her avatar. People will make attempts to find out where you live. I think some of it is because voices like mine aren’t the ones we are used to hearing. We are not primed to hear a young person of color, particularly a young South Asian woman, speak as if her words matter. Who are some women writers you would recommend? I would recommend Durga Chew-Bose. Her imagination and observations are always such a treat. I really appreciate Sarah Nicole Prickett. I love reading Hannah Black, she’s a contributing editor at TNI, and is a vital thinker. There is one other woman I would like to credit despite her not being published anywhere. But my mom just deserves so much recognition. I think in our culture, being a mother is often seen as a self-sacrificing position, and when they do something good, it’s just like it’s their job. But when they don’t meet these cultural expectations, it’s like they failed the entire world. I’m here because of her and my sister. What is some advice you have for women who want to write online? The voice is your head that’s asking how dare you is the voice produced by an environment that’s going to be challenged by your daring. The risk of undervaluing what you have to offer, especially for women of color, is so much greater than the risk of overvaluing it. Your contribution may not be grand, but its absence is going to be deeply felt and be part of a much greater void in our culture and history. What I’d recommend next is to find your women. Seek out and support, at all costs, women of color and put their testimony above all else. We have to go out of our way to support and value each other. Love is practice; you don’t gain expertise by never enacting it. Whether that’s liking a friend’s selfie, not withholding a compliment from another woman, or publicly supporting a woman who is being publicly piled on to. That just barely approaches equalising what we’re up against. My framework for the way we treat each other is deeply informed by my identity as a Muslim. That is where I first encountered justice and feminism. It’s called adab, which is the etiquette and style of how you treat others. These are lessons of Islam that my mother passed on, and my conceptualisation of the world and our place in it comes from that. What is one fun fact you would like to share with our readers? Of all things I talk about, there are other things I never get to talk about that I’m also interested in, like country music, westerns, and perfumes. I actually know a lot about perfume, and I’m very good at helping people figure out which scent works for them. |