Its Not a Small World If You Look Beyond What’s Put In Front of You

A while ago I saw a group talking about books and realize there was a book they’d read in common and someone said “It really is a small literary world”.

And that has haunted me ever since. Because it literally is not.

The problem is, imperialism puts certain things on platters so you are more likely to come across them by design. They make it difficult to search outside of their servings as a means of controlling the culture.
And they make algorithms that feed you things you’ll like within the framework of their mission so you’re satisfied and dissuaded from putting in the effort to search.

Believe it or not, there are more artists than I could dream of regularly being able to listen to that have spoken up about Palestine. A lot of them I had to search for, but there are a lot of them out there.

I have a library overflowing with books by authors that have spoken up about Palestine.

A lot of them don’t come up on a booktoker’s top 10, but there are so many out there.

Publishing is an inherently imperialist system. Which means it’s inherently white supremacist by design as well (note all the Nazi romances put out by the big publishing houses every fucking year). I know for a fact the big ones will reduce diversity in their lineups. (And after the Scholastic Bookfair fiasco, I’m sure Scholastic been foaming at the mouth. Waiting for this opportunity). And when both majority parties are campaigning on mass censorship and government control of information, it is more important than ever to get in the habit of exploring outside of the central media machine and searching out art and movements you align with.

It is an effort. It is a labor. But I think we need to understand how accepting whatever is put in front of us as the whole picture is another example of complying in advance.