I Found This Cross Literally In The Middle Of Nowhere, It Says: “Icide’s Cross - Pray As If You’ll

Winter attire for young women, made in the 1900s-1930s, Mocod village, Bistrita County,Transylvania, Romania.

photograph by Silvia-Floarea Tóth 

Incredible anamorphic artwork covering almost 50 buildings

 Created by street artist eL Seed in Cairo, this script lettering aligns when viewed from a point on the Moqattam Mountain. Designed for the community of Zaraeeb, the Arabic script is in a style the artist calls ‘Calligrafitti’:

“Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.” ‘إن أراد أحد أن يبصر نور الشمس، فإن عليه أن يمسح عينيه’

“Zaraeeb – Moqattam Mountain – EgyptIn my new project ‘Perception’ I am questioning the level of judgment and misconception society can unconsciously have upon a community based on their differences. In the neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr in Cairo, the Coptic community of Zaraeeb collects the trash of the city for decades and developed the most efficient and highly profitable recycling system on a global level. Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalised and segregated. To bring light on this community, with my team and the help of the local community, I created an anamorphic piece that covers almost 50 buildings only visible from a certain point of the Moqattam Mountain. The piece of art uses the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the 3rd century.”

David Scott taking in the view during an EVA from Command Module Gumdrop, seen from docked Lunar Module Spider, 1969 [4400 x 4600] x-post /r/HI_Res

Source: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/581/21315606974_1e27e70ef1_o.jpg

Oceania Week / Feminist Friday!

Indian women on the beach at Suva Fiji (before 1906) [Source]

Women in working clothes as indentured labourers Fiji (undated) [Source]

Students with teachers at the Dudley School Fiji (undated) [Source]

When we talk about Asian immigration to Oceania, the predominant narrative is male. Women didn’t go on long voyages to do hard manual labour and make their fortunes, they say…

But they did. Not many, in some cases–an 1861 survey of Australia counted 38,337 men and only eleven women–but in other cases, plenty. 

When I wrote about the Indo-Fijians, I noted that the Brits encouraged women as well as men to immigrate to stabilise the Indian population. These women were young widows, sex workers–and, according to writer Suresh Prasad, victims of kidnapping, some of them children.

And yes, they were abused in their labour. But, as journalist Gaiutra Bahadur has documented in her book Coolie Woman, they sometimes fought back:

Another immigrant, indentured in Fiji in 1906, recounted what happened to an overseer who told an Indian woman that he wanted her: “She asked him to wait till the next day. This woman, with two other women, devised a plan. When he came the next day, two of the women remained at a distance. When he approached the one he had spoken to the previous day, she asked him to take off all his clothes; when he lifted his shirt to take it off, all three women jumped on him and beat him up and threw him into a drain.” In 1916, a male schoolteacher who ended up indentured in Fiji told the tale of how he attacked an Indian driver who procured women for a European overseer. The ex-schoolteacher described what happened when the overseer came to the driver’s defense, with a gun: “The women of the lines, whom I called mother or sister and who treated me well, took up their hoes. He retreated, pleading to the women not to hit him, moving backwards he landed in a sewer pit. The women then threw shit on him. The overseer ran away.”

Women typically worked together in the same gang, plucking weeds in the cane fields, so they were already organized in a group by the plantation. Examples abound of overseers who took liberties being set upon by the women’s gang. According to the Fijian historian Vijay Naidu, “they would strike him to the ground and thrash him as well as do other more nasty things. In one incidence, they pinned the overseer to the ground and took turns at urinating on him. On another occasion, they made a line and walked over the overseer until his excreta came out.”

There’s a graphic account on that page of an overseer named Walter Gill, but the male gaze is a bit overblown there so it reads weirdly.

Of course, the road to gentrification had already started–in fact, I was originally going to do this post about Hannah Dudley, a British missionary who founded girls’ schools in the Indo-Fijian community from 1897 onwards.

Hannah Dudley with students Fiji (c. 1900s) [Source]

But rebellious coolie women makes for a much more interesting story. :)

After you click through that entire red carpet slideshow, go ahead and turn your sights onto this examination of who wore it best in the archives. 

Left: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, ca. 1890 / unidentified photographer. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Right:  Anita Vedder, 1891 or 2 / Fratelli D’Alessandri (Firm), photographer. Elihu Vedder papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Nov. 27, 1969: Youngsters found a good spot to view the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, from atop a telephone booth. “It was a day of abundance, not only of foods and goods, but of emotions also,” reported The Times. “Five raggedy children entered the Salvation Army cafeteria at 535 West 48th Street and, sitting among the weary old men and women who traditionally feast with the army on this holiday, received heaps of turkey and potatoes, peas and pumpkin pie.” Elsewhere, some G.I.s boycotted turkey dinner, to protest the American war in Vietnam, as did the Vegetarian Society of New York, to protest the exploitation of animals. Photo: Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Wooden Gate from Berbesti, Maramures County, Romania

Andy's awesome!

Musician Andy McKee Performs ‘Streets of Whiterun’ from Skyrim on a Beautiful Combination Harp Guitar

Star Wars: Rogue One places Asian heroes at the core of its revolution

by Kelly Kanayama Star Wars: Rogue One is a rare thing in mainstream media: a movie about revolution that actually tries to be revolutionary. Taking place right before the original Star Wars movie…

Rogue One foregrounds Asian visibility in a) a story about how there are no half measures when it comes to standing up against oppression and b) a franchise which has previously failed to provide any sort of remuneration for its appropriation from Asian cultures. Although the movie is a very recent addition to the Star Wars canon, its position in the franchise’s narrative timeline means we have always been part of that galaxy far, far away. At a time when we cannot afford to ignore issues of race and the civil liberties of the marginalised, this matters a great deal.

This. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. THIS ARTICLE IS EVERYTHING TO ME RIGHT NOW. 

Someday (maybe this year? idk) I will actively put a bunch of words down on paper about why I care so damn much about representation in popular culture. There are millions of words already out there, but…I can add a few more.