Guest Post: Romancing The Blog

This can save lives of many Black people who were wrongly convicted and arrested on drug possession charges. Please spread!

Atena Farghadani is a 28-year-old Iranian artist. She was recently sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in prison for drawing a cartoon.

This cartoon, that she posted on her Facebook page last year, depicts members of the Iranian parliament as animals. It was drawn in protest of new legislature in Iran that will restrict access to contraception and criminalise voluntary sterilisation. Atena’s charges include ‘spreading propaganda against the system’ and ‘insulting members of parliament through paintings’.

Last August, 12 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard came to Atena’s house, blindfolded her and took her to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran. According to Amnesty International:

“While in prison last year, Atena flattened paper cups to use them as a surface to paint on. When the prison guards realised what she had been doing, they confiscated her paintings and stopped giving her paper cups. When Atena found some cups in the bathroom, she smuggled them into her cell. Soon after, she was beaten by prison guards, when she refused to strip naked for a full body search. Atena says that they knew about her taking the cups because they had installed cameras in the toilet and bathroom facilities – cameras detainees had been told were not operating.”

She was released in November and gave media interviews and posted a video on YouTube detailing her beatings, constant interrogations and humiliating body searches. She was then rearrested possibly in retaliation for speaking out and has been imprisoned ever since. In January, Atena went on a hunger strike to protest the horrible prison conditions. Her health suffered dramatically, and after losing consciousness and suffering a heart attack in February, she was forced to eat again.

The quote used in the comic is taken from the speech Atena gave at her trial. It has been translated into English by the Free Atena Facebook page. You can read the whole thing here.

Time is now against her, she has just two weeks to lodge an appeal. Michael Cavna, comic journalist for The Washington Post, has launched a campaign appealing to artists to help bring awareness to Atena’s case by creating their own artwork in support of Atena and using the hashtag#Draw4Atena. Can a bunch of artists and a hashtag really make a difference and put pressure on the Iranian Government to release Atena? Probably not. But just remember that Atena is currently in prison enduring horrible conditions, and if her appeal isn’t successful, she will be there for another twelve years. FOR DRAWING A CARTOON AND POSTING IT ON FACEBOOK. Don’t we owe it to her to at least try?

Alot worse actually happens out there.. once Being a soldier (which turned me into an activist) showed me..

Signal boost.

We’re looking to expand the Disability in Kidlit team, as the website has grown in popularity in recent months and we’re working on exciting new projects. 

Keep reading

“Star Trigger” by Vincent Patrick

“Star Trigger is basically a superhero story, laced with western undertones, geekyness and alien symbiotes! Helena, is a fearful girl living in a semi-futuristic Denver, CO. Her life takes an interesting turn when she comes into contact with an alien named Ocho (also pictured above). I’ve been fleshing this thing out for awhile and I’m really excited to share this with everyone! There’s a few pages up already, some of which I really had fun with! Feel free to check it out at startriggercomic.com it updates on Wednesdays!”

Submitted by kingkaijuice

[ Follow SuperheroesInColor on facebook / instagram / twitter / tumblr ]

With 2015 behind us, it’s time for Audrey to look ahead and see what 2016 has to offer. And by her quick survey, there are a ton of YA books by or about people of color to look forward to in the next six months. Here’s a quick list of four that caught her eye:

The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1) by Emily Skrutskie Flux || February 8, 2016

For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. She’s been a Reckoner trainer-in-training ever since she could walk, raising the genetically-engineered beasts to defend ships as they cross the pirate-infested NeoPacific. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water.

There’s no time to mourn. Waiting for her on the pirate ship is an unhatched Reckoner pup. Santa Elena wants to take back the seas with a monster of her own, and she needs a proper trainer to do it. She orders Cas to raise the pup, make sure he imprints on her ship, and, when the time comes, teach him to fight for the pirates. If Cas fails, her blood will be the next to paint the sea.

But Cas has fought pirates her entire life. And she’s not about to stop.

These Vicious Masks (These Vicious Masks#1) by Tarun Shanker Swoon Reads || February 9, 2016

Jane Austen meets X-­Men in this gripping and adventure-­filled paranormal romance set in Victorian London.

England, 1882. Evelyn is bored with society and its expectations. So when her beloved sister, Rose, mysteriously vanishes, she ignores her parents and travels to London to find her, accompanied by the dashing Mr. Kent. But they’re not the only ones looking for Rose. The reclusive, young gentleman Sebastian Braddock is also searching for her, claiming that both sisters have special healing powers. Evelyn is convinced that Sebastian must be mad, until she discovers that his strange tales of extraordinary people are true—and that her sister is in graver danger than she feared.

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi St. Martin’s Griffin || May 3, 2016

Cursed with a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, sixteen-year-old Maya has only earned the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her world is upheaved when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. But when her wedding takes a fatal turn, Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Yet neither roles are what she expected. As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds friendship and warmth.

But Akaran has its own secrets – thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Beneath Akaran’s magic, Maya begins to suspect her life is in danger. When she ignores Amar’s plea for patience, her discoveries put more than new love at risk – it threatens the balance of all realms, human and Otherworldly.

Now, Maya must confront a secret that spans reincarnated lives and fight her way through the dangerous underbelly of the Otherworld if she wants to protect the people she loves.

The Star-Touched Queen is a lush, beautifully written and vividly imagined fantasy inspired by Indian mythology.

Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana Razorbill || June 21, 2016

For Tara Krishnan, navigating Brierly, the academically rigorous prep school she attends on scholarship, feels overwhelming and impossible. Her junior year begins in the wake of a startling discovery: A message from an alternate Earth, light years away, is intercepted by NASA. This means that on another planet, there is another version of Tara, a Tara who could be living better, burning brighter, because of tiny differences in her choices.

As the world lights up with the knowledge of Terra Nova, the mirror planet, Tara’s life on Earth begins to change. At first, small shifts happen, like attention from Nick Osterman, the most popular guy at Brierly, and her mother playing hooky from work to watch the news all day. But eventually those small shifts swell, the discovery of Terra Nova like a black hole, bending all the light around it.

As a new era of scientific history dawns and Tara’s life at Brierly continues its orbit, only one thing is clear: Nothing on Earth–and for Tara–will ever be the same again.

What books are on your radar for the first half of 2016?

Our boxset Wrath and Ruin releases today!

Wrath and Ruin is now available!

25 bestselling authors. 24 exclusive novels. One epic collection.

  Take flight with all new and exclusive stories that are out of this world, including full-length novels from some of today’s most popular names in science fiction and fantasy!From magnificent dragons, bloodthirsty aliens, and mad genetic engineers to intergalactic wars, magical curses, and…

View On WordPress

Featured artist: animudio

WΛW | Like : Tweet : Pin : Blog

#WeAreWakanda

Micro-aggressions, Unpacking privilege, and The Knee Jerk Response

Micro-aggressions happen all the time. Everyday. Even by people you think are your allies. For example: Black woman says:  I am so upset about the violence against the Black community. White LGBTQIA woman responds: What about the LGBTQIA community? What about violence against us? This is a micro-aggression. This is an invalidation of the Black Woman’s statement even though the White woman is right about violence in the LGBTQIA community. However, by co-opting the conversation, by making it about her own marginalization at that immediate moment, she has asserted her white privilege and any chance for a conversation ends abruptly. To be a good ally, we must learn to listen and support each other when people who are hurting are talking. Your time to talk will come soon enough, but don’t take it at the expense of others. Don’t let your privilege co-opt a conversation on race. I will give you a more personal example. I grew up during the race riots between the Korean American and Black community in NYC. My parents owned a store and we lived in the apartment above it. It was a scary time. At school I got into an argument with a Black classmate. She said it was incredibly hard being Black and having to deal with racism. In my young, resentful and admittedly self-centered mind, I didn’t like what she said. So I responded – “Well Korean Americans get hate and racism from both the Black and White communities.” That was a blatant micro-aggression. I invalidated her by pushing my marginalization over hers. And I was completely wrong. But at that time, I was unaware of my privilege. In my mind, my marginalization – being Asian – was just as bad as being Black. I was so wrong. Now I know that I have a privilege and if I I could go back in time, I would apologize to her. But I can’t and so the only thing I can do is keep learning and try my best to do better. I am Asian American, straight, cis-gender, educated, middle class. And even though I am a woman of color with invisible disabilities, I am also deeply aware of my privilege, because I am a woman of color who is not Black or Brown. I am also a woman with disabilities that are not visible. While these marginalizations make my life extremely difficult, I still have privilege and I must constantly remind myself to never forget that. It is not easy, and it is not supposed to be. But you check your privilege because it is the right thing to do. To be a good ally. Recently, I have noticed a troubling trend among white allies who, perhaps unknowingly, talk over and invalidate WOC by playing their own individual marginalization card. And in general, I’ve noted that it always comes on the heels of Black Women talking about race and intersectionality. This troubles me deeply because it causes resentment. It also bothers me when other WOC (especially other Asian women) aren’t as supportive of Black Women as they should be. I saw this happen in an online group, a good friend of mine (who is Black) tried to speak on race and found her whole discussion derailed in a heavy pile on by white marginalized feminists who co-opted the conversation. It was so frustrating that I posted the Huffington post video on White Feminism with this statement, “I think this video should be mandatory viewing for everyone especially because sometimes I think white feminists who are also LGBTQIA+ or disabled forget that intersectionality applies to WOC also, and that no matter what your marginalization is you have never experienced not being white. And if that statement makes you mad, you need to think about why.“

What I received back was a whole lot of angry Knee Jerk reactions. And what I mean by that is the “How dare she try to tell me that my marginalization is not as important as hers!” “How dare she try to police diversity!” “How dare she not check her privilege!” “How dare how dare how dare…” I call this a Knee Jerk reaction because these are not all bad people. These are people who are invested in the diversity movement themselves. So they are not the enemy. And yet they responded with a knee jerk reaction to being called out on having white privilege. But instead of getting so angry, accusing me of being a bully, demanding that I be banned and reported (for what, asserting my opinion?), and trying to silence me, they should have done exactly what I asked in that last sentence. They needed to think about why it made them so uncomfortable. They needed to reflect on their own privilege. What they did instead, was focus on their own marginalization as if it somehow negates their white privilege. The problem is that nothing negates white privilege. The poorest, most marginalized white person in the country will still not have the racist issues that the Black community faces. They will not be poisoned knowingly by their government. They will not live in fear that the police will kill their young children and never be punished. They do not have to worry about having the highest incarceration numbers in the land, simply because of the color of their skin. They do not have to worry about the school to prison pipeline because of inadequate resources in public schools. But because these issues do not actually affect white feminist’s personal lives, it is easy to focus solely on their own individual problems. After the responses so vividly proved my point, I left the group because I cannot stay where people believe that silencing the voices of POC instead of promoting open discourse is ever acceptable. Of course, this is not the first time I have been silenced and made to feel unwelcome by white feminists. Truth is this is commonplace for WOC. But it hurts more when it is done by people who say they are our allies.

I know that I will receive hate mail and harassment, but on this I feel too strongly to stay quiet. Because I stand in solidarity with the Black community. And we all need to speak out when wrong is wrong. The thing is, if a white person’s response to someone talking about White Privilege is to say “I’m marginalized too!” then they don’t get it. Because that is, essentially, how privilege works. It wants to take over the conversation and invalidate other people’s struggles. And if your response to that is “why is race more important?” I want to point you to one of my new favorite blogs -Reading While White. They address this very issue as follows:

This is a great explanation because it doesn’t say race is the most important issue, what it does is make clear is that race is the most all encompassing. That it crosses into all identities, all marginalizations. Intersectionality means that POC also exist in the LGBTQIA and disabilities communities. It affects all races, not just white people. But white privilege, even within those communities, wants to dominate. Unpacking your privilege is a hard thing. It is not easy. Nobody wants to think of themselves as being in the wrong, they’d rather think of themselves as being wronged. So you stay secure in your self-righteous indignation of “How dare yous” instead of thinking about how systemic racism and your own privilege has seeped so firmly into all aspects of your life that you can’t even see it. In order to be a good ally and make a difference in the fight for ALL OF US, we must recognize our own privileges and make a public stand to fight for what is right. But we cannot do that if our white allies don’t recognize what white privilege is and how deeply entrenched it is in our world. So I challenge white allies to really do some serious and probably very uncomfortable  self-reflection. When POC ask you to check your privilege, do you get mad and immediately demand that they check theirs? When POC talk about their experiences do you roll your eyes and snidely comment about how it’s not always about race? When someone says something racist, do you just stand there looking awkward and ignore it? When the status quo is racist, do you just accept it? When people talk about taking action, do you just nod your head in agreement and do nothing? When POC speak on oppression, do you respond with your own tale of oppression? 

In order to be a good ally, it is important to know when to speak up and when to shut up and just listen. And if you aren’t sure what to do, all you have to do is ask. How can I be a good ally to you? How can I support you? 

In conclusion, I will leave you with Daniel Jose Older’s The 5 Stages of Confronting Your Own Privilege. Here’s hoping that we can all get past number 1.

So today is Day 6 of the #authorlifemonth challenge 😊 I'll be doing two parts, so here's Part II It's supposed to highlight fanart/edit. I've found that with #NA vs #YA readers are less vocal when they read and like something. So people who've loved our #NA #romance #SamePage don't necessarily shout it out as opposed to #TheMarkOfNoba I've decided to make cool homemade fanart😇 The two ppl who inspired their looks were Travis Garland, a bomb ass singer I met and loved 😆 and Chime Edwards a hair vlogger I have hair envy over! So that's what inspired the art👍 #naturalista #naija #nigerian #interracial #bwwm #diversebooks #bookstagram #diverse #diversityjedi #diverseromance #booknerdigans #portugueseboys #blackgirlmagic #providence #messyromance