#postcolonial legacy

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“I started [social media] in 2017 to 2018. My wife actually started earlier, and I was supporting her from the background, behind the scenes.”

That all changed when her brother and mother, who didn’t have social media, were informed by a family friend that Shubhalaxmi Patil’s Instagram account had a rainbow emoji, a symbol of LGBTQ2S+ pride, next to her name.

“It was so silly. I didn’t think anyone from my family or my brother’s friend would understand that. But they told my brother, my brother explained it to my mom, and my mom told me to remove that emoji,” she said.

“And I was like, ‘I’m already shrinking myself so much that I’m not in the videos. I’m not publicly out. But you are asking me to remove that emoji, as well?’ I don’t know. It’s like the rebel in me, or I was just done with shrinking myself to make everyone around me feel comfortable. I just started making videos.”

Now living in Toronto, Patil met her wife in India while attending different colleges. They have been together for 13 years, but when they lived in India they had to keep their relationship more private for their own safety.

Imposed during British Colonial rule, a law criminalizing same-sex relationships was struck down in 2018. Another law acknowledging a third gender was passed even earlier in 2014. But much like Canada, stigma, harassment and violence towards queer and trans people remains ongoing in India.

"This is Desi Pride", by Shubhalaxmi Patil for The Tyee

[bossymarmalade]

Now, I did say my birth date could be either the 19th or 20th July because it all depended on when the messenger had enough errands to run as to make this trip. His only means of transport was by mule-drawn cart which would take at least 5 to six hours to get to the Warden's Office. The name as written on my birth certificate is "CHRISTIAH". I adopted the name "Krishna" perhaps when I had to enroll in school. I don't know if my teacher decided on the name Krishna since it was a more common [name].

Happy Father's Day to my dad born in 1936 who died on New Year's Day 2020, who spent his childhood in the sugar cane barracks in Trinidad and whose birthdate was in question because the labourers were both unlettered in English and unable to take a day off of work to travel to the Warden's Office in San Fernando to register their babies' births and names.

(Also I genuinely didn't know this was his legal name; I only found out just now reading my dad's autobiographical notes he left when he died, because oh boy that's how postcolonial legacy works. It's not unusual for Indo-Trinidadians to have strange legal names because the people at the office didn't know how to spell Hindi names.)

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Nona Faustine, "Dorothy Angola, Stay Free, In Land of the Blacks” & “When The Mind Forgets The Soul Remembers, Enslaved African Burial Ground, Bronx, NY” (2021)

More of Faustine's work in her collection "White Shoes" below the cut; contains nudity

“Ye Are My Witness, Brooklyn, NY” (2018)

“They Tagged the Land With Trophies and Institutions From Their Rapes and Conquests, Tweed Courthouse, NYC” (2013)

“Sojourner Truth, 74 Canal St., New York, NY” (2016)

"Like a Pregnant Corpse the Ship Expelled Her Into the Patriarchy" (2012)

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Charles E. Doty’s photograph of an incarcerated mother at the Bilibid Prison

The peacock chair, also called the “Bilibid Chair” or the “Manila Chair” alongside other pieces of wicker furnishings, that was part of a global trend toward the industrialization of leisure that drew in tourists from around the world at the turn of the 20th century.

Tourists to the Bilibid Prison could visit the workshops and gaze upon numerous incarcerated people working in any of the eight Industrial departments where they made furniture, processed construction materials, crafted metal pieces for interiors and exteriors, embroidered clothing and fine lacework, and tailored garments for the prison population.

Following their visit, tourists could order custom items from the sales catalog highlighting all the objects made by the prison’s incarcerated population. 

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[bossymarmalade]

I'm watching High on the Hog on Netflix (it's excellent; I also recommend the book it's based on) and this gentleman is talking about his childhood sharecropping cotton on an American plantation in the 1940/50s, how they were housed in former slave cabins, the labour stolen by the plantation owners -- and the similarities between this and how my father talked about growing up on the sugar cane barracks in the same era, in the remnants of indentured servitude of East Indians in Trinidad -- it's hitting me hard. How many experiences diasporan South Asians and Africans have in the new world that overlap and intertwine, and how successful white colonizers have been in dividing us to keep us from solidarity and resistance, and it's just ... ugh. One of the ugliest legacies of postcolonialism that we can't seem to shake.

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Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom (2022)

Pastor, educator, and descendant Rasool Berry examines how Christianity had been both weaponized against the enslaved in Texas, and [was] also a source of strength as they navigated different stages of liberation from Juneteenth through today. Berry connects with various experts, scholars, and historians in the state to unpack the suppressive use of faith — especially through the distribution of a “slave Bible” with redactions of any sections or scriptures pertaining to freedom and rebellion. The documentary tackles common but incisive questions, including why Black Americans would adopt Christianity when it was the faith of the enslavers who controlled them and how that same religion became an even stronger source of reprieve and validation as enslavement morphed into economic and legal bondage.

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Shani Roper, curator at the UWI Museum, and Mike G. Rutherford, curator of Zoology and Anatomy at the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow, with the Jamaican giant galliwasp specimen

A specimen of the Jamaican giant galliwasp, thought to be female and therefore named Celeste after its genus (Celestus), has been returned to the Natural History Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ) in one of the first such repatriations to the Caribbean. Celeste’s long-awaited homecoming, an important step toward reparations for colonial harms and injustices, has triggered wider debates around the repatriation of cultural and natural heritage and ancestral remains in the region. 

The Jamaican giant galliwasp was last recorded in the mid-1800s, before the lizard became extinct as a result of loss of habitat due to industrial agriculture and the booming colonial sugar cane industry. Rats arrived on board colonial ships and rapidly became a pest around Jamaica. Plantation owners subsequently introduced the small Indian mongoose to get rid of the rats; however, many endemic wildlife species also fell prey to the mongooses, including the Jamaican giant galliwasp (although other smaller endemic galliwasp species can still be found in Jamaica today). Many see its fate as yet another reminder of the far-reaching and disastrous consequences of colonialism. 

[bossymarmalade]

Already aggravated by the high-toned concern troll posts berating ppl for dedqueen memes

“you should be worried for the ordinary people who have to deal with the fallout of things going badly for the ruling English!”

“it’s time for you to speak up about how the monarchy is terrible!”

pals

What the fuck do you think those of us who’ve lived in the goddamn Commonwealth have been doing all this time, for generations? those of us whose families are indigenous or were enslaved or indentured? we ain’t been fuckin silent this whole time on exactly these points (even though god knows our languages were silenced). Maybe it’s a better time to find solidarity with post-colonial black and brown voices instead of assuming you’re the only ones who understand the severity of the situation and then deciding to scold people who are taking a well-deserved pleasure in the symbolism of the Royal Family dying off.