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Nii Ayikwei Parkes @BlueBirdTail
, 5 tweets, 5 min read Read on Twitter
My novel #TailoftheBlueBird has a fictional #Kenyan character called #Gawana who has run away from home to escape #British brutality. He's a vital sub character for me, but I'm often asked by Euro-readers who notice him: how is that possible? Nothing bad happened in Kenya! Well..
You can read more about things like the #DilutionTechnique used by the Brits to 'subdue' the #Kikuyu in this @guardian piece: theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/… Other sources reveal varied sexual assaults, which echo in my story Scotch Bonnets from #TheCityWillLoveYou. Writers hide research
Writers hide a whole lot of research, but it's those snippets from history that add ballast to our work. It's why I always say a book is the beginning of a conversation (more on that later) and as readers we can always do more. In fact I think I love being a reader more... #books
One of my people @Benjamin_P_Sam went and found the first reference to Gawana in #TailOfTheBlueBird...

#ATimeOfMadness
#History
#Fiction
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#TailOfTheBlueBird #Kenyan #Gawana #British #DilutionTechnique #Kikuyu #TheCityWillLoveYou #books #ATimeOfMadness #History #Fiction

More from @BlueBirdTail see all

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So, that long-promised lowdown on rice and slavery. There's a couple of things to understand from the off: "jollof wars" might be playful but they indicate a long West African history with rice.
That history also means that industrial head hunting actually began during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rice has been cultivated in West Africa for centuries although the variety native to the region was not considered to have high yields.
Soon, the WA strains were largely replaced with Asian oryza sativa strains and is now mainly cultivated in Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone and along the Ghana-Togo border. Locals continue to cultivate it because they consider the native rice more filling and sweeter... (call break..)
Read 18 tweets
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#TLDR - if you're a woman or from a #workingclass or 'minority' background in the UK, your exclusion from #publishing is not by accident it's #ByDesign. Inclusion programmes deal w/ symptoms; for change, we need redesign. (co @BareLit & @rlfwriters)

jamesmurua.com/long-read-nii-…
"They didn’t stop to consider the picture that includes what we have been taught to euphemistically call “side effects”, “human cost”, “collateral damage”." #ByDesign
"But consciousness is hard work and most of the privileged are unwilling to do the work."

#ByDesign
Read 10 tweets

Related threads

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Remember when the woman who wrote about her tomboy daughter in the @nytimes was harassed by trans activists? @Martina thanked the writer at the time. At this moment McKinnon et al are dredging it up to "discredit" Martina further. This goes beyond only women's sport.
2/ Davis was ruthlessly attacked in a coordinated campaign for what? For a mild article saying she wished people would stop asking if her gender nonconforming 7-year-old daughter was trans.
nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opi…
3/ Some activists even schemed about finding out where Davis and her family lived, so they could hang out in the local park and **try to talk to the 7-year-old**.
Read 6 tweets
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Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post”

By Ron Rosenbaum @RonRosenbaum1

THREAD✔
1/
THE TRUMP-HITLER COMPARISON.
Is there any comparison? Between the way the campaigns of Donald #Trump and Adolf #Hitler should have been treated by the #media and the culture? The way the media should act now? The problem of #normalization?
2/
Because I’d written a book called Explaining Hitler several editors had asked me, during the #campaign, to see what could be said on the subject.

Until the morning after the election I had declined them.
3/
Read 91 tweets
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Did anyone catch see this article from @JORISLUIJENDIJK?

It's well worth reading, and in the light of what's going on with Airbus, BMW, JLR etc it shows that he was talking sense.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
If the name sounds familiar it's because he is also the author of this absolutely superb article on the endemic problem in the collective psychology of England.

Maybe he has a point? Maybe the *England* doesn't belong in the EU?

prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-i…
Virtually all the national tabloids have blamed the EU for absolutely everything. They've vilified, slandered, and stoked hate towards Europe and (by extension) Europeans for decades.

People went out and bought that shit. Endorsed it.

It's not just that though.
Read 14 tweets
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Supreme Court oral arguments on same-sex marriage petition resumes at 2:30 PM today | via @InaReformina
@InaReformina Supreme Court resumes same-sex marriage oral arguments | via @InaReformina
@InaReformina SolGen Calida: The topic of same-sex marriage provokes impassioned debates and heated discussions in the PH. This is to be expected | via @SCPh_PIO
Read 142 tweets
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Home
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath

#home #warsanshire #poems
#WhereAreTheChildren
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
Read 8 tweets
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1. My first best friend, when I was 6, was a boy named Steven Wu. Steven's Mom was an acupuncturist, and one day after we dropped Steven off, my Dad told me acupuncture was against the law. My first experience of perceiving crime as glamourous.
2. When I was 11 years old, my father bought a CB radio. My CB handle was "Timber Wolf".
Read 153 tweets

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