The first note
Welcome to the first installment of Noted by Nesima! This is a weekly newsletter where I will be sharing what’s on my mind and what I’m noting in media, arts & culture and social impact.
Some of you may know me well in real life. Others are virtual friends or strangers. I hope this newsletter has a purpose for all of you and we can build a community together.
Ultimately, I want to curate stories and issues that matter, center marginalized voices, and generate interesting, nuanced conversations with a diverse group of people. My goal for this newsletter is to hopefully send you what you may not be finding elsewhere or add something new to the discussion when you think you’ve heard it all.
And finally, I want to be able to share everyday moments and musings from my life, so sometimes you’ll be getting a little of that from me, a human just trying to stay afloat in a noisy, chaotic world and reminding you it’s okay to be human too.
What I’m noting this week
The case for reparations went to Capitol Hill // I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions watching Wednesday’s hearing, but this was the first time since 2007 that the House of Representatives discussed the potential of studying the legacy of slavery and compensation to black descendants of slaves, which is huge. If you never read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s epic cover story on the topic, bookmark it and set aside some time this weekend. Also, read his testimony from the hearing.
A new publication on the lives of women of color // You’ll need to be a Medium member to read the stories in ZORA, but I applaud any initiative that is providing a space for WOC writers to write about issues and experiences that just aren’t heard enough such as why one PhD candidate won’t be teaching a novel about police brutality and how to raise a smart black woman.
#NoWhiteSaviors in humanitarian aid // Why do Westerners continue to parachute into countries they know nothing about to provide help that no one asked for? (Courtney Martin wrote a great piece on this if you’re not sure why that’s a problem.) An American missionary woman, Renee Bach, founded a nonprofit in Uganda in 2007 and started providing medical care to women and children, despite having zero medical training. She is allegedly responsible for the deaths of more than 100 Ugandan children and facing a lawsuit from two Ugandan mothers. Follow #NoWhiteSaviors on Instagram for more.
A podcast series on Native land rights // “An 1839 assassination of a Cherokee leader and a 1999 murder case – two crimes nearly two centuries apart provide the backbone to an upcoming 2019 Supreme Court decision that will determine the fate of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma.” That’s the premise of a new podcast called This Land, hosted by Rebecca Nagle, a journalist and a member of the Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. I also happened to meet Rebecca at a writers workshop last year where she first workshopped the article with us that turned into this podcast with Crooked Media! Subscribe now.
That’s it for for this first newsletter. Things will change and design/format will be tweaked as the weeks go on, so thanks in advance for your patience as I experiment.
If you have links to share (even if you are the writer/creator of that content), please send them my way and I’ll include them in an upcoming newsletter. I’m also open to questions and suggestions about topics to include.
Have a good weekend!
— Nesima