Jesus Heart I Saw That Vintage T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com
With Secure Checkout (100% Secure payment with SSL Encryption), Return & Warranty (If you’re not 100% satisfied, let us know and we’ll make it right.), Worldwide shipping available, Buy 2 or more to save shipping. Last Day To – BUY IT or LOSE IT FOREVER. Only available for a LIMITED TIME – NOT FOUND IN STORES! Click here to buy this shirt: Happy Halloween Mickey Duck Shirt, hoodie, tank top and long sleeve tee When I first met the rising poet Rosie Stockton two summers ago, they began to make me rethink the entire idea of performing gender. Stockton lives within the blurred edges of femininity and masculinity — all tenderness and swagger, acrylic nails and binders, bright-pink mesh and baggy pants. Their anarchic approach to “trolling the gender categories” would help inspire my own free-sliding on the gender spectrum, a way of playfully matching my lack of allegiance to any one gender to how I dressed and behaved.Stockton, who is from New Mexico, is releasing their debut book, Permanent Volta, about gender, sexuality, and love this week. It is a lush collection of poetry about the possibilities of love outside capitalism, and love as a way to resist its abuses. The poems are exceedingly relevant to our uneasy time: about hating work and being broke, but also about being in love, and needing sex, luxury, and care.Stockton’s book places them within a scene of young and provocative poets like Rachel Rabbit White (a Stockton fan), Ariana Reines, and Precious Okoyomon who are using poetry to investigate the pleasures and perils of sex, work, and power. Stockton began the book with the intention of writing about labor and revolt, but ended up writing about queer love, friendship, and desire as they realized that relationships are the antidote to the exploitative nature of work.“Capitalism convinces us that we’re individuals, that we’re isolated, that we’re separate from one another, and that personal responsibility is the ultimate good life,” Stockton says. “Love is something that inherently is a threat to that myth of individualism.” One of their poems asks, “What if we kissed/in an Amazon locker,” an intimacy in a world of alienation and depressed wages.Stockton and I spoke this spring, under a pomegranate tree in the backyard of their home in Los Angeles, about love and work. Stockton’s platinum blonde hair was pulled back, and they were wearing a white tank top, denim jacket, black pants — and a tiny string of pearls.You write about the conflict of love and the way capitalism wants us to experience love.Love can be playful and experimental, healing and activating. It can offer possibilities for growth, reflection, and breaking out of lonely modes of being. Capitalism regulates our experience of romantic love into the couple form envisioned by heteropatriarchy, because this is the form of social life most hospitable to capitalist accumulation. The state tries to control our experience of love through laws against deviant modes of sexuality and gender, in order to make us fit into capitalism’s needs. But I believe a politics of care and queer love is in excess of this.How did you get from writing about work to love?I was thinking about conversations around the politics of reproductive labor. There is a slogan that came from the Italian Marxist feminism’s “Wages for Housework” movement: “They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.’ There are also traditions of thought articulated by Black Marxist feminists that argue against the wage. Like, we don’t want to turn care and love into labor: what else is possible? In one poem I write: “Can we love with inadequate politics?” I wrote poems to people I care for: friends, lovers, and those who are both. I wanted to fuck with the poetic forms associated with romantic love (like the sonnet!) to actually experience the love that animates my life.So what’s your take? Should all care be paid for?Domestic labor and care work are exploited by racial capitalism, and have been a historically difficult sector to organize. For those doing this kind of labor, of course it has to be paid, and all workers need labor protections. That said, the wage isn’t the ultimate demand that I have around compensating reproductive labor, or practices of care and love. In this book I imagined refusing the wage as the path toward love and liberation. Leftist thinkers like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, and Rosa Luxemburg are influential to me.The book is simmering with radicalness. What are some of the politics that inform your work?These poems are personal, but informed by politics that demand the abolition of police and prisons and the decriminalization of sex work. I’m interested in the intersection of labor organizing and abolitionist mutual aid projects that call for better working conditions while dreaming of autonomous systems that get everyone’s basic needs met.I study radical traditions and organize with groups that center those most vulnerable to state violence and exploitation, and often this means people who are working in criminalized or unvalued economies, or those who can’t or refuse to enter the traditional workforce. Many in the decriminalization movement fight to demand the basic fact that sex work is work, but also emphasize how being recognized as a “worker” is a false promise of safety. This shows up in my poems: “I didn’t mean to ask for money/I meant to ask for a different set of relations”! I’m interested in politics that demand the abolition of work, the end of the racist and transphobic carceral state, and a reorganization of care, healing, and social life. These politics refuse to believe recognition from the state is the only path. I use the sonnet because I want to understand how it regulates love and creativity. Take it back as a poetic means of production of romantic love! Do you see yourself as part of a specific scene of poets working through these themes?Absolutely. I feel in community with poets who allow politics to enter their poems — leftist queer politics and the politics of pleasure and abundance. Poetry as a form is so resonant with queerness. There’s room for play, puns, winks, kink, breaking the rules. These are tropes that I associate with queer community and desire. At the charter school in Harlem where Darlene Okpo first worked full-time as an English teacher, students had to get through 1.5 million words by the end of the year in order to pass. Without the word count, they were required to attend summer school. Formerly a teacher of after-school art programs, entrepreneurship, and theatre, Okpo has been educating since 2009. In a city as culturally rich as New York (where Okpo has lived in all five boroughs, including the honorary sixth, New Jersey) there are stories everywhere—on plaques, statues, park maps, and in bulk at the city’s many libraries and bookstores. But Okpo understands that students—and all people—need to be introduced to the right stories in order to find the pleasure of a great book.“I had this one particular student that had an A+ in reading, but her word count was low. One day I asked her why she wasn’t reading and she told me that the books that they have at the school library were dull, and that she wanted to read more books that focused on African-American characters,” Okpo recalls. An avid reader from an early age, Okpo already had some young adult books in her personal library. The next day, she brought her student Tiffany D. Jackson’s book called Monday’s Not Coming. “She would read it during class and during lunch. In a matter of three days, she completed the book and requested another book to read. She was also a popular student and my other students would see her reading, and come to me for books.” By doing this, students with low word counts caught up within weeks. “Everybody is a reader, you just have to find the right book that speaks to your soul.”At the start of May, Okpo opened a bookstore, Adanne, in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, which offers the same warm approach to learning that Okpo offers the students in her classrooms. It’s named after Okpo’s mother, Pauline, whose nickname is Adanne, meaning “she is her mother’s daughter” in Igbo. “As I was creating the aesthetic for the store, my friends and family would visit and we would always end up talking about our current issues. We talk about education, real estate, financial literacy, and many other topics. The books I chose for the store inspired these conversations.” The store is a celebration of African-American culture, with walls adorned by album covers such as “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” and shelves stocked with “Defend Black Womanhood” t-shirts.It’s not the first time Okpo’s work, and her sense of storytelling, has been inspired by her family. In 2009, when Okpo was 22, she and her sister Lizzie founded the brand William Okpo, named after their father, who “irons his clothes every day—even when he’s cutting the lawn, he’s fashionable.” Both parents are immigrants from Nigeria who work for the city of New York. “Fashion tells a story that we’re able to visually read—it’s that designer’s story,” Okpo notes. “When it comes to written storytelling, you’re reading the story and also looking at the identity of the author.”Adanne will be hosting weekly and monthly workshops focused on catalyzing change. The first one, taking place on June 5th, will be a discussion of issues concerning education during the pandemic. “I feel that the government didn’t do a great job in terms of taking care of our students. Now it’s time to bring that to the forefront,” Okpo says.Okpo is currently building out Adanne’s website, but for now, for those who can’t visit in person, she offers book recommendations to readers of varying ages and interests:My Feet are Laughing, by Lissette NormanNana Akua Goes to School, by Tricia Elam WalkerI Promise, by Lebron JamesA Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart, by Zetta ElliotLook What Brown Can do, by T. Marie HarrisAmerican Street, by Ibi ZoboiMonday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. JacksonJuliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby RiveriaFlyy Girl, by Omar TyreeThe Coldest Winter Ever, by Sista SouljahConcrete Rose, by Angie ThomasPowernomics, by Dr. Claude AnersonThe Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley and Malcolm XThe Kidnapping Club, by Jonathan Daniel WellsAn African American and LatinX History of the United States, by Paul OrtizThe Mis- Education of the Negro, by Carter G WoodsonAn Indigenous People’s History of The United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizHood Feminism, by Mikki KendallAin’t I A Woman, by Bell HooksWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, by Joan MorganWomen Race Class, by Angela Davis “I’m a little old now to be an enfant terrible,” says Virginie Despentes. Nonetheless, it’s a label she’s worn proudly since her brilliant, incendiary manifesto, King Kong Theory, was published in France in 2006, when Despentes was 37. “In France, we like conflict, and I’m not exactly an easy character.” King Kong Theory minced no words and wasted no time from the moment the needle dropped on page one:I want to be crystal clear: I’m not here to make excuses, I’m not here to bitch. I wouldn’t swap places with anyone because being Virginie Despentes seems to me a more interesting gig than anything else out there. I think it’s amazing that there are also women out there who love to seduce, who know how to turn someone on, women determined to get hitched, women who smell of sex, and others who smell of cakes freshly baked for their kids’ after-school snacks. Awesome that there are women who are very gentle, others who are comfortable in their skin, young women, pretty women, women who are kittenish and radiant. Honestly, I’m really happy for all those women who’re resigned to the way the world works…. It just so happens that I’m not one of them.”What followed became an international feminist classic—one that made her infamous in her native country—though King Kong Theory has been out of print in the US since 2010 until now, as a new translation is published along with the third and final volume of her Vernon Subutex trilogy. Those latter books tell an entirely different, panoramic story, with a sprawling cast of characters, centered around a middle-aged record store owner on the decline amidst a Paris consumed by terrorist attacks and dominated by right-wing politics.You’ve published nine books since the somewhat notorious Baise-Moi in 1993, but here in the States you’re still mostly unformed in people’s minds. Are you still this divisive, kind of bomb-throwing figure in France? Are people still coming at your work with preconceived ideas about you?I’m still getting some conflict here, but I think they’ve gotten used to me. I’ve become part of the landscape—some people hate it, some people like it, but I’m part of the landscape.I’ve seen the title variously translated as Fuck Me, Rape Me…It’s really Fuck Me. I took it from The Exorcist, the young girl. I love that movie.Your books seem very distinctly of a time and place. How much are we missing if we don’t live, or haven’t lived, in Paris, or aren’t familiar with the culture of the moment in France?King Kong Theory was actually written out of my immersion in American theory and American feminism, American authors—Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen; all the process feminists that helped me and interested me. In France during the 90s, it was very difficult to get those American writers, because they weren’t translated; even writers like Judith Butler were translated very late in Europe. But some of us were very interested in pornography, prostitution, queer theory, lesbian culture, and I wanted to bring some of that American theory to France and to Europe. Vernon Subutex is very different—it’s a portrait of Paris about five years ago, but it has something in common with American culture in that it’s about punk culture and rock n’ roll culture, and a lot of that is coming from America. But it’s really about how the extreme right is rising in France—how things that were unacceptable ten years ago are becoming common. And that’s different from America—but there are, of course, some parallels.Is it odd to have King Kong Theory republished now? Is it still a representation of your thinking and feeling now, or is it a period piece for you?Here in Europe—and especially in Spain and South America—it’s my “hit.” It’s an old work, but I’ve never spent one year not talking about King Kong Theory, and now with feminist subjects rising again after #MeToo, I never stop talking about King Kong Theory. I didn’t expect it to be so important to my life when I wrote it—but I like it.It’s a very angry book—or maybe it’s just a very honest book? Maybe it’s just easy for people to classify and dismiss it by calling it angry, as opposed to saying it’s a very powerful or gripping book. But it’s intense.Yeah—you get the point. It’s not angry. I just read Valerie Solanas’ biography—Valerie Solanas was angry. This book isn’t angry—it’s straight to the point. It’s sincere. And I think that nowadays, many woman have gone through the process of talking about how they handled such things.To be clear: When you say “such things,” you’re talking about being raped. You write in the book about that, and about your reaction to it which, at the time, seemed unusual, or provocative: While the traditional feminist response to that, as you’ve noted, is to frame it in terms of being violated, being changed forever, irrevocably traumatized, you elected to view the experience within the prism of war, or battle—and you seemed determined, above all, to move on.So many people have gone through the process of being raped, and you can deal with it in many ways—or you can choose not to deal with it. I dealt with it. I was 17 when I was raped, and I wasn’t ready to just give up my life and die psychologically. I put every energy I had into going through the process of dealing with it. But I didn’t write the book until nearly 20 years later. At the time I wrote it, talking about your rape was a strange idea. Nowadays, things have changed. I also wasn’t the only one writing about such things—but there’s been a big explosion since then.Why King Kong?I had just seen the Peter Jackson movie when I wrote the book. We always suppose that King Kong is a male character, and I thought it could be more a queer character—or a mother figure. I suppose also I was thinking about the Guerilla Girls—the American feminists doing actions at museums with gorilla masks on their heads. It’s a lot about femininity, and about allowing different forms of femininity—I don’t feel masculine, but I don’t feel like a very feminine girl either. I feel a different kind of femininity.Back to Vernon Subutex: In a career devoted to writing from a pointedly feminist or woman-centric perspective, what possessed you to write a three-book series with a middle-aged white man in crisis as the central character?First of all, because it’s about rock, punk rock [NB: There’s a wealth of Spotify playlists worth exploring—both official and otherwise—centered around Vernon Subutex] and I thought the character had to be a white male, because this is what rock is about. And second, I thought this book was a good place to change my gender. I did it without thinking a lot about it—but then I published it and I soon thought it was a brilliant idea, because I found that the readers and the critics were more tender with a male character. When women do exactly the same things as Vernon Subutex, they’re much more subject to judgmental perspective and analysis. When it’s a guy, everything is fine—he can do whatever he wants, no? [Despentes laughs, and takes another drag on her cigarette.]Without giving away too much, I think we can say that the three Subutex books have everything from a dead rock star, a secret lost videotape, and a cast of dozens—from screenwriters and private detectives and wannabe revolutionaries to young students and cokehead dilettantes—all of them in a kind of middle age decline as they revolve loosely around Vernon as his life starts to swirl down the drain. They hatch various plots, fashion alternate ways of living; they cling to a certain utopian ideal even as their realities become more and more desperate and sordid. I was attracted to it first as High Fidelity as written by JG Ballard or something, but later it seemed more like Dickens or Zola as rendered by Bukowski. But what’s the origin story?It’s nice to hear those references—I’ve certainly read all of them. And I loved High Fidelity—that book was a big stepstone for people like me. I’m 51, and when I wrote the book I was 45, and that’s a time of life when you understand that while things are fine, they are going to be over soon—and going through that age is an experience that you have to live through to know. I was living in Spain then, and when I came back to France, I was amazed at how in Paris, everybody was depressed—and it’s a book about that, also. Even really privileged people were really depressed, and that really struck me, and I tried to understand what was eating us alive—why did we all feel this bad, this sad?Can you brood a bit about Vernon the man? I mean, why him—and what purpose did he serve you as a writer?There are two sides for me: He is the nice white guy; he’s very childish, which I kind of like in my mates. But you know that it’s not a good time for him. What I liked about Vernon as I was writing about him is that he’s not judgmental. He confronts a lot of situations and a lot of people, and he’s not an idiot—he sees things—but he’s never judgmental. Maybe this is what I like about my own rock background: You don’t hide truth; you witness things, and you’re gathered around very strange people who are sometimes unable to fit in other places, but you learn not to be judgmental. Some other characters in the book are driven by anger or anxiety, and it wasn’t so nice for me to spend time with them, but when I was with Vernon, it was a nice place to be.About this rock background: You once described your work as “really just rap and punk applied in a literary form.” How did music inform your writing, or your world, so much? I saw Nina Hagen on the television when I was 13, and from there The Clash, Joy Division…. it opened a whole new world to me, one that was hugely important. It was life-changing, and I feel a big deal of gratitude for this experience, because from then to my early 20s I had a very intense and happy and full experience of life—much better than going to university or being a square person—and I enjoyed it fully. I mean, you’ll never be 20 again—but it’s not a really good preparation for real life. [Despente laughs] When I discovered the publishing world in France at 25, I wasn’t fully prepared for many things.Such as?You’re not prepared for a lot of hypocrisy; you don’t learn to negotiate with normal people. In the punk world there were no adults, so there’s no judgements. You have a lot of ethical positions you have to give up if you want to function with normal people. And you expect to have a lot of fun when you’re into punk rock—and then you understand that normal people do not expect to have the same amount of fun; fun is not their priority. [More laughter, as Despentes lights another cigarette]I think things have changed for young people now—they don’t have that secret world that we used to have. I also read a lot, I learned a lot politically. There was a romantic side to it; there was a community. Nobody cared about us, because at the time nobody understood that there was money to be made from us, and that was a great privilege: We could do what we wanted. But then Nirvana happened, and everything changed.Back to Vernon: He seems to have kind of taken his hands off the steering wheel of life—I don’t think we’re giving much away to say that he becomes homeless and exists on the fringes of society—yet somehow his passivity leads people begin ascribing all kinds of things to him that may be true, may not be true—he becomes almost an object of devotion, a saintly figure.I think a lot of us take our hands off the steering wheel now and again. We don’t know how to handle our life, and reality in general—a lot of us just say, Okay, let’s see what comes next, and just go with the flow because we feel we can’t drive the car, can’t drive the bus. Many things happen that are very surprising to us, and we don’t know how to react without being passive. And a lot of people are anxious to build prophets, and there’s nothing fair about that. Why him? Maybe because he’s very passive, yes, and it allows people to project things upon him. He doesn’t do anything to deserve it; it’s not fair. But it’s something I’m interested in: I meet a lot of famous people, and sometimes you think: Yeah, you’re a star. But most of the time you think: This just fell on you somehow. And it falls on Vernon. And I don’t know—maybe Jesus Christ wasn’t someone so special, who knows? Maybe Jesus Christ was just a guy—nice guy, but… [We both erupt in laughter]And again let’s not give away the ending, but maybe we can say that it’s… shocking? Beautiful, tragic, dark? And there’s a kind of epilogue, a flash forward and a flash back from way into the future that’s grim and dystopian—but there’s a notion, hinted at, that rock n’ roll may just save the world? Maybe?I’m very pessimistic about the difficult times we’re going through, but at the same time there’s something very optimistic about myself. And I think the end of the book gets at that: I wish that something good could happen, but I’m not sure. But you have to understand that the books were written at the time of different terrorist attacks in Paris, and you can tell; you can feel it: There was this sense that we could die tomorrow without a fight. But at the same time, you think, yeah: Maybe something could survive—maybe music. Music is not only a big business; it’s a high form of poetry. I don’t know what to believe in; I’m very divided between sheer desperation and some kind of optimism. I wish I could imagine a different way of living that would succeed in a different kind of culture, but at the same time, I don’t believe in it. I want us as humans to be able to change things, but I’m not sure we can. It’s my contradiction.What are you working on now?I’m writing a novel, and I’m working a lot with a guy who’s adapting Vernon Subutex as a comic. It’s a cool process, and I’m having a lot of fun.There was a lot of fuss in the literary world when you were appointed to the prestigious Goncourt Academy, which decides the Goncourt Prize, five years ago—lots of headlines about the outsider joining the establishment and that sort of thing. But in January, you made headlines for resigning your post—why?I loved to do it, but it was too much work. I didn’t want to do it my whole life. I learned a lot, but you have to read more than 100 books a year, and if you want to do it correctly you really don’t read anything else. There was one summer when I was reading James Baldwin, and I had to stop the book, and I just thought: I’m going to quit the Goncourt. It’s interesting, but it’s not paid; I’m fed up. I want to read what I want to read. Product detail: Suitable for Women/Men/Girl/Boy, Fashion 3D digital print drawstring hoodies, long sleeve with big pocket front. It’s a good gift for birthday/Christmas and so on, The real color of the item may be slightly different from the pictures shown on website caused by many factors such as brightness of your monitor and light brightness, The print on the item might be slightly different from pictures for different batch productions, There may be 1-2 cm deviation in different sizes, locations, and stretch of fabrics. Size chart is for reference only, there may be a little difference with what you get. 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Click here to buy this shirt: Happy Halloween Mickey Duck Shirt, hoodie, tank top and long sleeve tee When I first met the rising poet Rosie Stockton two summers ago, they began to make me rethink the entire idea of performing gender. Stockton lives within the blurred edges of femininity and masculinity — all tenderness and swagger, acrylic nails and binders, bright-pink mesh and baggy pants. Their anarchic approach to “trolling the gender categories” would help inspire my own free-sliding on the gender spectrum, a way of playfully matching my lack of allegiance to any one gender to how I dressed and behaved.Stockton, who is from New Mexico, is releasing their debut book, Permanent Volta, about gender, sexuality, and love this week. It is a lush collection of poetry about the possibilities of love outside capitalism, and love as a way to resist its abuses. The poems are exceedingly relevant to our uneasy time: about hating work and being broke, but also about being in love, and needing sex, luxury, and care.Stockton’s book places them within a scene of young and provocative poets like Rachel Rabbit White (a Stockton fan), Ariana Reines, and Precious Okoyomon who are using poetry to investigate the pleasures and perils of sex, work, and power. Stockton began the book with the intention of writing about labor and revolt, but ended up writing about queer love, friendship, and desire as they realized that relationships are the antidote to the exploitative nature of work.“Capitalism convinces us that we’re individuals, that we’re isolated, that we’re separate from one another, and that personal responsibility is the ultimate good life,” Stockton says. “Love is something that inherently is a threat to that myth of individualism.” One of their poems asks, “What if we kissed/in an Amazon locker,” an intimacy in a world of alienation and depressed wages.Stockton and I spoke this spring, under a pomegranate tree in the backyard of their home in Los Angeles, about love and work. Stockton’s platinum blonde hair was pulled back, and they were wearing a white tank top, denim jacket, black pants — and a tiny string of pearls.You write about the conflict of love and the way capitalism wants us to experience love.Love can be playful and experimental, healing and activating. It can offer possibilities for growth, reflection, and breaking out of lonely modes of being. Capitalism regulates our experience of romantic love into the couple form envisioned by heteropatriarchy, because this is the form of social life most hospitable to capitalist accumulation. The state tries to control our experience of love through laws against deviant modes of sexuality and gender, in order to make us fit into capitalism’s needs. But I believe a politics of care and queer love is in excess of this.How did you get from writing about work to love?I was thinking about conversations around the politics of reproductive labor. There is a slogan that came from the Italian Marxist feminism’s “Wages for Housework” movement: “They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.’ There are also traditions of thought articulated by Black Marxist feminists that argue against the wage. Like, we don’t want to turn care and love into labor: what else is possible? In one poem I write: “Can we love with inadequate politics?” I wrote poems to people I care for: friends, lovers, and those who are both. I wanted to fuck with the poetic forms associated with romantic love (like the sonnet!) to actually experience the love that animates my life.So what’s your take? Should all care be paid for?Domestic labor and care work are exploited by racial capitalism, and have been a historically difficult sector to organize. For those doing this kind of labor, of course it has to be paid, and all workers need labor protections. That said, the wage isn’t the ultimate demand that I have around compensating reproductive labor, or practices of care and love. In this book I imagined refusing the wage as the path toward love and liberation. Leftist thinkers like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, and Rosa Luxemburg are influential to me.The book is simmering with radicalness. What are some of the politics that inform your work?These poems are personal, but informed by politics that demand the abolition of police and prisons and the decriminalization of sex work. I’m interested in the intersection of labor organizing and abolitionist mutual aid projects that call for better working conditions while dreaming of autonomous systems that get everyone’s basic needs met.I study radical traditions and organize with groups that center those most vulnerable to state violence and exploitation, and often this means people who are working in criminalized or unvalued economies, or those who can’t or refuse to enter the traditional workforce. Many in the decriminalization movement fight to demand the basic fact that sex work is work, but also emphasize how being recognized as a “worker” is a false promise of safety. This shows up in my poems: “I didn’t mean to ask for money/I meant to ask for a different set of relations”! I’m interested in politics that demand the abolition of work, the end of the racist and transphobic carceral state, and a reorganization of care, healing, and social life. These politics refuse to believe recognition from the state is the only path. I use the sonnet because I want to understand how it regulates love and creativity. Take it back as a poetic means of production of romantic love! Do you see yourself as part of a specific scene of poets working through these themes?Absolutely. I feel in community with poets who allow politics to enter their poems — leftist queer politics and the politics of pleasure and abundance. Poetry as a form is so resonant with queerness. There’s room for play, puns, winks, kink, breaking the rules. These are tropes that I associate with queer community and desire. At the charter school in Harlem where Darlene Okpo first worked full-time as an English teacher, students had to get through 1.5 million words by the end of the year in order to pass. Without the word count, they were required to attend summer school. Formerly a teacher of after-school art programs, entrepreneurship, and theatre, Okpo has been educating since 2009. In a city as culturally rich as New York (where Okpo has lived in all five boroughs, including the honorary sixth, New Jersey) there are stories everywhere—on plaques, statues, park maps, and in bulk at the city’s many libraries and bookstores. But Okpo understands that students—and all people—need to be introduced to the right stories in order to find the pleasure of a great book.“I had this one particular student that had an A+ in reading, but her word count was low. One day I asked her why she wasn’t reading and she told me that the books that they have at the school library were dull, and that she wanted to read more books that focused on African-American characters,” Okpo recalls. An avid reader from an early age, Okpo already had some young adult books in her personal library. The next day, she brought her student Tiffany D. Jackson’s book called Monday’s Not Coming. “She would read it during class and during lunch. In a matter of three days, she completed the book and requested another book to read. She was also a popular student and my other students would see her reading, and come to me for books.” By doing this, students with low word counts caught up within weeks. “Everybody is a reader, you just have to find the right book that speaks to your soul.”At the start of May, Okpo opened a bookstore, Adanne, in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, which offers the same warm approach to learning that Okpo offers the students in her classrooms. It’s named after Okpo’s mother, Pauline, whose nickname is Adanne, meaning “she is her mother’s daughter” in Igbo. “As I was creating the aesthetic for the store, my friends and family would visit and we would always end up talking about our current issues. We talk about education, real estate, financial literacy, and many other topics. The books I chose for the store inspired these conversations.” The store is a celebration of African-American culture, with walls adorned by album covers such as “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” and shelves stocked with “Defend Black Womanhood” t-shirts.It’s not the first time Okpo’s work, and her sense of storytelling, has been inspired by her family. In 2009, when Okpo was 22, she and her sister Lizzie founded the brand William Okpo, named after their father, who “irons his clothes every day—even when he’s cutting the lawn, he’s fashionable.” Both parents are immigrants from Nigeria who work for the city of New York. “Fashion tells a story that we’re able to visually read—it’s that designer’s story,” Okpo notes. “When it comes to written storytelling, you’re reading the story and also looking at the identity of the author.”Adanne will be hosting weekly and monthly workshops focused on catalyzing change. The first one, taking place on June 5th, will be a discussion of issues concerning education during the pandemic. “I feel that the government didn’t do a great job in terms of taking care of our students. Now it’s time to bring that to the forefront,” Okpo says.Okpo is currently building out Adanne’s website, but for now, for those who can’t visit in person, she offers book recommendations to readers of varying ages and interests:My Feet are Laughing, by Lissette NormanNana Akua Goes to School, by Tricia Elam WalkerI Promise, by Lebron JamesA Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart, by Zetta ElliotLook What Brown Can do, by T. Marie HarrisAmerican Street, by Ibi ZoboiMonday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. JacksonJuliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby RiveriaFlyy Girl, by Omar TyreeThe Coldest Winter Ever, by Sista SouljahConcrete Rose, by Angie ThomasPowernomics, by Dr. Claude AnersonThe Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley and Malcolm XThe Kidnapping Club, by Jonathan Daniel WellsAn African American and LatinX History of the United States, by Paul OrtizThe Mis- Education of the Negro, by Carter G WoodsonAn Indigenous People’s History of The United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizHood Feminism, by Mikki KendallAin’t I A Woman, by Bell HooksWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, by Joan MorganWomen Race Class, by Angela Davis “I’m a little old now to be an enfant terrible,” says Virginie Despentes. Nonetheless, it’s a label she’s worn proudly since her brilliant, incendiary manifesto, King Kong Theory, was published in France in 2006, when Despentes was 37. “In France, we like conflict, and I’m not exactly an easy character.” King Kong Theory minced no words and wasted no time from the moment the needle dropped on page one:I want to be crystal clear: I’m not here to make excuses, I’m not here to bitch. I wouldn’t swap places with anyone because being Virginie Despentes seems to me a more interesting gig than anything else out there. I think it’s amazing that there are also women out there who love to seduce, who know how to turn someone on, women determined to get hitched, women who smell of sex, and others who smell of cakes freshly baked for their kids’ after-school snacks. Awesome that there are women who are very gentle, others who are comfortable in their skin, young women, pretty women, women who are kittenish and radiant. Honestly, I’m really happy for all those women who’re resigned to the way the world works…. It just so happens that I’m not one of them.”What followed became an international feminist classic—one that made her infamous in her native country—though King Kong Theory has been out of print in the US since 2010 until now, as a new translation is published along with the third and final volume of her Vernon Subutex trilogy. Those latter books tell an entirely different, panoramic story, with a sprawling cast of characters, centered around a middle-aged record store owner on the decline amidst a Paris consumed by terrorist attacks and dominated by right-wing politics.You’ve published nine books since the somewhat notorious Baise-Moi in 1993, but here in the States you’re still mostly unformed in people’s minds. Are you still this divisive, kind of bomb-throwing figure in France? Are people still coming at your work with preconceived ideas about you?I’m still getting some conflict here, but I think they’ve gotten used to me. I’ve become part of the landscape—some people hate it, some people like it, but I’m part of the landscape.I’ve seen the title variously translated as Fuck Me, Rape Me…It’s really Fuck Me. I took it from The Exorcist, the young girl. I love that movie.Your books seem very distinctly of a time and place. How much are we missing if we don’t live, or haven’t lived, in Paris, or aren’t familiar with the culture of the moment in France?King Kong Theory was actually written out of my immersion in American theory and American feminism, American authors—Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen; all the process feminists that helped me and interested me. In France during the 90s, it was very difficult to get those American writers, because they weren’t translated; even writers like Judith Butler were translated very late in Europe. But some of us were very interested in pornography, prostitution, queer theory, lesbian culture, and I wanted to bring some of that American theory to France and to Europe. Vernon Subutex is very different—it’s a portrait of Paris about five years ago, but it has something in common with American culture in that it’s about punk culture and rock n’ roll culture, and a lot of that is coming from America. But it’s really about how the extreme right is rising in France—how things that were unacceptable ten years ago are becoming common. And that’s different from America—but there are, of course, some parallels.Is it odd to have King Kong Theory republished now? Is it still a representation of your thinking and feeling now, or is it a period piece for you?Here in Europe—and especially in Spain and South America—it’s my “hit.” It’s an old work, but I’ve never spent one year not talking about King Kong Theory, and now with feminist subjects rising again after #MeToo, I never stop talking about King Kong Theory. I didn’t expect it to be so important to my life when I wrote it—but I like it.It’s a very angry book—or maybe it’s just a very honest book? Maybe it’s just easy for people to classify and dismiss it by calling it angry, as opposed to saying it’s a very powerful or gripping book. But it’s intense.Yeah—you get the point. It’s not angry. I just read Valerie Solanas’ biography—Valerie Solanas was angry. This book isn’t angry—it’s straight to the point. It’s sincere. And I think that nowadays, many woman have gone through the process of talking about how they handled such things.To be clear: When you say “such things,” you’re talking about being raped. You write in the book about that, and about your reaction to it which, at the time, seemed unusual, or provocative: While the traditional feminist response to that, as you’ve noted, is to frame it in terms of being violated, being changed forever, irrevocably traumatized, you elected to view the experience within the prism of war, or battle—and you seemed determined, above all, to move on.So many people have gone through the process of being raped, and you can deal with it in many ways—or you can choose not to deal with it. I dealt with it. I was 17 when I was raped, and I wasn’t ready to just give up my life and die psychologically. I put every energy I had into going through the process of dealing with it. But I didn’t write the book until nearly 20 years later. At the time I wrote it, talking about your rape was a strange idea. Nowadays, things have changed. I also wasn’t the only one writing about such things—but there’s been a big explosion since then.Why King Kong?I had just seen the Peter Jackson movie when I wrote the book. We always suppose that King Kong is a male character, and I thought it could be more a queer character—or a mother figure. I suppose also I was thinking about the Guerilla Girls—the American feminists doing actions at museums with gorilla masks on their heads. It’s a lot about femininity, and about allowing different forms of femininity—I don’t feel masculine, but I don’t feel like a very feminine girl either. I feel a different kind of femininity.Back to Vernon Subutex: In a career devoted to writing from a pointedly feminist or woman-centric perspective, what possessed you to write a three-book series with a middle-aged white man in crisis as the central character?First of all, because it’s about rock, punk rock [NB: There’s a wealth of Spotify playlists worth exploring—both official and otherwise—centered around Vernon Subutex] and I thought the character had to be a white male, because this is what rock is about. And second, I thought this book was a good place to change my gender. I did it without thinking a lot about it—but then I published it and I soon thought it was a brilliant idea, because I found that the readers and the critics were more tender with a male character. When women do exactly the same things as Vernon Subutex, they’re much more subject to judgmental perspective and analysis. When it’s a guy, everything is fine—he can do whatever he wants, no? [Despentes laughs, and takes another drag on her cigarette.]Without giving away too much, I think we can say that the three Subutex books have everything from a dead rock star, a secret lost videotape, and a cast of dozens—from screenwriters and private detectives and wannabe revolutionaries to young students and cokehead dilettantes—all of them in a kind of middle age decline as they revolve loosely around Vernon as his life starts to swirl down the drain. They hatch various plots, fashion alternate ways of living; they cling to a certain utopian ideal even as their realities become more and more desperate and sordid. I was attracted to it first as High Fidelity as written by JG Ballard or something, but later it seemed more like Dickens or Zola as rendered by Bukowski. But what’s the origin story?It’s nice to hear those references—I’ve certainly read all of them. And I loved High Fidelity—that book was a big stepstone for people like me. I’m 51, and when I wrote the book I was 45, and that’s a time of life when you understand that while things are fine, they are going to be over soon—and going through that age is an experience that you have to live through to know. I was living in Spain then, and when I came back to France, I was amazed at how in Paris, everybody was depressed—and it’s a book about that, also. Even really privileged people were really depressed, and that really struck me, and I tried to understand what was eating us alive—why did we all feel this bad, this sad?Can you brood a bit about Vernon the man? I mean, why him—and what purpose did he serve you as a writer?There are two sides for me: He is the nice white guy; he’s very childish, which I kind of like in my mates. But you know that it’s not a good time for him. What I liked about Vernon as I was writing about him is that he’s not judgmental. He confronts a lot of situations and a lot of people, and he’s not an idiot—he sees things—but he’s never judgmental. Maybe this is what I like about my own rock background: You don’t hide truth; you witness things, and you’re gathered around very strange people who are sometimes unable to fit in other places, but you learn not to be judgmental. Some other characters in the book are driven by anger or anxiety, and it wasn’t so nice for me to spend time with them, but when I was with Vernon, it was a nice place to be.About this rock background: You once described your work as “really just rap and punk applied in a literary form.” How did music inform your writing, or your world, so much? I saw Nina Hagen on the television when I was 13, and from there The Clash, Joy Division…. it opened a whole new world to me, one that was hugely important. It was life-changing, and I feel a big deal of gratitude for this experience, because from then to my early 20s I had a very intense and happy and full experience of life—much better than going to university or being a square person—and I enjoyed it fully. I mean, you’ll never be 20 again—but it’s not a really good preparation for real life. [Despente laughs] When I discovered the publishing world in France at 25, I wasn’t fully prepared for many things.Such as?You’re not prepared for a lot of hypocrisy; you don’t learn to negotiate with normal people. In the punk world there were no adults, so there’s no judgements. You have a lot of ethical positions you have to give up if you want to function with normal people. And you expect to have a lot of fun when you’re into punk rock—and then you understand that normal people do not expect to have the same amount of fun; fun is not their priority. [More laughter, as Despentes lights another cigarette]I think things have changed for young people now—they don’t have that secret world that we used to have. I also read a lot, I learned a lot politically. There was a romantic side to it; there was a community. Nobody cared about us, because at the time nobody understood that there was money to be made from us, and that was a great privilege: We could do what we wanted. But then Nirvana happened, and everything changed.Back to Vernon: He seems to have kind of taken his hands off the steering wheel of life—I don’t think we’re giving much away to say that he becomes homeless and exists on the fringes of society—yet somehow his passivity leads people begin ascribing all kinds of things to him that may be true, may not be true—he becomes almost an object of devotion, a saintly figure.I think a lot of us take our hands off the steering wheel now and again. We don’t know how to handle our life, and reality in general—a lot of us just say, Okay, let’s see what comes next, and just go with the flow because we feel we can’t drive the car, can’t drive the bus. Many things happen that are very surprising to us, and we don’t know how to react without being passive. And a lot of people are anxious to build prophets, and there’s nothing fair about that. Why him? Maybe because he’s very passive, yes, and it allows people to project things upon him. He doesn’t do anything to deserve it; it’s not fair. But it’s something I’m interested in: I meet a lot of famous people, and sometimes you think: Yeah, you’re a star. But most of the time you think: This just fell on you somehow. And it falls on Vernon. And I don’t know—maybe Jesus Christ wasn’t someone so special, who knows? Maybe Jesus Christ was just a guy—nice guy, but… [We both erupt in laughter]And again let’s not give away the ending, but maybe we can say that it’s… shocking? Beautiful, tragic, dark? And there’s a kind of epilogue, a flash forward and a flash back from way into the future that’s grim and dystopian—but there’s a notion, hinted at, that rock n’ roll may just save the world? Maybe?I’m very pessimistic about the difficult times we’re going through, but at the same time there’s something very optimistic about myself. And I think the end of the book gets at that: I wish that something good could happen, but I’m not sure. But you have to understand that the books were written at the time of different terrorist attacks in Paris, and you can tell; you can feel it: There was this sense that we could die tomorrow without a fight. But at the same time, you think, yeah: Maybe something could survive—maybe music. Music is not only a big business; it’s a high form of poetry. I don’t know what to believe in; I’m very divided between sheer desperation and some kind of optimism. I wish I could imagine a different way of living that would succeed in a different kind of culture, but at the same time, I don’t believe in it. I want us as humans to be able to change things, but I’m not sure we can. It’s my contradiction.What are you working on now?I’m writing a novel, and I’m working a lot with a guy who’s adapting Vernon Subutex as a comic. It’s a cool process, and I’m having a lot of fun.There was a lot of fuss in the literary world when you were appointed to the prestigious Goncourt Academy, which decides the Goncourt Prize, five years ago—lots of headlines about the outsider joining the establishment and that sort of thing. But in January, you made headlines for resigning your post—why?I loved to do it, but it was too much work. I didn’t want to do it my whole life. I learned a lot, but you have to read more than 100 books a year, and if you want to do it correctly you really don’t read anything else. There was one summer when I was reading James Baldwin, and I had to stop the book, and I just thought: I’m going to quit the Goncourt. It’s interesting, but it’s not paid; I’m fed up. I want to read what I want to read. Product detail: Suitable for Women/Men/Girl/Boy, Fashion 3D digital print drawstring hoodies, long sleeve with big pocket front. It’s a good gift for birthday/Christmas and so on, The real color of the item may be slightly different from the pictures shown on website caused by many factors such as brightness of your monitor and light brightness, The print on the item might be slightly different from pictures for different batch productions, There may be 1-2 cm deviation in different sizes, locations, and stretch of fabrics. Size chart is for reference only, there may be a little difference with what you get. 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With Secure Checkout (100% Secure payment with SSL Encryption), Return & Warranty (If you’re not 100% satisfied, let us know and we’ll make it right.), Worldwide shipping available, Buy 2 or more to save shipping. Last Day To – BUY IT or LOSE IT FOREVER. Only available for a LIMITED TIME – NOT FOUND IN STORES! Click here to buy this shirt: Happy Halloween Mickey Duck Shirt, hoodie, tank top and long sleeve tee When I first met the rising poet Rosie Stockton two summers ago, they began to make me rethink the entire idea of performing gender. Stockton lives within the blurred edges of femininity and masculinity — all tenderness and swagger, acrylic nails and binders, bright-pink mesh and baggy pants. Their anarchic approach to “trolling the gender categories” would help inspire my own free-sliding on the gender spectrum, a way of playfully matching my lack of allegiance to any one gender to how I dressed and behaved.Stockton, who is from New Mexico, is releasing their debut book, Permanent Volta, about gender, sexuality, and love this week. It is a lush collection of poetry about the possibilities of love outside capitalism, and love as a way to resist its abuses. The poems are exceedingly relevant to our uneasy time: about hating work and being broke, but also about being in love, and needing sex, luxury, and care.Stockton’s book places them within a scene of young and provocative poets like Rachel Rabbit White (a Stockton fan), Ariana Reines, and Precious Okoyomon who are using poetry to investigate the pleasures and perils of sex, work, and power. Stockton began the book with the intention of writing about labor and revolt, but ended up writing about queer love, friendship, and desire as they realized that relationships are the antidote to the exploitative nature of work.“Capitalism convinces us that we’re individuals, that we’re isolated, that we’re separate from one another, and that personal responsibility is the ultimate good life,” Stockton says. “Love is something that inherently is a threat to that myth of individualism.” One of their poems asks, “What if we kissed/in an Amazon locker,” an intimacy in a world of alienation and depressed wages.Stockton and I spoke this spring, under a pomegranate tree in the backyard of their home in Los Angeles, about love and work. Stockton’s platinum blonde hair was pulled back, and they were wearing a white tank top, denim jacket, black pants — and a tiny string of pearls.You write about the conflict of love and the way capitalism wants us to experience love.Love can be playful and experimental, healing and activating. It can offer possibilities for growth, reflection, and breaking out of lonely modes of being. Capitalism regulates our experience of romantic love into the couple form envisioned by heteropatriarchy, because this is the form of social life most hospitable to capitalist accumulation. The state tries to control our experience of love through laws against deviant modes of sexuality and gender, in order to make us fit into capitalism’s needs. But I believe a politics of care and queer love is in excess of this.How did you get from writing about work to love?I was thinking about conversations around the politics of reproductive labor. There is a slogan that came from the Italian Marxist feminism’s “Wages for Housework” movement: “They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.’ There are also traditions of thought articulated by Black Marxist feminists that argue against the wage. Like, we don’t want to turn care and love into labor: what else is possible? In one poem I write: “Can we love with inadequate politics?” I wrote poems to people I care for: friends, lovers, and those who are both. I wanted to fuck with the poetic forms associated with romantic love (like the sonnet!) to actually experience the love that animates my life.So what’s your take? Should all care be paid for?Domestic labor and care work are exploited by racial capitalism, and have been a historically difficult sector to organize. For those doing this kind of labor, of course it has to be paid, and all workers need labor protections. That said, the wage isn’t the ultimate demand that I have around compensating reproductive labor, or practices of care and love. In this book I imagined refusing the wage as the path toward love and liberation. Leftist thinkers like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, and Rosa Luxemburg are influential to me.The book is simmering with radicalness. What are some of the politics that inform your work?These poems are personal, but informed by politics that demand the abolition of police and prisons and the decriminalization of sex work. I’m interested in the intersection of labor organizing and abolitionist mutual aid projects that call for better working conditions while dreaming of autonomous systems that get everyone’s basic needs met.I study radical traditions and organize with groups that center those most vulnerable to state violence and exploitation, and often this means people who are working in criminalized or unvalued economies, or those who can’t or refuse to enter the traditional workforce. Many in the decriminalization movement fight to demand the basic fact that sex work is work, but also emphasize how being recognized as a “worker” is a false promise of safety. This shows up in my poems: “I didn’t mean to ask for money/I meant to ask for a different set of relations”! I’m interested in politics that demand the abolition of work, the end of the racist and transphobic carceral state, and a reorganization of care, healing, and social life. These politics refuse to believe recognition from the state is the only path. I use the sonnet because I want to understand how it regulates love and creativity. Take it back as a poetic means of production of romantic love! Do you see yourself as part of a specific scene of poets working through these themes?Absolutely. I feel in community with poets who allow politics to enter their poems — leftist queer politics and the politics of pleasure and abundance. Poetry as a form is so resonant with queerness. There’s room for play, puns, winks, kink, breaking the rules. These are tropes that I associate with queer community and desire. At the charter school in Harlem where Darlene Okpo first worked full-time as an English teacher, students had to get through 1.5 million words by the end of the year in order to pass. Without the word count, they were required to attend summer school. Formerly a teacher of after-school art programs, entrepreneurship, and theatre, Okpo has been educating since 2009. In a city as culturally rich as New York (where Okpo has lived in all five boroughs, including the honorary sixth, New Jersey) there are stories everywhere—on plaques, statues, park maps, and in bulk at the city’s many libraries and bookstores. But Okpo understands that students—and all people—need to be introduced to the right stories in order to find the pleasure of a great book.“I had this one particular student that had an A+ in reading, but her word count was low. One day I asked her why she wasn’t reading and she told me that the books that they have at the school library were dull, and that she wanted to read more books that focused on African-American characters,” Okpo recalls. An avid reader from an early age, Okpo already had some young adult books in her personal library. The next day, she brought her student Tiffany D. Jackson’s book called Monday’s Not Coming. “She would read it during class and during lunch. In a matter of three days, she completed the book and requested another book to read. She was also a popular student and my other students would see her reading, and come to me for books.” By doing this, students with low word counts caught up within weeks. “Everybody is a reader, you just have to find the right book that speaks to your soul.”At the start of May, Okpo opened a bookstore, Adanne, in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, which offers the same warm approach to learning that Okpo offers the students in her classrooms. It’s named after Okpo’s mother, Pauline, whose nickname is Adanne, meaning “she is her mother’s daughter” in Igbo. “As I was creating the aesthetic for the store, my friends and family would visit and we would always end up talking about our current issues. We talk about education, real estate, financial literacy, and many other topics. The books I chose for the store inspired these conversations.” The store is a celebration of African-American culture, with walls adorned by album covers such as “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” and shelves stocked with “Defend Black Womanhood” t-shirts.It’s not the first time Okpo’s work, and her sense of storytelling, has been inspired by her family. In 2009, when Okpo was 22, she and her sister Lizzie founded the brand William Okpo, named after their father, who “irons his clothes every day—even when he’s cutting the lawn, he’s fashionable.” Both parents are immigrants from Nigeria who work for the city of New York. “Fashion tells a story that we’re able to visually read—it’s that designer’s story,” Okpo notes. “When it comes to written storytelling, you’re reading the story and also looking at the identity of the author.”Adanne will be hosting weekly and monthly workshops focused on catalyzing change. The first one, taking place on June 5th, will be a discussion of issues concerning education during the pandemic. “I feel that the government didn’t do a great job in terms of taking care of our students. Now it’s time to bring that to the forefront,” Okpo says.Okpo is currently building out Adanne’s website, but for now, for those who can’t visit in person, she offers book recommendations to readers of varying ages and interests:My Feet are Laughing, by Lissette NormanNana Akua Goes to School, by Tricia Elam WalkerI Promise, by Lebron JamesA Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart, by Zetta ElliotLook What Brown Can do, by T. Marie HarrisAmerican Street, by Ibi ZoboiMonday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. JacksonJuliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby RiveriaFlyy Girl, by Omar TyreeThe Coldest Winter Ever, by Sista SouljahConcrete Rose, by Angie ThomasPowernomics, by Dr. Claude AnersonThe Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley and Malcolm XThe Kidnapping Club, by Jonathan Daniel WellsAn African American and LatinX History of the United States, by Paul OrtizThe Mis- Education of the Negro, by Carter G WoodsonAn Indigenous People’s History of The United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizHood Feminism, by Mikki KendallAin’t I A Woman, by Bell HooksWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, by Joan MorganWomen Race Class, by Angela Davis “I’m a little old now to be an enfant terrible,” says Virginie Despentes. Nonetheless, it’s a label she’s worn proudly since her brilliant, incendiary manifesto, King Kong Theory, was published in France in 2006, when Despentes was 37. “In France, we like conflict, and I’m not exactly an easy character.” King Kong Theory minced no words and wasted no time from the moment the needle dropped on page one:I want to be crystal clear: I’m not here to make excuses, I’m not here to bitch. I wouldn’t swap places with anyone because being Virginie Despentes seems to me a more interesting gig than anything else out there. I think it’s amazing that there are also women out there who love to seduce, who know how to turn someone on, women determined to get hitched, women who smell of sex, and others who smell of cakes freshly baked for their kids’ after-school snacks. Awesome that there are women who are very gentle, others who are comfortable in their skin, young women, pretty women, women who are kittenish and radiant. Honestly, I’m really happy for all those women who’re resigned to the way the world works…. It just so happens that I’m not one of them.”What followed became an international feminist classic—one that made her infamous in her native country—though King Kong Theory has been out of print in the US since 2010 until now, as a new translation is published along with the third and final volume of her Vernon Subutex trilogy. Those latter books tell an entirely different, panoramic story, with a sprawling cast of characters, centered around a middle-aged record store owner on the decline amidst a Paris consumed by terrorist attacks and dominated by right-wing politics.You’ve published nine books since the somewhat notorious Baise-Moi in 1993, but here in the States you’re still mostly unformed in people’s minds. Are you still this divisive, kind of bomb-throwing figure in France? Are people still coming at your work with preconceived ideas about you?I’m still getting some conflict here, but I think they’ve gotten used to me. I’ve become part of the landscape—some people hate it, some people like it, but I’m part of the landscape.I’ve seen the title variously translated as Fuck Me, Rape Me…It’s really Fuck Me. I took it from The Exorcist, the young girl. I love that movie.Your books seem very distinctly of a time and place. How much are we missing if we don’t live, or haven’t lived, in Paris, or aren’t familiar with the culture of the moment in France?King Kong Theory was actually written out of my immersion in American theory and American feminism, American authors—Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen; all the process feminists that helped me and interested me. In France during the 90s, it was very difficult to get those American writers, because they weren’t translated; even writers like Judith Butler were translated very late in Europe. But some of us were very interested in pornography, prostitution, queer theory, lesbian culture, and I wanted to bring some of that American theory to France and to Europe. Vernon Subutex is very different—it’s a portrait of Paris about five years ago, but it has something in common with American culture in that it’s about punk culture and rock n’ roll culture, and a lot of that is coming from America. But it’s really about how the extreme right is rising in France—how things that were unacceptable ten years ago are becoming common. And that’s different from America—but there are, of course, some parallels.Is it odd to have King Kong Theory republished now? Is it still a representation of your thinking and feeling now, or is it a period piece for you?Here in Europe—and especially in Spain and South America—it’s my “hit.” It’s an old work, but I’ve never spent one year not talking about King Kong Theory, and now with feminist subjects rising again after #MeToo, I never stop talking about King Kong Theory. I didn’t expect it to be so important to my life when I wrote it—but I like it.It’s a very angry book—or maybe it’s just a very honest book? Maybe it’s just easy for people to classify and dismiss it by calling it angry, as opposed to saying it’s a very powerful or gripping book. But it’s intense.Yeah—you get the point. It’s not angry. I just read Valerie Solanas’ biography—Valerie Solanas was angry. This book isn’t angry—it’s straight to the point. It’s sincere. And I think that nowadays, many woman have gone through the process of talking about how they handled such things.To be clear: When you say “such things,” you’re talking about being raped. You write in the book about that, and about your reaction to it which, at the time, seemed unusual, or provocative: While the traditional feminist response to that, as you’ve noted, is to frame it in terms of being violated, being changed forever, irrevocably traumatized, you elected to view the experience within the prism of war, or battle—and you seemed determined, above all, to move on.So many people have gone through the process of being raped, and you can deal with it in many ways—or you can choose not to deal with it. I dealt with it. I was 17 when I was raped, and I wasn’t ready to just give up my life and die psychologically. I put every energy I had into going through the process of dealing with it. But I didn’t write the book until nearly 20 years later. At the time I wrote it, talking about your rape was a strange idea. Nowadays, things have changed. I also wasn’t the only one writing about such things—but there’s been a big explosion since then.Why King Kong?I had just seen the Peter Jackson movie when I wrote the book. We always suppose that King Kong is a male character, and I thought it could be more a queer character—or a mother figure. I suppose also I was thinking about the Guerilla Girls—the American feminists doing actions at museums with gorilla masks on their heads. It’s a lot about femininity, and about allowing different forms of femininity—I don’t feel masculine, but I don’t feel like a very feminine girl either. I feel a different kind of femininity.Back to Vernon Subutex: In a career devoted to writing from a pointedly feminist or woman-centric perspective, what possessed you to write a three-book series with a middle-aged white man in crisis as the central character?First of all, because it’s about rock, punk rock [NB: There’s a wealth of Spotify playlists worth exploring—both official and otherwise—centered around Vernon Subutex] and I thought the character had to be a white male, because this is what rock is about. And second, I thought this book was a good place to change my gender. I did it without thinking a lot about it—but then I published it and I soon thought it was a brilliant idea, because I found that the readers and the critics were more tender with a male character. When women do exactly the same things as Vernon Subutex, they’re much more subject to judgmental perspective and analysis. When it’s a guy, everything is fine—he can do whatever he wants, no? [Despentes laughs, and takes another drag on her cigarette.]Without giving away too much, I think we can say that the three Subutex books have everything from a dead rock star, a secret lost videotape, and a cast of dozens—from screenwriters and private detectives and wannabe revolutionaries to young students and cokehead dilettantes—all of them in a kind of middle age decline as they revolve loosely around Vernon as his life starts to swirl down the drain. They hatch various plots, fashion alternate ways of living; they cling to a certain utopian ideal even as their realities become more and more desperate and sordid. I was attracted to it first as High Fidelity as written by JG Ballard or something, but later it seemed more like Dickens or Zola as rendered by Bukowski. But what’s the origin story?It’s nice to hear those references—I’ve certainly read all of them. And I loved High Fidelity—that book was a big stepstone for people like me. I’m 51, and when I wrote the book I was 45, and that’s a time of life when you understand that while things are fine, they are going to be over soon—and going through that age is an experience that you have to live through to know. I was living in Spain then, and when I came back to France, I was amazed at how in Paris, everybody was depressed—and it’s a book about that, also. Even really privileged people were really depressed, and that really struck me, and I tried to understand what was eating us alive—why did we all feel this bad, this sad?Can you brood a bit about Vernon the man? I mean, why him—and what purpose did he serve you as a writer?There are two sides for me: He is the nice white guy; he’s very childish, which I kind of like in my mates. But you know that it’s not a good time for him. What I liked about Vernon as I was writing about him is that he’s not judgmental. He confronts a lot of situations and a lot of people, and he’s not an idiot—he sees things—but he’s never judgmental. Maybe this is what I like about my own rock background: You don’t hide truth; you witness things, and you’re gathered around very strange people who are sometimes unable to fit in other places, but you learn not to be judgmental. Some other characters in the book are driven by anger or anxiety, and it wasn’t so nice for me to spend time with them, but when I was with Vernon, it was a nice place to be.About this rock background: You once described your work as “really just rap and punk applied in a literary form.” How did music inform your writing, or your world, so much? I saw Nina Hagen on the television when I was 13, and from there The Clash, Joy Division…. it opened a whole new world to me, one that was hugely important. It was life-changing, and I feel a big deal of gratitude for this experience, because from then to my early 20s I had a very intense and happy and full experience of life—much better than going to university or being a square person—and I enjoyed it fully. I mean, you’ll never be 20 again—but it’s not a really good preparation for real life. [Despente laughs] When I discovered the publishing world in France at 25, I wasn’t fully prepared for many things.Such as?You’re not prepared for a lot of hypocrisy; you don’t learn to negotiate with normal people. In the punk world there were no adults, so there’s no judgements. You have a lot of ethical positions you have to give up if you want to function with normal people. And you expect to have a lot of fun when you’re into punk rock—and then you understand that normal people do not expect to have the same amount of fun; fun is not their priority. [More laughter, as Despentes lights another cigarette]I think things have changed for young people now—they don’t have that secret world that we used to have. I also read a lot, I learned a lot politically. There was a romantic side to it; there was a community. Nobody cared about us, because at the time nobody understood that there was money to be made from us, and that was a great privilege: We could do what we wanted. But then Nirvana happened, and everything changed.Back to Vernon: He seems to have kind of taken his hands off the steering wheel of life—I don’t think we’re giving much away to say that he becomes homeless and exists on the fringes of society—yet somehow his passivity leads people begin ascribing all kinds of things to him that may be true, may not be true—he becomes almost an object of devotion, a saintly figure.I think a lot of us take our hands off the steering wheel now and again. We don’t know how to handle our life, and reality in general—a lot of us just say, Okay, let’s see what comes next, and just go with the flow because we feel we can’t drive the car, can’t drive the bus. Many things happen that are very surprising to us, and we don’t know how to react without being passive. And a lot of people are anxious to build prophets, and there’s nothing fair about that. Why him? Maybe because he’s very passive, yes, and it allows people to project things upon him. He doesn’t do anything to deserve it; it’s not fair. But it’s something I’m interested in: I meet a lot of famous people, and sometimes you think: Yeah, you’re a star. But most of the time you think: This just fell on you somehow. And it falls on Vernon. And I don’t know—maybe Jesus Christ wasn’t someone so special, who knows? Maybe Jesus Christ was just a guy—nice guy, but… [We both erupt in laughter]And again let’s not give away the ending, but maybe we can say that it’s… shocking? Beautiful, tragic, dark? And there’s a kind of epilogue, a flash forward and a flash back from way into the future that’s grim and dystopian—but there’s a notion, hinted at, that rock n’ roll may just save the world? Maybe?I’m very pessimistic about the difficult times we’re going through, but at the same time there’s something very optimistic about myself. And I think the end of the book gets at that: I wish that something good could happen, but I’m not sure. But you have to understand that the books were written at the time of different terrorist attacks in Paris, and you can tell; you can feel it: There was this sense that we could die tomorrow without a fight. But at the same time, you think, yeah: Maybe something could survive—maybe music. Music is not only a big business; it’s a high form of poetry. I don’t know what to believe in; I’m very divided between sheer desperation and some kind of optimism. I wish I could imagine a different way of living that would succeed in a different kind of culture, but at the same time, I don’t believe in it. I want us as humans to be able to change things, but I’m not sure we can. It’s my contradiction.What are you working on now?I’m writing a novel, and I’m working a lot with a guy who’s adapting Vernon Subutex as a comic. It’s a cool process, and I’m having a lot of fun.There was a lot of fuss in the literary world when you were appointed to the prestigious Goncourt Academy, which decides the Goncourt Prize, five years ago—lots of headlines about the outsider joining the establishment and that sort of thing. But in January, you made headlines for resigning your post—why?I loved to do it, but it was too much work. I didn’t want to do it my whole life. I learned a lot, but you have to read more than 100 books a year, and if you want to do it correctly you really don’t read anything else. There was one summer when I was reading James Baldwin, and I had to stop the book, and I just thought: I’m going to quit the Goncourt. It’s interesting, but it’s not paid; I’m fed up. I want to read what I want to read. Product detail: Suitable for Women/Men/Girl/Boy, Fashion 3D digital print drawstring hoodies, long sleeve with big pocket front. It’s a good gift for birthday/Christmas and so on, The real color of the item may be slightly different from the pictures shown on website caused by many factors such as brightness of your monitor and light brightness, The print on the item might be slightly different from pictures for different batch productions, There may be 1-2 cm deviation in different sizes, locations, and stretch of fabrics. Size chart is for reference only, there may be a little difference with what you get. 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Click here to buy this shirt: Happy Halloween Mickey Duck Shirt, hoodie, tank top and long sleeve tee When I first met the rising poet Rosie Stockton two summers ago, they began to make me rethink the entire idea of performing gender. Stockton lives within the blurred edges of femininity and masculinity — all tenderness and swagger, acrylic nails and binders, bright-pink mesh and baggy pants. Their anarchic approach to “trolling the gender categories” would help inspire my own free-sliding on the gender spectrum, a way of playfully matching my lack of allegiance to any one gender to how I dressed and behaved.Stockton, who is from New Mexico, is releasing their debut book, Permanent Volta, about gender, sexuality, and love this week. It is a lush collection of poetry about the possibilities of love outside capitalism, and love as a way to resist its abuses. The poems are exceedingly relevant to our uneasy time: about hating work and being broke, but also about being in love, and needing sex, luxury, and care.Stockton’s book places them within a scene of young and provocative poets like Rachel Rabbit White (a Stockton fan), Ariana Reines, and Precious Okoyomon who are using poetry to investigate the pleasures and perils of sex, work, and power. Stockton began the book with the intention of writing about labor and revolt, but ended up writing about queer love, friendship, and desire as they realized that relationships are the antidote to the exploitative nature of work.“Capitalism convinces us that we’re individuals, that we’re isolated, that we’re separate from one another, and that personal responsibility is the ultimate good life,” Stockton says. “Love is something that inherently is a threat to that myth of individualism.” One of their poems asks, “What if we kissed/in an Amazon locker,” an intimacy in a world of alienation and depressed wages.Stockton and I spoke this spring, under a pomegranate tree in the backyard of their home in Los Angeles, about love and work. Stockton’s platinum blonde hair was pulled back, and they were wearing a white tank top, denim jacket, black pants — and a tiny string of pearls.You write about the conflict of love and the way capitalism wants us to experience love.Love can be playful and experimental, healing and activating. It can offer possibilities for growth, reflection, and breaking out of lonely modes of being. Capitalism regulates our experience of romantic love into the couple form envisioned by heteropatriarchy, because this is the form of social life most hospitable to capitalist accumulation. The state tries to control our experience of love through laws against deviant modes of sexuality and gender, in order to make us fit into capitalism’s needs. But I believe a politics of care and queer love is in excess of this.How did you get from writing about work to love?I was thinking about conversations around the politics of reproductive labor. There is a slogan that came from the Italian Marxist feminism’s “Wages for Housework” movement: “They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.’ There are also traditions of thought articulated by Black Marxist feminists that argue against the wage. Like, we don’t want to turn care and love into labor: what else is possible? In one poem I write: “Can we love with inadequate politics?” I wrote poems to people I care for: friends, lovers, and those who are both. I wanted to fuck with the poetic forms associated with romantic love (like the sonnet!) to actually experience the love that animates my life.So what’s your take? Should all care be paid for?Domestic labor and care work are exploited by racial capitalism, and have been a historically difficult sector to organize. For those doing this kind of labor, of course it has to be paid, and all workers need labor protections. That said, the wage isn’t the ultimate demand that I have around compensating reproductive labor, or practices of care and love. In this book I imagined refusing the wage as the path toward love and liberation. Leftist thinkers like Claudia Jones, Angela Davis, and Rosa Luxemburg are influential to me.The book is simmering with radicalness. What are some of the politics that inform your work?These poems are personal, but informed by politics that demand the abolition of police and prisons and the decriminalization of sex work. I’m interested in the intersection of labor organizing and abolitionist mutual aid projects that call for better working conditions while dreaming of autonomous systems that get everyone’s basic needs met.I study radical traditions and organize with groups that center those most vulnerable to state violence and exploitation, and often this means people who are working in criminalized or unvalued economies, or those who can’t or refuse to enter the traditional workforce. Many in the decriminalization movement fight to demand the basic fact that sex work is work, but also emphasize how being recognized as a “worker” is a false promise of safety. This shows up in my poems: “I didn’t mean to ask for money/I meant to ask for a different set of relations”! I’m interested in politics that demand the abolition of work, the end of the racist and transphobic carceral state, and a reorganization of care, healing, and social life. These politics refuse to believe recognition from the state is the only path. I use the sonnet because I want to understand how it regulates love and creativity. Take it back as a poetic means of production of romantic love! Do you see yourself as part of a specific scene of poets working through these themes?Absolutely. I feel in community with poets who allow politics to enter their poems — leftist queer politics and the politics of pleasure and abundance. Poetry as a form is so resonant with queerness. There’s room for play, puns, winks, kink, breaking the rules. These are tropes that I associate with queer community and desire. At the charter school in Harlem where Darlene Okpo first worked full-time as an English teacher, students had to get through 1.5 million words by the end of the year in order to pass. Without the word count, they were required to attend summer school. Formerly a teacher of after-school art programs, entrepreneurship, and theatre, Okpo has been educating since 2009. In a city as culturally rich as New York (where Okpo has lived in all five boroughs, including the honorary sixth, New Jersey) there are stories everywhere—on plaques, statues, park maps, and in bulk at the city’s many libraries and bookstores. But Okpo understands that students—and all people—need to be introduced to the right stories in order to find the pleasure of a great book.“I had this one particular student that had an A+ in reading, but her word count was low. One day I asked her why she wasn’t reading and she told me that the books that they have at the school library were dull, and that she wanted to read more books that focused on African-American characters,” Okpo recalls. An avid reader from an early age, Okpo already had some young adult books in her personal library. The next day, she brought her student Tiffany D. Jackson’s book called Monday’s Not Coming. “She would read it during class and during lunch. In a matter of three days, she completed the book and requested another book to read. She was also a popular student and my other students would see her reading, and come to me for books.” By doing this, students with low word counts caught up within weeks. “Everybody is a reader, you just have to find the right book that speaks to your soul.”At the start of May, Okpo opened a bookstore, Adanne, in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, which offers the same warm approach to learning that Okpo offers the students in her classrooms. It’s named after Okpo’s mother, Pauline, whose nickname is Adanne, meaning “she is her mother’s daughter” in Igbo. “As I was creating the aesthetic for the store, my friends and family would visit and we would always end up talking about our current issues. We talk about education, real estate, financial literacy, and many other topics. The books I chose for the store inspired these conversations.” The store is a celebration of African-American culture, with walls adorned by album covers such as “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” and shelves stocked with “Defend Black Womanhood” t-shirts.It’s not the first time Okpo’s work, and her sense of storytelling, has been inspired by her family. In 2009, when Okpo was 22, she and her sister Lizzie founded the brand William Okpo, named after their father, who “irons his clothes every day—even when he’s cutting the lawn, he’s fashionable.” Both parents are immigrants from Nigeria who work for the city of New York. “Fashion tells a story that we’re able to visually read—it’s that designer’s story,” Okpo notes. “When it comes to written storytelling, you’re reading the story and also looking at the identity of the author.”Adanne will be hosting weekly and monthly workshops focused on catalyzing change. The first one, taking place on June 5th, will be a discussion of issues concerning education during the pandemic. “I feel that the government didn’t do a great job in terms of taking care of our students. Now it’s time to bring that to the forefront,” Okpo says.Okpo is currently building out Adanne’s website, but for now, for those who can’t visit in person, she offers book recommendations to readers of varying ages and interests:My Feet are Laughing, by Lissette NormanNana Akua Goes to School, by Tricia Elam WalkerI Promise, by Lebron JamesA Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart, by Zetta ElliotLook What Brown Can do, by T. Marie HarrisAmerican Street, by Ibi ZoboiMonday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. JacksonJuliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby RiveriaFlyy Girl, by Omar TyreeThe Coldest Winter Ever, by Sista SouljahConcrete Rose, by Angie ThomasPowernomics, by Dr. Claude AnersonThe Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley and Malcolm XThe Kidnapping Club, by Jonathan Daniel WellsAn African American and LatinX History of the United States, by Paul OrtizThe Mis- Education of the Negro, by Carter G WoodsonAn Indigenous People’s History of The United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizHood Feminism, by Mikki KendallAin’t I A Woman, by Bell HooksWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, by Joan MorganWomen Race Class, by Angela Davis “I’m a little old now to be an enfant terrible,” says Virginie Despentes. Nonetheless, it’s a label she’s worn proudly since her brilliant, incendiary manifesto, King Kong Theory, was published in France in 2006, when Despentes was 37. “In France, we like conflict, and I’m not exactly an easy character.” King Kong Theory minced no words and wasted no time from the moment the needle dropped on page one:I want to be crystal clear: I’m not here to make excuses, I’m not here to bitch. I wouldn’t swap places with anyone because being Virginie Despentes seems to me a more interesting gig than anything else out there. I think it’s amazing that there are also women out there who love to seduce, who know how to turn someone on, women determined to get hitched, women who smell of sex, and others who smell of cakes freshly baked for their kids’ after-school snacks. Awesome that there are women who are very gentle, others who are comfortable in their skin, young women, pretty women, women who are kittenish and radiant. Honestly, I’m really happy for all those women who’re resigned to the way the world works…. It just so happens that I’m not one of them.”What followed became an international feminist classic—one that made her infamous in her native country—though King Kong Theory has been out of print in the US since 2010 until now, as a new translation is published along with the third and final volume of her Vernon Subutex trilogy. Those latter books tell an entirely different, panoramic story, with a sprawling cast of characters, centered around a middle-aged record store owner on the decline amidst a Paris consumed by terrorist attacks and dominated by right-wing politics.You’ve published nine books since the somewhat notorious Baise-Moi in 1993, but here in the States you’re still mostly unformed in people’s minds. Are you still this divisive, kind of bomb-throwing figure in France? Are people still coming at your work with preconceived ideas about you?I’m still getting some conflict here, but I think they’ve gotten used to me. I’ve become part of the landscape—some people hate it, some people like it, but I’m part of the landscape.I’ve seen the title variously translated as Fuck Me, Rape Me…It’s really Fuck Me. I took it from The Exorcist, the young girl. I love that movie.Your books seem very distinctly of a time and place. How much are we missing if we don’t live, or haven’t lived, in Paris, or aren’t familiar with the culture of the moment in France?King Kong Theory was actually written out of my immersion in American theory and American feminism, American authors—Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen; all the process feminists that helped me and interested me. In France during the 90s, it was very difficult to get those American writers, because they weren’t translated; even writers like Judith Butler were translated very late in Europe. But some of us were very interested in pornography, prostitution, queer theory, lesbian culture, and I wanted to bring some of that American theory to France and to Europe. Vernon Subutex is very different—it’s a portrait of Paris about five years ago, but it has something in common with American culture in that it’s about punk culture and rock n’ roll culture, and a lot of that is coming from America. But it’s really about how the extreme right is rising in France—how things that were unacceptable ten years ago are becoming common. And that’s different from America—but there are, of course, some parallels.Is it odd to have King Kong Theory republished now? Is it still a representation of your thinking and feeling now, or is it a period piece for you?Here in Europe—and especially in Spain and South America—it’s my “hit.” It’s an old work, but I’ve never spent one year not talking about King Kong Theory, and now with feminist subjects rising again after #MeToo, I never stop talking about King Kong Theory. I didn’t expect it to be so important to my life when I wrote it—but I like it.It’s a very angry book—or maybe it’s just a very honest book? Maybe it’s just easy for people to classify and dismiss it by calling it angry, as opposed to saying it’s a very powerful or gripping book. But it’s intense.Yeah—you get the point. It’s not angry. I just read Valerie Solanas’ biography—Valerie Solanas was angry. This book isn’t angry—it’s straight to the point. It’s sincere. And I think that nowadays, many woman have gone through the process of talking about how they handled such things.To be clear: When you say “such things,” you’re talking about being raped. You write in the book about that, and about your reaction to it which, at the time, seemed unusual, or provocative: While the traditional feminist response to that, as you’ve noted, is to frame it in terms of being violated, being changed forever, irrevocably traumatized, you elected to view the experience within the prism of war, or battle—and you seemed determined, above all, to move on.So many people have gone through the process of being raped, and you can deal with it in many ways—or you can choose not to deal with it. I dealt with it. I was 17 when I was raped, and I wasn’t ready to just give up my life and die psychologically. I put every energy I had into going through the process of dealing with it. But I didn’t write the book until nearly 20 years later. At the time I wrote it, talking about your rape was a strange idea. Nowadays, things have changed. I also wasn’t the only one writing about such things—but there’s been a big explosion since then.Why King Kong?I had just seen the Peter Jackson movie when I wrote the book. We always suppose that King Kong is a male character, and I thought it could be more a queer character—or a mother figure. I suppose also I was thinking about the Guerilla Girls—the American feminists doing actions at museums with gorilla masks on their heads. It’s a lot about femininity, and about allowing different forms of femininity—I don’t feel masculine, but I don’t feel like a very feminine girl either. I feel a different kind of femininity.Back to Vernon Subutex: In a career devoted to writing from a pointedly feminist or woman-centric perspective, what possessed you to write a three-book series with a middle-aged white man in crisis as the central character?First of all, because it’s about rock, punk rock [NB: There’s a wealth of Spotify playlists worth exploring—both official and otherwise—centered around Vernon Subutex] and I thought the character had to be a white male, because this is what rock is about. And second, I thought this book was a good place to change my gender. I did it without thinking a lot about it—but then I published it and I soon thought it was a brilliant idea, because I found that the readers and the critics were more tender with a male character. When women do exactly the same things as Vernon Subutex, they’re much more subject to judgmental perspective and analysis. When it’s a guy, everything is fine—he can do whatever he wants, no? [Despentes laughs, and takes another drag on her cigarette.]Without giving away too much, I think we can say that the three Subutex books have everything from a dead rock star, a secret lost videotape, and a cast of dozens—from screenwriters and private detectives and wannabe revolutionaries to young students and cokehead dilettantes—all of them in a kind of middle age decline as they revolve loosely around Vernon as his life starts to swirl down the drain. They hatch various plots, fashion alternate ways of living; they cling to a certain utopian ideal even as their realities become more and more desperate and sordid. I was attracted to it first as High Fidelity as written by JG Ballard or something, but later it seemed more like Dickens or Zola as rendered by Bukowski. But what’s the origin story?It’s nice to hear those references—I’ve certainly read all of them. And I loved High Fidelity—that book was a big stepstone for people like me. I’m 51, and when I wrote the book I was 45, and that’s a time of life when you understand that while things are fine, they are going to be over soon—and going through that age is an experience that you have to live through to know. I was living in Spain then, and when I came back to France, I was amazed at how in Paris, everybody was depressed—and it’s a book about that, also. Even really privileged people were really depressed, and that really struck me, and I tried to understand what was eating us alive—why did we all feel this bad, this sad?Can you brood a bit about Vernon the man? I mean, why him—and what purpose did he serve you as a writer?There are two sides for me: He is the nice white guy; he’s very childish, which I kind of like in my mates. But you know that it’s not a good time for him. What I liked about Vernon as I was writing about him is that he’s not judgmental. He confronts a lot of situations and a lot of people, and he’s not an idiot—he sees things—but he’s never judgmental. Maybe this is what I like about my own rock background: You don’t hide truth; you witness things, and you’re gathered around very strange people who are sometimes unable to fit in other places, but you learn not to be judgmental. Some other characters in the book are driven by anger or anxiety, and it wasn’t so nice for me to spend time with them, but when I was with Vernon, it was a nice place to be.About this rock background: You once described your work as “really just rap and punk applied in a literary form.” How did music inform your writing, or your world, so much? I saw Nina Hagen on the television when I was 13, and from there The Clash, Joy Division…. it opened a whole new world to me, one that was hugely important. It was life-changing, and I feel a big deal of gratitude for this experience, because from then to my early 20s I had a very intense and happy and full experience of life—much better than going to university or being a square person—and I enjoyed it fully. I mean, you’ll never be 20 again—but it’s not a really good preparation for real life. [Despente laughs] When I discovered the publishing world in France at 25, I wasn’t fully prepared for many things.Such as?You’re not prepared for a lot of hypocrisy; you don’t learn to negotiate with normal people. In the punk world there were no adults, so there’s no judgements. You have a lot of ethical positions you have to give up if you want to function with normal people. And you expect to have a lot of fun when you’re into punk rock—and then you understand that normal people do not expect to have the same amount of fun; fun is not their priority. [More laughter, as Despentes lights another cigarette]I think things have changed for young people now—they don’t have that secret world that we used to have. I also read a lot, I learned a lot politically. There was a romantic side to it; there was a community. Nobody cared about us, because at the time nobody understood that there was money to be made from us, and that was a great privilege: We could do what we wanted. But then Nirvana happened, and everything changed.Back to Vernon: He seems to have kind of taken his hands off the steering wheel of life—I don’t think we’re giving much away to say that he becomes homeless and exists on the fringes of society—yet somehow his passivity leads people begin ascribing all kinds of things to him that may be true, may not be true—he becomes almost an object of devotion, a saintly figure.I think a lot of us take our hands off the steering wheel now and again. We don’t know how to handle our life, and reality in general—a lot of us just say, Okay, let’s see what comes next, and just go with the flow because we feel we can’t drive the car, can’t drive the bus. Many things happen that are very surprising to us, and we don’t know how to react without being passive. And a lot of people are anxious to build prophets, and there’s nothing fair about that. Why him? Maybe because he’s very passive, yes, and it allows people to project things upon him. He doesn’t do anything to deserve it; it’s not fair. But it’s something I’m interested in: I meet a lot of famous people, and sometimes you think: Yeah, you’re a star. But most of the time you think: This just fell on you somehow. And it falls on Vernon. And I don’t know—maybe Jesus Christ wasn’t someone so special, who knows? Maybe Jesus Christ was just a guy—nice guy, but… [We both erupt in laughter]And again let’s not give away the ending, but maybe we can say that it’s… shocking? Beautiful, tragic, dark? And there’s a kind of epilogue, a flash forward and a flash back from way into the future that’s grim and dystopian—but there’s a notion, hinted at, that rock n’ roll may just save the world? Maybe?I’m very pessimistic about the difficult times we’re going through, but at the same time there’s something very optimistic about myself. And I think the end of the book gets at that: I wish that something good could happen, but I’m not sure. But you have to understand that the books were written at the time of different terrorist attacks in Paris, and you can tell; you can feel it: There was this sense that we could die tomorrow without a fight. But at the same time, you think, yeah: Maybe something could survive—maybe music. Music is not only a big business; it’s a high form of poetry. I don’t know what to believe in; I’m very divided between sheer desperation and some kind of optimism. I wish I could imagine a different way of living that would succeed in a different kind of culture, but at the same time, I don’t believe in it. I want us as humans to be able to change things, but I’m not sure we can. It’s my contradiction.What are you working on now?I’m writing a novel, and I’m working a lot with a guy who’s adapting Vernon Subutex as a comic. It’s a cool process, and I’m having a lot of fun.There was a lot of fuss in the literary world when you were appointed to the prestigious Goncourt Academy, which decides the Goncourt Prize, five years ago—lots of headlines about the outsider joining the establishment and that sort of thing. But in January, you made headlines for resigning your post—why?I loved to do it, but it was too much work. I didn’t want to do it my whole life. I learned a lot, but you have to read more than 100 books a year, and if you want to do it correctly you really don’t read anything else. There was one summer when I was reading James Baldwin, and I had to stop the book, and I just thought: I’m going to quit the Goncourt. It’s interesting, but it’s not paid; I’m fed up. I want to read what I want to read. Product detail: Suitable for Women/Men/Girl/Boy, Fashion 3D digital print drawstring hoodies, long sleeve with big pocket front. It’s a good gift for birthday/Christmas and so on, The real color of the item may be slightly different from the pictures shown on website caused by many factors such as brightness of your monitor and light brightness, The print on the item might be slightly different from pictures for different batch productions, There may be 1-2 cm deviation in different sizes, locations, and stretch of fabrics. Size chart is for reference only, there may be a little difference with what you get. 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