Hilary Plum

Just a reminder that budgets reflect priorities. In December 2024 @signalcleveland documented how a former president at CSU, who had stepped down six years prior, had made $337,500 as "special advisor" in just that past year alone. This was in the midst of a large-scale buyout of teachers and staff as part of "right-sizing" efforts. Fyi it cost much much less than $337,500/year to have an independent literary press -- the CSU Poetry Center -- that trained students, served thousands of readers and writers, and for decades was a cultural hub with national reach here in Cleveland.

These are just a few public comments from posts about @cle_state closing the press we know and love as the CSU Poetry Center. Cleveland deserves to be heard. 💚

Thanks to Axios Cleveland and @scenesallard for covering the battle over the CSU Poetry Center and the logic of austerity at @cle_state . Bonus photo of the CSU library interior and its 5 years of wet garbage cans, what.

Thanks to @leechilcote and the @clevelandscene for this in-depth article on the CSU Poetry Center, the bleak future of the arts and humanities for CSU students, and what it would mean to end Cleveland's longtime literary press. @xarylann

Some questions for CSU 💚

Comments on this article, and on similar pieces, are full of racism and hate. We could categorize them: those that describe Morrison’s success as affirmative action; or that mock another Black woman alongside her (Oprah, Ayanna Presley); or that also include frank racism against Palestinians. I’ll spare us the quotations. Some milder illustrative phrases: “She was another in a long line of Black intellectual Jew haters. Her books weren’t so great either”; “She won’t be missed”; “If I knew this notorious antisemite was going to up and croak, I would have ordered a large cake to celebrate. So long and good riddance.” If this letter triggered hate and racism, it must have “mattered”—is that my argument? Is that a good measure of effect? Despite the intensity of responses like these, Morrison’s fate was not like that of, say, the women in the Convent in _Paradise_. And she did not share in the fate of the hundreds of Palestinian writers, journalists, and artists in Gaza whom Israel has targeted and killed since 2023. Nor the thousands more displaced, injured, impoverished by occupation and war.  Yet upon her death, in corners of the internet which is also the world, a checkpoint: did you ever criticize the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians?  At a checkpoint, ranks close. IDs are demanded. People with weapons decide who you are. - MORRISON IN PARADISE, MORRISON IN PALESTINE by Hilary Plum (@hmplum )

"I wanted to write an essay about Toni Morrison’s work as an editor. I’ve been looking for a model to put to use. How did Morrison practice the profession of editing? [...] Yet the occasion of my question about Morrison’s editorial practices, how she approached her job—my desire to learn, mid-career, new approaches to that career—was not the publication of new scholarship on America’s best-known writer/editor. I wish it were. The occasion of my question was the ongoing US–Israeli genocide in Gaza. The genocide, for those of us fortunate enough to witness it from a distance, incited a crisis within our institutions—higher ed, media—that hasn’t ended and shouldn’t end. The form of the crisis is and should be personal. How can you work here, in a cultural institution you now know, beyond doubt, will not protest genocide—in fact, will punish those who do? The question bears both emphases: *how could you* and also—given that you must work, in some form, at some job—*how* should you?" I wrote an essay on Toni Morrison, the ongoing genocide, editing, Palestine, Morrison's prescient novel Paradise, the genre of the "open letter," the work of Adania Shibli, the forms collectivity and collaboration can take, hopeful and nihilistic. And the work women can do for each other. An attempt to think through the now. Link in bio. I'm grateful to @clereviewbooks for publishing this, in a series on freedom, theme of this year's Cleveland Humanities Festival. And grateful to Literary Cleveland and Ohio's yearlong celebration of Toni Morrison for inviting us all to return again and more deeply to her work.

Two of my favorites and best friends said some nice things about Konbit. I’m so thankful to you both, @hmplum and @cunningpscott . Konbit will be out next month @cmupress .

Urging you all to read Samer Abu Hawwash's masterpiece Ruins, in mezmerizing translation by @hjfakhr and just out from @worldpoetrybooks . I wrote a review for @arablitorg -- and thanks as ever for the irreplaceable work of that magazine & community. Link in stories or just go over to arablit.org (Also look how lovely all these @worldpoetrybooks look together)

@hmplum

Ghassan Kanafani, The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine translated by Hazem Jamjoum @1804books Recommending this book, and its excellent translation and illuminating paratext. For US readers the study of the 1936–1939 Palestinian revolution and its context seems especially useful—not a period of history usually included in the narratives reaching us, our Americanized histories. (Also recommending Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian again, on this period.) Kanafani’s analysis is precise and even dense in its detail—focused on class dynamics, the multifaceted operations of imperialism and colonial power, labor and unequal economic transformation, Palestinians' loss of land, policing and the rise of Zionist militias, conditions leading into the Nakba—pressing into the question of what happened and what could have happened. Another thought about this book lingers at the end from its the introduction, photo above—how to read this work actively today. I’ll have more to say (I just finished & it always takes me a moment to get my reading experiences into language) but this note for now, here on day 7 of #ReadPalestine week. @sira36abaqi @publishers4palestine

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, No One Knows Their Blood Type translated by Hazem Jamjoum @mayaalhayyat @sira36abaqi #ReadPalestineWeek, day 5 I first read this translation in manuscript 4-ish years ago, I don’t know how many times I’ve read it since, and through this past year I’ve gotten to keep rereading and living in this novel as so many people—many of you—read it and wrote about it and shared how it had moved you, moved powerfully through your lives and thinking and classrooms. And then two weeks ago Hazem received the @palestinebookaward for his translation, which was a beautiful moment amid the darkness. This novel renders—short, deft, potent in its structure—the intensities of girlhood, sisterhood, daydreaming, marriage and parenting, the everyday wildness of having and being a mom, amid and inside three decades of history in Palestine and in exile, the PLO, the movement for liberation, events ranging from the massacre at Sabra and Shatila to daily moments under occupation. Acutely this novel is about the shadow of the patriarch in both private and public life, or that’s something I keep learning from it—how to live and thrive in that shadow. An endlessly sly, funny, perceptive, feminist book, whose thinking feels so casual—even flirtatious—while being unstoppably radical. Cover painting by @malakmattarart Thanks to the team at @csupoetrycenter 💚 @publishers4palestine