Read, Watch, Listen
When in crisis or quandary, we seek to resource ourselves with wise guidance, or find a mirror out in the world for whatever it is that we’re going through.
For each theme, Meeting the Moment Fellows compile a list of materials to read, watch, and listen to. These resources are meant to bring us into dialogue with each theme and, ultimately, a deeper understanding.
"The Black Art of Escape" by Casey Gerald
400 years have passed. Where do we go from here?
Meeting the Moment Fellow Kory Gaines '21
"shout out to my niggas in Mexico" by Danez Smith
This is a poem of celebration by Danez Smith in the face of historical and intergenerational trauma. Danez calls for a joining of all the people who have been oppressed, a call for us to celebrate our survival instead of mourning how we've struggled. They name the wounds, but do not give them power over us.
Meeting the Moment Fellow DeeSoul Carson, '21
Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists by Chenxing Han
This is the first book I've ever read that uplifts the voices of Asian American Buddhists in a way which embraces complexity, nuance, and diversity with affect and deep care. Chenxing Han interweaves her own positionality and experiences with Buddhism throughout the book in a way which acknowledges the intersubjective experience of ethnographic research, creating a space for all of her respondants to be exactly who they are without needing to subscribe to any one kind of narrative. The book is a celebration of joy and of possibility--the possibility of the category of Asian American Buddhism to be unwieldy, complex, and oh so beautiful because of this.
Meeting the Moment Fellow Elaine Lai, PhD Candidate
This cartoon encapsulates so perfectly what's so fun about creation and the way that you can create whole worlds for yourself to play around in.
Meeting the Moment Fellow Adesuwa Agobnile '21
"Watch me play...the audience!"
This is an amazing short video that, to me, demonstrates what play can really do! In this clip, we see Bobby McFerrin's use music to help show the audience that play can unlock our creative potential.
Meeting the Moment Fellow JJ Kapur '22
For Estefani, Third Grade, Who Made Me a Card
In this poem, the poet Aracelis Girmay is trying to dissect the meaning of a word 'loisforeribari' that a third grader wrote in a card to her. I think it's playful because as the poet is trying to dissect this word, she jumps into all these different frames of mind and ways of thinking. Also, the animated video that goes along with the poem is just so much fun to watch!
Meeting the Moment Fellow Adesuwa Agbonile '21
Segment from Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao
So, funny enough, I first encountered this story in the reading comprehension section of an ACT practice book. That is, indeed, how I found the story. It's SUCH a beautiful and short story depicting the struggles of connecting to ancestry and roots - the disconnect of cultural values between immigrant children and their parents.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, JJ Kapur '22
"In Praise of Limbo", from This American Life
This is a podcast about a library on the border of the US and Canada. Because of its unique location, it is a site of reunification for many migrant families who haven't seen eachother in decades.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '21
"A Life Worthy of Our Every Breath" Onbeing podcast interview with Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong is the author of the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award; and a novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. This interview unpacks Vuong’s experiences growing up as an Asian-American, and how success for children of immigrants often results in a sense of betrayal to one’s own parents. Particularly moving is the section where he talks about when his mother heard her son recite his work in a live audience for the first time. Reflecting on why this meant victory for his mother, Vuong observed his mother working at the salon the next day and says: “I saw her and watched her kneel at the pedicure chair before one old, white woman after another. It was so humbling, because, I thought, finally. She was below their eye level for so many years. And for one brief moment, in Mark Twain’s house, they saw her, face-to-face, as an equal. And that’s when I understood, that is victory.”
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Elaine Lai, PhD Candidate
Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad, W.E.B du Bois and the American Soul
This On Being interview excerpt with poet, essayist, playwright and president of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Elizabeth Alexander looks back W.E.B. du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and the ways his career and work had reimagined possibilities for education, the university, and what it means to be a full-flourishing human being, in a context when certain possibilities had not yet been imagined. In one of du Bois’s most famous quotes “One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a negro, two souls warring within one dark body,” Elizabeth Alexander invites all of us to examine our double-consciousness, those parts of us warring with each other within us. What would it be like to give voice to these different aspects of ourselves?
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Elaine Lai, PhD Candidate
Your Elusive Creative Genius
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bookclub hit memoir Eat, Pray, Love, muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses. She shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius.
Meeting the Moment Program Associate, Emma Master '19
3 Idiots
This Bollywood film depicts the trouble with the way academic institutions, especially elite ones, teach their students. Protagonist "Rancho" does not fit in with his peers because, unlike them, he chooses not to memorize equations and knowledge but, rather, learn for the sheer fun of it.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, JJ Kapur '22
Let's Meet Again in Five Years
What I love about this story is that it addresses a huge question of dating as a young person: is this person "the One" for me? Is there even such thing as "the One"? In this column, we learn about a couple who decides to meet five years later to re-evaluate their relationship.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, JJ Kapur '22
The Metal Bowl
One of my favorite short stories of all time, "The Metal Bowl" captures the way that intimacy is not always something soft, beautiful and sweet. Oftentimes, being intimate with someone can be harsh, and odd, and scary, and ugly.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '21
Take Me as I Am, Whoever I am
Dating is hard enough, but can dating with a mental illness is a whole 'nother ball game. In this story, we learn about one woman's experience dating while also dealing with Bipolar Disorder.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, JJ Kapur '22
Speaking Freely: Bell Hooks
Living in a culture of domination, to truly love is a revolutionary act. bell hooks makes an important distinction between care and love, in other words someone who takes care of you, like your parents may not actually practice unconditional love. This interview brings out various aspects of bell hooks' personality, from her Buddhist background to her intellectual pursuits, from her love of nonfiction and mixing of genres to her call to reinvigorate what education means.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Elaine Lai, PhD Candidate
"Poem About My Rights" by June Jordan
June Jordan is the poet I think of when I think of using anger as a means to just ends. Her writing is clear, and unequivocal - her self-determination may cost you your life, and she's not afraid to say it out loud!
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '21
Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ep.30: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
After perhaps the most important election of our lifetimes, the real work begins. On this episode, Kimberlé sits down with a brilliant group of political thinkers and leaders to analyze the 2020 election and the challenges that remain. The discussion includes insights as to how local organizers turned Georgia blue for the first time in a generation, what strategies progressives might employ to keep pressure on President-elect Biden, and why in 2020, President Trump appears to have made electoral inroads with every demographic but white men. The panelists also discuss Kamala Harris’ historic ascension to the nation's second highest office, despite facing unparalleled levels of misogynoir.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Kory Gaines '21
Anger and Revolutionary Justice
In this talk, philosopher Martha Nussbaum analyzes the structure of anger. She explains how anger can be a necessary response, but ultimately argues that revolutionary movements that don't rely heavily on anger are the most effective at achieving justice.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Luciana Frazao MS '21
Prolouge + Gameboy Grows Up
This podcast episode tells the story of Cole, a manager at the amusement park Worlds of Fun. He is insanely dedicated to his job (even though people sometimes wonder why) because of the sense of belonging he feels while at the amusement park.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '21
In A Heartbeat
This animated short film is about a young boy dealing with his attraction to another boy at his school, as he is worried about being ridiculed by his peers and not fitting in.
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Darnell (DeeSoul) Carson '21
"Alien Suite" by Safia Elhillo
This is a beautiful poem about being uprooted and not knowing where one's home is, and not feeling at home with any of the languages one has been taught to speak. “Did our mothers invent loneliness or did it make them our mothers? Were we fathered by silence or just looking to explain away this gaping quiet?”
Meeting the Moment Fellow, Elaine Lai PhD candidate
"Dear White America" by Danez Smith
This poem is Danez recokining with the violent legacy of America and asking for more, and better, for Black people.
MtM Fellow, DeeSoul Carson '20
Death, Trauma, and Grief in the Time of COVID-19
This is an article about grieving in times of COVID. Pretty enlightening.
MtM Fellow, Luciana Frazao MS'21
"It's a Small World After All" on This American Life
In her twenties, Elna Baker lost 110 pounds over the course of a few years, and discovered that the world was a different place when you were a thin woman. This is a story of her coming to terms with that hard truth - grappling with the hard realities of womanhood, weight, and the world's perceptions of you if you're fat.
MtM Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '20
"A Poem About Inteligence for My Brothers and Sisters" by June Jordan
I like how this poem plays on the multiple meanings of reckoning - on the one hand, in the poem June Jordan is literally trying to reckon with the meaning of e=mc2, but in a larger sense, it's a poem about how Blackness and intellegence are often seen as two seperate things, when in fact, June Jordan sees herself as a genuis.
MtM Fellow, Adesuwa Agbonile '20
"The Tale": Astonishing New Movie Tackles Filmmaker Jennifer Fox's Reckoning with Child Sexual Abuse
This is an interview with Jennifer Fox, director of the film "The Tale," which looks at the director's own reckoning with her childhood sexual abuse. This interview emerged in the midst of the #MeToo movement and helps to change the conversation about child sexual abuse and memory by taking it out of the taboo box of the perpetrator being an evil monster. It attempts to show how perpetrators of sexual abuse are often esteemed in communities, completely unsuspected, and how common sexual abuse actually is.
MtM Fellow, Elaine Lai PhD Candidate
"These Tyrannical Times: Poetry as Liberatory, Poetry as Undoing" Dionne Brand and Harryette Mullen
The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics organized this talk between two of the most renowned Black poets of our century. They speak prescient poems and have critical discourse on the role of language, metaphors, and more for our current calamitious times. They tackle legacies of colonialism, chattel slavery, and institutionalized racism with their work.
MtM Fellow, Kory Gaines '21
"Thank You" by Ross Gay
Gratitude as grounding.
MtM Fellow, Kory Gaines '20
"Find Your Ground" by Dr. Rick Hanson
In this article from Psychology Today, Dr. Hanson, a psychologist and reseracher at UC Berkeley, shares tools to help the reader find their ground (and the better understand the importance of finding it).
MtM Fellow, Luciana Frazao MS '21
"Facing It" by Yusef Komynyakaa
In this poem, Yusef Komunyakaa reflects on the Vietnam War, which he was drafted into fighting in. In relation to ourselves, I believe part of finding ground is facing our ghosts head on.
MtM Fellow, DeeSoul Carson '20
Authenticity vs. Attachment
Finding Ground is about differentiating true self from false self, and begining to disentangle the identities you assumed to get your needs met and to cope from your more authentic self and needs.
MtM Program Assistan, Emma Master '19
Rabbits and Fire by Alberto Ríos
This poem isn't for everyone dealing with uncertainty; however, it's one that I return to when I feel a particular kind of uncertainty. It helps me lean into the knowledge that humans are not the only beings in existence, that pain and chaos occur naturally without human 'reason,' and that to hold awful things in my mind can be healing.
MtM Fellow, Rachel Lam '19
Summon the Hero Within: the power of mindset for dealing with change
The event is part of Stanford's annual Contemplation By Design program. The theme is about changing your strategies to address unforeseen changes.
MtM Fellow Luciana Frazao MS '21
Saving Mr. Banks
This is a movie about how to dance through uncertainty! Ms. P.L.Travers - the original author of the Mary Poppins book - is faced with a difficult decision: Does she allow Mr. Walt Disney to animate it? Her uncertaintly stems from fear: What if they ruin her Mary Poppins? The movie teaches us about the fear uncertainty brings, and how to meet that fear with "a spoonful of sugar."
MtM Fellow JJ Kapur '22
Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford
Steve Jobs divides his famous graduation speech into three categories. His second category on "Connecting the Dots" is all about meeting uncertainty. Jobs explains how we cannot connect the dots looking forward, we can only connect the dots looking back. This means we must rely on our intuition/gut to guide us through uncertainty, and to have faith that the dots will somehow connect in our future. For Jobs, this principle came into practice when he dropped out of Reed College and "dropped in" on a caligraphy class. This class, at the time, had no application to Jobs' life. Many years later however, what Jobs learned from that calligraphy class became the backbone of Apple's beautiful typeface.
MtM Fellow JJ Kapur '22