Alison Kinney
@alisonkinney.bsky.social
Author: UNITED STATES OF REJECTION: A STORY OF LOVE, HATE & HOPE (UGA Press, May 1, 2026): https://www.ugapress.org/9780820377230/united-states-of-rejection/
Having loved Tommy Pico's NATURE POEM, I went back to read his first book, IRL. I highlighted so many moments (odyssey across Williamsburg, horrid bar conversation, Brooklyn backyard fireworks party that yields moonwalking and his grandmother and the residential schools).
October 15, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Having loved Tommy Pico's NATURE POEM, I went back to read his first book, IRL. I highlighted so many moments (odyssey across Williamsburg, horrid bar conversation, Brooklyn backyard fireworks party that yields moonwalking and his grandmother and the residential schools).
Reposted by Alison Kinney
Was painting. Got sidetracked by pastels and kaiju.
October 6, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Was painting. Got sidetracked by pastels and kaiju.
I thought I'd posted about reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's THE SERVICEBERRY, but I hadn't, so just in time for Indigenous Peoples' Day, here was the first book I read this past summer, as soon as I could rest from other obligations!
October 13, 2025 at 1:12 PM
I thought I'd posted about reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's THE SERVICEBERRY, but I hadn't, so just in time for Indigenous Peoples' Day, here was the first book I read this past summer, as soon as I could rest from other obligations!
Today in book joy: For years I've been assigning Audre Lorde's epilogue to her collection, A BURST OF LIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS; I wanted my students to know who first defined self-care--"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
October 10, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Today in book joy: For years I've been assigning Audre Lorde's epilogue to her collection, A BURST OF LIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS; I wanted my students to know who first defined self-care--"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
Reposted by Alison Kinney
It’s tempting to urge protesters to avoid giving Trump a pretext for escalation. That would be a grave mistake. @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/10/07/t...
The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act
An authoritarian’s dream, the Insurrection Act is ripe for abuse — and Trump’s Cabinet is already setting up his justification to use it.
theintercept.com
October 7, 2025 at 11:40 AM
It’s tempting to urge protesters to avoid giving Trump a pretext for escalation. That would be a grave mistake. @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/10/07/t...
Today in book joy (and heartbreak): It's hard to choose among all the heartbreaks in Naomi Shihab Nye's 2019 THE TINY JOURNALIST. In the poem "Janna," "At 7, making videos. /At 10, raising the truth flag," Nye writes in the voice of the eponymous tiny journalist:
October 3, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Today in book joy (and heartbreak): It's hard to choose among all the heartbreaks in Naomi Shihab Nye's 2019 THE TINY JOURNALIST. In the poem "Janna," "At 7, making videos. /At 10, raising the truth flag," Nye writes in the voice of the eponymous tiny journalist:
Today in book joy:
When I finally read Jodi Savage's essay collection THE DEATH OF A JAYBIRD this summer, I was struck over and over by the craft. The entire work is incisive, witty, unflinchingly honest, and just as unflinchingly, deeply compassionate, without a trace of sentimentality.
When I finally read Jodi Savage's essay collection THE DEATH OF A JAYBIRD this summer, I was struck over and over by the craft. The entire work is incisive, witty, unflinchingly honest, and just as unflinchingly, deeply compassionate, without a trace of sentimentality.
September 29, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Today in book joy:
When I finally read Jodi Savage's essay collection THE DEATH OF A JAYBIRD this summer, I was struck over and over by the craft. The entire work is incisive, witty, unflinchingly honest, and just as unflinchingly, deeply compassionate, without a trace of sentimentality.
When I finally read Jodi Savage's essay collection THE DEATH OF A JAYBIRD this summer, I was struck over and over by the craft. The entire work is incisive, witty, unflinchingly honest, and just as unflinchingly, deeply compassionate, without a trace of sentimentality.
Today in book joy: I've been teaching the first chapter of Julie Otsuka's THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC in my Bodies of Water course for the first of two units on border crossings and immigration; this summer I devoured the whole novel over two evenings.
September 24, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Today in book joy: I've been teaching the first chapter of Julie Otsuka's THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC in my Bodies of Water course for the first of two units on border crossings and immigration; this summer I devoured the whole novel over two evenings.
I first loved Marcos Gonsalez's brilliant critical essays on membership in communities that are LGBTQ+, Mexican and Puerto Rican, undocumented folks and U.S. citizens. PETRO'S THEORY: REIMAGINING THE PROMISED LAND turned my mind toward the theorizing of vulnerabilities.
September 22, 2025 at 1:42 PM
I first loved Marcos Gonsalez's brilliant critical essays on membership in communities that are LGBTQ+, Mexican and Puerto Rican, undocumented folks and U.S. citizens. PETRO'S THEORY: REIMAGINING THE PROMISED LAND turned my mind toward the theorizing of vulnerabilities.
Today in book joy/reflection: Miller Oberman's THE UNSTILL ONES.
When I got to his translation of "The Ruin," these lines just took my breath away. "The repairers died." What happens to a culture, a world, when the repairers die, when there are no more generations to make things right again?
When I got to his translation of "The Ruin," these lines just took my breath away. "The repairers died." What happens to a culture, a world, when the repairers die, when there are no more generations to make things right again?
September 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Today in book joy/reflection: Miller Oberman's THE UNSTILL ONES.
When I got to his translation of "The Ruin," these lines just took my breath away. "The repairers died." What happens to a culture, a world, when the repairers die, when there are no more generations to make things right again?
When I got to his translation of "The Ruin," these lines just took my breath away. "The repairers died." What happens to a culture, a world, when the repairers die, when there are no more generations to make things right again?
I've been using excerpts from Alexis Pauline Gumbs's UNDROWNED for years, ever since it was first taught to me by the great ecocritic (and my former student) Quinn Luthy. "This section looks at the revolutionary parenting and community-care practices modeled by marine mammals....
September 15, 2025 at 1:22 PM
I've been using excerpts from Alexis Pauline Gumbs's UNDROWNED for years, ever since it was first taught to me by the great ecocritic (and my former student) Quinn Luthy. "This section looks at the revolutionary parenting and community-care practices modeled by marine mammals....
For the foreseeable future, book recommendations: I'm just going to post the most delightful and illuminating books I've read this summer and fall.
First: Randa Jarrar, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.
First: Randa Jarrar, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.
September 12, 2025 at 7:45 PM
For the foreseeable future, book recommendations: I'm just going to post the most delightful and illuminating books I've read this summer and fall.
First: Randa Jarrar, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.
First: Randa Jarrar, LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY.
Over on Instagram I posted a remembrance of Morgan Lopez, a writer, dancer, and former student of mine, who graduated from Lang in 2020 and left us too soon.
www.instagram.com/p/DN5wbJkDcmo/
www.instagram.com/p/DN5wbJkDcmo/
August 28, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Over on Instagram I posted a remembrance of Morgan Lopez, a writer, dancer, and former student of mine, who graduated from Lang in 2020 and left us too soon.
www.instagram.com/p/DN5wbJkDcmo/
www.instagram.com/p/DN5wbJkDcmo/
From an English department chair, Ahmed Kamal Junina, in Gaza: "To generate knowledge in the context of hunger is to think through pain.... That, in itself, is an act of resistance."
‘Too hungry to think, too weak to sit upright. Concentration slips away’: the struggle to stay focused as an academic in Gaza
It is hard to keep the mind sharp when the body is thin and dehydrated, but solidarity is teaching starving students their thoughts still matter
www.theguardian.com
August 23, 2025 at 1:26 PM
From an English department chair, Ahmed Kamal Junina, in Gaza: "To generate knowledge in the context of hunger is to think through pain.... That, in itself, is an act of resistance."
As a writer whose book treats the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence at length (Adams! Paine!), I feel cheated out of my best chance so far at the #NEA grant! I was so looking forward to thanking the NEA for accidentally funding my anti-Trump anti-fascist anti-white supremacist rejection book!
August 22, 2025 at 8:33 PM
As a writer whose book treats the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence at length (Adams! Paine!), I feel cheated out of my best chance so far at the #NEA grant! I was so looking forward to thanking the NEA for accidentally funding my anti-Trump anti-fascist anti-white supremacist rejection book!
The destruction of seed banks is about destroying viability for generations. Perpetuating hunger for generations, destroying biodiversity and systems developed over millennia, destroying relationships between people and land. It's not unlike salting the earth. viacampesina.org/en/2025/07/i...
Israeli Forces Demolish Seed Multiplication Unit of UAWC’s Seed Bank in Hebron | Via Campesina
Agroecology, Biodiversity and Peasants' Seeds In a grave escalation of its assault on Palestinian agricultural sovereignty, food sovereignty and Indigenous Seed Heritage, Israeli military forces carri...
viacampesina.org
August 5, 2025 at 1:59 PM
The destruction of seed banks is about destroying viability for generations. Perpetuating hunger for generations, destroying biodiversity and systems developed over millennia, destroying relationships between people and land. It's not unlike salting the earth. viacampesina.org/en/2025/07/i...
In my garden right now: Ozark witch hazel "Amethyst." The entire tiny tree is only about a foot tall; you don't notice it walking by, till you do.
February 7, 2025 at 2:43 PM
In my garden right now: Ozark witch hazel "Amethyst." The entire tiny tree is only about a foot tall; you don't notice it walking by, till you do.
Rescued sea turtle, photo by Michael Brady who is on no social media whatsoever.
January 27, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Rescued sea turtle, photo by Michael Brady who is on no social media whatsoever.
Seen at NJ Transit. If I were NJ Transit, maybe I'd think twice about volunteering comparisons of service quality between me and...well, anybody, let alone Harriet Tubman.
December 1, 2024 at 7:07 PM
Seen at NJ Transit. If I were NJ Transit, maybe I'd think twice about volunteering comparisons of service quality between me and...well, anybody, let alone Harriet Tubman.
The garden had a rough time this fall with the drought, but it still managed to bring out a little fall color. The itea (red/purple foreground) is a gift that keeps giving.
November 27, 2024 at 7:08 PM
The garden had a rough time this fall with the drought, but it still managed to bring out a little fall color. The itea (red/purple foreground) is a gift that keeps giving.
I tend to make pot pies for Friendsgiving. This was 8 years ago. I didn't think I'd need to save the puff pastry letters for another time around. The resistance requires more pastry!
November 26, 2024 at 4:55 PM
I tend to make pot pies for Friendsgiving. This was 8 years ago. I didn't think I'd need to save the puff pastry letters for another time around. The resistance requires more pastry!
I passed my post-probationary review last spring and go up for tenure this spring. The process requires 10 lengthy letters of support from other creative writers who have to review my 300pp+ dossier. Problem: some people have already reviewed and written letters for my first 300pp+ dossier...
November 22, 2024 at 4:10 PM
I passed my post-probationary review last spring and go up for tenure this spring. The process requires 10 lengthy letters of support from other creative writers who have to review my 300pp+ dossier. Problem: some people have already reviewed and written letters for my first 300pp+ dossier...
Reposted by Alison Kinney
My animated essay for The Texas Observer:
Our top story: “In reading these treaties, I continually trip over the word ‘friendship.’ Ostensibly, it’s like saying, ‘We are friends, so I’m taking your land,’ or, ‘Now that I’ve taken your land, we can be friends.’”
Reclaiming ‘Friendship’ Across Borders
In reading U.S.-Mexico treaties, I trip over the word “friendship.” Ostensibly, it's like saying, “We are friends, so I’m taking your land.”
www.texasobserver.org
October 13, 2024 at 1:28 PM
My animated essay for The Texas Observer:
Reposted by Alison Kinney
The publication with 15 columnists who all share the same 3 takes every week are very concerned that this place might be an echo chamber
November 16, 2024 at 4:33 PM
The publication with 15 columnists who all share the same 3 takes every week are very concerned that this place might be an echo chamber
"Word up!" It is I, the Gray Lady, with a "shoutout" to all my hip young friends.
*Not actually the Gray Lady
*Not actually the Gray Lady
November 14, 2024 at 5:03 PM
"Word up!" It is I, the Gray Lady, with a "shoutout" to all my hip young friends.
*Not actually the Gray Lady
*Not actually the Gray Lady