The NS Poem: Help Yourself
He was visiting town, and in the local paper
he looked so lost and lonely. He brought
a mid-price bottle of Chilean Merlot, cat nip
for the dog, and an action figure of himself
dressed as a pharaoh. At the dining table
he kept checking his phone – I could see
the reflection of numbers and bodies
in his cool shades, I could hear the clicks and moans.
When we told him there was no more pudding
he wiped his mouth on the front room curtains
and ordered a driverless cab, which arrived
in minus three seconds. He said, 'I could
shaft this country with my little finger.
You nobody people are a big problem.'
He stole our bread-knife and one of our children.
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New Statesman
a day ago
- New Statesman
How do we keep the lid on race-related violence?
A police car set on fire by far-right activists in Sunderland last August. Photo by Ian Forsyth / Getty Images 'Shower upon us abundant rain,' goes a Muslim prayer one learns in childhood, 'swiftly and not delayed.' A prayer for rain that makes sense in the desert. Imagine my surprise on learning the Church of England has one too. Whose idea was it to institute such a prayer in this soggy, inclement land? Its diverse uses have, however, recently become apparent: in the middle of an inconvenient hosepipe ban, to foil defeat in the cricket, or – more seriously – to maintain public order in times so tense that the country is being called a 'tinderbox' at risk of exploding again into nationwide rioting. Last summer, a far-right frenzy gripped towns across Britain. Hotels housing asylum seekers were almost burned down. Now, another such hotel in Epping is subject to anti-migrant demonstrations; these are spreading. Fearing another summer of discord, officials have been appealing to the deus ex machina of the weather. It's well known that hot summers provide the perfect conditions for public unrest to germinate. The London riots in 2011 were a summer affair, as were the 1981 England riots, the worst race-related violence the UK has seen. Tempers flare with temperatures. And rain souses the appetite to indulge in outdoor clashes. A historic heatwave also provides the metaphor for simmering conflict in Do the Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee's classic film about racial tension in a predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood. Lee saturates the frame – Gauguin-like – with volcanic hues of red and orange. Our eyes are primed – lava will surely fly – and after a youngster is choked to death by a cop, as George Floyd would be, the community at last erupts into violence. What would be the right thing to do in these circumstances? Lee is a dialectical filmmaker. He ends by quoting from two opposing – though equally compelling – schools of thought about political protest: Martin Luther King Jr's contention that violence is 'both impractical and immoral', and Malcolm X's rejoinder, that when violence is 'in self-defence, I call it intelligence'. The film doesn't say which of these courses of action is, in the end, right. I admire Malcolm X's courage. His insinuation that the bullet may ultimately be more effective than the ballot was born of the chronic failure of American democracy. But rewatching Lee's film, I found myself leaning more towards King. I recoiled during the climactic scene, when the amiable protagonist, Mookie, smashes up the Italian-American pizzeria that provides him with employment, a father-figure and a lively communal space (last year's rioters similarly ransacked their own community centres and amenities). Finally, the rioters threaten the local Asian-run grocery. At this moment, seeing such a familiar character threatened, I fully realised where it was that I stand in this debate. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe For all my sympathy with this community ravaged by the violence of an unjust state, I could not accept this rage against blameless bystanders. I recalled the real-life Bangladeshi family in Minneapolis, whose livelihood – a restaurant – was destroyed in Black Lives Matter protests five years ago. 'Let my building burn,' its immigrant owner, Ruhel Islam, proclaimed, 'justice needs to be served.' The restaurant's name still sticks in the mind: Gandhi Mahal, in homage to the man whose still revolutionary doctrine of non-violence King was an adherent of. By overcoming self-interest and standing with a just cause at personal cost, so clearly was Ruhel Islam. The rioters from Do the Right Thing and from last summer have divergent motives: Mookie and his friends in 1980s New York are crying out for racial justice, while last year's rioters were motivated, I do believe, by racial animus. Nevertheless, in distinct ways, they exemplify anxieties and resentments around race that can stew in any 'melting pot' society. Incidents of police brutality or, as has recently been the trigger in UK unrest, sexual assault, can blow the lid off. When that happens, since time immemorial, immigrant communities like mine are the ones consumed in the fury. How, then, to keep the lid on? This, now, is our challenge. Personally, I'd like to spread the Mahatma's teachings in Epping, but alas, that may fall on deaf ears. Severe sentencing was what the courts opted for – on violent demonstrators, deservedly, but also on inciteful or hateful speech. This, on reflection, seems appropriate. Terror was unleashed by the now jailed Lucy Connolly's call to burn down asylum hotels. But such authoritarianism betrays a political establishment increasingly of the view that the country's diverse ethnic and religious make-up can no longer sustain open discussion of topics sensitive to its respective communities. Note the state's recent activity: a superinjunction to prevent media reporting on Afghan refugee resettlement; an Online Safety Act that is concealing from the public controversial footage; making it a crime even to voice support for Palestine Action; penalising the burning of a Koran. Here, then, is a government that thinks segments of the population are so vexed by migration, or so offended by criticism of Israel, or Islam, that these conversations must be suppressed to keep the peace: ignorance coerced for the sake of bliss. If this is the cost of being tolerated, I don't really feel like paying it. I refuse to believe the country is such a tinderbox. Social cohesion will come, but only by having and withstanding difficult conversations, not by avoiding them. That's how to do the right thing. Failing that, I have my prayer for rain. [See also: One year on, tensions still circle Britain's asylum-seeker hotels] Related
New Statesman
13-06-2025
- New Statesman
Fang Fang's acts of resistance
Photo by David Levenson / Getty Images The Running Flame is a gripping, heart-wrenching read. In this novel by the Chinese author Fang Fang, first published in the writer's home country in 2001 and now in English, we follow Yingzhi, a teenager from a rural village. When she unexpectedly gets pregnant, she enters into a marriage she wouldn't otherwise have chosen. Her husband, Guiqing, is a lazy, entitled man whose negligence of his adult responsibilities soon turns to sheer callousness towards Yingzhi. Guiqing becomes violent. His parents have no sympathy for Yingzhi. Ever audacious, she argues with her in-laws about how society has changed since they were young: 'Haven't you heard that we have gender equality these days?' Later, when Guiqing is arrested on suspicion of raping another woman, it is Yingzhi who takes the blame: 'Guiqing left his wife at home to go screw around with some other woman. And you claim that isn't your fault!' her father-in-law says. 'It's your job to keep him happy… If my son picks up some dirty STD out there, I will hold you 100 per cent responsible!' All this is framed by an opening chapter in which Yingzhi is waiting on death row for an as-yet undetermined crime. From then on, Fang Fang's narrative hurtles towards a shockingly violent end. Wang Fang was born in Nanjing, eastern China, in 1955. Under her pen name Fang Fang she is the lauded yet controversial author of poetry, several novels and the online blog Wuhan Diary, which she wrote between January and March 2020 to document the lockdown in her city, then the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. Her posts were quickly deleted by authorities, as she called for the end of internet censorship. Set in the 1990s and based on interviews the author conducted with female death-row inmates, The Running Flame is a powerful reckoning with China's brutal patriarchy – which continues today, as shown in the case of the tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared in 2021 after accusing a senior politician of sexual assault. The book won four major literary awards in China. Fang Fang's 2016 novel Soft Burial, also now available in English, received critical acclaim and prizes. Then, within the space of a few months, it was denounced and removed from bookshops. The novel's setting of China's violent Land Reform Campaign of the 1940s threatened premier Xi Jinping's propaganda drive of 'telling China's story well' – meaning not criticising the nation's past. Soft Burial is a knottier tale than The Running Flame – though no less affecting. During the land reform campaign, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of land-owners and their families were killed by the Communist Party and the peasants they inspired under a movement to redistribute land. Our central character is Ding Zitao. When her son Qinglin moves her into a comfortable home for her retirement, she becomes psychologically ill, and he sets out to investigate the past she has always hidden. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Ding Zitao was a member of a landlord family: when it became clear their lives were threatened by the campaign, her parents encouraged her to speak against them at a village denunciation meeting in order to save herself. Fang Fang does not spare us any details: Ding Zitao's relatives chose suicide instead of facing murder by their tenants, and she buried them herself before escaping alone. A soft burial, a character named Happy Lu tells us, 'is when you bury someone's body directly in the dirt without any casket or wrapping. The local elders say that someone who will die with lingering anger or regret and doesn't want to be reincarnated can decide to have a soft burial.' This trauma haunts Ding Zitao for the rest of her life. 'The way they hid their past spoke to a deep mistrust they have harboured toward everyone around them,' Qinglin thinks as he uncovers the truth. The Chinese authorities feared Fang Fang's book because it revealed the horror of a time that remains unspoken, and because it encouraged that mistrust to fall on the government, rather than one's fellow citizens. In California-based scholar Michael Berry's translations, the narratives of both books can feel stilted. In Soft Burial, the dialogue is at times contrived, resulting in scenes that are unnatural and lack nuance. But the style is superseded by the unflinching stories. Given the challenges facing Fang Fang at home, the widening of these books' audiences to include Anglophone readers is a matter of urgent resistance. The Running Flame by Fang Fang, translated by Michael Berry Columbia University Press, 208pp, £16.99 Soft Burial by Fang Fang, translated by Michael Berry Columbia University Press, 416pp, £20 [See also: English literature's last stand] Related
New Statesman
22-05-2025
- New Statesman
The NS Poem: Help Yourself
We invited the world's richest man for supper. He was visiting town, and in the local paper he looked so lost and lonely. He brought a mid-price bottle of Chilean Merlot, cat nip for the dog, and an action figure of himself dressed as a pharaoh. At the dining table he kept checking his phone – I could see the reflection of numbers and bodies in his cool shades, I could hear the clicks and moans. When we told him there was no more pudding he wiped his mouth on the front room curtains and ordered a driverless cab, which arrived in minus three seconds. He said, 'I could shaft this country with my little finger. You nobody people are a big problem.' He stole our bread-knife and one of our children. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
