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You lot are truly wicked @Silver_Press_
When a writer articulates their needs in design, texture, quality, they aren’t mere suggestions. They are mandatory for the experience of the work. When the writer tells you what you’ve created does not match their vision, you don’t force it into the world, but you work to fix it
You don’t foreground your own experience, you don’t smile through your teeth and whisper simmer down now. You out to be ashamed of yourselves for pushing this edition of Zong! into the world, and against M. NourbeSe Philip’s wishes. Against her clearly articulated vision, against
the souls those poems live to honor and protect. Perhaps republishing works by writers who aren’t w/ us any longer is easier for you because they cannot talk back. @Silver_Press_
And this is consistent w/ experiences I’ve been told about, witnessed, or experienced myself: white & nonblack publishers ignoring the needs of Black writers, Black women in particular, foregrounding their own do-good, “aren’t you grateful we’re introducing you to the public?”
I knew you weren’t to be trusted as soon as I saw the clumsy and ignorant embrace of Cecilia Vicuña’s clumsy and ignorant text on Zong! from Frieze a few years back. Because clearly you aren’t operating in spirit or criticality, but only by names and associations.
@Silver_Press_ your little press must rot. No one should entrust their work w/ you. You have brought dishonor to this work, & imagine! just days before the anniversary of the massacre. I’m sure you’ll invoke contractual standards & how you abided by them. I’m sure you’ll never
see the irony how it was contract the slavers enacted the massacre. Because you’re too caught up in what republishing this great work and this great author means for your reputation, and not in honor or service to the occasion, to spirits that the books exists to give breath to.
