Katie Fustich

writer/artist/etc.

recent posts

  • “Parable of the Sower” – A Rereading

    I first read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower in 2019. Originally published in 1993, Parable of the Sower gained renewed attention in the mid 10’s — reaching the NYT Bestseller list for the first time — for its prophetic depiction of a Trump-like presidency. Parable‘s President Christopher Donner, familiarly, vowed to return a crumbling United States to a long-lost golden age.  

    The book, at the time, felt foreboding. I distinctly remember the feeling of pique when narrator Lauren Olamina expresses shock at news of a measles outbreak. At the time, a measles outbreak was sweeping through New Jersey. How portentous! I thought. No, the word “portentous” didn’t actually sail its way down my stream of consciousness, but the novel nevertheless struck an excitingly sinister cord — the same feeling I used to get playing Bloody Mary with my friends. 

    Last week, I finished reading Parable of the Sower for the second time. My friends and I decided to start a book club. When someone suggested Parable of the Sower, I recalled the thrilling goosebumps of my first read, and happily agreed to pick it up again. For the month that followed, everyone in my life had to endure my exclamations of how the book was “too real.” 

    The fact that Octavia Butler predicted the “Make America Great Again” movement with surgical accuracy feels like an afterthought to the ways in which Parable depicts society as fractured, isolated, and self-serving. The poverty that disempowers, the paranoia that leaves everyone fending for themselves. Reading the book in 2019 felt like a glimpse at a possible future — reading in 2025 felt like holding a mirror. 

    In the afterword to the novel, writer Nnedi Okorafor talks about her own experiences with reading and re-reading Parable at various stages of her life. She charts her own trajectory from idealistic student activist to adult pragmatist through her interpretations of Parable at ten year intervals. Okorafor expresses gratitude to Butler for the lessons these readings have continued to afford her, letting her peel back new wisdom with each subsequent reading. 

    I wonder what lessons are left to learn now? I am being somewhat hyperbolic and morose for effect — but only ever-so-slightly. I am starting to think that what this book has to teach us is less a matter of opening our eyes and more a means of survival. Survival, at times, feels like all there is left.

  • Stuck in a the Beautiful Trap of Normalcy

    Until this summer, I had never lived in an apartment with its own washer and dryer.

    Prior to July, washing my clothes (and, with disturbing infrequency, bed sheets) meant layers of strategic planning. Sometimes it meant hauling a wire cart, stuffed with sacks of musty bras, three blocks down Myrtle Avenue, to the nearest laundromat. Other times it meant descending into a basement whose rat population was kept at bay by a friendly three-legged cat.

    As of this summer, I can separate my white socks from my black sweaters with no regard for the number of quarters in my possession. I don’t have to pretend my dishtowels don’t vaguely smell of mildew at all times; I can simply toss them in the hamper, where they will await a timely cleaning, and then pull out a fresh one from a kitchen drawer.

    Having laundry to do, mums to water, and dishwasher filters to clean is glorious — luxurious even. It’s also so normal in a way that’s hypnotizing.

    I see how folding fresh clothes and preparing a week’s worth of lunches into neatly-stacked Pyrex containers can be the stuff of a life, with Love is Blind episodes to fill the space in between. The days feel full enough to send you to bed tired. Add in a regular gym regimen and maybe one social interaction per week and your calendar is booked and busy as can be.

    There is no rhythm to my writing lately. Creativity comes in fits and starts. I have a box of pastels next to the couch, poised. My writing notebook is tucked under the laptop I use for work. Everything is ready for me, but suddenly there is far too much laundry to do.

    There are many people who would rather have their lives be comfortable than interesting, and both qualities cannot always coexist. I once heard someone say that, in order to be a powerful, creative woman, you also have to let your house be a little messy. Dust needs to gather in the corners of your house, or else it will gather in the corners of your soul.

  • Summer Camp for Anxious Adults

    Last month, I attended the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. In the days before, I was so nervous. “What if the other kids don’t like me?” I wondered.

    Those fears didn’t matter, in the end. A different version of myself came back down from that mountain.

    Surrounding myself with others who believe that reading and writing are the most beautiful stars in life’s constellation was indescribably affirming.

    Singing Alanis Morrissette at karaoke night was almost as affirming.

    What is the opposite of gatekeeping? Knowledge sharing? Whatever it is, it’s so refreshing; so needed. I understand the desire for mystique, but I think generosity builds legends in just the same way. 

    I bought my husband a Bread Loaf t-shirt. He wore it out to dinner the day after I got back. A woman leaving the restaurant looked at him and said “Bread Loaf! Wow!” She met my gaze as if to say “what an impressive fellow you have caught in your web.” Indeed.

    The real lesson from this experience is that I should have been reading so much more Benjamin this whole time.

  • New Publication: Palestine Solidarity Encampment

    “Yesterday, we handed our written list of demands to the university. I don’t think I will ever forget how I felt, printing off the documents and running together to the Student Support Office with them tightly clutched in our arms” – Yuka, Former Steering Committee Member, University of Tokyo Palestine Solidarity Encampment

    Thank you so much to the brilliant editorial team at Spectre Journal for publishing my latest: a translation of a Palestine Solidarity Encampment Diary, originally published in Etc. When I first read the piece, I was so captivated by Yuka’s relentless dedication to women and queer activists, and her necessary interrogation of misogyny and homophobia in student activist spaces. It’s a story I think that anyone who has ever been involved in student organizing can see a little of themselves in.

    Etc. Books チーム、ありがとうございました！数年前から、大ファンです。Etc雑誌は本当に重要なな仕事をしていて、一緒にコラボする機会があったことをとても嬉しく思います。ゆかさんの言葉は私の頭にいつも響いています。

  • All my heroes are dead

    You could say I’m a fan of Radiohead. You could say I’ve spent more than half of my life listening to them, own all of their albums, tattooed myself with lyrics from Karma Police before I was even 20 years old, have seen them in concert on multiple occasions and in multiple countries, each experience rapturous. Yes, you could say I am invested.

    And yet, today I sit here disillusioned by this group of five men from Oxfordshire, who are nowadays looking much less like keen-eyed and sharp-tongued auteurs and more like lolling middle-aged rock stars (Jonny Greenwood basically said as much while promoting his artisanal olive oil brand — the very existence of which says all you need to know). Nowhere has this shift  felt more apparent than the band’s “can’t we all just get along” stance on Palestine. 

    This isn’t new territory for Radiohead, admittedly. Ahead of a 2017 Radiohead concert in Tel Aviv, Roger Waters publically encouraged Radiohead to cancel the concert in support of the BDS movement. This came after repeated attempts at private discussion. Many Radiohead fans expressed support for Waters’ perspective. Thom Yorke responded in a lengthy statement that lambasted Waters and BDS — saying that their “black and white” way of thinking was unproductive, and demands paternalistic at best. The concert went on as planned. 

    Now, in light of the daily starvation, murder, and ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza, fans have renewed their requests to the band to stand up for Palestine. I am among them. I admit, my desire to have Radiohead speak on the issue is rooted in equal parts altruism and selfishness. I believe that we all have a moral calling to amplify the cries of Palestinians to the best of our ability. I also hope that artists who have been so important to me are brave enough to agree.

    Last week, Thom Yorke — who, by the way, has released four albums and toured extensively in the last two years — finally released a statement via his Instagram. I admit I was optimistic as I began reading Yorke’s perspective on, as he put it, “the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.” My hopes quickly fell. 

    What could have been a long-awaited opportunity to correct the record and join the chorus of voices in support of the oppressed was, instead, a pale lamentation on celebrity coupled with half-baked centrist politics. Yorke expressed surprise that his “supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity” and that the “social media witch-hunts” have taken a “heavy toll on [his] mental health.” I can’t say for sure, but I imagine the mental health toll of watching your entire family burn alive is likely worse. 

    Yorke pressed on: “[T]he unquestioning Free Palestine refrain that surrounds us all does not answer the simple question of why the hostages have still not all been returned?” Ignoring the fact that this sentence structure resembles a college freshman’s attempt to appear erudite, Yorke’s derision of pro-Palestinian activists as unthinking horde cut to my core; cut through 15 years of admiration, late nights driving home alone, taking the long way so I could sing along to In Rainbows, posters taped above bedframes, and songs carefully selected for mix tapes. 

    The man I have so long felt a connection with has turned out to be a paper-thin bourgeois faux-intellectual fence-straddler. His words are the words of those who wish to be perceived as progressive, while maintaining their access to comfort and power. 

    Yorke’s statement concluded with finger-pointing at Netenyahu and Hamas, as opposed to a century-old colonial settler project, and platitudes about how much is meant to transcend borders and other self-serving bullshit. Maybe the fault was mine to begin with. What was I thinking, idolizing a 56-year-old British man? It was a project doomed to fail from the start. Either way, I am left wondering where to go from here. 

    Maybe I shouldn’t wonder too hard. Centering myself and my feelings makes me no better than the man who I have allowed to let me down for the last time.