Read & Riot
Page 20
Nadya embodies the true rebel spirit with every fiber of her being. Revolution is not an action. It’s a state of being. For 141 minutes a night, eight times a week, I tapped into that way of existing. To know that it was possible to live with such fierce independence is exhilarating. It’s simply a choice. What would happen if we all chose that path?
Pussy Riot, as a living, breathing piece of revolutionary art, exemplifies a complete rejection of control. They have breathed life, humor, color, and joy into the struggle for freedom. As Arundhati Roy put it in War Talk, “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.” We forget our own ability to craft our reality. Just as Orwell prophesized, by handing over control of our consciousness, we have allowed ourselves to become our own oppressors.
Perhaps the most powerful thing we can do is to exist. To not let ourselves be defeated, unpersoned, by surrendering to apathy or misery. Of course Howard Zinn put it best when he wrote in “The Optimism of Uncertainty,” “What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. . . . The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” Defiance as an act of optimism. We must not give up on our own power to craft the narrative, no matter what they do to us.
After six months of playing Julia on Broadway, I finally got to meet Nadya when she came to see the show. That night, I felt her presence in the audience, and it energized me to the point of tears. I felt my Julia was suddenly not alone, particularly when I said the line, “I’m alive, I’m real, I exist, right now. We defeat the Party with tiny, secret acts of disobedience. Secret happiness.” I knew Nadya understood. I knew I finally did too.
A PUSSY RIOT READING LIST
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About the Author
NADYA TOLOKONNIKOVA is an artist, political activist, and founding member of Pussy Riot, the punk-rock art collective that garnered international headlines, and support, after several members were sent to jail following a performance in the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Tolokonnikova is the recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace and is a corecipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. Following her release in 2013, she founded Zona Prava, a prisoners’ rights nongovernmental organization. Later, she started MediaZona, an independent news service now partnered with The Guardian.
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Copyright
Some names in this book have been changed to protect people’s privacy.
Adaptation from The Simpler Way printed with permission from Samuel Alexander.
Excerpt from “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)” by Gene Taylor reprinted with permission from Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
READ & RIOT. Copyright © 2018 by Nadya Tolokonnikova. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design: Masha Zakharova
Illustrated by Roman Durov
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda, 1989– author.
Title: Read & Riot : a Pussy Riot guide to activism / Nadya Tolokonnikova.
Description: First edition. | San Francisco : HarperOne, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059217 | ISBN 9780062741585 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Pussy Riot (Musical group) | Musicians—Political activity—Russia.
<
br /> Classification: LCC ML421.P88 T67 2018 | DDC 782.42166092/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059217
* * *
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274159-2
Version 09182018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-274158-5
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