Talking About a Revolution Interview

With her trademark optimism, sass, boldness and search for answers, across a collection of new and revisited essays, Yassmin Abdel-Magied explores resistance, transformation, and revolution.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied started out a dynamic, optimistic, naïve, youthful grass-roots organiser and oil rig worker before she found herself taking on the heft of the Australian political and media establishment, unintentionally.

From her new home in Europe she brings her characteristic warmth, clarity and inquisitive nature to the concepts of 'the private and public self' and 'systems and society' that structure this collection.

In 'The Private and Public Self', Yassmin shares her passions for cars and cryptocurrency as well as the personal challenges around her activism and leaving Australia. She provides a hearty defence of hobbies and expands on the value and process of carving out a private life and self in an incredibly public-facing world. The concept of identity when one is a 'forever migrant' - by ancestry, and by choice - is interrogated, as is what it means to organise for social justice when you aren't sure where you belong.

In 'Systems and Society', through essays on cultural appropriation, the meaning of citizenship, and unconscious bias, Yassmin charts how her thinking on activism, transformative change and justice has evolved. She brings an abolitionist lens to social justice work and, recalling her days as a young revolutionary, encourages younger generations of activists to decide if it is empowerment they are working towards, or power.

In all these essays, written with the passion, lived-experience and intelligence of someone who wants to improve our world, the concept of revolution, however big or small, is ever-present.

Talking About a Revolution

Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Penguin Random House Australia

RRP: $34.99

Talking About a Revolution Yassmin Abdel-Magied Interview

What originally inspired the idea of Talking About a Revolution?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: The title of the book itself comes from an album I grew up on and loved my whole life, Tracy Chapman's Talking 'bout a Revolution. In the song, she sings about the whispers of revolution in the air, and I've always found her descriptions and imagery so evocative. It seemed like a fitting title for a book in which I do my best to Talk about Revolution in the ways I know how – through my personal experiences, through the movements I've been involved in or observed, and through my own, internal, evolution.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: This is a book for people who are interested in the world, those who want to think deeply and critically about the most urgent issues of the day. This is not a descriptive guidebook on the 'ten steps to overthrow the system', but a conversation, intellectual stimulus, a push to think about what kind of world we want to build and the ways we go about building it. This is a book for people who want to understand who I am beyond the headlines, who want to learn what liberation and justice looks like from the perspective of an African born, Muslim woman who holds those values and principles close to her heart. I hope people read this with curiosity, care and hunger.

How did you develop your approach to writing Talking About a Revolution?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: I started by reading a lot. I revisited a number of the old classics, including Fanon, Baldwin, Davis, then spread out to read more literary fiction, academic work on niche topics like necropolitics, old European philosophers like Wittgenstien, and whatever else I could get my hands on. I'd read and read and read and think and sit and chat about my thoughts with those around me (many of the new essays were written while I was on a Australia Council residency in Paris, so I was surrounded by artists) and only after the framework of the essay would be formed in my mind, would I then begin to write. That was for the new essays. For the older ones, I went through almost everything I'd published before and asked: what do I want to preserve as part of my body of work? What is important to include, what should I leave behind? It was a wonderful process of putting all these pieces together to make hopefully, a greater whole.

What's the main message you hope readers take from Talking About a Revolution?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: I want people to have deepened their thinking on some of the 'hot topic' issues in today's discourse, be more comfortable with nuance rather than taking on uninterrogated, uncompromising positions. I want readers to understand that it is 100% okay to evolve politically over time, I've done so and I certainly hope I continue to change, evolve and grow.

I want reader to challenge some of the norms we assume are fixed: like borders, our modern understandings of race, the idea that punishment is the same as justice.

Ultimately, I want readers talk about the world they want to create, because first we create the world we want with language and narrative, then we can build it.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers or artists?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: I'll be honest, this is not an easy life! To be a career writer or artist, one has to walk a fine line between following your heart's desire and paying the rent. It is not a path for the faint hearted! But hey. It's also an enormous privilege to do this work… so, my advice is this: go in with your eyes open. This is a high risk track. Enjoy the process, because often, you have no control over the outcomes (how people respond to your work, etc). Revel in the community of artists and writers you will meet along the way, because they will be some of the few people that truly understand the wild experience of being on this little yellow brick road.  And do try to have fun!

What's next, for you?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied: Well, I'm currently working on my six book (an adult novel…) and there are some screen things in development… so watch this space !