Hana Shafi's Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty is an essay collection about the power of affirmation
This interview originally aired on Jan. 16, 2021.
Hana Shafi is a writer and artist from Toronto; she illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. She is also the author of the poetry collection It Begins With The Body.
Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty is a collection of essays and artwork that explores self-discovery. Based on the affirmations Shafi shares online, this book explores identity, self-discovery, racism, feminism, friendship and the power of creativity through humour, reflection and art.
Shafi spoke with The Next Chapter about Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty.
Contextualizing humanity
"One of the things that inspired me to create the collection was that I had a lot of people on my Instagram ask if I could put together all my affirmations in a little book.
"I liked the idea, but I didn't want to just throw all of them together. I felt like there were stories behind each piece — or at least ways to contextualize the pieces, ground them and also make them more relatable."
"There is an affirmation in the book that says, 'Do not parade your trauma for those who are not equally enraptured by your joy. Our tragedies are not for consumption.' It's a little image of two cats. One cat is smiling, and the other cat is hissing.
It's about how sometimes marginalized people are put in this position to share really difficult parts of their life, and how we set people up to engage in this trauma porn for our entertainment and our benefit.
"It was inspired by a friend of mine, who is a drag queen. It was about the ways in which she was approached by the media and the way she is encouraged to talk about trauma and about the difficult parts of life, but not necessarily the successes. It's about how sometimes marginalized people are put in this position to share difficult parts of their life, and how we set people up to engage in this trauma porn for our entertainment and our benefit."
What the book is about
"The book is about joy and about mental health. But those things are not apolitical subjects — and this is a political book. It's something to be taken seriously. I think sometimes, when women write about mental health and 'feel good' stuff, people dismiss it as frivolous or unimportant. But it is important.
The book is about joy and about mental health. But those things are not apolitical subjects — and this is a political book.
"More authors, especially racialized authors who are women, should be able to see that about their work, that their work is important."
Hana Shafi's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
