"Connection is integral to liberatory work"

Poet and artist Zoë Luh on the power of dreaming, the importance of connection, and how living with a disability is a constant reminder to resist.

Freedom Ways is an interview & essay series exploring the intersection of artistry and liberation, illuminating how art serves as both personal transformation and collective resistance. Our fifth Freedom Ways interview features Zoë Luh, an artist, disability doula, and poet. Enjoy!

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Zoë Luh (she/they) is a poet, artist, and disability doula living on unceded Tiwa lands. They believe in poetry as a necessary tool for collective liberation and reclamation of bodily autonomy. Her work is rooted in healing, grief, joy, hope, and dreaming. As a poet, she feels it’s her duty and joy to use writing as a liberation practice and a tool for radical imagining. You can find Zoë on Instagram, and can find more information about their work on their Website and Linktree!

Zoë graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Comparative American Studies, and a minor in Studio Art. She published her first book of poetry, [and time erodes like thunder], with Assure Press in 2020, and is featured in Deathrattle/Oroboro, Blue Mesa Review, Saranac Review, In Between Spaces, a disability-centered anthology published with Stillhouse Press, and more. They were selected by Carolina Ebeid as a runner up for the 2024 American Literary Review Awards. They are currently working on a project centering their lived experience with the medical-industrial complex, and interrogating the connections between disability-based violence and global struggles for liberation.

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What is a moment from your personal or family history that has informed the way you think about liberation?

My relationship with disability, my body, and the medical-industrial system has deeply shaped my understanding of liberation and liberation work. I began experiencing medical trauma, medical experimentation, and systemic discrimination at a young age, and those experiences changed me at my core. Most of my adolescence, from about age eleven on, was centered around the everyday violences that come with disability and illness—from being kicked out of multiple schools, to chronic housing instability, to ongoing direct discrimination, harm, and gaslighting from medical practitioners. Growing up with the threats of systemic violence always hanging over me, I couldn’t ignore the world and had to be responsible and aware of the realities of the world at a younger age than many of my peers.

I hold multiple marginalizing identities, but I am talking primarily about disability because 1. disability is how I have experienced the most direct systemic harm, 2. I have many privileges as well, and those privileges allow me to experience only indirect/minimized harm and discrimination related to my other identities, and 3. the medical system amplifies and makes more precarious all intersecting forms of marginalization, which means that much of the discrimination I’ve experienced relating to race or sexuality were in a medical context.

The material reality of living with disabilities and illnesses forced me to acknowledge the need for liberation, and also forced me to turn that realization into everyday action for my own survival. There was not much room for avoidance or denial of my material conditions despite my attempts to ignore my reality. But the more I avoided my illnesses, disabilities, and the harmful impacts of systems, the more I hurt myself and the sicker I became, so much so that denial and avoidance led me close to death multiple times. The reality of disability does not allow for passivity or complicity; it forces you to be aware and to take action. Being disabled and ill is a constant reminder of the need to fight for liberation, and a continual practice of strengthening my resolve. I am also constantly wavering in my resolve, constantly feeling exhausted and wanting to give up and just tune out. But then I am reminded of my material reality, and that of those I love, and my love for myself and my communities strengthens my commitment to liberation work again.

I also want to acknowledge in this answer that even before I became acutely sick and began experiencing direct systemic violence and oppression at eleven, I was disabled. I’ve been disabled for my whole life, and when I was a child I was blessed to experience the love of a community and family that understood, accepted, and loved my differences. I think I only recently realized that these experiences are also central to my understanding of liberation, especially disability and bodily liberation. Growing up in this way and having love and acceptance be my basis of understanding myself, my body, and disability—before experiencing the stark contrast of the medical-industrial complex—allowed for me to know and imagine different ways of relating to disability, and therefore loving disability. I still had (and have) a lot of internalized ableism and shame, but I think that having those formative experiences gave me a window into the possibilities of liberation and community. When I write and sit with myself, I am often trying to look into that window and imagine the possibilities of bodily autonomy, community care, and collective liberation.

Photo Credit: Abdulmajeed

Why do you write?

I have always felt a pull towards language, and at some point I just couldn’t ignore it. I took refuge in books when I was most sick, and the love I have for writing and words runs soul-deep.

A key way that oppression works is by creating disconnection (here I’m specifically talking about medical oppression, but this applies generally as well, I think). I felt this disconnection sharply while growing up and am still finding ways to combat the harm of disconnection. I fought being isolated and disconnected throughout my formative years by finding connection through words. While I was sick, I took refuge in reading, particularly young adult fiction, and then later poetry. Words were truly world-changing because they were so much of my world, and I developed an appreciation and admiration for the power of writing and imagining. I really feel like reading saved me, and so writing did as well.

Writing is also the language I feel most fluent in. I think partially because I had so much brain damage (& therefore brain fog) from such a young age, it can be difficult for me to take my thoughts and translate them into spoken words, but writing is different. Writing unlocks access to my thoughts in a different way and allows me to be more myself on the page. Writing is very intertwined with my disabilities, partially because I write about that a lot, but also because it is a communication method that works with my disabilities. I also love performing my written work, because I see so much power in spoken word and connecting with community through poetry, but that language is difficult for me to access without first writing it, and so writing is where I feel most authentically myself, and most powerful.

Which texts/writers/works of art ground you as a writer working during various collective crises?

There are so many! Anything by Leah-Lakshmi, but most recently The Future Is Disabled because their work is so loving and clearly written for disabled people and communities of color. Like many, I also find myself returning again and again to Octavia Butler’s work, especially Parable of the Sower. Her work is prophetic and powerful, damning but holds grains of hope. I love science fiction, speculative fiction, young adult fiction, and magical realism in general. I love how these genres are full of possibility and imagining, whether that be the possibility of world destruction, or the possibility of creating a world despite violent forces.

I unironically love The Hunger Games series, especially Mockingjay. I started loving the series when I first read them at ten or eleven, and then they became one of my primary reading obsessions. But as an adult I love them because I also see so much possibility in them, and part of that radical potential is because they are geared towards a younger audience. I think often YA isn’t allowed to be as complex and real as The Hunger Games is, and it is a radical choice to give young readers stories that take them seriously and create space for revolutionary dreaming. I am still sometimes amazed that Suzanne Collins was able to conclude such a mainstream series with the main character refusing to re-create systems of oppression, instead finding future in healing and community. I’m trying to read more YA and children’s books, because I think there is so much possibility in those genres.

I am also trying to read more fiction in general and to ground myself in imagining and possibility! I also love nonfiction and see that as absolutely essential to read, especially essays and histories that give a deeper understanding of history, ourselves, and the methods of oppressors. But my heart is really with imaginative fiction and poetry because they take the realities of our world and then open up the possibilities of reality. A poetry collection that I continue to return to is Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. This is one of the first poetry books I really fell in love with, and the way she reclaims history and fights colonial power and narrative throughout the book continues to amaze and inspire me to be more intentional with my writing and to sharpen my words.

What/how do you resist in the literary world?

I struggle a lot with elitism and wanting to ‘be enough’, and I also am constantly reminding myself to resist these feelings. I think especially because of my disabilities, I’ve experienced systemic discrimination from academic institutions and this trauma very much carries over to my relationship with the literary world. Because of those traumatic experiences, I often feel the need to prove myself and reach for elitist markers of achievement and validity. But when I feel that urgency, I ground myself and remind myself that the voices in my head telling me I need to do this thing to be enough are not my own but the voices of white supremacy and capitalism and colonialism. Once I’ve separated those voices from my own, it’s easier to distinguish what I actually want for myself from wanting that is imposed on me. It is also easier to resist the elitism of the literary world when I am sharing space and in relationship with other radical writers and creatives. Community is always rooting me, pushing me to be better, giving me strength to broaden my imagination and find ways to resist.

Photo Credit: OSLAM

How do you remember your power? What do you use your power for?

To be honest, I have really been struggling to remember and stand in my power lately, so this question hit me hard. The last few weeks I have been re-reading The Future Is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and listening to another disabled person of color speak so honestly and lovingly about disabled communities has been giving me strength. Witnessing people in my communities and people I admire be unapologetically themselves always reminds me that I can also be unapologetic and powerful and still be loved and lovable.

Being in community, especially creative community, is really the root of power for me. When I am rooted in community and surrounded by people who I love and deeply admire, I remember my power and bravery, and feel like I am able to be powerful without being cut down. Community is what reminds me of my power and also what I try to use my power for. I think I am most powerful when I am rooted in love and fighting for people I love, including myself. I definitely have some shame associated with power, but have been working to untangle that shame lately. Really I think it does not come from myself but is imposed on me by society. Community reminds me that being powerful isn’t a bad thing. Embracing and nurturing my power allows me to love my community and myself more fully, and allows me to better protect those I love.

I also have been really leaning into the year of the wood snake, which is a yin year. The yin snake energy reminds me that doing things that feed my femininity (like dressing up and making everyday moments special) supports me in feeling powerful. I think it is easy to neglect or underestimate yin energy because our world is so yang-energy heavy, but when I nurture and feed my spirituality and yin side, I feel more powerful. I am naturally a more yin-predisposed person, but have developed an imbalance to be more yang-focused because of the demands of capitalism. Intentionally connecting with, and deepening, my yin energy is helping me stand more authentically in my power, and poetry is essential to this. To me, poetry is a yin art form. It is unapologetically feeling and loving, and I think that is why it is such a powerful tool for me.

How do the pressures created by capitalism impact your experience as a writer?

It can be hard for me to be with myself enough to write. The more I feel the pressures and stress of capitalism and witness the violence of colonialism, the more I need to write, but also it becomes harder to want to write. When I write I know I will have to feel my emotions, will have to acknowledge my reality, and capitalism is unrelenting, so it’s hard to want to make myself face this as intimately as writing demands. I am still struggling with this, it’s a constant ebb and flow of being emotionally and spiritually present, and then disconnecting and being avoidant again. Earlier I talked about connecting with yin energy more and nurturing my spiritual practices. Leaning into yin energy and deepening my spiritual practices and connection has also been helping me be present with myself, my feelings, and the world.

Capitalism also makes it hard to have things that you care about that aren’t monetized. Many (most) of the things that I do that I love are not monetized and that is part of what I love so much about them, they are work done out of love, intentionally against capitalism. But we also do live under capitalism and I need money. When I feel the pressure and stress of needing money to survive, I struggle with the tension of wanting to monetize my writing while not wanting to compromise this work. I haven’t really figured out that balance, because honestly I do need money to survive, especially as a disabled and ill person with many medical expenses. I think where I am at with this balance now is embracing that my main income is not writing-based (and maybe not even something I feel all that passionate about), continuing to do my writing work out of love, and being pleasantly surprised when I do receive money for my writing.

What do you believe is the role of creativity in collective resistance?

I see creativity as absolutely essential to resistance work. I think it’s easy to dismiss creative work as not directly contributing to collective liberation, and it’s true that it doesn’t always support material needs, but it’s spiritual and emotional work and that is equally important. If we can’t imagine a different world, if we can’t imagine ways of living outside of our current material conditions, how will we ever create something better? If we don’t do the hard work of going deep within, knowing our soul, loving ourselves, and unlocking our imaginations, then we will not be able to throw off the systems of oppression that keep us down.

I think the most powerful way that capitalism, colonialism, the medical-industrial system (and all other inter-connected systems of oppression) survives is by taking hold of our minds and the way we see the world. Because when they shape our thoughts even when we attempt to overthrow these systems, they are so deeply rooted in our minds that we end up re-creating the same harm we are trying to eradicate. I think that’s also why it’s so easy to dismiss creativity, because white supremacy and colonialism uses so-called objectivity and “logic” to invalidate ways of thinking that threaten their hold on our minds. Because creativity and imagination is powerful and has the power to undermine violent systems, it is framed as weak and irrelevant in an effort to de-fang the work. We often internalize this and bring this into our movement spaces, and in doing so, we undermine our own fight for liberation.

To me, the most effective way to go against this logic is to lean into the work of creativity and imagining. I think the way I can become most powerful and most dangerous to the oppressors is to daydream more, read more fiction and poetry, garden & create with community, and intentionally grow roots of creativity and imagination so deep that they can’t be uprooted.

How do you see the relationship between writing and liberatory action?

I think that writing is the work of building connections between people, even if you haven’t met them, and connection is integral to liberatory work. Writing is an exchange of ideas and imagination, an accessible way to build connections and networks of ideas, creativity, care. I think the act of writing is a way to reach across time & space and give another person a piece of your heart and to dream with someone who you might not ever know. There is something about writing that is at its core against any system of control, and I think it’s because writing and reading is the work of imagination and freeing the mind. Reading exposes us to new ways of thinking, lets us feel the shape of someone else’s thoughts and feelings, and allows for possibility to take root.

I also think there is power in the tangible. When you put words on the page, they are powerful because they are undeniable. We are going against powerful systems that use logic and apparent fact to undermine our communities and movements, so I think there is power in the undeniability of writing. I also think that spoken word and oral traditions are incredibly powerful and are inherently against colonialism. I am not saying that the written word is powerful in order to undermine the power of the spoken word, but rather to complement the strength of oral traditions. Words, whether written or spoken in community, are a way of allowing for possibility and provide a foundation for liberatory action to emerge.

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Submissions | Writing a Liberatory Practice [A Lit Lib x Memoir Land collaboration]

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