Pussy Riot’s Revolutionary Reading

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I hope you saw my earlier Tribute to Pussy Riot. I admire those women so much!

I was pleased when I read in The New Yorker that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the three members of the Russian feminist punk-rock band Pussy Riot serving time in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred“, spends her time in a small four woman cell reading. She tries to write, but her notes are confiscated. She knows she is being spied on, but does her best to keep up her spirits while she continues to fuel her mind with what I believe is revolutionary reading.

What is she reading? Foucault, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, the Bible, and the late essays of Tolstoy. I’m thinking, “No wonder she is who she is and does what she does!”

The Bible is revolutionary, depending how you read it. Remember how it inspired such people as Wilberforce, Lincoln, M.L. King Jr., Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero and others to revolutionary thinking.

Nadeshda’s husband Verzilov accepted the LennonOno Grant for Peace on her behalf in New York from Yoko Ono and Amnesty International the other day. Read more HERE.

(I know this isn’t my regular Prayer From the Cell, but this is a kind of prayer from a real cell, isn’t it?)