Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity by Kristin Anahit Cass

What does the world look like from a SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) futurist perspective? Author and artist Kristin Anahit Cass explores this question in her debut book Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity published by fifth wheel press, a vibrant tapestry of essays, stories, poems, quotes, and detailed, often surreal images. 

Reparations of the Heart rejects the imperialist narratives and hopelessness that loom around us, instead proposing an alternative future where creativity, culture, and community flourish. Moving from past to present and into the future, memories of beloved ancestors inform various artistic iterations of SWANA futurity, as narrated by the vast diversity of their photographic subjects. 

Divided into three parts, this book crosses time and borders. Ancestors connects us to our past, building on the wisdom of our ancestors and infusing it with a greater openness and liberation for all people. The Republic of My Imagination situates us in a difficult but hopeful present where we create community, encouraging healing and hope through solidarity and mutual support. A Planet of Our Own launches us into an alternative future world where kindness and compassion are core values, replacing the oppression and colonialism of the present. 

Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity offers Cass’ unique perspective as a queer SWANA elder. Her long experience as a mother, activist, writer, and artist infuses the book with a unique perspective on queering the future to build a compassionate and inclusive world, holding compassion as a core value, respecting a spectrum of identities, and ways to love and live in the world.

Reparations of the Heart was inspired by the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, and was written in the midst of the recent genocide in Artsakh, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The wounds of these atrocities are felt on its pages, but against all odds it insists that change is possible. This profound book imagines the future and envisions creating it, encompassing land back, reparations, ethnic and cultural diversity, ancestral practices, and shared SWANA culture.

Praise for Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity

“Reparations of the Heart makes visible the power of transmuting ancestral memory into rich, euphoric, and interconnected life. Kristin Anahit Cass’ images are transportative, taking us to the internal realms where our ancestors, current realities, and possible futures mingle outside of time.” — Detroit-based weaver and storyteller Levon Kafafian

“In Reparations of the Heart and in the person of the remarkable artist Anahit Cass, we find a new and powerful artistic voice, one that speaks to today’s most pressing issues, including the ongoing war being waged globally against First Peoples by colonizing powers.” — Christopher Atamian, Writer, Director, Gallerist, and Curator of the Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Practice

“Her art seeks to fill the voids left by wounds, while opening up each scar to new possibilities that refuse to see them as an end in and of themselves. She is simultaneously in dialogue with SWANA ancestors, hard contemporary realities, and dreams for a future aligned with communal hopes and aspirations.” — Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-chief and Co-founder of Hyperallergic

Kristin Anahit Cass is a writer and artist working in photography, video, sculpture and other media. Cass’s work imagines the future, touches the past, and envisions a better world. As Tamar Boyadjian noted in Hyperallergic, Cass’s work “recognizes the lived experience of trauma, yet owns the ability of humans to individually and collectively reframe that experience in their hearts to make way for reparations.” In addition to her arts education, Cass has worked with women and minority owned businesses, artists, and nonprofits in her career as a lawyer. She is one of the founders of the LGBTQ platform Entanik (Family) where she’s active in supporting creatives in the global community. Her Borderlands Under Fire project was a finalist for the 2018 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago and Denver. You can find her online at kristincass.com and on Instagram at kristinanahitcassprojects.

You can purchase Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity here. Learn more about the book by reading Cass’ interview.