Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars. – Ursula K. Le Guin
For me this book is a bag… Like any single-use carrier bag – I disapprove. It shouldn’t exist, it contributes to pollution, it should be banned… And yet, in spite of the fact I know this book may be a waste product… I’m still writing, redacting, expanding… I’m still waiting, wasting, wanting. According to Ursula, ‘It is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag.‘ – Sophia Al-Maria
Sad Sack is a book of collected writing by Sophia Al-Maria, taking feminist inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1986 essay ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’; opposing ‘the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic.’ Encompassing more than a decade of work, Sad Sack tracks Al-Maria’s speculative journey as a writer, from the first seed of her ‘premature’ memoir, through the coining and subsequent critique of ‘Gulf Futurism’, towards experiments in gathering, containing, welling up and sucking dry.