On Platforms for the Youth, The Letters Project and Anxiety on Social Media, Jood Al Thukair shares it all.
Jood AlThukair is a 21-year-old rising college senior majoring in English Linguistics and Literature. She is also a writer, artist, filmmaker, and the founder of Sumou Mag. Sumou is an online magazine and platform that focuses on amplifying the voice of the youth who come from different parts of the world. She founded Sumou in her summer trip to Istanbul in 2018. She has grown up in a family that treats art and literature as essential messengers to self-expression, which has eventually made her become the woman she is today.
Jood and I actually met through Instagram direct messages. I had DMed her something along the lines of, “Hello! We are Unootha Magazine. Let us know if you need any support or help at all!” from Unootha’s account, and the rest is history.
We also recorded two podcast episodes (one session divided into two parts) for Broadening Unootha that you may check out here! Jood and I spoke for three hours and laughed way too much about almost everything you can think of. There’s also some behind-the-scenes conversations about TikTok and Lady Bird that will always remain in the folders of my laptop.
I’m so grateful I get to call Jood my friend, and even more grateful that I get to share her brilliant work with all of you.
FATIMA AL-JARMAN: It’s been around a year since Sumou’s genesis, just as it’s been around a year since Unootha’s. Tell us more about this past year. Have you learned any lessons?
JOOD ALTHUKAIR: In all honesty, it feels much, much longer than a year! I have to say that I’ve learned a lot throughout the somewhat-short experience I’ve had/am having with Sumou. Not only did I learn things related to my professional career, but I also started to take notice of how much it has changed me as an individual. I established Sumou with almost zero experience in moderating magazines, especially online, but my passion for it is what kept me going. Establishing Sumou has shaped me into the creative I am today, and I’m still learning new things every day.
FATIMA: What were your initial goals for Sumou? Have they changed over this past year?
JOOD: Well, what I knew for sure is that I wanted to create a platform for youth. Growing up, I barely found any platforms that would support me as an artist/writer, mainly because they required previous experience. I wanted to provide a platform for those who needed a starting push. The mission hasn’t changed, but I want to say that we now focus more on ensuring that Sumou is a safe platform for those who want to be informed as well as be artistically motivated.
F: And what kind of space do you hope to cultivate through Sumou? Why does a space like Sumou matter?
J: Growing up, I always wanted to have this cozy little platform that’s pretty much like a scrapbook. I wanted to make Sumou a safe platform that can be perceived as a remote space, without the toxicity/anxiety that is usually accompanied with the other social media platforms. My sole intention was, and is, having to maintain a bubble where young people can express themselves and be heard without having the fear of backlash if they remain respectful.
F: I love the whole scrapbook-esque vibe that you’ve built up with Sumou. I feel like your new site and the visuals of your third issue do a brilliant job of reinforcing that aesthetic. What inspired you to take that route with Sumou, instead of maybe making it a more traditional magazine?
J: I’ve always been kind of a scrapbooking person. My uncle once bought me a scrapbook with a disposable camera. I never actually ended up using the camera — I accidentally burnt it by taking the film out in the sunlight — but I kept using the scrapbook, and every time I would get access to printed photos, I would design the scrapbook as much as I can. I found myself collaging even though I never knew it was a thing.
Someone said this to me once, as a form of bullying, that I was the last burp of the nineties. And I was like, you know what? You’re not wrong. And being “the last burp of the nineties” gave me the accessibility to be exposed to early two thousands aesthetics. I feel the early two thousands aesthetic shaped who I am as a person and how I perceive art. I feel like a lot of the elements on the site, and generally in my creative direction, are mostly influenced by that type of aesthetic.
F: I’ve also always loved the themes you select for the Sumou issues. Each one strikes me as deeply poetic and melancholic. From “Déjà vu: The Weight of a Memory” to “Dreams: The Things That Make Us”, can you tell me more about the brainstorming process behind each of these themes? What stories do you aim to tell through Sumou?
J: Thank you! I have to say that I can’t take the full credit—every now and then, I sit with my best friend and brainstorm themes with her. We get to send each other lines until we find the right ones. Initially, I envisioned Sumou’s themes to be single-worded. One day I opened a text from her that said, “All the Things We Don’t Feel”. I didn’t quite comprehend that she was trying to suggest this as a theme for our first issue. And from then on, it’s all what we’ve been doing. I think making our theme titles have more than one word enables our creatives to capture the emotion we aim to convey.
F: A Sumou project you've announced last June is “The Letter Project”. Can you tell us more about the project?
J: I’ve been thinking about creating a print project ever since I started Sumou. I write annual resolutions for the magazine ever since it was created, and when 2018 came to an end, I remember listing that I should create a category on our site for those who want to share their stories anonymously, in the form of a letter. The idea began to grow, and I thought it would be much cooler if the letters were compiled into a print issue. Our main focus is to shed light on the lives of the people in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and their diasporas. Our vision is to give them the space to express themselves anonymously, without feeling the threat of having someone to find out who they are.
F: How did your idea for it come about?
J: I’ve always found writing anonymously, whether from personal experiences or famous figures, quite exciting. Although I’ve stopped writing anonymously at 16, I still have some admiration for those who continue to write anonymously. I know that not giving a name to yourself when publishing can be, in one way or another, very freeing. It takes a lot of courage—and much regret later on—to express yourself and tell your story while using your given name, so I thought that requiring the letters to be anonymous is both necessary and inevitable.
F: I think it’s interesting that you share that you’ve been writing anonymously till you were 16, because I had roughly the same exact experience. What shift led to that big change — from you being anonymous to being open with attaching your name to your work?
J: I feel like the biggest shift was that I was focusing on fiction, and a lot of the times, the things I wrote in fiction were not things that I felt comfortable writing with my real name. Not because I was writing about sort of taboo topics or anything, but because I feel like fiction ironically enough, exposes a lot of your thoughts more than you do with non-fiction. I feel like non-fiction is just a constricted medium, and you focus on one topic, but with fiction, you get to expand a lot more.
I feel like in fiction, the way you structure your dialogues and the way you incorporate conversations can tell a lot about the author. And had I written these fictional stories when I was 16, I would be cringing at myself right now.
F: If anyone stalks you on Twitter as much as I do, I think it’s easy to identify your affinity for postcolonial studies, film, and literature. What would be the cultural products that would be required in a Crash Course to Jood AlThukair?
J: I feel like you need to be exposed to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You have to read Orientalism by Edward Said, and Angela Davis, of course. For film, anything that is related to well-constructed aesthetics easily lures me in, like Jojo Rabbit, Parasite and Knives Out. I also love Tim Burton’s productions — Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland.
F: So you’ve got a lot going on. You have The Letters Project, you’ve just released Sumou’s third issue, you’re releasing PSA, and as mentioned in the podcast, you’re finishing up university. But what are you focusing on outside of these creative endeavours? What are your goals for Jood AlThukair as a person?
J: I feel like Sumou and I are completely connected, while also completely different people at the same time. Sumou is my daughter, so anything that relates to her success is kind of connected to mine. So currently my main goal is having it established as a goal outside of social media, almost like a forum of it but not a forum. I feel like we’ve been so delved into social media and its toxicity as I’ve mentioned, that we need to step back sometimes and recharge, and I want Sumou to be that place. Where you get informed but also relax.
If you want to get involved in Sumou’s Letter Project, you can send all your written submissions here: http://sumoumag.com/index.php/the-letter-project/ (make sure you save a copy of your letter beforehand, in case of any accidents). For art and photography, send your submission(s) to Sumou’s email: sumoumag@gmail.com. Make sure you include your name or initials, where you’re from, where you’re residing. Note that the art and photography submissions need to be sent in .png, .jpg, or .jpeg files.
If you stay up-to-date on Jood’s postcolonial discussions, you can follow her on twitter (@joodthu).