An interview with the Virginia Poet Laureate on poetry as witness, colonial history’s hauntings, and her longstanding poem-a-day practice
it’s spring, or whatever / season it is for laughter or slaughter, a // difference of one letter between one state / of being and another
“Together we are as mighty as our ancestors up from the dead.”
REPEAT: you stay up memorizing all the twists and turns of a ‘proper’ / enunciation and still your tongue fails you the morning after, syllables / flopping in your mouth like a dead fish, cleaved in shame.
Writers of the Bangladeshi diaspora reflect on liberation and identity.
On making critical connections to the long legacies of intraracial and cross-racial Black and Asian American lesbian organizing and community building.
Anahita’s head weighs 10 kilograms. Her hand, extended forward yet / disconnected from the bust, holds a fragment of drapery.
They say singing makes them recall the peaceful time in Arakan, that once upon a time, they used to sing these folksongs freely and proudly
He was nice to my father and his siblings. But still…
When you are a descendant of indenture, even the violence of the colonial archive presents the seduction of finding.
I’m not proud of what I’ve done. One foot bent in the gaze of the lake as if pleading to be consumed immediately.
In that moment who was to say what belonged to me—Munir’s mouth, my luminous skin color, a setting sun, the shady place we were in, I could never tell anyone.
“The work of journalism is bound up in paying attention and noticing things. That’s kind of how I go through the world, with an antenna up for the unexpected, the beautiful, or the moving.”
“As a writer, as someone who reveals their innermost selves linguistically, it’s lonely not to speak the same language as your parents.”
Your mother always told you stories as she oiled your hair: of her youth, legends and fables, immigration, your father’s business ventures.
The investigative journalist and author of the true-crime book The Good Girls in an interview about honor, caste, and patriarchy in India.
Her grandma had once asked her how you could tell the difference between something that had disappeared and something that had escaped
Kutenun seikat mimpi / dari telapak pemigi | I weave a bundle of dreams / from the palm of the pemigi loom
And who could forget / when he declared he was going to marry himself, /showing up to Barnes and Noble in a wedding dress
it’s spring, or whatever / season it is for laughter or slaughter, a // difference of one letter between one state / of being and another
I’m not proud of what I’ve done. One foot bent in the gaze of the lake as if pleading to be consumed immediately.
“Together we are as mighty as our ancestors up from the dead.”
In that moment who was to say what belonged to me—Munir’s mouth, my luminous skin color, a setting sun, the shady place we were in, I could never tell anyone.
REPEAT: you stay up memorizing all the twists and turns of a ‘proper’ / enunciation and still your tongue fails you the morning after, syllables / flopping in your mouth like a dead fish, cleaved in shame.
“The work of journalism is bound up in paying attention and noticing things. That’s kind of how I go through the world, with an antenna up for the unexpected, the beautiful, or the moving.”
“As a writer, as someone who reveals their innermost selves linguistically, it’s lonely not to speak the same language as your parents.”
Writers of the Bangladeshi diaspora reflect on liberation and identity.
Your mother always told you stories as she oiled your hair: of her youth, legends and fables, immigration, your father’s business ventures.
On making critical connections to the long legacies of intraracial and cross-racial Black and Asian American lesbian organizing and community building.
Anahita’s head weighs 10 kilograms. Her hand, extended forward yet / disconnected from the bust, holds a fragment of drapery.
The investigative journalist and author of the true-crime book The Good Girls in an interview about honor, caste, and patriarchy in India.
They say singing makes them recall the peaceful time in Arakan, that once upon a time, they used to sing these folksongs freely and proudly
Her grandma had once asked her how you could tell the difference between something that had disappeared and something that had escaped
He was nice to my father and his siblings. But still…
Kutenun seikat mimpi / dari telapak pemigi | I weave a bundle of dreams / from the palm of the pemigi loom
When you are a descendant of indenture, even the violence of the colonial archive presents the seduction of finding.
And who could forget / when he declared he was going to marry himself, /showing up to Barnes and Noble in a wedding dress