Columns
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“Famesick”: On the Frackable Self
The extraction she describes is not always malicious; it often emerges from precarity, ambition, hunger, and the longing to be let inside a world that feels inaccessible. Dunham shows that fracking frequently operates without self-recognition. Those asking for access, connection,…
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Writing from the Chinese Diaspora and Against Self-Censorship: A Conversation with M Lin
“I have self-censored in the sense that, once, when I knew a story was to be published, I took out a few overtly explicit name-callings. I believe the story was actually better for it—sometimes leaving something unsaid has a chilling,…
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Bad Artist
That was summer. In the autumn, you fly to see him. The address is a narrow lane off the canal, where tourists recede and street signs wilt in their place. The buzzer is broken, he has to come down to…
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Eight Poems
Brown Girl Dreams of Arson Yesterday I dreamed empires are falling again. This time it was under the weight of climate reports nobody bothers to read andonline petition signed with burner accounts. I dreamed America melted like butter left too…
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No Quick Fixes and Owning Your Own Existence: A Conversation with Kelly Yang
“[W]we want to believe that women will want to help other women. We want that so badly, that a lot of stories and experiences get swept under the rug, because they don’t fit neatly with the narrative.”
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Imagining Irmgard
I see her on the sidewalk, voyaging through town. Even in modest-sized Quickborn, she is out of place, a doddering oldster around whom the rest of the world speeds like a time-lapse film. But her progress is steady, and an…
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Intimate Enemies
What’s important isn’t that El Tricolor wins, but that they give us occasion to revel in the stands. Strictly speaking, the crowd is there to celebrate itself. In emblematic fashion, the chant we use to encourage our own is sí…
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The Train Keeps Moving: A Conversation with Jeff Boyd
“To me, there always has to be a sort of rhythm or pace to it, which is what I was keeping in mind as I was switching POVs in this novel. The train’s always moving, and it’s almost always moving…
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O’ Frankenstein: A Resurrection of Manman and Tifi in Catherine-Esther Cowie’s “Heirloom
We begin to wonder how this past might become vivified in our hands. An heirloom might serve this purpose. Or it should. Is an heirloom not typically an item of great value, cherished and preserved to be passed on to…
