Columns
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A Shopkeeper’s Sanctuary is the Page: A Conversation with Jeannine A. Cook
“The books are for who they’re for. I’m not trying to make you understand. I’m not an evangelist. I’m not trying to convert. I knew who Harriet’s was for. I knew who Ida’s was for. They’re for those who walk…
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Three Poems
Fish Crew We feed our neighbors’ fish when they’re away,goldfish living in small man-made ponds.Anna’s yard is a tangle of flowering shrubs,pink and white blooms, small waterfallthat foams into the tiny pool.We throw some pellets in and wait.The fish swim…
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There Is Only a God in Grief
I always talked about how much stronger it made me, how many skeletons in my closet I’m able to keep quiet. What I never talked about were the conversations I used to have with his god. Or is it God?…
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The Crumbling of a Porous Life: A Conversation With Naeem Murr
“For a character to really come to life on the page they have to retain a kind of mystery for you as a writer. Of course, there are some characters who are much more flat, who are comic, or just…
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Lunatics in America
Though La Niña always giggled at the word, enchanted by its rhythm, it didn’t take long for her to understand: not everything in America was wonderful. Mami had made sure of that—warning her about guns, about the way even little…
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Seeking a Way In: :Woman House: Essays and Assemblages” by Lauren W. Westerfield
..the way virginity becomes larger than itself, something that marks the women who bear it as a kind of prey.
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Soulmate as Solidarity: A Conversation with Kelsey L. Smoot
“Blackness and queerness and masculinity are cultural artifacts that we teach each other and that evolve over time. They’re incredibly hard to pin down. Poetry allows you to blow language open and think in terms that are so much less…
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“a desire, a desire”: Appetite & Obsession in Summer Farah’s “The Hungering Years”
This repetition evokes an incantation, signaling the recursive and often reverent nature of the speaker’s desire. For Farah’s speaker—and for many living in diaspora—longing is an ongoing ritual, an inheritance. Ending the poem with a comma, Farah leaves the reader…
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To My Date at the Wonder Bar
“I don’t know how to capture my curiosity about forms of relationality that defy familiar, ossified shapes when I don’t even have the language for fluidity. How can I name the intimacies on which I don’t want to slap the…
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Saibin (the Visitation of Our Lady)
Our Lady’s journey began, as it did each year—even in our time—at the chapel of our village of Arossim, and would move from there to each house in the village. Our Lady was encased in a tiny wooden chamber, for…
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With Both Anxiety & Self-Importance: The Lasting Resonance of “One, None, and a Hundred Grand”
Contemporary readers can relate to Vitangelo, as social media seems designed to focus on what others think of us.
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The First Book: Carrie R. Moore
“I’m writing for readers who love emotional resonance. I’m not writing to teach anyone anything about race or history; instead, my book is for readers who want to see Black people living their lives. My ideal readers can also make…