Category Archives: Issues

i. The Shrine He was eleven the first time he snuck downtown to visit the Tropicana, accompanied by some older boys from Bishop Pinkham Junior High. He no longer recalls what season it was, but he feels that it had . . .

We are masked. Mine is black with white elephants parading across it, the fabric from my local Nigerian seamstress, who now sells them in the front window of her shop. His is simple black, warrior-like and fitting for this October . . .

First the steep mountain and clouds, then a red line of movement, and closer still, a cannon and a priest, a statue of the Virgin Mary, two Spanish women awkwardly carried in covered litters, the chained and enslaved Inca men . . .

I was around thirteen and my sister was around ten when during a moment of severe panic my parents came up with a concrete, no-nonsense plan to lengthen our bodies by eight or nine inches. Despite being involved in sports, . . .

For N. Manu Chakravarthy & Eliot Weinberger   Sometime during the first millennium in South India, a Jain monk named Kumudendu Muni composed on palm leaves what is, perhaps, the most radical and spectacular work of literature in any language. . . .

Once upon a time, this was supposed to be a review of Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon. To write a review, though, requires an overview, and to achieve this overview, one needs to change position: to be wiser as . . .

Skúli W. Skíðdal was undeniably one of Iceland’s best-known and respected writers in his time. By the end, he had peacefully held his seat as an undisputed leader in the spiritual realm for years. Oddly enough, people these days seem . . .

When you connect powerfully to a story, you’re actually connecting to your deepest truth. Your ancestors want to connect with you as much as you want to connect with them. Your emotions are your sacred guides. Follow them down to . . .

It’s July 2018. Today is the last day of my visit to Siem Reap. Later this afternoon I have to catch my flight, and the thought of being so far away from Cambodia pains me deeply. I have failed to . . .

African unity is at present merely an emotion born of a history of colonialism and oppression. — Julius K. Nyerere When we studied Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine in high school, we relished the sound of the names—Ihuoma, Emenike, Ekwueme, Madume. . . .

Let’s imagine it is interesting to think about boredom. The particular boredom of childhood: vague, a bit listless, on the precipice of possibility. Where time is expansive and anything and nothing might pique one’s curiosity, or it might not. The . . .

Having lived for almost seven decades, death is not new to me. Each time someone I love dies, I am struck not just with overwhelming grief, but with the finality. The power of that finality staggers me every time. And . . .