Nonfiction

Psychosomatic

Allie Coppola

I have pink eye. At least, I think I do. And if I don’t already, I will soon. I can feel the little leggy bacteria marching along the rim of my lower eyelid, thrusting their germy arms, pumping their microbial fists as they exert a final bacterial battle cry before completing the conjunctivitis coup of my conjunctiva. They are here. These bacterial bastards, ready to ravage my eyeball and tickle my tear ducts, are mating and multiplying and personifying before (and within) my very eyes. I can picture them clearly: […]

Psychosomatic2022-01-19T23:07:48+00:00

Six Degrees of Separation

Nicole Drakopoulos

The telling of this story comes in different versions. There are my recreations: fallible, beautiful, and naive. There is a truth: unattainable, likely nonexistent. There’s his version, muted. There’s a version written in the heat and pain of our separation. Words flowing from a place of desperation, scribbled onto a page to hold onto him, onto us, to prevent our reality from dissolving into a fading memory. Much of that writing is raw, desperate, repetitive. These words were therapy, a way of making sense of a person I […]

Six Degrees of Separation2022-01-19T23:07:56+00:00

To Drown One’s Guilt in a Stream of Consciousness: An Examination of Ian McEwan’s Atonement as Trauma Narrative

Sarah Ang

Cathy Caruth’s seminal work Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History suggests that at the centre of trauma narratives lies “a kind of double telling…between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable nature of its survival” (Caruth, 1996, 7). This ‘double telling’ is at the heart of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which revolves around the tragic mistake of the thirteen-year-old protagonist, Briony Tallis, accusing her sister’s lover wrongfully of rape, the drastic repercussions that […]

To Drown One’s Guilt in a Stream of Consciousness: An Examination of Ian McEwan’s Atonement as Trauma Narrative2022-01-19T23:08:04+00:00

What Dreams May Come: Coleridge and the Pains of Sleep

David James Lamb

Insomnia is a literary disease. Those who have the best command of language seem least able to lay their head on a pillow and join the collective slumber. “The night is always a giant” said Nabakov, who could scarcely snatch more than an hour or two of rest back from each interminable night’s oppression. Ray Bradbury said of insomnia: “Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open.” Honoré de Balzac practiced a kind of self-imposed […]

What Dreams May Come: Coleridge and the Pains of Sleep2021-06-06T17:41:48+00:00

Nonfiction: Fever Dream

Wang Chutong

I once had a fever dream. I dreamt I was missing, falling into the deep abyss of time. I sensed the touch of waves and the sweet sounds made by gulls flapping their wings most joyously. I dreamt I was traveling, most intensely, through mysterious mists of early morning, but a clear cracking of knuckles or a grin, a clenching of fists or teeth would immediately drag me back to the secular life, mourning, without a purpose. A lighthouse became clearer and clearer to me, while at the last instant, totally […]

Nonfiction: Fever Dream2021-06-06T17:42:33+00:00

Why the “Amy Cooper” Bill Falls Short

Jacob Anthony Moniz

In June of this year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo showed support for legislation referred to as “the ‘Amy Cooper’ False Accusation Bill,” which would make it a hate crime to call the police and make a false accusation based on another person’s race, gender, or religion.

New York State Assemblyman Félix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn)1 introduced the bill in 2018. However, it gained traction in May after an incident involving a white woman named Amy Cooper who dialed 9–1–1 and claimed that she was being threatened by “an African-American man” in Central Park.2 […]

Why the “Amy Cooper” Bill Falls Short2020-09-01T14:32:27+00:00

Polaco: Death of the American Dream in Serbia

Milana Meytes

“The more important question is what am I going to do?” he said.

The middle-aged man with a Yugoslav-era mustache answered me from the kiosk window. The clerk smiled at me as he replied to my question. In Serbia, you can add additional money to your prepaid SIM card at one of these booths. I frantically gave him the equivalent of a twenty-dollar bill as I asked him what I should do if the kiosks in the country closed under lockdown. My cell phone was soon to be my […]

Polaco: Death of the American Dream in Serbia2020-10-04T21:11:55+00:00

On Creating Chhotu: an Interview with Varud Gupta and Ayushi Rastogi

Colin Stragar-Rice

Chhotu: A Tale of Love and Partition, released by Penguin publishing in December 2019, is a graphic novel that, ‘simply put,’ is a coming of age story. However, the context, references, writing, illustrations, and narrative form all make it difficult to ‘simply’ describe the book. Blending personal family histories with the historical memory of the partition of India, the authors entangle personal journeys of growth with the larger political and economic circumstances in which we live. In doing so, the authors interrogate individual struggles and the search for effective means of […]

On Creating Chhotu: an Interview with Varud Gupta and Ayushi Rastogi2021-01-07T22:29:35+00:00

Kajmak in Belgrade

Milana Meytes

At a Kafana tucked away in blistering Belgrade, my mother finds Kajmak.

Kajmak is the frothy fat congealed on top of boiled milk on its way to a greater cheese substance. A midway between butter and cream cheese, the dregs of a pot with nothing to waste and no hand to hold. The cream of a country that does not have time or room or fostering because there are other things to do and not waste.

“They have Kajmak?!” Mama exclaimed as she clapped her hands together, reminding me of the times she would […]

Kajmak in Belgrade2021-01-07T22:26:30+00:00

Breaking Boundaries in the Bekaa Valley

Natalie Garland

Update 2/8/2022: To protect the identity of the people in this piece, the names are anonymous.

At a humanitarian conference, hosted by the American University of Beirut, a panel of senior United Nations staff and Lebanese ministers gather to speak. It’s 2019, almost nine years into the Syrian war. A Syrian doctor asks: “who is responsible for Syrian refugees?” The panel unanimously agrees that it is the responsibility of the international community.

Not one Syrian refugee is on this panel. The silencing of refugees and local communities is systematic.

In Lebanon, the gaze is on […]

Breaking Boundaries in the Bekaa Valley2022-02-08T18:46:12+00:00
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