nonfiction

Last Week of the Month

Myka Owen

Abstract

In this text, I give the reader a first-person view of my experience while incarcerated at the Broward County Jail on a charge that was immediately dismissed by the judge that I was brought upon. Though I felt the charge was ludicrous, the dehumanization and fear that was instilled in me made it very hard to simply “move past” the ridiculousness of the arrest. This was my first and only time being arrested, something I feel like everyone will eventually go through despite being innocent or cooperative. There are simply times where the “justice […]

Last Week of the Month2020-06-08T06:56:57+00:00

The Smoke in the Room

Courtney Patterson

I’m inside the smoke filled claustrophobia of his barracks apartment. The carpet is uncomfortable and tight, a dingy grey green in color. My mother is drunk. She always is when we come here. It’s been a few weeks since Donald. Or maybe it’s been days, I can’t be sure. Daylight seems to pass slowly and quickly simultaneously, and my nightmares are only getting worse and more persistent. My mother won’t stop talking about it. I wish she would just stop. I relive it enough inside my own head on a daily basis. Every time […]

The Smoke in the Room2020-06-08T06:56:34+00:00

The Never-End of History: Finding Meaning in the World-Historical Moment

Mark Howard

INTRODUCTION

In 1989 Francis Fukuyama(1)claimed that the end of history was upon us; Liberal Democracy had prevailed in the social, political, and ideological unfolding of secular modernity, and competing social forms could no longer pretend to offer viable alternatives. It would only be a matter of time, he felt, before deniers of this truth would be converted into the faith.

The end of history, as I understand it, is the end of politics; and politics, as I define it, is the process of contestation over social form. What Fukuyama was essentially claiming was that […]

The Never-End of History: Finding Meaning in the World-Historical Moment2020-06-08T06:56:28+00:00

Skeletal humour between binaries


Skeletal humour
between binaries:
forfeiting the funny in Svetlana Alexievich’s Boys in Zinc

Emily Upson

Eva van Roekel, an anthropologist working within Latin America, spent several years in post-dictatorship Argentina. She examined how humour revealed “internalised ambiguities”, in “complex everyday moral confusions and moral uncertainties”.¹ This analysis was a steep departure from the often perfunctory assessment that humour entrenched social groups as certainties, rather than sensitively navigating social uncertainties. I want to take this perspective and apply it to Svetlana Alexievich’s text, Boys in Zinc, which is a collection […]

Skeletal humour between binaries2020-06-08T06:55:07+00:00

A Short Story About Participating in What May Have Been a Kidnapping


A Short Story about Participating in What May Have Been a Kidnapping

Davíd Lockard

The captive is kneeling at my feet, clutching onto the fabric of my pants, begging for my help. Please, please, tell him to let me off, this will be my end.

The bus driver hesitated before announcing his verdict. He looked up through the mirror at his jury of passengers, scanning the faces he could see, before turning back to the captive. “I cannot just let you off in the middle of the highway. I […]

A Short Story About Participating in What May Have Been a Kidnapping2020-06-08T06:55:27+00:00

A SKIN THAT SINGS


A SKIN THAT SINGS: Movement, Mycelium, and Corporeal Choirs

Iván Espinosa

Scattered throughout the worlds of soil and sprig, there is family of small creatures whose lives emanate both sensation and transformation.  Carved into their flesh are brown waves of Earth, and beautiful wrinkles of wisdom.  Not far from the communities they nurture and grow, are towering trees that span generations.  This is the landscape — and soundscape — of the Mycelia. And at the heart of where they live, everyone sings, everything resonates in the rippling sounds of soma […]

A SKIN THAT SINGS2020-06-08T06:50:37+00:00

Landscapes and the Living

By Iván Espinosa

“Passion Flower” (oil on canvas) by John Francis Peters

Last Fall, I attended an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) called “Kelly Reichardt: Powerfully Observant.”  It was a mid-career retrospective highlighting six feature-length productions created by the New York-based independent filmmaker that have, since production, earned critical acclaim. Her intensely perceptive, often slow-paced films have been celebrated for reflecting a tremendous sense of landscape.  Her camera work relies on vast still terrains, capturing rich colors of luscious Oregon greens and Pacific Coast waters. In fact, […]

Landscapes and the Living2019-01-14T00:05:04+00:00

Queerness Contested: Derogatory Language in Drag Performance and the Fundamental Queer Antagonism

By Sam Danley

TRANNYGATE: DRAG’S DIGITAL DISCOURSE

Since its premiere in 2009, the reality television show RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-) has garnered significant critical and commercial success, cherry picking drag queens up by their lace front wigs and dropping them into the living rooms of Betty and Joe Beercan. Drawing larger audiences with each new season, Drag Race has brought about significant changes in the drag performance industry by expanding a potential for mainstream success and ushering in a new generation of “Drag Race baby boomers”—younger performers whose first exposure to […]

Queerness Contested: Derogatory Language in Drag Performance and the Fundamental Queer Antagonism2019-01-14T00:05:27+00:00

Who Owns the Underworld: Holograms and the Taboo

By Louise Ho

The last five years has seen the realization of advanced holograms, which can be projected onto any setting, including outdoors and in daylight. Most of these holograms are used to recreate live performances of dead celebrities, mining the underworld for stars thought to have gone too soon. The handful of companies which own the expensive equipment needed have been vying to develop a Madam Tussaud-style collection of celebrities who can be mobilized to perform for live audiences.  Holograms of deceased singers are created by compositing archival footage of their performances onto footage of body doubles, using […]

Who Owns the Underworld: Holograms and the Taboo2019-01-14T00:06:39+00:00

Exodus

By Dan Murage

On December 1st, we wake up in the early hours of the morning and trek to the polling stations. While we wait for the polling personnel to arrive, we regale each other with stories of a new country, a new democracy again. Some hail this moment as “The New Gambia” and have with them banners to publicize their creed. We stand in line for thirty minutes, after which everyone starts getting impatient: women begin singing victory songs, men beat their drums and children cheer, sneaking in […]

Exodus2018-05-07T21:28:50+00:00
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