“It’s modern-day bondage. Our folks are being held hostage for ransom.” This statement was made by Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners On New Ground (SONG)—an Atlanta, Georgia-based LGBTQ and social-justice advocacy organization that helps bail Black women, queer and transgender folks out of jail. Hooks was referring to the US cash bail system—a corrupt, for-profit complex […]
Suzy Hansen is an American journalist and contributing writer for The Times Magazine. She spent more than a decade living and working in Istanbul, where she wrote her recent book, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, which been widely hailed by the New York Times, the Guardian, the Los Angeles […]
The conflict in Syria has been called a civil war, proxy war, a regional conflagration, even a foreign conspiracy. These representations reflect a militaristic conceptualization of conflict that renders the Syrian people invisible and silences their intimate day-to-day lives. Yet if we start thought from the life of an object – from the statues of […]
This essay follows Black culture in the United States through the lens of gangsta rap. This musical art functions as a window into the hidden consciousness of post-industrial, working class, African American society. To listen to the legendary lyrics of individuals like Ice-T and Tupac Shakur is to tap in to an expansive network of […]
I love words – words that rumble and resonate with the incessancy of a raging bull. Words like deliberate, precocious and prowess, which seem to exist entirely by their own volition. And then there are those like, ethereal,transience and willingly, whose delicacy curves and flows like quicksilver. I love the art of transcription, of translating […]
There is something special about being a new intern. It reminds me of being in a foreign country – everything a mystery, glistening with newness and awe. The unfamiliar faces and languages heighten a girl’s senses, enabling her to pick up on even the faintest of nuances. This state of careful observation, sparked by a […]
Day after day, chattering, basket-carrying, cart-pushing humans pass me by. Occasionally they stop to sniff my cherry-colored petals or grope one of my leaves, and then continue on. Life in the flower shop is simple, expected, routine. The owners feed me, water me, keep me clean and warm. They trim me every Tuesday and splash […]
This past quarter I was first exposed to the illogic of war. For weeks I felt a welling up of grief – an accumulation of pain, horror and sorrow growing out of my sudden introduction to necropolitics and the ruthless machine we call war. Like an insurgency no longer able to resist the humiliation of […]
In August 2013 I was arrested and detained at the border of Washington and Canada. My hands were held behind my lower back as a young officer locked me inside a steel, windowless room. Outside, while the older, higher ranking officer raided our car, stealing food, wine, tobacco and other possessions he saw as unfit […]
Two of human kind’s most innate motivations are death and sex. Yet the United States operates under a complex social system that systematically denies both. Mass denial of death hinders human thought and movement through the world, and the incessant refusal to acknowledge sexuality in its array of forms impedes healthy, respectful engagement between humans. […]
Jessica Merino 