ORIGINS
Duana Fullwiley
Home DNA ancestry kits include no ancestors, instead comparing customers to other present-day people based on assumptions about race and ethnicity. So what are they actually selling?
Kyoko Uchida
Three Poems
How is it that we’re still learning / to draw breath, a lungful of burning coal / to speak, to name ourselves, our daughters?
Deborah Taffa
“Healing never restores us to the way we were before getting hurt.” A trip to Machu Picchu ends up offering surprising insights into what it means to be a survivor of the genocide of Native Americans.
Poetry
Diamond Forde
Our bodies, temples—shouldn’t that mean anyone can worship? Shouldn’t that mean it’s okay to dip my hips into a communion bowl?
Poetry
Felicia Zamora
If I cross paths with myself on the sidewalk, I’m not sure I will recognize my own face.
Fiction
Racquel Goodison
“Every time she noticed he was dressed for sport, she’d head for the door.” In this short story, a young Jamaican man weighs his responsibility to his family against his love of biking.
Poetry
Terrance Hayes
Remembering poets Lynda Hull and Michael S. Harper, with original portraits
Fiction
Reginald McKnight
"The Earth’s skin had become a million toads." After a town undergoes a disturbing transformation, a boy finds a solitary companion.
RUPTURES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Metta Sáma
No More Sorrow Songs
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Fiction
Yeoh Jo-Ann
“I could have been a clever girl. When the first of the Japanese bombs fell on Penang, my father stopped us from going to school. And when the war was over, there was no question of going back. So I married your father.” Three generations of a family struggle to maintain their way of life in a country changed irrevocably by war.
Poetry
José B. González
The sewing machines have been pushed aside to a far-off world, but I can still hear their thumping
Poetry
Vuyelwa Maluleke
[Evidence: Personal Effects] A Purse Full of Black
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Domenica Ruta
Companion Animals
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Poetry
Day Heisinger-Nixon
“Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of Eternal Glory for Thee and for Everyone” & “Publick Universal Friend Adopts a More Androgynous Appearance . . .”
ONWARD
Sonia Sanchez & Christina Knight
In this searching interview, legendary Black Arts poet Sonia Sanchez discusses the ancestral influences on her work and how art can give us strength.
Poetry
Emily Lordi
A Sun Ra tribute concert by a member of the pathbreaking pop group Labelle leads to reflections on how Black women artists and scientists have often been at the vanguard of their disciplines—though most are still awaiting due recognition.
Fiction
Sam Bett, Izumi Suzuki
The last humans on a planet attempt a nice family outing—except that they can’t remember how. A short story from Japanese counterculture icon Izumi Suzuki, available for the first time in English in a new translation by Sam Bett.
