Repair
We bear deep wounds, individually and collectively. All have been worsened by a period of destructive politics that left us ill-equipped to respond to a global health catastrophe. As we struggle to recover our footing and grieve our dead, we believe that the arts must have a voice in the conversation about how we heal.
This anthology draws together a wide range of artists and thinkers, established and emerging. In essays, memoir, poetry, fiction, and comics, contributors explore what it might look like to repair. Topics include the Salem witch trials, climate catastrophe, the January 6 siege of the Capitol, gender identity, the failures (and hope) of Western medicine, and the entwined horrors of racial, sexual, and colonial violence.
No single text in this volume offers a definitive answer for what it means to repair. But together, they reveal a promising vision for where to go from here.
Editors’ Note
PART I: REPAIR
- January 21, 2021
- April 22, 2022
- April 7, 2022

Heat Index
- January 10, 2022
Toni Morrison’s novels imagine a society governed by an ethic of care, devoted to restoring and repairing those who have been harmed, and giving them the space for transformation.
- September 7, 2021
PART II: REVIVE
- April 29, 2022
- April 14, 2022
Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest
- September 1, 2022

The Kindness Thief
- April 14, 2022
- February 3, 2022
PART III: REPAY

Three Poems

Dear Mothers, We Are No Longer Lost
Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest
- September 15, 2022

The Tailor

Mamabird
Images seized from enslaved people are not private property to be owned but ancestors to be cared for.
- September 23, 2021