by Bárbara Pérez Curiel As mirrors of reality, cultural products contribute to normalizing, more directly or indirectly, practices and ideas of the context in which they are created. Sometimes, however, they are also spaces of resistance where certain of these conventions are not normalized but rather exposed as what they are: constructions that can be...
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August 13, 2019August 6, 2019African, African, Arts, Culture, Entertainment
The Puzzle Smothers A Montreal Refuge
By Ray Mwareya “Seen him? Ticks his puzzle, hides a beer in a coffee mug. Think he fools the train driver?” Wallis, my landlord, gossiped about an untidy laborer on my maiden ride on Montreal underground metro. Wallis scanned his eyes over rows that contained a bridge´s name that I insert into the crossword puzzle...
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August 8, 2019August 6, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Black/African American, Marginalized Communities, Music
Sometimes, The Old Heads Knew What Was Up
Why Didn’t We Listen? by Brian Lindenmuth Let’s take a look at some of the spoken word performances, that were accompanied by music, that make up some of the significant DNA strands of rap. The Watts Prophets, Gil Scott-Heron, and The Last Poets are considered some of the godfathers of rap. They were poets interested...
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August 7, 2019August 4, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Music
Feature Interview: Acclaimed Singer-Songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill
With Reissues of Two of Her Most Iconic Works, Berryhill Comes Full Circle By Michelle Nati Singer-songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill is about to embark on a new chapter in her life. Two of her most well-known and critically acclaimed albums, Garage Orchestra and Straight Outta Marysville, are being reissued on Omnivore Recordings in August 2019....
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August 6, 2019August 4, 2019Fiction, Muslim, Short Story
Fragments
Short Fiction by Amra Pajalic Srebrenica, July 1992 I threw open the front door and bolted out of the house when my mother’s guttural scream of terror stopped me dead in my tracks. I turned and went back inside. “What’s wrong?” Mama clutched the wall, her face white with terror. “Stupid girl!” She shook me...
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July 31, 2019July 31, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Asian Heritage, fantasy, Fiction, Review/Recap, Sci Fi/Fantasy, YA
10 #OwnVoices, Asian-inspired Fantasy YA Books of 2019
by Margaret Kingsbury This year brings a lot of amazing Asian #OwnVoices YA fantasy. While Asian characters and settings have been a part of fantasy for a long time, often these settings and cultural practices have been appropriated by white authors, and stereotypes abound. That’s one reason why it’s so important for more #OwnVoices Asian...
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July 30, 2019July 28, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, Indigenous
Indigenous Representation in Cinema
by Chris La Tray Indians seem to be invisible in movies as much as we are anywhere. Hell, even when Hollywood puked out a Lone Ranger movie in 2013, they got a white dude (the long-irrelevant Johnny Depp) to play arguably America’s most famous Indian: his Comanche sidekick, Tonto. I haven’t seen the movie, but...
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July 24, 2019July 19, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Asian, fantasy, Fiction, Latinx, LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, Muslim, YA
Top 6 Hella Queer YA Novels You Need to Read
by Laila Winters As an avid reader of young adult science fiction and fantasy, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and the fiancée of a graduate student who needed to live near campus, I managed to fit an ever-growing library into our quaint, 600 sf apartment. With 5 bookshelves lining the wall in our living...
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July 23, 2019July 24, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Black/African American
Uproot YYC – Uprooting Systemic Racism in the Arts, Centering Ourselves
By Mel Vee X At a spoken word event I performed at over three years ago for International Women’s Month, I saw an unassuming Desi woman at a table, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. I noticed she was folding leaflets for something called Uproot YYC. Being the sucker that I am for things printed...
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July 17, 2019August 6, 2019Arts, Culture, Entertainment, Fiction, Folklore, horror, Latinx, Mythology
Recent Latina Books Inspired by Folklore and Mythology
by Margaret Kingsbury Writers use folklore in many ways. In the past, Latina writers like Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel wove folklore into beautiful, magical realism landscapes. Their works are dreamy and nostalgic. Recent Latina writers–like Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Samanta Schweblin, Carmen Maria Machado, Anne-Marie McLemore, among others–use folklore and mythology in more subvervise...