Brigadista in Retirement
Every nation teaches itself the myths
of its survival. Fantasy, harnessed,
feeds the impulse to die for la patria,
and then the war is over. In the after-
glow of dizzying celebration, a purpling
sky
Features
[an excerpt from Spectra]
To speak without vulnerability you claimed
impossible
the land’s fragrance its honey its plants
translation I wanted to be back in my language
“back”? /
I wanted to differently be in
another word for being…
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I abandoned my homeland in 2000, when I was twelve years old. Home was a small village located in the northernmost part of Korea. A decade earlier, the Arduous March had started, and though the famine was formally over, for …
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For fewer but more perfect blooms,
experts say to prune the buds.
—Sara Wainscott, Insecurity Systems
The ideas in this essay have not led me to quit or walk away from any role or job I currently hold. But …
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Initiation
I don’t remember what they called that night. Someone drove us to a house off campus. Someone blindfolded us. Someone lined us up around the perimeter of a pool. They made us practice fundamentals—low mark time (heel up, toes …
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In 1900 the world’s fair was held in Paris. Like world’s fairs before it, the 1900 Paris Exposition celebrated technological innovation within the context of a world built of nations, projecting an air of unbridled optimism through a conviction of …
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W. E. B. Du Bois was a leader in establishing the field of American sociology. He deployed empiricism, often triangulating various methods to advance our sociological understanding in ways that were unheard of in the United States at that time …
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In the attitude of the American mind toward Negro suffrage can be traced with unusual accuracy the prevalent conceptions of government. In the fifties we were near enough the echoes of the French Revolution to believe pretty thoroughly in universal …
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