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10 Questions for Abby Manzella

June 10, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

On November 1, 2012—over ten years ago now—I awake to the sound of a generator . . . in another, wealthier building. It is Day Four of the blackout. I cover my nose from the chill in my unheated and lightless apartment. My husband, already awake, wraps his arms around me and gives a quick squeeze. The warmth from his body accentuates the cold of the air. 

“It’s time to e-scavenge,” he whispers in my ear. We are co-conspirators, taking new actions and finding new words for this strange, new moment. 

I grumble against the intrusion of the morning. Still, I know it’s time to face the day, so I slip out of my husband’s embrace and our bed into the cold air of our once perpetually overheated apartment.
—from...

What Does Claudia Sheinbaum Stand For?

June 7, 2024 - By Margaret Cerullo

The excitement in Mexico and abroad about North America’s first woman president has dominated the headlines—almost to the exclusion of who Claudia Sheinbaum is, and what she stands for. How did she win, and how will she confront the enormous challenges facing Mexico, perhaps none more dramatic than pervasive violence, including murder and violence against women?

While I am skeptical, or at least cautious, about how much or in what ways her gender will affect her politics, it is worth taking a moment to feel the enormity—and the ecstasy—of the moment. Not only has a left-wing Jewish woman been elected president of an overwhelmingly Catholic country (a country steeped in machismo where women only gained the vote in the 1950s), she won by a landslide (30...

The View from Gaza

June 5, 2024 - By Staff

“What killed my son Abboud wasn’t just an American missile fired by an Israeli pilot. What killed my son was a regime whose very existence is defined by and built on expulsion and genocide.”

                          – Ahmed Abu Artema, co-organizer of Gaza’s Great March of Return

Gaza is asking all of us: what do we want our world to be? Gaza offers us a choice: will we move our world towards liberation and justice for all, or will we allow it to slip ever further into genocidal violence? The Massachusetts Review, under the guidance of guest editor Michel...

10 Questions for Kayla Min Andrews

June 3, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I'm home from work, reading in bed, when Mom calls to tell me. It’s six in the evening. My boyfriend’s out with some friends of his I find exhausting. He’s often out, while I stay in. We’ve been together for almost a decade, our rituals of avoidance calcified into habit. 

I live in New Orleans. Mom lives in Asheville, North Carolina. We talk several times a week. Ususally she makes me laugh with her sparkling anger at a co-worker, a hilarious gaffe she made with a student, juicy details of a power struggle either in her own romantic life or a friend's. Usually when she asks how I'm doing, I deflect. I say something quick—oh, pretty good—and try to get her talking again. 

This time, her voice trembles. Her latest scan...

2024 Anne Halley Prize Reading

June 3, 2024 - By Staff

Nathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy have selected Michael Lavers' poem "Sun, Birds, and Leaves" from MR's Summer 2023 issue (Vol. 64, Issue 2) for the prestigious prize.

MICHAEL LAVERS is the author of After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in ...