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SHAME ON THE DNC!

August 22, 2024 - By Michel Moushabeck

It is ludicrous that keynote speakers for a party campaigning on freedom and democracy would be silent about the genocide in Gaza, where Palestinians are being subjected to daily bombardment and unimaginable suffering. It’s infuriating that the DNC would ignore the children of Gaza, who are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen. How can the DNC disregard the massive mobilization of protests around the country and on university campuses? And there hasn’t been a peep about Israeli apartheid, which the International Court of Justice confirmed in its recent ruling, where it demanded that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian lands. The ICJ also ordered the dismantling of Israel’s illegal settlements.
 

The DNC...

10 Questions for Johanna Bishop

August 20, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Profile of a solitary man, in shirt sleeves, whose pose of
sharpening a blade suggests he is a knife grinder. Often
called The Spy, since he seems to be listening to some-
thing attentively, it is thought to depict the man who
discovered the Catiline conspiracy; at other times of day
he appears to be Cincinnatus, at still others Manlius Capi-
tolinus.
—from Andrea Inglese's "Five Visions From The Big Duck," Volume 65, Issue 2 (Summer 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I suppose I translated a few poems and songs from French and Italian as a teenager—recently, an old friend even dug up a Natalia Ginzburg essay that we had the youthful hubris to tackle over a...

The Jim Foley Story

August 19, 2024 - By Jim Hicks

Today is the tenth anniversary of the murder of the journalist, educator, and humanitarian James W. Foley. As his mother, Diane Foley—founder of the Foley Foundation, an NGO that has developed a safety curriculum for journalists and advocates for the release of US citizens held captive abroad—wrote yesterday in the New York Times, bereaved mothers “don’t need anniversaries for things [they] can never forget.” The rest of us, however, would do well to take a moment and reflect on the life of James Foley, a decade after his death—to remember who he was and how he chose...

From Below the Earth and Across the Sea:

The Chthonic Choreography of Emma Cianchi

August 15, 2024 - By Anna Botta and Jim Hicks, with Emma Cianchi and Caterina Giangrasso Angrisani

Editor’s note: As will be clear, the following conversation with the Massachusetts Review’s Executive Editor, Jim Hicks, and the co-editor of our “Mediterraneans” issue, Anna Botta, was conducted just hours before the première of the choreographer Emma Cianchi and ArtGarageDanceCompany’s new performance, The Sea that Unites Us. After the dance that evening, the choreographer told the audience more about her inspiration. She commented, “When I came here, I had the idea of working on the theme of the journey. When I got to Jacob’s Pillow, however, I immediately felt that I also needed to bring something here from my land, which is rich in mythology. And I thought of the legends of female figures present in the story of...

A Return to My Native Country

August 13, 2024 - By Aamer Janbey

A Review of Fadi Azzam, Huddud’s House. Translated by Ghada Alatrash. Northampton: Interlink Publishing, 2024. 
 

What does it mean to truly belong? Is it the soil beneath our feet? Or is it the echoes of our memories, the whispers of our ancestors, and the silent pull of our heritage? In a world fractured by displacement and longing, how do we reconcile the fragments of our identity with places we once called home? Can we ever truly return to these places?

As a twenty-one-year-old Syrian who has not set foot in my homeland for thirteen years, reading Fadi Azzam’s Huddud’s House was an...