Blog / Our America

On White Hysteria

December 25, 2024 - By Jim Hicks

Editor’s note: A earlier version of this essay was published on December 25, 2019. It has been revised here in light of more recent events.

In her December 2019 preface to a New York magazine photographic portfolio by Mark Peterson, with less than a thousand words Claudia Rankine offered what was, for her, a typically eloquent and essential assessment of the state of our nation.

She began with Dylann Storm Roof, the young assassin that in 2015 killed nine African Americans at prayer in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; she then notes Roof’s ongoing exchange of letters with Billy Roper,...

Beete Huye Lamhon Ki Kasak

November 6, 2024 - By Mahendra Kapoor, translated by Tabish Khair

Don't say adieu yet, my friends, in pain;
We don't know where we might meet again.

Because. . .
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.

This autumn drenched...

Who Are Universities For?

October 25, 2024 - By Leyla Moushabeck

Around midnight on May 7, 2024, I was arrested on the UMass campus alongside over 130 students, faculty and fellow community members. Up until the moment of my arrest, I’d been sitting on the ground, singing protest songs and sharing out granola bars with friends and colleagues, a “Ceasefire Now” banner draped across our legs.

I joined the student-led protest to pressure the UMass administration to disclose and divest from companies profiting from the sale of weapons used in the US-backed Israeli war on Palestine, an act that violates both...

Al-Aqsa Flood: Turning the World Right Side Up

October 11, 2024 - By Willow Naomi Curry

On October 7, 2023, a group of Palestinian freedom fighters from the military wing of Hamas, the de facto government of Gaza, changed the world forever. In Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a prison break and hostage-taking mission turned into a spectacle of carnage—after an exchange of gunfire between Hamas fighters and the Israeli Occupation Forces, the IOF...

Hey J.D., Thought You Might Like This!

September 27, 2024 - By Jim Hicks

The Honorable James David Vance, United States Senate
288 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

September 19, 2024

Dear Senator Vance,

I have to admit it. When I first came across that sound-bite moment from your recent interview with Dana Bash, I thought it was a hoot. “If I have to create stories [. . .], then that’s what I’m going to do!” Really? I teach fiction, I publish fiction, and, on occasion, I even write it—though when I do, I never claim to be doing otherwise. That would be lying. And that would be wrong.

Sorry. I’m being unfair. That whopper of a hot dog you served...