July 17, 2023 To the Administrators of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center: We, the editors of the Massachusetts Review, are writing to express our deep disappointment and concern regarding the recent and very unexpected cancellation of this year’s Asian American Literary Festival, just weeks before its opening and after over a year . . .
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Bill Ehrhart at Oakland Cemetery, West Chester, PA(Photo: Terry Griffith) So here I am with Smedley Butler,Major General, Maverick Marine,Old Gimlet Eye, the Stormy Petrel,two-time Medal of Honor winner;me a sergeant with a Purple Heartfor doing nothing but getting hit.(Don’t kid yourself, there’s nothingheroic in that; just bad luck.) Yet here I . . .
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Cover Art: Susan Jahoda, From the series (in preparation for absence), Untitled, silver print, 16×20 inches, 1999. ©Susan Jahoda, used with permission. All Rights Reserved. A PDF of Roe: Telling the Tale is available here. Available from Amazon, Kobo, and Weightless Books. (All profits from sales will be donated to the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts)
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Anthony Gormley, “Float,” 1992. Author’s collection. With kind permission from the author and artist. This essay was written in Rome on the eve of what may be a turning point in the fortunes of democracy, the political system that Plato called a “ship of fools” for its tendency to elect incompetent captains . . .
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At Interlink Publishing, my staff and I were shocked, devastated, and heartbroken to hear about the attack on Salman Rushdie and his interviewer on August 12th. Rushdie, a fellow member of PEN and past president of PEN America, has always been a fierce advocate for freedom of expression as we know all . . .
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Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial—bylined by its editorial board—condemning the “woke” direction of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)’s new recommendations for medical schools. “Read and wince at how woke politics is about to infect medical education,” they fret, before detailing how the AAMC now suggests . . .
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It wasn’t my choice to leave Odesa. My father decided, my mother agreed, and so it happened. In 1976. We were lucky to get out, lucky to avoid the fates of refuseniks and political prisoners in the Gulag, lucky that my father—who lost his job immediately upon applying for an exit visa—did . . .
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Like many of you, I’ve been glued to the news this past week following Putin’s senseless, illegal, and immoral war on neighboring Ukraine. Our eyes are filled with images showing the horrors of Russia’s invasion. We stand in solidarity with the people of the Ukraine and our hearts and thoughts are with . . .
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Editor’s Note: First posted precisely one year ago, we can think of nothing more appropriate to revisit on this dark anniversary than Harry Harootunian’s chilling and incisive diagnosis of our world today. (Image: Ben Shahn, Walking Figures: circa 1960, silkscreen.) Abstract “A Fascism for Our Time” focuses on how the accidental convergence . . .
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(Children and teachers in the Village of Dong Loc, Vietnam, where there are memorials to children and road workers killed by American bombing. Photo by Doug Anderson.) Happy Veterans Day, brothers and sisters, especially those of wars that turned out to be unjustified and incompetently led. I speak from the Vietnam generation . . .
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