July 26th was a day like many others in Gaza. I woke up at 8:00 a.m. to fetch four gallons of potable water from the truck that would come every day to the school where my family and I had been displaced. After completing that daily mission, I was already exhausted. I . . .
Read MoreIt’s 5:50 in the morning, just ten minutes before the university bus is supposed to arrive. I should be rushing to catch it and head to my classes in Gaza, just like I used to every day. But today, I’m trapped in a nightmare from which I can’t awake. The alarm ringing . . .
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The Inaugural Kay Johnson Lecture in Asian American Studies at Hampshire College “The Chinese Must Go: A History of Anti-Asian Violence in the United States” Beth Lew-Williams, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University Wednesday 7 April 2021, 4:30 pm The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885 Following the massacre of . . .
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Photo: Kancelaria Sejmu/Łukasz Błasikiewicz / CC BY At a time when unidentifiable government-paid thugs are abducting people into unmarked vans off the streets of Portland, it might take extra effort to notice and recognize the brutality of police states outside the U.S. Especially when the news comes from a country whose government has . . .
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Original article, pubished 02/07/2020: I’ve always loved this country, just as I’ve learned to love the somber colors and the soft scents that waft off the pages of books. I don’t really know why. In spite of the weather, in spite of life’s own inclement seasons, I learned to love it. Sometimes . . .
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(Photo: Nicoletta Dosio, ANSA) Editor’s note: Shortly after New Year’s Day, Erri De Luca published a poem dedicated to Nicoletta Dosio. On December 30, 2019, Nicoletta Dosio, the seventy-three year-old ex-schoolteacher and activist from Bussoleno in Italy’s Susa Valley, was sent to prison by the Italian state. Dosio is a leading figure . . .
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Translated from Chinese by Walter Chan Chun Hay June 13, 2019 It was some minutes past five in the morning. The sky was turning bright and birds were relentlessly tweeting. Sparrows pecked around us. The bridge to the Central Government Complex has been blockaded by police and barriers, making it an island . . .
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It’s been over a week since I first failed to sleep normally. My sleep has been shallow. I’ve tossed and turned in bed, awake and asleep. Or, at other times, I was simply an insomniac, almost never missing the first soft beam of sunlight shining through the curtain cracks. My insomnia suggested . . .
Read MoreThe insults hurled at Carola Rackete, captain of the Sea Watch 3, from the wharf in Lampedusa glanced off her untroubled expression. No dent was made in her self-composure: it was grounded in knowing that, out of a sense of her own responsibility, she had put her body on the line—not something . . .
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Oleg Sentsov © Sergei Venyavsky/Getty Images In a letter smuggled out of Labytnangi Penal Colony in September 2016, Crimean-born, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov writes, “If we’re supposed to become nails in the coffin of a tyrant, I’d like to become one of those nails. Just know that this particular nail will not bend.” On . . .
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