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A Hellscape of False Options

A Hellscape of False Options

Anima Adjepong (Photo courtesy of the author) IN HER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH for the DNC’s nomination, Kamala Harris promised to secure the nation’s borders and to advance U.S. security and values abroad. She assured voters that under her leadership, America will have “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” The expansion . . .

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10 Questions for Sabina Murray

10 Questions for Sabina Murray

No form of art can express a life quite like the novel. No art form charts the lives of individuals—encounters, challenges, and relationships—as successfully as the book-length work of fiction. Perhaps this is because of the amount of detail provided for characters and their situations, which allows us to truly experience as they do, but . . .

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You Know You Can’t Help It, Who You Are

You Know You Can’t Help It, Who You Are

Jim, I expect you would be surprised that your death affected me so much, that I spoke at two services for you, that I am writing about you now. We were friends, but we had not stayed in touch. So, it surprises me too. But you were a friend to me during . . .

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SHAME ON THE DNC!

SHAME ON THE DNC!

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 . . .

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10 Questions for Johanna Bishop

10 Questions for Johanna Bishop

Profile of a solitary man, in shirt sleeves, whose pose ofsharpening a blade suggests he is a knife grinder. Oftencalled The Spy, since he seems to be listening to some-thing attentively, it is thought to depict the man whodiscovered the Catiline conspiracy; at other times of dayhe appears to be Cincinnatus, at . . .

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The Jim Foley Story

The Jim Foley Story

Jim Foley with staff and graduating students at the Care Center in Holyoke. From left to right: Irma Medina (Care Center staff), Glenda Suarez (Care Center graduate and teen mom), Jim Foley, Aimee Loiselle (English GED Teacher), and Maria Salgado (Care Center Transition Counselor). Photo courtesy of the Care Center. Today is . . .

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From Below the Earth and Across the Sea: The Chthonic Choreography of Emma Cianchi

From Below the Earth and Across the Sea: The Chthonic Choreography of Emma Cianchi

Dancers from Emma Cianchi’s ArtGarageDanceCo. Front: Tonia Laterza, Gaia Mentaglia; Back: Maria Anzivino, Pearl May Hubert. Photo courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow. 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 . . .

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A Return to My Native Country

A Return to My Native Country

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 . . .

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10 Questions for Ryan Choi

10 Questions for Ryan Choi

As the sharpened sword beheads the two-headed               serpent,I shun the crude laughter and gossip of the mortal               world.Thousands of autumns of virtue and vice are buried               in the yellow of the earth,Under the sunny . . .

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Restoring the Radical Imagination: Shatz v. Harris

Restoring the Radical Imagination: Shatz v. Harris

I have crossed an oceanI have lost my tongueFrom the root of the old oneA new one has sprung                   Epilogue, Grace Nichols (Please donate to the Grenada Disaster Fund) Caribbean hybrid identities are characterized by survival and creativity out of monumental loss, including various languages from Arawakan, to Patois to Kreyòl. But very rarely are Caribbean people . . .

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