October 29, 2018 This interview took place on the telephone on December 22, 1986. Originally published in the Winter 1987 (Vol. 28, no. 4) issue of the Massachusetts Review. BRENDA LYONS: Colored Girls raised a furor in the 70s. In addition to much acclaim and many awards, you were attacked as a traitor to your . . .
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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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BOW DOWN, an image from Trump Papers, a show of broadsides painted by San Francisco artist Ward Schumaker Ward Schumaker:fine art portfolio: https://ward-schumaker.squarespace.comtumblr images: http://wardschumaker.tumblr.cominstagram: https://www.instagram.com/schumakerward/ Trump Papers 20 October – 6 November 2018Jack Fischer GallerySan Francisco www.jackfischergallery.com
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Drawing by Marcela Castro, from the video Drawings by Themselves: Portraits of America Read Part Four here. One Last Story Here’s a bipartisan idea: Declare MS-13 an international terrorist organization. It is. They could. Problem: they’d have to believe the women…and give them asylum. Maybe even stop punishing them in the iceboxes and the . . .
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Welcome sign in Dilley, Texas (wikimedia commons) Read Part Three here. Individual Stories As I reflect on the week in Dilley, the ongoing work I do here in the Bay Area, I wonder: Do individual stories matter anymore, outside the hearing room, that is, the courthouse, and only insofar as the boxes . . .
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Read Part Two here. Twisted Minds Before traveling to Dilley, I could not help but think of Oświęcim, the town that hosted the camp we know of as Auschwitz. I thought of the scene in Shoah when Lanzmann interviews a group of local residents about what they knew about the camp, about their neighbors . . .
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Photo from the Cara Pro Bono Project Read Part One here. Credible Fear In order for an American woman and her children imprisoned at the South Texas Residential Center—run by the private, for-profit, publicly traded CoreCivic Company (previously named Corrections Corporation of America, and whose motto is “Better the Public Good”)—to be released, . . .
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Photo from CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project Kidnapped Kids Since the 2016 election, several of my local translator colleagues and I have been volunteering with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, California, as legal interpreters. I have worked with asylum seekers to help them fill out forms (asylum application, work authorization, . . .
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“When the package arrived on Monday morning by overnight FedEx, a disturbance ensued. Mr. Rodrigo made an agitated phone call in his glassed-in sanctum, looking in turns horrified, elated, and apprehensive.”—from “Mr. Rodrigo’s Identification Company”, Spring 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I have . . .
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Like vegetation that findsshelter in so many territoriesI swell around the housesurge from your insides whenyou feel death coming—from “That Which Is Only Visible When the Wind Brings It,” Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.Some years back I co-translated a short story . . .
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