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Essays Illustration by Maria Labetskaia / Shutterstock.com

FROM BEIRUT TO SAN FRANCISCO by Karim Dajani

“AWASSNI, AWASSNI.” The man screamed these words before letting out a guttural cry. Awassni is Arabic for “he shot me.” It had been some years since the war began, and most of us had learned to distinguish sound more keenly.…

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ASSISTED PASSAGE by Jo Wright

The news photos—the bulky container ship straddled across the straight blue gash cut through yellow sands—prompted memories of my wonder and curiosity when, as an eight-year-old in June 1956, I gazed down from the deck of the P&O liner Strathaird…

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Essays Illustration by Ichpochmak /Shutterstock.com

OF FRUIT AND COVID by Santiago Delboy

I stood in front of the granadillas for what felt like an eternity, holding an empty plastic bag in my right hand and a shopping basket in my left. (A granadilla is a small South American fruit, with a round…

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Essays Illustration by Login /Shutterstock.com

RADICAL OPENNESS, PART II

Anton: The concept of loss or losing is important because it speaks to the ways that opening oneself up and allowing oneself to be moved is not just a benign thing to do; it involves relaxing one’s grasp of what…

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Essays Illustration by Bibadash /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

REMAINING TO BE SEEN by Umi Chong

It is Tuesday at 4:00 pm, and it is time for Ben, a white man in his early thirties. He often refers to himself as “strange” for feeling out of step in not holding popular, mainstream views like most of…

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Essays Red Frame by Mafe Izaguirre

REFRAMED by Celeste Kelly

“I was thinking to myself, I can’t wait to tell them. They’re going to be so excited!” Or maybe the patient didn’t say excited—maybe they used a different word. I can’t exactly remember because my mind got stuck on them/they’re.…

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Essays Illustrations by Bibadash /Shutterstock.com

MOVING BOUNDARIES by Dinah M. Mendes

Many of us have had the experience of standing in front of the window of a hospital’s newborn nursery, a partition that simultaneously protects and allows visitors to gaze at the variety of human life displayed within. The tiny creatures,…

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Essays Illustrations by Evgeny Turaev and Jorm S /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

BEAR WITH ME by Mark Singer

Even though a virus is blind, we have learned, yet again, that like so many oppressive things, it disproportionately finds its way to those who are already suffering. I feel privileged that, during the coronavirus pandemic

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MOTORCYCLE MAN by Christie Platt

Back in 1987, I was in a doctoral psychology program outside of Los Angeles. I had the good fortune to do my final internship in a solidly middle-class section of town at a community mental health center staffed with social…

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Essays Artwork by Leighann Blackwood

WHOSE HAIR IS IT? by Raynell Sangster

Within the Black community, there exists a hidden caste system of “good” and “bad” hair, just like skin color hierarchies. “Good” hair is considered to be closer to straighter, wavier, Eurocentric hair, and “bad” hair is kinkier, coiled, thicker hair.…

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Essays Artwork by Mikk Tonissoo /Shutterstock.com

WHISPERING WINDS by Pamela Nathan

In the early 1980s, the heyday of Land Rights, I lived in Central Australia, working as a sociologist with the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. A senior Aboriginal man, Dick Lechleitner Japanangka, worked alongside me, and we visited many Aboriginal communities…

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Essays Artwork by Andrius Repsys /Shutterstock.com

THINGS WHICH DON’T EXIST by Kyrie Mason

Another fixation of mine has been the impossibility of my ancestors, particularly the abducted and the enslaved. Through the wound which would be called the Atlantic Slave Trade, Black persons were simultaneously the subject, the object, and the labor. Put…

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Essays Artwork by Jorm S./Shutterstock.com

GAGGED BY GOLDWATER by Bandy X. Lee

As I write this at the turn of the year, hospitals are overflowing, and our medical system is about to collapse. Yet the approaching loss of a half million lives in the United States from COVID-19 was entirely preventable. For…

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Essays Artwork by 3d_kot /Shutterstock.com

A SEARCH FOR BELONGING by David Stromberg

Growing up in America with immigrant parents, you’re often on your own navigating your future, and so institutions like elementary school become more than just places of study. They become agents of social advancement. One day, in fifth grade, someone…

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