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# The Nasiona

Humanize the Other

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://www.thenasiona.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Episode 64 – Decolonizing & Indigenizing Storytelling, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/13/episode-64-decolonizing-indigenizing-storytelling-part-2/) - This is Part 2 of a virtual public event Julián Esteban Torres López gave on what it means to decolonize and indigenize storytelling, hosted by Texas A&M University, San Antonio. He talks about the relationship between language and identity; how the concept of time can be used to challenge hegemonic epistemologies; the importance of centering and circulating thinking and art from the Global South; and more. Dr. Alexandra Rodriguez Sabogal interviews Julián, followed by a Q&A with the audience moderated by Dr. Katherine Gillen.
- [Episode 48 - BIPOC Musical Artists Showcase](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/23/episode-48-bipoc-musical-artists-showcase/) - Listen to our first musical compilation album, entitled Volume 1: Petrichor. The works contained in this volume—from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals—express the intricacies of being an artist of color in a too-often indifferent world. Artists: San Palo, Whitney & The Saying Goes, Stephanie Henry, Tony Tennyson, whenthecitysleeps, Chromic, Beezy Montaña, Mallika Vie, Annah Sidigu, Eki Shola, Samantha Pearl, and Jinnat.
- [STEPHANIE HENRY: "Snowflakes at Midnight" & "Nocturne in G Minor"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/stephanie-henry-snowflakes-at-midnight-nocturne-in-g-minor/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Stephanie Henry's tracks "Snowflakes at Midnight" & "Nocturne in G Minor" are featured in the volume.
- [BEEZY MONTAÑA: "Hail Mary"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/beezy-montana-hail-mary/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Beezy Montaña's track "Hail Mary" is featured in the volume.
- [TONY TENNYSON: "Beat of the Tye"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/tony-tennyson-beat-of-the-tye/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Tony Tennyson's track "Beat of the Tye" is featured in the volume.
- [ANNAH SIDIGU: "The Lynchpin"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/annah-sidigu-the-lynchpin/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Annah Sidigu's track "The Lynchpin" is featured in the volume.
- [SAMANTHA PEARL: "Don't Let Me Go"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/samantha-pearl-dont-let-me-go/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Samantha Pearl's track "Don’t Let Me Go" is featured in the volume.
- [whenthecitysleeps: "For Emma" & "The Rain"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/whenthecitysleeps-for-emma-the-rain/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. whenthecitysleeps's tracks "For Emma" & "The Rain" are featured in the volume.
- [EKI SHOLA: "Change the System"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/27/eki-shola-change-the-system/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Eki Shola's track "Change the System" is featured in the volume.
- [MALLIKA VIE: “Bluebells Still Grow” & “Since My Baby Said Goodbye“](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/27/mallika-vie-bluebells-still-grow-since-my-baby-said-goodbye/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Mallika Vie's tracks "Bluebells Still Grow" & "Since My Baby Said Goodbye" are featured in the volume.
- [WHITNEY & THE SAYING GOES: “Somebody Must’ve Prayed for Me“](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/whitney-the-saying-goes-somebody-mustve-prayed-for-me/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Whitney & The Saying Goes's track "Somebody Must’ve Prayed for Me" is featured in the volume.
- [SAN PALO: “Rainy Day,” “Fall,” & “Try“](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/27/san-palo-rainy-day-fall-try/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. San Palo's tracks “Rainy Day,” “Fall,” & “Try“ are featured in the volume.
- [JINNAT: "Enlight"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/jinnat-enlight/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Jinnat's track "Enlight" is featured in the volume.
- [Volume 1: Petrichor](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/volume-1-petrichor/) - This first volume of The Nasiona’s music series encapsulates all the glorious highs and the searing lows of navigating the world as an empathetic, curious individual. The works contained in this volume — from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals — express the intricacies of being an artist of color in a too-often indifferent world; and like the scent that lingers long after the downpour, these masterpieces ask you to sit awhile, to close your eyes, to pay attention
- [On the Limits of Goodwill, the Golden Rule, and Deontological Ethics: A Social Justice Activist's Reflections](https://www.thenasiona.com/2022/01/14/on-the-limits-of-goodwill-the-golden-rule-and-deontological-ethics-a-social-justice-activists-reflections/) - As we approach Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, I’ve been journaling on the limits of goodwill, the Golden Rule, and deontological ethics. The reflections below are consistent conversations I have with myself as I decolonize my own ethics, because, just like you, I am a product of a culture and a society where these limiting frameworks are prevalent. Some of the biggest obstacles in our quest toward achieving social justice are ideologies and people (which includes innumerable progressive folx) that only equate “real” harm (harm that should be taken seriously and acted upon to find a remedy to reduce the harm) with harm caused by malicious intent. These frameworks and ethical systems directly invalidate, devalue, and gaslight the concerns of those who’ve been harmed, which contribute to and perpetuate oppressive status quos.
- [Episode 53 - Deconstructing & Rebuilding Our Education System, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/28/episode-53-deconstructing-rebuilding-our-education-system-part-1/) - On today’s episode, we speak with Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Dr. Robin Harwick to identify the pain points of our education system, and to explore how we can deconstruct and rebuild it anew. They are the co-authors of the book YOU are the Revolution! Education that Empowers your Black Child and Strengthens your Family, and also are at the center of the innovative The Pearl Remote Democratic High School. Musical Guest: Jinnat.
- [Episode 66 - Relationship between Psychological Trauma and Physical Illness](https://www.thenasiona.com/2022/02/04/relationship-between-psychological-trauma-and-physical-illness/) - What is the relationship between psychological trauma and physical Illness? Co-producer Nicole Zelniker joins Julián Esteban Torres López on the podcast to interview Molly “Marco” Marcotte to answer this question. Molly “Marco” Marcotte (they/them) is a program designer, evaluator, and consultant in their eighth year of work in the anti-violence field. Existing as a multilingual, neurodivergent, queer, non-binary femme informs every aspect of their approach, particularly in building authentic rapport and community-centered definitions of programmatic success.
- [Four Poems on Latinidad by Anthony Orozco](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/03/07/four-poems-by-anthony-orozco/) - “Encantado” — An ode to Boricuas, who showed up en masse to the first Puerto Rican festival in Reading, Pa, in over a decade. The city’s first Latino mayor was freshly elected, the aftermath of Maria is behind them, and they continue to grapple with the perception of being not “real Americans. // ”mano a mano” — A call for unity, advocacy, and pride among Latinos. It honors the massive contributions and hidden hardships of our people. The poem momentarily erases our cultural, national, and class barriers to connect us as one. // “Conquest” — Written and performed with the oral tradition in mind, it is a vulnerable and visceral defense of mixed-race, mixed-culture people. When people try to control what Latinidad means or looks like, though they do not know the multi-cultural and sordid past of Latin America, this poem is used to refute claims of “not being Latino” enough. // “Land of the Cinder Block” — Also written and performed with the oral tradition in mind, this piece is an ode to my father’s homeland of Chihuahua, Mexico. It examines the state’s dual nature of being equally beautiful and perilous, of being sacred and frightening.
- [Episode 67 - Women of Color Writers’ Authentic Voices: Natalie Obando, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2022/02/10/women-of-color-writers-authentic-voices-natalie-obando-part-1/) - Natalia Obando, current national president of the Women’s National Book Association and first Latina to take the helm, stops by the show to speak with Julián Esteban Torres López about her goal to promote diversity in publishing via grassroots efforts. She discusses her own experience in the literary world as a Latina, along with the origin story and breakdown of the Authentic Voices Fellowship Program she founded. They then transition into a discussion on the White Gaze in publishing and how she uses her influence to transition us out of it so we can become more authentic and reflect a more realistic representation. They end part one of the conversation dissecting the pros and cons of code-switching and how through us coming together in solidarity we can gain more power and lift each other up.
- [Episode 68 – Women of Color Writers’ Authentic Voices: Natalie Obando, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2022/02/11/episode-67-women-of-color-writers-authentic-voices-natalie-obando-part-2/) - We continue with the second part of Julián Esteban Torres López’s conversation with Natalie Obando, the current national president of the Women’s National Book Association and first Latina to take the helm. They continue to discuss the Authentic Voices Fellowship Program, her experiences and thoughts about the White Gaze in publishing and storytelling industries, how she uses her influence to transition us out of it so we can become more authentic and reflect a more realistic representation, and much more. They also dissect the harmful urge to center the comfort of others by anglicizing our names, thereby decentering ourselves at the outset of relationships, and the kind of impact this form of code-switching has on us and our communities. If you have not already, we encourage you to go back and listen to the first part so you can better situate yourself in today’s episode.
- [The Nasiona's Black Is Beautiful Playlist](https://www.thenasiona.com/2022/02/09/the-nasionas-black-is-beautiful-playlist/) - With our BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL music playlist, we strive to center, elevate, and amplify the voices and musical talents of Black storytellers and creators. Curated by The Nasiona team, this introduction is more than a simple opportunity for you to learn and be entertained. No. Not just that. That's a bonus. What we really hope you'll do is commit to taking action to support these artists, purchase their music, share their work, use your influence and power to create access to opportunity, and become long-term patrons. We hope the playlist animates your body, inspires your soul, and moves your wallet. As we try to impact equity, one critical thing we can all do is buy and experience the works created and produced by Black artists.
- [Episode 60 - Growing up Black and Brown in a White Town](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/10/02/episode-60-growing-up-black-and-brown-in-a-white-town/) - What’s it like growing up Black and brown in a predominantly white town? Joe Sparkman and Julián Esteban Torres López share their experiences of growing up together in the 1990s as teenagers in Nashua, New Hampshire: Money magazine’s best place to live in the US in 1987 & 1997; where JFK announced he would run for president; and home to the first racially integrated US team in modern baseball. With this episode we glimpse into the kinds of situations that give rise to activists and social justice warriors.
- [Episode 61 - Being Latina/e/o/x](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/11/16/episode-61-being-latina-e-o-x/) - A tour of what it means to be Latina/e/o/x through the voices of previous The Nasiona Podcast guests: Sylvia Salazar, Colette Ghunim, Alondra Adame, Eva Gonzalez, Diana Castellanos, Mireya S. Vela, Liza Ann Acosta, Alexandra Meda, Christina Igaraividez, J.L. Torres, Irma Herrera, Beezy Montaña, Ra Avis, Patrick A. Howell, Carlos Carrasco, and Deborah Taffa. Our stories are complex, nuanced, and deserve to be heard. In the show notes, you can find links to the previous guests’ episodes.
- [Episode 62 - Decolonizing & Indigenizing Storytelling, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/11/26/episode-62-decolonizing-indigenizing-storytelling-part-1/) - What does it mean to decolonize and Indigenize storytelling? How do institutionalized Euro-centric storytelling frameworks limit creativity, understanding of stories and histories, and how we relate to others, our selves, our environment, and our art creations? In this episode, Julián Esteban Torres López addresses the importance of decolonizing storytelling, affirming Indigenous storytelling traditions, and creating safe and encouraging spaces for BIPOC stories.
- [Episode 63 - On Healing, Transformation, & Reclaiming Authority of Your Authenticity](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/07/episode-63-on-healing-transformation-reclaiming-authority-of-your-authenticity/) - What does it mean to show up as you beyond the you you were told to be? Christine Cariño joins Julián Esteban Torres López to discuss the philosophy of authenticity, how getting over trauma often means finding your way back to that person you were before the trauma, and the transformative process of rerooting and replanting yourself and reclaiming deferred dreams. This episode is about healing, empowerment, and giving ourselves permission to say yes to ourselves, to allow ourselves to feel, and to create the conditions we need to fully become ourselves.
- [Episode 65 - Blue Blood: Challenging the Rhetoric that Trans People are ‘Unnatural’](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/15/episode-65-blue-blood-challenging-the-rhetoric-that-trans-people-are-unnatural/) - We all begin in water and are called back to water. Blue Blood challenges the rhetoric that trans people are “unnatural” through captivating verses about metamorphosis and meditations on the concept of home. Robin Gow invites readers to celebrate identity; to question what their own body means to them.
- [Indigenous Peoples' Day](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/08/indigenous-peoples-day/) - In a red state like Missouri, their hero columbised this land but for us, indigenous emigrants of burnt sage and blown prayers, a shivering flame in the stomach and Dr. Silver Wolf’s drums outside the Buder Center for American Indian Studies in the city. Voices blue, we remember blood, buried histories burning like dry ice
- [CHROMIC: "Lightless"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/chromic-lightless/) - This series spotlights musical artists from The Nasiona's first compilation album, Volume 1: Petrichor. Chromic's track "Lightless" is featured in the volume.
- [TRE. CHARLES: "Stressin."](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/26/tre-charles-stressin/) - World premiere of Tre. Charles's debut single/music video for "Stressin." Tre. Charles is a singer-songwriter who dives into the depths of his soul to try to bring you into his world with an expressive blend of warm and soulful undertones. This track embodies personal and social struggles that Tre. Charles has experienced throughout his life as a young Black man in America. This timely track and its visuals are sure to capture the isolation that many have felt through this pandemic.
- [A Tale of Two Tongues](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/a-tale-of-two-tongues/) - i’m a chameleon with two tongues in my mouth / Punjabi and English / my mother tongue / and the other tongue / one the language of my blood the other of reason // i couldn’t speak anything except my mother tongue until i was five / Punjabi is what i spoke, it was how i was safe and survived/ Punjab comes from the Persian words panj, meaning five, and ab meaning water / it represents the five powerful rivers flowing across the lands /
- [Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/09/ghost-in-a-black-girls-throat/) - The South will birth a new kind of haunting / in your black girl-ness, your black woman-ness. / Your body becomes a poached confection— / honeyed enigma pledging to be allegiant. / The muddied silk robe waving in their amber / grains of bigotry. / Your skin—a rhetorical question, / blood-stained equation no one wants to answer.
- [Books on Deconstructing Oppressive Systems and Cultures of Domination](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/16/books-on-deconstructing-oppressive-systems-and-cultures-of-domination/) - As The Nasiona's creator, I thought I'd start an annual series of the books I've read (or reread) throughout the year that focus specifically on deconstructing oppressive systems and cultures of domination. By doing so, I hope to give you a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes to better prepare to serve our communities. Enjoy this list of 44 books. Hopefully some of these titles make it onto your to-be-read pile for 2022.
- [Poetry Presses Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/08/19/poetry-presses-answer-your-burning-questions-part-2/) - In part two of this three-part series, we asked poetry presses about the challenges that come with being a small press publisher. This article will give you insights into the barriers they face and how their struggles impact who, what, and how much they publish.
- [Poetry Presses Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/12/poetry-presses-answer-your-burning-questions-part-1/) - In part one of this three-part series, we asked independent presses about what it takes to craft and publish a poetry collection. Curious about the perfect length for a poem? How many poems should be in your collection? The barriers to getting your collection out into the world? Where the publication of poetry is headed? Then read on.
- [Literary Agents Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 3](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/12/literary-agents-answer-your-burning-questions-part-3/) - In part three of this three-part series, we asked literary agents questions that are all about developing relationships in publishing. This article will provide you with insights about being a good client and utilizing social media to interact with your intended audience.
- [Literary Agents Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/05/15/literary-agents-answer-your-burning-questions-part-2/) - In part two of this three-part series, we asked literary agents questions that are all about you: the writer. This article will give you insights into your manuscript, from what draws an agent in to how to perfect your query letter, and much more.
- [Literary Agents Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/01/literary-agents-answer-your-burning-questions-part-1/) - You’ve spent months, maybe years, working tirelessly to tell your story and you’ve done it. You’ve written a book. What follows may be even harder: getting it published. It’s the word on every writer’s mind, and it can be scary, especially if you’re choosing to go the traditional route. In this three-part series, we hope to answer some of your burning questions, like What makes a literary agent tick? How do I craft a query letter? What are the best ways to utilize social media? To answer these questions, we went straight to source: literary agents. This article will give you a glimpse into the inner workings of the publishing world as experienced by literary agents.
- [Poetry Presses Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 3](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/11/poetry-presses-answer-your-burning-questions-part-3/) - In part three of this three-part series, we asked poetry presses about where poetry is headed. This article will give you insights into changes they’d like to see and ways this industry can be improved.
- [Is there anything you would recommend to authors/publishers about how to best position their books in the market?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/is-there-anything-you-would-recommend-to-authors-publishers-about-how-to-best-position-their-books-in-the-market/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 6 gives you an inside glimpse into the recommendations of 52 bookstores across the country on how authors/publishers can better position their books in the market.
- [Do you host author/book signing events/readings?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/do-you-host-author-book-signing-events-readings/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 5 gives you an inside glimpse into whether or not 53 bookstores across the country host author/book signing events/readings.
- [How can local authors develop a relationship with you?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/how-can-local-authors-develop-a-relationship-with-you/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 4 gives you an inside glimpse into how local authors can develop a relationship with 55 bookstores across the country.
- [What’s your processing for vetting books?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/whats-your-processing-for-vetting-books/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 3 gives you an inside glimpse into the book vetting process of 49 bookstores across the country.
- [Do you accept self-published authors? In what situations would you consider this?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/do-you-accept-self-published-authors-in-what-situations-would-you-consider-this/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 2 gives you an inside glimpse into whether or not bookstores accept books from self-published authors, and what goes through their minds when they consider putting such books on the shelves of 48 bookstores across the country.
- [How can authors get their book on your shelves?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/19/how-can-authors-get-their-book-on-your-shelves/) - In this six-part series, we asked bookstores across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. Here, Part 1 gives you an inside glimpse to how authors can get their books on the shelves of 49 bookstores across the country.
- [Libraries Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/22/libraries-answer-your-burning-questions-part-1/) - In this 2-part series, we asked libraries across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. In Part 1, we asked them: Do you have a book-buying budget? If so, does it fluctuate from year to year? Is it based on department/type of book? How do you find and choose which books to buy?
- [Libraries Answer Your Burning Questions, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/22/libraries-answer-your-burning-questions-part-2/) - In this 2-part series, we asked libraries across the United States to answer some of your burning questions. In Part 2, we asked them: How can authors collaborate with you to spread the word about their book to potential readers? Are you open to circulating self and small-published books by local authors? If you can’t buy the book, do you accept donations?
- [What Does It Mean to be Colombian?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/22/what-does-it-mean-to-be-colombian/) - Can we really sit down and agree on a set of characteristics to essentialize what it means to be a Colombian? Once challenged to unpack what it means, most will recognize inherent limitations to this endeavor as there are any time one tries to essentialize anything. In the process of constructing an identity, one always leaves something out when trying to include something else.
- [Apart, but Together for Change](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/22/apart-but-together-for-change/) - We are standing on a fault line. We’re at what can become a historic crossroad and turning point, or simply a return to the status quo … a status quo that will only continue to degrade our planet and the vast majority of its inhabitants. Our soil is ready for a new harvest. Our seeds need to be watered.
- [On Faith and Other Demons](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/12/23/on-faith-and-other-demons/) - When you tell survivors of oppression to have faith that things will get better, and then you do nothing to change culture, to change behaviors, to change policies, to ensure situations improve, you ultimately ask us to be docile and to accept a violent, exploitative, and suppressive status quo.
- [The Right Wing May Have Lit the Fire, but the Left Wing May Dig the Grave](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/01/12/the-right-wing-may-have-lit-the-fire-but-the-left-wing-may-dig-the-grave/) - In the US, we’ve been radicalized to assume ourselves as great, at the detriment of ourselves, our country, and the world. Our collective arrogance, self-absorption, and superiority complex will be our downfall if we do not course-correct immediately. A turbulent future is here and on the horizon. The intensity of that turbulence will depend on how we prepare and act today.
- [Episode 35: Isolation, Grief, and Sisterhood While Incarcerated, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/12/19/episode-35-isolation-grief-and-sisterhood-while-incarcerated-part-2/) - Ra Avis joins Julián Esteban Torres López again, this time to discuss how people do not rehabilitate via isolation alone, her experience dealing with grief and trauma while incarcerated, and the shocking aspect of realizing that one of the only women-run societies in the world is a women's prison, which was one aspect of incarceration that she found herself missing after she was out.
- [Episode 34: Incarceration and Prison Abolition, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/10/18/episode-34-incarceration-and-prison-abolition-part-1/) - Do prisons get rid of social problems, or do they create a lot of them? Should we abolish the prison system? What are the biggest barriers to prison abolition? What should people know about the prison system that most do not know? This is part 1 of a 2-part interview where I speak with Ra Avis to get a glimpse into incarceration and prison abolition. Ra Avis is a once-upon-a-time inmate, a reluctantly-optimistic widow, and a generational storyteller.
- [On Allyship](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/12/01/on-allyship/) - You want to be an ally? Here are some initial demands in order for you to demonstrate and enact love, care, and support beyond your personal feelings.
- [Our Narratives Become Our Future: Designing a Story with the Traumatized at the Center](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/11/24/our-narratives-become-our-future-designing-a-story-with-the-traumatized-at-the-center/) - “We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid. […] People are taught to respect their fear of speaking more than silence, but ultimately, the silence will choke us anyway, so we might as well speak the truth.” - Audre Lorde
- [Episode 29: Protesting the Publishing Industry's White Gaze](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/28/episode-29-protesting-the-publishing-industrys-white-gaze/) - In the previous episode, Lisa D. Gray, founder of Our Voices Our Stories SF, joined Julián Esteban Torres López to interrogate the publishing industry’s white gaze. In today’s episode, they discuss how we can protest the industry, and other institutions, and how we can gain power and find power in our everyday lives to dismantle and rebuild the world anew, even when under the yoke of systems of oppression like racism.
- [Episode 28: Interrogating the Publishing Industry's White Gaze](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/25/episode-28-interrogating-the-publishing-industrys-white-gaze/) - Lisa D. Gray, founder of Our Voices Our Stories SF, joins Julián Esteban Torres López to interrogate the white gaze of the publishing industry. They challenge its myths about Black and brown communities; call out its performative allyship; expose its diversity, equity, and inclusion problem; and hold it accountable. They also center, elevate, and amplify Black and other People of Color writers, especially women.
- [Black Books Matter](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/25/black-books-matter/) - As we find ways to impact diversity and equity in publishing and writing and disrupt its "old boy" culture, one critical thing we can all do is buy and read books written by Black and other people of color. This list provides a starting point. It’s for readers searching for themselves on the page and ones who never encountered or meaningfully engaged with someone who doesn’t look like them or share their ethnic/cultural norms and values. These tomes, written by women of color, are ones that you need to read like yesterday. These books and the women who wrote them dare to push for space and give voice to the lives of Black and brown women on the page. Buy one today.
- [Episode 44 - Design Thinking & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/03/15/episode-44-design-thinking-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-part-2/) - Vanessa Weathers, Founder and Principal Consultant at Conscious Employee Experiences, joins us to explore design thinking and its relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We discuss how marginalized folks may be better positioned for leadership roles. We unpack questions, such as: What's behind the claim "diversity is white genocide"? Where is power truly rooted in an organization? How can we design local politics to get the best results and to get people in the right roles? And much more. Musical guest: Samantha Pearl.
- [Episode 43 - Design Thinking & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/28/episode-43-design-thinking-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/) - Most environments are not designed to include and value everyone because they fail to center the concerns of those in the bottom rungs of our class and caste systems. I speak with Vanessa Weathers, Founder & Principal Consultant at Conscious Employee Experiences, to further explore design thinking and its relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We critique the desire to build teams based on cultural fit, and we dissect the difference between managers and leaders. Musical guest: Mallika Vie.
- [[Transcript] Ep. 30: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/10/04/transcript-ep-30-global-international-african-arts-movement-part-1/) - Julián Esteban Torres López speaks with the two complementing spirits behind Victory & Noble, a storytelling company. In this 2-part conversation, Tori Reid and Patrick A. Howell reveal their legacy project, and their energy and determination are sure to inspire, educate, and transform. They both move us forward with a critical optimism rooted in both the real struggles of our past and our present, but also a futurism grounded in the belief that we have the power to harvest a tomorrow that is brighter than today.
- [[Transcript] Ep. 31: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/10/04/transcript-ep-31-global-international-african-arts-movement-part-2/) - In the second episode of our 2-part conversation, Tori Reid and Patrick A. Howell of Victory & Noble continue to unpack what it means to be a prophet in the Global International African Arts Movement, as well as what it means to be an evangelist, a seer, and a manifester; they open up about their most memorable conversations with cultural icons and how these conversations transformed them; they challenge the Hollywood industrial complex and push forward to reclaim our voices and tell our own stories.
- [Episode 56 - Third Culture Kids, Cultural Appropriation, & Identity](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/06/25/episode-56-third-culture-kids-cultural-appropriation-identity/) - Kanchan Gautam and Julián Esteban Torres López discuss their experiences as Third Culture Kids, which then evolves into a conversation about cultural appropriation. Kanchan Gautam is a novice birdwatcher, myco-enthusiast, and amateur naturalist. She is proud of her Nepali heritage and she spends time exploring identity and cultural narrative in Oakland, occupied Ohlone territory. Musical Guest: Annah Sidigu.
- [Episode 57 - Colorism in Latin American & South Asian Communities](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/06/29/episode-57-colorism-in-latin-american-south-asian-communities/) - During the last episode, my good friend Kanchan Gautam and I discussed our experiences as Third Culture Kids and cultural appropriation. Today, we explore the deep roots of colorism in our South Asian and Latin American communities, along with dating and making friends while brown in predominantly white spaces. Musical Guest: Stephanie Henry.
- [We Are Nice Humans: An Interview with Fran Meneses (Frannerd)](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/09/29/we-are-nice-humans-an-interview-with-fran-meneses-frannerd/) - As a Latina, a Chilean, an immigrant, feminist, and lesbian, Fran Meneses (Frannerd) has lived life under the patriarchal dictatorship of Pinochet, watched as family members struggle to make ends meet under widening wealth gaps, and recently witnessed the manifestations in her native country that have led to the rewriting of the Chilean constitution. All of these factors play into how she expresses herself.
- [Other Russias: Interview with Victoria Lomasko](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/other-russias-interview-with-victoria-lomasko/) - The subjects of VICTORIA LOMASKO’s graphic reportage are what she has called her heroes, regardless of what side of an issue they stand. In approaching work this way, she finds a way of representing the voices that connect ordinary people to one another, as well as highlighting those moments where an individual’s actions and actual
- [An Ounce of Gold](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/an-ounce-of-gold/) - In “An Ounce of Gold,” Hao Tran met with his kid brother on a special occasion and the two relived their past histories as Vietnamese refugees in the United States. The story about the brother was one of thousands of boat people who escaped South Vietnam after the end of Saigon and settled in America to live the stereotypical life of a well-assimilated immigrant. The story dives deeper into the trauma of their pasts and the ambiguity they find themselves in as citizens of no country.
- [Hyphenated](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/hyphenated/) - “Hyphenated” revisits a year in the author’s life when she changed her name in order to fit in. She then had to question her hyphenated identity on a trip to her birthplace, realizing that her ancestry was only just a part of her. This essay briefly explores what it feels like to have multiple cultural identities.
- [Nuances of Race and Identity](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/nuances-of-race-and-identity/) - As a Kenyan of South Asian descent, my sense of identity is deeply intertwined with the East African country that my ancestors chose as their home many generations ago. Growing up in Kenya, I knew who I was. But by moving to Canada, a country where you are defined by ethnicity and not nationality, I experienced a disconnect between how I looked and how I felt. I do not know where I belong anymore. This piece of writing captures an aspect of that realization, and loss.
- [Ghosts Everywhere](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/ghosts-everywhere/) - As a mixed-race, Vietnamese person, Gabrielle Behar Trinh's childhood often felt divided between two worlds. Sometimes, it was painfully obvious how much the world her mother existed in—Asian fruits and foods, language, ancestral traditions, and the memories of leaving Vietnam—thrived by remaining hidden from her father. Told in flashbacks of memories, including the grief following her mother’s miscarriage, this story touches on intergenerational trauma and living in-between.
- [Self-Care Isn’t Just About Bubble Baths](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/self-care-isnt-just-about-bubble-baths/) - My cousin told me not to discuss my engagement with her daughter, because I am marrying another woman. Through this experience, I reaffirmed how to best live my truth and take care of myself.
- [Haunted by a 4-Letter Word](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/haunted-by-a-4-letter-word/) - “Haunted By a 4-Letter Word” describes changing personal, political, and societal perspectives on the meaning of the role of wife across fifty years, from the first issue of Ms., to more current discussions of hetero-normativity and marriage equality. The essay tells that broader cultural story through my personal narrative as a straight Catholic school girl of 16, to my current experience as a 68-year-old lesbian-identified bi- woman partnered, then married, to a woman for thirty-eight years. The essay concludes by describing newer meanings of ‘wife’, while acknowledging some of the current complexities of the label for queers.
- [Black and Other](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/black-and-other/) - "Black and Other" touches upon some of the layers of my journey to my authentic self, some layers being race and color. When a light skin girl, with long curly hair tells you she’s Black and you think to question her. Think about how white supremacy has carved into us that being Black is not good enough. When she tells you she is Black, do not question her. Because being Black is enough.
- [Episode 59 - The Nuyorican Hallway: Belonging & Living Between Worlds](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/22/episode-59-the-nuyorican-hallway-belonging-living-between-worlds/) - J.L. Torres is the author of Migrations, the inaugural winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Prize. His work focuses on the diasporican experience—living in the inbetweeness that forms and informs the Puerto Rican experience. We dissect the central themes of Migrations—a collection of stories deeply rooted in Puerto Rico's history—where he elevates the experiences of Othered individuals. This is a far-ranging conversation that spans colonialism, Nuyorican identity, colorism, Critical Race Theory, and healing.
- [Episode 55 - Blended Future Project](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/06/22/episode-55-blended-future-project/) - Blended Future Project is creating a new cultural identity where multiracial and multiethnic people are understood and free to develop and collaborate their own unique culture(s). It actively unites multiracial and multiethnic people and integrates them fluidly into the cultural communities of all other racial and ethnic groups. Julián speaks with the leaders of the Blended Future Project, Maris Lidaka and Beth Chin, to further understand this movement, as well as hear about their own mixed-identity journeys.
- [What It Means to Be a Woman](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/what-it-means-to-be-a-woman/) - To get to your apartment junior year of college, you have to walk a winding path by your old freshman dorm, three newer apartments, and the community center before you arrive at home. Sometimes instead, you take a shorter path through the woods, like when it was below 40 degrees or you were running late to whatever class or club you’d committed to. On this particular night, you wrap your jacket tightly around yourself and opt for the shorter, if poorly lit, path.
- [How to Be Alone with a God](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/how-to-be-alone-with-a-god/) - I know now that when you turn a man into a god, he does not die. He is inevitable; he is Poseidon with a beard; Hades on a chariot; Pan stealing the survival of the moon. My god sits constantly at my feet, on my shoulder, behind my eyes. Gods, of course, exist for us, silent and taunting, slowly conforming themselves into conjugal intervention until they know our bodies through entrance and scrutiny of entrance.
- [Badasses of the Season (Spring 2019)](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/24/badasses-of-the-season-spring-2019/) - In this new seasonal series, we highlight some badasses. _Lido Pimienta _Ana Tijoux _Shadia Mansour _Gogol Bordello _LP _Melissa Lozada-Oliva _Jessie Reyez _The Hamilton Mixtape: K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC (Riz Ahmed), and Residente
- [How I Became a U.S. Citizen](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/how-i-became-a-u-s-citizen/) - I wrote this Stand-Up comedy set for the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, who asked me to speak at a rally they held on April 22, 2021, in Jackson, Mississippi. I wanted to make my green card story funny.
- [Colombiana de Biblioteca](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/colombiana-de-biblioteca/) - Heightened by the recent unrest in Colombia, a Colombiana-Americana describes the inner conflict of claiming both Colombia and the United States as home, rejected by both countries, and learning to embrace this duality as a gift.
- [Fuck the Homophobes](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/fuck-the-homophobes/) - I was inspired to write this piece about homophobia when my partner and I were treated very differently from the customers in our small shop that she has used for years. Even in a place I consider mostly liberal, we encounter homophobia often. We figured we could hide, or just be proud of who we are. So, we decided, fuck homophobes! We are not going away! If even one young person who feels alone can see us and feel less alone, then the discomfort is worth it. This piece was aired on BBC Radio Uploads Suffolk on 7/8/2020.
- [Getting Dressed](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/getting-dressed/) - The short narrative essay “Getting Dressed” contemplates the relationships between physical appearance, cultural identity, and belonging through the one seemingly simple act: getting dressed.
- [When Your Name Is Escobar](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/when-your-name-is-escobar/) - In the thirty years that I’ve been living outside of my home country, Colombia, I have been asked numerous times if I am related to the drug lord Pablo Escobar. This is a predictable question since my last name is Escobar. This personal essay aims to understand why the question offends. Cultures are a rich tapestry of references, symbols, history, smells, landscapes, flavours, connections, and meanings. A migrant leaves most of her identifiers and references behind. Beyond a personal outburst of hurt, the essay tackles the effect of reducing a migrant to a stereotype.
- [The Permanent Peace](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/the-permanent-peace/) - “I’m gay,” I proclaimed to a sea of strange, blank faces. The word hung proud and uncertain, in the air just as out of place as I was, in this place and with these people, my new form and friends. Their chattering stopped dead, and a cold silence flooded the room. Hope hovered precariously on my tongue. Frozen, I stared at my dormmates, their shining, distant eyes fixed on mine. I swallowed.
- [A Sort of Fairy Tale](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/a-sort-of-fairy-tale/) - This piece describes the author's first queer romantic experience, which took place after she began working at a commercial BDSM dungeon. As the title suggests, the piece examines the gulf between fantasy and reality, courage and fear, desire and reluctance, as the author navigates a new world.
- [How to Be Mixed in a One-Drop World](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/how-to-be-mixed-in-a-one-drop-world/) - This essay reflects on the life of a multiracial child growing up in a predominately white, isolated, rural town and the complexity of harboring identities seemingly misaligned. It questions the tokenization of mixed-race peoples and what it means to be mixed-race in a world still indoctrinated with the ideology behind the “One Drop Rule.”
- [Speak](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/speak/) - My story describes a horrifying threat of violence I experienced at the age of nineteen, many decades ago. I recount the seemingly safe context in which it occurred, how I responded to the threat as it was unfolding and how profoundly the experience impacted on my character development. An important dimension of the story is how my need to be popular and offend no-one at the time led me to ignore my sense of impending danger.
- [Coats](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/coats/) - When my mother was young, she was rich / So rich that her father bought her a coat / Straight from a well known department store / At ten after closing time by knocking on the window / And shaking a hand full of money at the manager. / It was a prepossessing coat. / Georgia clay red with a furry collar. / When my mother got a little older, her family was poor / And her mother and her had to share a coat. One had to wait for / the / other to come in, order to go out.It was a hideous coat. /
- [Five Poems by Ashlee Lusch](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/five-poems-by-ashlee-lusch/) - I do not know how to say what I am. Label me if you must. / All I know is this: / Nobody loves women as much as I love women.
- [The Wedding Party](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/the-wedding-party/) - "The Wedding Party" was inspired by an incident I experienced at a family wedding. In the light of the events of 2020, I revisited this moment in time, as well as many other racially charged moments in my life as a mixed race person, and the result was this essay. I hope this essay shares some insight into my experience as a mixed race person and hopefully illustrates the challenges of being mixed race in what often feels like a black and white world.
- [Just One Picture?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/08/10/just-one-picture/) - This piece is about the subtlety with which harassment occurs at work. It comes in many forms and sometimes sweeps past us so swiftly that we hardly know how to respond in the moment, how to defend ourselves, or how to defend each other.
- [Episode 58 - Taboos: Trauma, Resistance, & Healing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/07/05/episode-58-taboos-traumas-resistance-healing/) - Podcaster and poet Angela Rideau joins Julián Esteban Torres López to explore taboos, their relationship to trauma, and how our taboo resistance is both a revolutionary act and a step toward healing. Musical Guest: Mallika Vie.
- [Episode 54 - Deconstructing & Rebuilding Our Education System, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/06/16/episode-54-deconstructing-rebuilding-our-education-system-part-2/) - How can we reimagine school systems to fit the concerns of students in the 21st century? Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Dr. Robin Harwick, who are at the center of the innovative The Pearl Remote Democratic High School, teach us about democratic education. The Pearl is a personally relevant and student-centered educational experience. Students benefit from being part of a dynamic international learning community while being supported by mentors, educators, and professionals. The Pearl’s students are prepared for whatever life they choose. Musical guest: San Palo.
- [Episode 52 - Inside the Afro-Latino Actors Studio, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/25/episode-52-inside-the-afro-latino-actors-studio-part-2/) - On today’s episode, we re-enter the Afro-Latino Actors Studio with Carlos Carrasco: actor, filmmaker, and director of the Panamanian International Film Festival. We examine the heart of art, how the sounds of things carry the emotions of things, we deconstruct language into its most fundamental pieces, explore how art is a process of selection, and much more. Musical Guest: Chromic.
- [Episode 50 - Inside the Afro-Latino Actors Studio, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/12/episode-50-inside-the-afro-latino-actors-studio-part-1/) - Let's go inside the Afro-Latino Actors Studio with Carlos Carrasco: actor, filmmaker, and director of the Panamanian International Film Festival. Carrasco will take the lead on stage, then give us the VIP tour backstage, behind the curtains, where we glimpse into what it is like to be an immigrant Afro-Latino in acting in the US, and how this experience has impacted his identity and drove him to also dedicate his time to social impact causes for Latin actors, theatre, and film. Musical Guest: Tre. Charles.
- [Screwdrivers](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/screwdrivers/) - This story about LGBTQIA+ yearning and the hardships of navigating one's boundaries — while also trying to be open to the experience of falling in love — explores how much we give of ourselves in order to get the most minuscule response, and then call that response affection because as LGBTQ+ people, we rarely know what healthy reciprocity is, especially when we’re young and still learning.
- [The Nasiona Writing Prompts League, Season 1 Stats & Rankings](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/20/the-nasiona-writing-prompts-league-season-1-stats-rankings/) - The Nasiona's Writing Prompts League is the gymnasium of the mind. Every prompt master was once a beginner. Check out our stats, rankings, and league leaders after 6 of our 6 season tournaments. One-hundred and twenty-one international competitors participated, 37 qualified for the SEASON 1 FINALS TOURNAMENT in June 2021.
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #6](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/19/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-6/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #6: WHEN I LEARNED I WAS DIFFERENT is
- [Episode 49 - Colombia’s Historical Lack of Hegemony and Institutionalized Violence](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/07/episode-49-colombias-historical-lack-of-hegemony-and-institutionalized-violence/) - Colombia’s history has the following pattern: people are massacred or enslaved, displaced, the land is freed, and the élite, foreign powers, and multi-national corporations come in to exploit the land and the labor force. What is going on today, during the Great Colombian Uprising of 2021, is an extension of this history. Since April 28, the Colombian government has been killing, torturing, disappearing, and sexually assaulting Colombian people on the streets throughout the country. Please don’t look away.
- [Episode 51 - Colombia * Anti-Uribista](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/05/16/episode-51-colombia-anti-uribista/) - Go on social media and type the hashtag #AntiUribista and you will find photos of cities in Colombia declaring themselves Anti-Uribistas as they resist state violence. Today, I cover the eight years Álvaro Uribe was president of Colombia, from 2002 to 2010, give you a thorough overview into the many reasons behind the current Anti-Uribismo movement, and glimpse into the United States’s love affair with Uribe, along with its role in Colombia's militarized state since the turn of the century.
- [Social Clues](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/social-clues/) - Sometimes shyness and loneliness go hand in hand. And sometimes loneliness is not so much about being alone, or isolated, but an inability to connect with others on a meaningful level. A feeling too raw and too embarrassing to be expressed except within the protective shell of a hermit crab essay. With thanks to Sara Ryan for her piece, “Body Puzzle,” which offered the perfect shell.level. A feeling too raw and too embarrassing to be expressed except within the protective shell of a hermit crab essay. With thanks to Sara Ryan for her piece, “Body Puzzle,” which offered the perfect shell.
- [Out](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/out/) - "Like many, I learned a lot in college. I learned that I didn’t like sociology and that it was pretty easy to finish a minor. I learned that I matter and that toxic people aren’t worth my time. And slowly over the course of those years, I learned that I was bi."
- [Existentialism in Spring 2021](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/28/editors-note/) - As we idle into Spring, with all its transformative, and deeply metamorphic connotations, let us embrace that gentle introspection. Let us always wonder, and be unafraid of the strange doors this wondering inevitably opens.
- [There's No Such Thing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/theres-no-such-thing/) - The essay considers the experiences of being biracial in the late 1990s through the college application process. It ends with a reflection on the persistence of the idea that society does not allow for a “biracial” or “multiracial” category, and that those of us who are mixed-race must demand it.
- [The Second Studio Album by American Industrial Rock Band Nine Inch Nails](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/the-second-studio-album-by-american-industrial-rock-band-nine-inch-nails/) - During a solitary evening in New York City, the author contemplates the chasm between glamor and brutality, between transitory human connection, and disaffected loneliness.
- [Encounters with Māya](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/encounters-with-maya/) - The short essay Encounters with Māya (Illusion) takes us on a journey through dreams, poems, and sacred texts to reflect on living as a human, awakening to ‘reality’, and staying connected to one another through hardship.
- [Time Dilation](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/time-dilation/) - This essay recounts a story of mutual discomfort between two teenagers. The speaker considers the events in retrospect in which he realizes the degree to which he made a person, to whom he was romantically interested, uncomfortable. The piece centers on communication breakdown, the failure of a friendship, misapprehension of others, the speaker’s journey to self awareness, and a healthier, yet still evolving, approach to intimacy and rejection.
- [In Pandemic Times, A Migrant's Notes on Home](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/in-pandemic-times-a-migrants-notes-on-home/) - This personal essay is about the ever-present feeling, as a migrant, of not belonging to any one place. It explores the author’s long line of migrant ancestors, reflecting on whether the accumulation of their experiences have made her feeling of unrooted-ness run even deeper. At the center of the piece is an exploration of the concept of "home,” what that means for migrants and how that can affect our sense of self.
- [Backstrokes](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/backstrokes/) - In Backstrokes the author describes a reconnection with a cherished friend and kindred spirit from four decades ago. Their meet-up sparks a series of reflections in which she reassesses the value of usefulness as a lifelong priority.
- [Yellow Fever](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/yellow-fever/) - “Yellow Fever” is a coming-of-age piece that explores the fetishization of young Asian and mixed-race women. It describes the frustration of being seen as an exotic prize and not as a woman with complex emotions or as a human having value beyond men’s sexual desires.
- [Up for Grabs](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/up-for-grabs/) - The author recalls: "An older male friend told me once that if a woman was over 18, “she was up for grabs”. I thought he was just being facetious: most men have a sense of decorum. An eye-opening incident, may have proved my friend’s point."
- [How to Be an Ecuadorian Girl](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/how-to-be-an-ecuadorian-girl/) - After living in Connecticut for a decade, Victoria Buitron, at fifteen years old, returns to reside in her hometown.
- [My Mind, My Choice](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/my-mind-my-choice/) - This piece is about the author's ongoing struggle with her decision to not press charges against her rapists. It also includes struggles she had with how her family and friends reacted to her victimhood and coping mechanisms. The author makes a subtle defense for her decision to cope.
- [Seen and Unseen](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/seen-and-unseen/) - The true story of what can happen to a relationship when you see what you shouldn’t and refuse to see what you should.
- [Cold Coffee](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/cold-coffee/) - “Cold Coffee” is a creative nonfiction piece by Helena Ducusin that depicts her experience growing up half-Filipino and half-white in an Americanized household. It describes her interactions with parents, comparisons made to her friends, and the hurtful reactions of strangers that hindered her search for identity as she grew older.
- [Love Me in Arabic](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/love-me-in-arabic/) - This essay is an attempt to explore the author's relationship with the Arabic language and love. Although his relationship with his father is the centre of this exploration, this essay remains a love-letter to all of Nofel's friends and former lovers and an invitation to a different linguistic experience of love.
- [The World Behind the World](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/the-world-behind-the-world/) - “The World Behind the World” grapples with the restaurant industry’s insularity and examines how that exclusivity embodies wider dynamics of power, race, and class.
- [Searching](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/searching/) - A poem about the author's journey as a bisexual woman struggling with anxiety, told through very minimal Google searches that she (and many other queer people) have made in her life, along with some she hopes to make in the future.
- [Lesbian Y.A. Novel](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/lesbian-y-a-novel/) - “Lesbian Y.A. Novel” is a fragmented coming-to-terms with lesbian identity across hometown, high school, and college. Interspersed with anecdotes about lesbian bars from Artforum’s “Confessions On The Dance Floor: Reveries From The Gay Bar,” this essay contemplates what it means to be a lesbian in any space — warm or cold, closed off or open.
- [On Jefferson Street](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/on-jefferson-street/) - A meditative piece on a brief encounter witnessed a few years ago on Albuquerque’s Jefferson Street on a winter afternoon: in the daily grind of just trying to get where we need to go – physically, figuratively, spiritually – we are faced with the realities of our circumstances. And when we connect as humans, it is oftentimes done so when we stop to really see each other, to pay witness to the brief, fleeting, often ignored struggles that become our everyday life.
- [Landing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/landing/) - As the narrator encounters winter-stranded birds desperate for whatever food they can find, she considers a night in which she witnessed a girl desperate to reunite with her abusive boyfriend, as well as the narrator’s own desperate attachments to an abusive lover.
- [Are You Borg Now?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/are-you-borg-now/) - Themes of belonging, of isolation, of expressions of identity, and of the nuances between the African American and the African Immigrant experience arise from a conversation between the author and the author’s inner voice.
- [Leveraging Love as Loyalty](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/leveraging-love-as-loyalty/) - This essay explores a few assumptions and real-world events about what we as children are taught to believe regarding the social concepts of family, fraternity, and fidelity. Formative experiences from the author’s childhood turn the home-spun concepts of familial love, brotherhood, and justice on their heads. After all is said and done however, there is love in the world—genuine love. None of us is perfect, but perhaps the critical period for human decency spans not weeks or months, but a lifetime.
- [My Dead Darlings](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/my-dead-darlings/) - “My Dead Darlings” is a creative nonfiction essay that focuses on the author's personal connection to Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Lisbon sisters from Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. The characters are used as conduit through which to explore the experiences of teenage girls.
- [The (Questionable) Safety of Home](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/the-questionable-safety-of-home/) - The summer after her junior year of college, the author lived alone in a house of five, or she thought she did. This essay tells the story of discovering that somebody who did not belong in her house was there without her knowledge, and the lasting effect it has had on her sense of safety in her home.
- [A Poor Puerto Rican Girl’s Bread](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/a-poor-puerto-rican-girls-bread/) - “A Poor Puerto Rican Girl’s Bread”, by Mydalis Vera was inspired by the structural social inequalities in the United States of America. Puerto Ricans have long been disenfranchised by policies that have robbed them of their land, ushered them into new concrete jungles, and created infinite ladders in the climb to socioeconomic freedom.
- ["You Look Gay", A Poem](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/you-look-gay-a-poem/) - “Gay” takes on multiple meanings and connotation as the author dissects depression and the facade of happiness, as well as sexuality and its variable expressions.
- [¿Dices mu? Raising a Bilingual Child in a Tumultuous Era](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/25/dices-mu-raising-a-bilingual-child-in-a-tumultuous-era/) - In this essay, Betancur reflects on raising a bilingual, bicultural child in today’s socially charged climate. The act of reading to his infant daughter in Spanish leads him to consider both the advantages and potential disadvantages to growing up bilingual, the joys of sharing his cultural heritage with her and the fear that she will face the kind of racist, exclusionary intolerance he experienced as a child simply because of the language(s) she speaks.
- [Episode 47 - The Nasiona's Earth Day Manifesto](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/20/episode-47-the-nasionas-earth-day-manifesto/) - Julián Esteban Torres López lays out The Nasiona's Earth Day Manifesto: "We are standing on a fault line. We’re at what can become a historic crossroad and turning point, or simply a return to the status quo … a status quo that will only continue to degrade our planet and the vast majority of its inhabitants. Our soil is ready for a new harvest. Our seeds need to be watered."
- [Episode 45 - Racism and Racial Trauma in English Language Teaching, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/03/25/episode-45-racism-and-racial-trauma-in-english-language-teaching-part-1/) - We speak with Dr. Parisa Mehran, founder of Women of Color in English Language Teaching (ELT), to explore how white supremacy is at the heart of ELT and how the industry functions as a racist propaganda machine. We discuss how native-speakerism and passport privilege can be forms of racism, and we shine a light on some of the detrimental consequences of racism in ELT, such as racial abuse and its effects on mental health. Musical guest: Stephanie Henry.
- [Episode 46 - 'You Look Like a Terrorist' & Other Racial Traumas, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/03/31/episode-46-you-look-like-a-terrorist-other-racial-traumas-part-2/) - Julián Esteban Torres López speaks with Dr. Parisa Mehran, founder of Women of Color in English Language Teaching. They discuss passport privilege and the barriers for international students. They also speak about obstacles to legal immigration, why POC international students may not finish university, share their own experiences of the impact of being called terrorists, and much more. Musical Guests: Aroe Phoenix & Mallika Vie.
- [On Writing My Grandma's Story & Reading It Back to Her](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/on-writing-my-grandmas-story-reading-it-back-to-her/) - When Brooke Randel wrote her grandma's story, she never thought she'd have to read it to her too. Randel explores how writing about her grandma—a Holocaust survivor who never learned to read—helped patch the distance between them and bring a well-kept family secret out in the open.
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #5](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/04/08/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-5/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #5: FORGETTING IS WORSE THAN is …
- [Episode 42 - The Philosopher of Authenticity: Fernando González (El filósofo de la autenticidad: Fernando González)](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/23/episode-42-the-philosopher-of-authenticity-fernando-gonzalez-el-filosofo-de-la-autenticidad-fernando-gonzalez/) - Given the centering of Euro and Anglo authors, thinkers, artists, etc., our education systems in the US and Canada are still forms of colonial assimilation and propaganda. In the spirit of decolonizing our education, we introduce you to Fernando González, the philosopher of authenticity. To learn more about one of Colombia’s most influential and controversial writers, we speak with Gustavo A. Restrepo Villa, executive director of Corporación Otraparte, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and amplifying Fernando González’s work.
- [Episode 8: The Elusive Burmese from Liminal Space](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/28/episode-8-the-elusive-burmese-from-liminal-space/) - We take you into the world of a Burmese woman's quest to piece together the fragments of her identity as Su Su Maung. We also learn about how that quest led her to found the Myanmar-based psychological consulting firm, Citta Consultancy. Citta helps empower the people of Myanmar with social and emotional intelligence so they can heal, transform, and grow to reach their fullest potential and contribute to the development of their country.
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #4](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/17/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-4/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #4: IF I WERE TRULY FREE is ...
- [Episode 41 - Intersecting Oppressions of Race, Disability, and Mental Health During COVID-19](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/17/episode-41-intersecting-oppressions-of-race-disability-and-mental-health-during-covid-19/) - As a Black-Filipino United Statesian man with multiple sclerosis, Joe Sparkman talks about the “Scarlet Letter” of his diagnosis, the challenges he has faced getting a job, interactions he has had with doctors, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted his life and mental health. This is a candid conversation about the realities and the insidious nature of intersecting systems of oppression in the United States.
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #3](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/01/04/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-3/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #3: THE FIRST TIME WAS ALSO THE LAST is ...
- [Episode 40: Mobs, Insurrections, & the Radicalized](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/12/episode-40-mobs-insurrections-the-radicalized/) - In the US, we’ve been radicalized to assume ourselves as great, at our detriment. Our superiority complex will be our downfall if we do not course-correct immediately. A turbulent future is here and on the horizon. The intensity of that turbulence will depend on how we prepare and act today. On today’s episode, I share an editorial I wrote following the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol, and play an audio story that takes you through the different turbulences and warnings of the 20th century.
- [Stalker, Stalker, Rapist: A (Sub)Version of Duck, Duck, Goose for Feminists](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/11/stalker-stalker-rapist-a-subversion-of-duck-duck-goose-for-feminists/) - In a child’s game, roles and blame flip with little more than the pointing of a finger. Terminology emerges for experiences that couldn’t be acknowledged without words to label them; new legislation and culture changes follow. #MeToo. But even the most positive changes can be weaponized against those they were meant to protect. Beware the smiling woman.
- [Episode 39 - Kwatsáan: Ancestral Land, Myths, & Reparations](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/02/03/episode-39-kwatsaan-ancestral-land-myths-reparations/) - Deborah Taffa, a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma Indian) Nation, shares two personal essays. In Act 1, she tells the story of a Native woman who leaves her ancestral land and lands in Missouri, where a disappearing lake and the confusion of a binational marriage force her to examine the relationship between motherhood and community. In Act 2, she speaks of a daughter’s familial connections to the land. As she leaves her mother’s hospital bed, Taffa reflects on healing and prayer, her tribal myths, and the injustice of tourism in her homeland.
- [Episode 38 - In Between: Races, Languages, & Religions](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/01/29/episode-38-in-between-races-languages-religions/) - "When you're mixed-race, someone's always telling you who you're not." That's the first line from Tamara Jong's personal essay, "In Between," which succinctly captures the essence of what it means to be mixed-race. Tamara Jong is a Canada-born mixed-race writer and cartoonist of Chinese and European ancestry. In November of 2019, Julián Esteban Torres López spoke with Tamara about her experience of being in between races, languages, and religions, and her journey to find a footing, identity, and community.
- [Episode 36: The Sisterhood of Teatro Luna, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2021/01/09/episode-36-the-sisterhood-of-teatro-luna/) - Teatro Luna is an ensemble of Latina/x femmes and Women of Color creating empowering theatre, media, and training for social impact. On the 18th of June, 2020, Julián Esteban Torres López spoke with three of these radical culture makers and got a glimpse into Teatro Luna’s history, evolution, values, and sisterhood: Christina Igaraividez, Alexandra Meda, and Liza Ann Acosta. Here’s the conversation.
- [Remember to Forget: A Coping Mechanism](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/remember-to-forget-a-coping-mechanism/) - During a poetry open mic, Angelia Saplan explores the relentlessness of trauma and the elusiveness of the act of remembering. As she revisits her childhood sexual assault at the hands of a family member, she confronts its harrowing repercussions on her relationship with her mother — and herself.
- [Cluttered Table](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/15/cluttered-table/) - "Cluttered Table" follows Briley Dewayne Jones in the winter of 2018 as he attempts to bring back repressed memories from his time in conversion therapy.
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/10/04/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-1/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA's Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #1: A RECURRING MISTAKE is ...
- [Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/11/18/results-the-nasiona-writing-prompts-tournament-2/) - And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #2: A CHILDHOOD SECRET OVERHEARD is …
- [Episode 32: Imaginative Biography: PLACES & NAMES](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/09/04/episode-32-imaginative-biography-places-names/) - We showcase Carl Boon’s debut collection, PLACES & NAMES, and speak with the poet. His poems coalesce two kinds of history—the factual and the imagined—to produce a kind of intimacy greater than either fact or imagination. The people who inhabit these places—as we range from Saigon to northern Iraq; Athens, Ohio, to Libya; Ankara to Pittsburgh—become those places, inseparable from their geographies and histories, often unable to escape, bound by memory, nostalgia, and tradition.
- [Five Cent Secret](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/five-cent-secret/) - After a beloved grandfather dies, long held secrets come into sharp focus. “Five Cent Secret,” by Court Castaños, explores the complexities of having both white privilege and Mexican roots.
- [Three Poems](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/three-poems/) - In “A Study In Plants”, “The Image Surprises”, and “When I Was A Boy”, yearning takes center-stage as Sarah Sala comes to terms with loving and/or losing the women in her life: this includes deceased great-grandmothers, estranged sisters, the woman she loves and marries, and herself.
- [Scales](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/scales/) - Referencing some chimeric composition of fish, eczema, and weight, "Scales" is a personal essay exploring the swimming pool as a liminal space where the water's distortions allow its pubescent narrator to linger outside heteronormative perceptions she doesn't yet have the vocabulary to understand.
- [The Way Things Are Supposed to Be](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/the-way-things-are-supposed-to-be/) - After a potential lover rejects him for being trans, Kieran DeMelfi is faced with the powerful contradiction between begrudging the man’s callousness, and the attraction he still feels for him.
- [Planting Seeds](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/planting-seeds/) - Two decades after a newlywed suggests divorce, she writes a letter to her ex-husband, both an apology and an explanation for what she couldn’t understand at the time. Their son is now the age she was on that fateful night, in a sweltering bedroom in her mother’s apartment, waiting for her husband to come home.
- [Howling to No One in Particular](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/howling-to-no-one-in-particular/) - "Howling to No One in Particular" is about a break up. Mostly it's about losing perceived individuality in couples, hook-up culture, loving someone until you stop seeing them, and an MTV reality show.
- [fleas. & their five life stages.](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/fleas-their-five-life-stages/) - This piece clings to the life cycle of a flea to process a sexual assault. In comparing the five stages of a flea’s life to the events that occurred, this author attempts to find closure while addressing her nameless yet personally known perpetrator directly.
- [All Woman](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/all-woman/) - “All Woman” chronicles the impact of sexual harassment in adolescence through adulthood, and the altered perspective of the world it cultivates. The harassment, however, is portrayed as a reclaimed point of connection, however unfortunate, from which women can bond, heal, and become stronger from sharing experiences and supporting one another.
- [Tell Me If This Hurts](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/tell-me-if-this-hurts/) - “Tell Me If This Hurts” portrays the gruesome aftermath of a sexual assault. From being insulted by the police, re-living trauma during the rape kit, to finding out the offender was on the force: this story depicts the challenges and pains of being a rape survivor.
- [Softball](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/12/softball/) - Robin Gow reflects on his relationship with his father when they used to play softball together. He recalls the only time he saw his father cry was watching Field of Dreams and explores how the themes of that movie apply to both of their lives.I didn’t know why players took practice swings outside the box but I did it anyway, three in a row. The
- [10 Books for Cosmic Flying, Clarity, and Revelations from Victory & Noble](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/10/04/10-books-for-cosmic-flying-clarity-and-revelations-from-victory-noble/) - Books inspire and teach. The best give us a detailed roadmap to our highest selves. Some are political. Others are motivational. Others still, healing, funny, or mystical. All are about freedom of the spirit, the beauty of living as a soul, or the journey of life day by day, millennium after millennium. So, really, our book selections are our close friends and mentors who have helped us to develop into our best selves. We welcome you to our circle of close dynamic friends — a timeless mastermind forum. If you have a magic bag, a cherished bookshelf, or a favorite space for your most potent spells that’s where these sacred texts belong. In the human spirit (oftentimes spirit work by the authors themselves) but also within the symphony of our shared humanity.
- [Episode 31: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 2](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/31/episode-31-global-international-african-arts-movement-part-2/) - In the second episode of our 2-part conversation, Tori Reid and Patrick A. Howell of Victory & Noble continue to unpack what it means to be a prophet in the Global International African Arts Movement, as well as what it means to be an evangelist, a seer, and a manifester; they open up about their most memorable conversations with cultural icons and how these conversations transformed them; they challenge the Hollywood industrial complex and push forward to reclaim our voices and tell our own stories.
- [Episode 30: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/08/31/episode-30-global-international-african-arts-movement-part-1/) - Julián Esteban Torres López speaks with the two complementing spirits behind Victory & Noble, a storytelling company. In this 2-part conversation, Tori Reid and Patrick A. Howell reveal their legacy project, and their energy and determination are sure to inspire, educate, and transform. They both move us forward with a critical optimism rooted in both the real struggles of our past and our present, but also a futurism grounded in the belief that we have the power to harvest a tomorrow that is brighter than today.
- [Ecija Siete](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/30/ecija-siete/) - Whether caused by gentrification or war, displacement is an increasingly common aspect of the human experience. Growing up between three cultures and languages, Carmen Morawski's personal essay, “Ecija Siete,” explores what constitutes home and belonging.
- [Episode 33: Journeys: Inbound, Outbound](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/09/08/episode-33-journeys-inbound-outbound/) - Today we showcase the work of two essayists — Stephen D. Gutierrez and Morelle Smith. We selected these pieces to share with you today because of the kind of inner world exploration many of us have been experiencing during the pandemic lockdowns, while simultaneously craving for a time when we can travel freely once again. Today’s episode takes you into two kinds of journeys: the inner world of the Self, and the external world of traveling through a foreign land.
- [What Would Happen If One Woman Told the Truth about Her Life?: New Book, 'Vestiges of Courage,' by Mireya S. Vela](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/19/what-would-happen-if-one-woman-told-the-truth-about-her-life-new-book-vestiges-of-courage-by-mireya-s-vela/) - Vestiges of Courage is a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Raised between two cultures and two languages, Mireya S. Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. In her book, Ms. Vela delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. This book is much more than a collection of experiences, though. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family. She digs deep to understand why these things happened and how she survived.
- [Obsessed with Immigration, Otherness, and Belonging? Read These Books](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/03/10/obsessed-with-immigration-otherness-and-belonging-read-these-books/) - Yaldaz Sadakova—writer, editor, journalist, and creator of Foreignish.net—shares a list of books on belonging, immigration, and otherness. What most of the books have in common is that political developments are part of their narratives, as well as being authored by minority writers, particularly minority women.
- [Why Japanese Persimmons Are Hard](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/13/why-japanese-persimmons-are-hard/) - You waited until now to tell me I was the love of your life? More than 2 decades after we met—as we’re pushing 50? Timing has clearly never been our strong suit. Over and over again we find each other. We take turns rushing toward each other like a wave hitting the shore, only to pull away once again. I wouldn’t call you my other half, but no one else is my hafu.
- [Episode 27: To the Border Crossers](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/27/episode-27-to-the-border-crossers/) - On this episode, we showcase the following four poets out of dozens who took the stage during “Cruzando Fronteras”—an event on immigration and border crossing—to share their personal stories: Alondra Adame, Eva Gonzalez, Gustavo Martir, and Diana Castellanos. Then, Julián Esteban Torres López shares his keynote speech, which tackled the role of storytelling as a tool of empowerment that can disrupt the status quo, confront caricatures, change politics by first changing culture, and help shape new paradigms.
- [Resilience](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/28/resilience/) - In search of healing, both for her damaged knee and “broken” sexuality, Erica tests her faith in her own resilience. As she slowly recovers from surgery and the fallout of coming out as a lesbian, she starts to see the dark side of her desperate need to believe in her ability to bounce back.
- [Telenovela](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/26/telenovela/) - J. Daniel Cruz recounts his story as a gay Mexican immigrant in the United States in his journey through acceptance, love, loss, and family ties. Cruz explores the religious, social, and familial struggles that arise when a family member identifies as LGBTQ.
- [Discovering Dangerfield](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/24/discovering-dangerfield/) - In the years before my grandmother’s death, she became the enthusiastic genealogist of our family, piecing together tales so extraordinary I can sometimes hardly believe they recount the genesis of our family. Now, after my grandmother’s death, I feel my tenuous grasp on my heritage slipping, so I revisit her expansive research and discover the complexities of my heritage are so much more astonishing than I could anticipate.
- [Excerpt from Memoir: King Leopold's Daughter](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/22/excerpt-from-memoir-king-leopolds-daughter/) - "Imagine my hill at the edge of a road. Imagine a city, Kinshasa, a recent Belgian colony made independent nine years earlier. Imagine my white Belgian father, an architect waiting to make deals with one of the cruelest dictators of our times: Mobutu Sesseseko. Imagine my metisse mother, born as a simple brown girl in Burundi, now the queen of the continent, thanks to papa. Imagine me, a four-year-old brown girl, waiting for the sun to set to sneak out of the house to my castle at the end of a road, on the side of a hill."
- [Episode 15: Memoir as a Political Act](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/24/episode-15-memoir-as-a-political-act/) - How can memoir be a political act? When living under oppressive systems, the simple act of standing up and sharing personal stories that go against the mainstream is a political act. Mireya S. Vela and Julián Esteban Torres López meditate on this issue. Vela speaks from the perspective of an author, while Torres López forwards his experience as a publisher. They both explore inequities and injustice and use memoir to challenge, expose, and defiantly try to break down systems of oppression.
- [Episode 23: Traces of Home](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/01/21/episode-23-traces-of-home/) - Filmmaker Colette Ghunim on her first feature-length documentary: "Traces of Home tells the story of what happens when we as first-generation Americans go back to our roots to find out how where we come from shapes our identity. Through Traces of Home, I am telling my own personal story. I'm half Mexican and half Palestinian and both my parents were forced to leave their homes as children, and they both never returned since then. So through my film, we're going back to Mexico and Palestine to try to find the original houses and to talk about why people are leaving and immigrating and why refugees are leaving as well, during a time when we need to hear it the most."
- [Episode 6: The Imperfect Art of Medicine](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/05/21/episode-6-the-imperfect-art-of-medicine/) - Why is it so hard to change people’s minds and behaviors with new facts? We explore this question through pediatrics. In 2015, after a landmark medical study proved that the early inclusion of peanut in the diet of infants prevents peanut allergy, Ron Sunog, MD, set out to develop a great first peanut food for infants. When most physicians and parents did not embrace this important new information, Dr. Sunog was determined to understand why. Dr. Sunog joins me to discuss his new book, Eat The Eight.
- [Episode 1: IM John Donaldson's Chess World](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/28/episode-1-im-john-donaldsons-chess-world/) - Do the stereotypes about chess and chess players have any validity at all? Through the eyes of John Donaldson (International Master and chess writer, journalist, coach, and historian) we get a behind-the-scenes look at the most popular game of all time to see if chess really does transcend language, age, race, religion, politics, gender, and socioeconomic background. We also get some interesting anecdotes about Bobby Fischer from his biographer, as well as try to answer the following questions: Is chess a sport, art, or a science? What is the role of computers in the game? How much do privilege and belief play into improvement? How has who plays chess today changed over the decades?
- [Beach Speak](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/20/beach-speak/) - "Beach Speak" focuses on Angelica Julia Davila's identity as Latinx through the use of the Spanish and English languages. Documenting her struggle with both languages while a child, Angelica explores what it means to accept who one is on the inside. It is a piece that touches on the shame of being seen as different while growing up in the United States.
- [Half-Cooked](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/18/half-cooked/) - This story is about food. And identity. And how each feeds the other. In a series of vignettes and reflections on Hana Etsuko Dethlefsen's relationship with family, culture, food, and recipes, she explores the bitter-sweetness of an identity that is defined by being in-between.
- [Eating Lice](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/17/eating-lice/) - My mom was an immigrant for eighteen months. I have been an immigrant for twenty-seven years. What made our migrations different? Mom was borderline illiterate, had six children and chose a husband poorly. I earned a Ph.D., had only one child, married a good man, divorced him, and married a better one. I teach at a university where I’m surrounded by intelligent people with inquisitive minds. I don’t know if education was the key, or who we married, or fate.
- [Am I Still Bisexual? A Quiz](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/11/am-i-still-bisexual-a-quiz/) - Using the format of a pop culture quiz, Yolande House interrogates her sexuality and how it has—or hasn't—changed as she’s grown older. Is sexuality based on experience or identity? Does her lack of recent experience negate a strong identity that formed when she was younger? House’s essay gives a clear voice to the frustrations of how the world looks at bisexuals compared to how bi+ people feel about themselves.
- [When My Name Is José](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/15/when-my-name-is-jose/) - "When My Name is José" is a playful take on when and how often someone's gotten Juan Carlos Reyes's name wrong since he was a kid. The concerns are local and universal: navigating a new culture, assimilation, and the politics of speaking up.
- [Episode 9: Daughterhood](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/08/24/episode-9-daughterhood/) - Four daughters lose and find their mothers, engage and disengage with them, learn and unlearn who these women are and who they were before they came along. These daughters, intentionally and unintentionally, look for meaning and identity in the women who gave them birth; because whether we like or barely tolerate them, whether they put us together fragment by careful fragment, or whether they undo us with the tug of an errant string, who they were tells us everything about who we will become.
- [Episode 26: 'Where Are You From?': The Wrong Passport](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/07/episode-26-where-are-you-from-the-wrong-passport/) - In this in-depth interview with Yaldaz Sadakova—creator of Foreignish.net and author of The Wrong Passport: Memoir Stories About Immigration—we unpack the dreaded question "Where are you from?", its limitations, how it's a micro-aggression, and a better question to ask; Yaldaz speaks to how she found new emotional and intellectual anchors after leaving her birth country and how she found her creative voice in a foreign land; her feelings of shame and distress about forgetting her mother tongue; becoming estranged from her Turkish Muslim heritage; we interrogate our hesitation to correct people when they mispronounce our names; she elaborates as to why she's convinced borders are a form of injustice; and much more.
- [Four Poems](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/05/01/four-poems/) - While love seems to be the most common quality of a happy life, our first exposure to love starts in the home. These poems exemplify the influence parent-child relationships have on one's experience of self-love and even romantic love.
- [Lightning Strikes Twice](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/09/lightning-strikes-twice/) - A ride home from the nice guy at the bar transforms into being dragged into a bedroom, and the narrator struggles with her second experience of sexual assault.
- [Symbol Not Recognized](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/06/symbol-not-recognized/) - "Bureaucracy is colonization’s filing system; at Ellis and Angel island where people were renamed with ‘American’ names, at the border where children are being separated from their families, and thus their namesakes, a brutality perfected in Native Boarding Schools. Over the centuries of the Transatlantic slave trade, cultures, names and entire lineages were stripped from the people in a brutalist gesture to weaken identity. That is why we insist on our complication, our trickiness, reminding the systems that we are multitudes," Ana Reyes-Bonar.
- [All My Safe Spaces Are Dead](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/07/03/all-my-safe-spaces-are-dead/) - “All My Safe Spaces Are Dead” is a look at the upheaval and restructuring of my sense of self. My sense of safety is a horizon I never seem to reach; a mirage that morphs into something new once I tear my gaze away from its lies. Yet I wake up every morning looking for it, craving it, being unable to live without it. This is my hunt for a place to call home.
- [Episode 18: Parenting a Mixed-Race Child](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/10/15/episode-18-parenting-a-mixed-race-child/) - In addition to being multiracial, many mixed-race Americans are also multicultural. Naomi Raquel Enright is one such person, and she writes about her own experience with race and racism in her book, Strength of Soul. Interwoven with her own story of being born to a Jewish American father and an Ecuadorian mother in La Paz, Bolivia, Naomi also proposes her own strategies for how to fight racism and introduces readers to what it is that exacerbates systemic racism in the US.
- [California](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/california/) - "California" captures the experiences of a young multiracial girl as she watches the white world of her mother and the Japanese-American of her father collide. On a summer evening, she begins to understand why her parents chose to make a life for their family in a small town.
- [Dear Boy Who Will Stick Needles In His Thighs on Fridays](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/dear-boy-who-will-stick-needles-in-his-thighs-on-fridays/) - Tyler Dalzell writes a letter to his younger self, the one who’s about to undergo hormone therapy treatments. In it, he tells himself to be gentle, as he will, during his transition, find a shifting sense of Self, uncertainties about his changing body and, in the most unexpected times, slices of joy and unconditional love.
- [Unlade](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/unlade/) - "Unlade," a braided essay, unpacks the legal ruling allowing same-sex marriages to be recognized throughout the United States in the midst of Cie moving into a new apartment. There, unknown and without a center, Cie uses music and Pixy Liao’s Experimental Relationship photography collection to reflect on and explore sexuality.
- [I, The Universe](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/i-the-universe/) - The narrator struggles with coming to terms with his identity as he grows up in a sheltered village in rural France. The story takes the format of a mock-scientific theory presenting evidences before reaching a conclusion, through the metaphor of the universe and space.
- [Love Letters](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/love-letters/) - "Love Letters” is a story about Atash Yaghmaian's life as a queer teenager in post-Revolution Iran and a funny but painful love triangle.
- [Into Eros](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/04/01/into-eros/) - Drawing on her experience of intimate partner abuse at 15, Zoë Brigley considers the possibility of sex after rape. Anne Carson’s assertion that Eros is “the biggest risk of your life” takes on a new meaning within legacies of trauma, and on a quest to rediscover desire and healing.
- [The Audacity to Live](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/02/01/the-audacity-to-live/) - "The Audacity to Live" is a personal essay that centers around Alondra Adame's experience as a daughter of immigrants and as a queer woman of color wrestling with her parents' expectations while learning to become independent and navigating higher education.
- [Episode 25: Round-Table Discussion on Race](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/03/04/episode-25-round-table-discussion-on-race/) - Nasiona podcast producers and editors Aïcha Martine Thiam, Nicole Zelniker, and Julián Esteban Torres López explore why it's so difficult to discuss race, how race differs in different countries, race in publishing, share personal anecdotes, and give our take on Jordan Peele's "documentary" Get Out. We also have a post-production conversation about The Nasiona's Being Mixed-Race podcast series: what hit home for us, what we learned, and what surprised us.
- [Episode 24: Tono Latino](https://www.thenasiona.com/2020/02/24/episode-24-tono-latino/) - Today's guest is the founder of Tono Latino, Sylvia Salazar—a Colombian immigrant and a computer engineer turned political activist. She is determined to change Latino representation in politics and in media. Tono Latino is a progressive platform that informs and educates Latinos about politics in the United States and encourages them to become more involved and vote. Why should the Latinx community get more politically involved? What are the potential consequences if we do not? Listen to find out.
- [Cruzando Fronteras / Crossing Borders](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/31/cruzando-fronteras-crossing-borders/) - Why would anyone want to take on the treacherous task of crossing (multiple) borders? Poets Alondra Adame, Eva Gonzalez, Gustavo Martir, David Cruz, and Diana Castellanos share their personal stories on crossing borders and immigration during "Cruzando Fronteras," an event that provided a safe space to talk about the seeking of refuge.
- [The Space In Between](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/04/the-space-in-between/) - Food is tied to cultural identity, both of the land I left behind and of the land I found. I am outside the love of pumpkin pie, a common Canadian dessert, and I am outside the love of durian, a common Vietnamese delicacy. I exist in the space in between these two cultures as no amount of food, no matter its origins, may fulfill the ache deep within, the ache of otherness.
- [Breathing Lessons](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/31/breathing-lessons/) - After a racialized exchange with a doctor at a walk-in clinic, the narrator of “Breathing Lessons” examines the way she has been perceived as a mixed-race person; one constantly barraged with the question of, “What are you?” False binaries are explored in this deeply personal meditation.
- [The Shulamite Woman](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/31/the-shulamite-woman/) - "The Shulamite Woman" places the author’s personal experience growing up as a woman in a fundamentalist evangelical non-denominal Protestant church that enforced purity culture, and the lasting psychological and emotional trauma it caused, in juxtaposition with an alternative reading of the biblical book Song of Solomon.
- [Barbs on a Wire](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/31/barbs-on-a-wire/) - The first time we three are together and Dad says, “Hey, Hon”, both our heads turn to him expectantly. Of course, he means her. I blush, embarrassed by the demotion. Confronting and exposing childhood sexual abuse—like walking a barbed wire.
- [Flood](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/25/flood/) - Remembering the pakhlava her Armenian medzmama used to make, a granddaughter ponders the miracle of this bit of ancestral wisdom dipped in syrup enduring her own family flood. Pluck, a certain string of nucleic acid bases and the myth of Noah’s Ark collide in this stitched-together story of survival.
- [On Suffering](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/26/on-suffering/) - The girl sweeping cedar chip insulation in the bitter cold of winter becomes a teenage girl drowning in the heavy metal that seeps through the wall between her room and her brother’s. While drunk at a house party, this malcontent teen confronts the man who stole her innocence. We leave the girl pondering her fate spelled out in a fortune-teller’s tarot cards. Will she alter her doomed journey?
- [800,000 Clenched Cervixes](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/26/800000-clenched-cervixes/) - Childbirth is often heralded as one of the most amazing and profound experiences a woman can have. But what happens when the birthing mother has been sexually abused? Lan Tran shares her experiences, shadowed by trauma, of birthing naturally and via C-section.
- [The Tree is a Body](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/26/the-tree-is-a-body/) - Disassociation. Panic. Looking back and freezing. Moving between nude art modeling, trauma, and becoming a tree. How do we ignore the way our body hurts when we don’t move it? How do we let other people look at our bodies?
- [in which a woman closes, then opens, a door](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/26/in-which-a-woman-closes-then-opens-a-door/) - The piece considers the aftermath of trauma in the context of a woman revisiting her childhood. It weaves together personal narrative with a meditation on temporal displacement in La Jetée (1962), to consider how trauma creates temporal vertigo – and ties us to the past whilst simultaneously alienating us from it.
- [Crush](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/25/crush/) - Jenny Ferguson discusses what it means to crush as a demi-sexual adult, and takes readers with her to a black-tie wedding in Malibu, CA, days before wildfires burned 96,949 acres.
- [When Jesus Meant More Than Me](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/25/when-jesus-meant-more-than-me/) - A story of a young dyke in the early 1970s, in Tampa, FL, whose mother’s religious beliefs have led to her being disowned. Making a life and new family for herself, the protagonist desperately tries to live with the monumental loss and the events endured over her sexuality. Her efforts to find peace are overshadowed with her own debilitating issues with alcoholism, drugs and mental health. Issues, resulting from a childhood lost to her mother’s madness and religiosity. The story focuses on a particular night at the local gay bar when said mother arrives unannounced and demands an audience with her child, in a last-ditch effort to save her soul. A furious, yet heartbreaking. exchange, grown from all that’s been done, occurs in the bar’s parking lot.
- [Origin Story](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/17/origin-story/) - “Origin Story” is a short memoir that spans from my birth in Iran to my present day living in Spain, focusing on key moments that shaped my understanding of my own status as an immigrant. My story is an evolution; from victimization and self-hatred, to fighting angrily and finally to acceptance.
- [Latinx Writers Caucus: Interview with Ruben Quesada](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/06/latinx-writers-caucus-interview-with-ruben-quesada/) - We speak with Ruben Quesada, founder of the Latinx Writers Caucus, to discuss what Latinx means to him, why he felt the need to create the Latinx Writers Caucus, advice he would give Latinx writers, Latinx voices and the industry, and more.
- ['The Bravery Came by Doing the Work': An Interview with Doyali Islam](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/02/the-bravery-came-by-doing-the-work-an-interview-with-doyali-islam/) - In her most recent interview with The Nasiona, award-winning poet Doyali Islam shares what it means to be a cis-woman with vaginismus, how to overcome the struggles of being a poet, and the importance of celebrating her body.
- [That time I made yoghurt blankets and called it The Habit](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/14/that-time-i-made-yoghurt-blankets-and-called-it-the-habit/) - Can you find control within the luminosity of an eating disorder? As blended ingredients cadence from her mouth, Cara holds on to The Habit like an anchor. For her, co-existing with bulimia pulses her between posturing and shame as she lives alongside the pulls of anxiety, OCPD, addiction, and a need for social belonging.
- [The Right Pronunciation](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/12/the-right-pronunciation/) - "The Right Pronunciation" focuses on adjusting to the US as a new immigrant, the push to achieve Whiteness and assimilation, and the pronunciation of my name as a key part of my South Asian identity that I am now reclaiming.
- [Firsts](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/10/firsts/) - This piece explores the stereotypical “firsts” we romanticize—first kiss, first date, first time having sex—and how those firsts are distorted by the violence and threat of violence prevalent in rape culture. Rape culture then introduces young people, and especially young women, to new, terrifying firsts.
- [An Architecture of the Painful Body: Explorations of the Aristotelian Taxonomy of Pleasure](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/12/08/an-architecture-of-the-painful-body-explorations-of-the-aristotelian-taxonomy-of-pleasure/) - Aristotle’s views on pleasure and pain correlate distinctly with his concept of health—a necessary component for individual cultivation of goodness. A trans body complicates, but ultimately and surprisingly triumphs alongside, this Aristotelian framework like the careful crafting of an infinite number of ever-changing objects.
- [Hymns to the Lares](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/30/hymns-to-the-lares/) - An adoptee returns to Brooklyn, to the setting of her father’s stories and her adoption, and tries to find identity and truth in worlds that exist only in her father’s memories, and in files she is not allowed to see.
- [I Fear Men Like I Fear My Billy Goat](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/28/i-fear-men-like-i-fear-my-billy-goat/) - My mom and I stood alongside the fence line and watched my billy goat chase his mother around and around the pen, trying to mount her. “See that Cleo?” Mom tried to educate me. “That’s what men are like. All they want is sex.” I listened, but I would have to learn for myself.
- [Therapy Baby](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/11/therapy-baby/) - This is a work of nonfiction about the relationship between a mother and daughter, both coping with aging and revealing secrets to one another. Some scenes delve into humanitarian efforts in prisons and assisted living, as well as other career paths. The subtext reveals the deeper pursuit of women's rights.
- [Episode 22: Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/09/episode-22-why-would-i-mispronounce-my-own-name/) - When Irma Herrera gives her name its correct Spanish pronunciation, some assume she’s not a real American. Her play, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, is one woman’s journey from a small segregated South Texas town to California's multicultural mecca. In this wide-ranging interview, we explore her Chicana identity, colorism, linguistic isolation, cultural hybridity, class migration, her social justice work, how her play is relevant to current events, and her transition into becoming a playwright.
- [Relics](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/14/relics/) - We enshrine our relics in museums and churches or keep them safe in our homes, where the sight or touch of them brings back memories and associations. But how much does the authenticity of a relic matter? What if they have no real connection to what or who we remember?
- [Snapshot: A Hyphenated Coexistence](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/07/snapshot-a-hyphenated-coexistence/) - My grandmother from Peru remarried at 81 to Don from Dayton, Ohio. She didn’t speak English and Don doesn’t speak Spanish, but they managed to find their own language. Together, they created a unique American love story, far from the life she left behind in Lima.
- [Episode 21: Education and Race](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/11/03/episode-21-education-and-race/) - Even after Brown v. Board of Education, race is still a contentious topic in education. In fact, we’re more segregated today than we were in the late 1960s, but most people wouldn’t know that from their high school history classes. Race is still something we don’t teach in school unless it’s firmly placed in the past. Going against the grain is historian James Shields from Guilford College, a sought-after educator and speaker on anti-racism, community engagement, and Underground Railroad history.
- [Episode 20: Brown White Black Family](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/10/25/episode-20-brown-white-black-family/) - Most TV and movies portray adoption as a white parent adopting a child. This is true in such mainstream shows as Friends, Glee, 90210, Modern Family, Sex and The City, Grey’s Anatomy, and Parenthood. This representation is often how people think of adoption, something that can get frustrating for Nishta J. Mehra, an Indian woman with a white wife and black adopted child.
- [Revel with Ghosts](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/17/revel-with-ghosts/) - Two months after losing our infant son, we were just starting to learn the language of signs. In Barcelona, a city whose ghosts seem to rise from the walls, our loss found a welcoming home. The first thing we fell in love with were the towering metal bulls, standing stark and proud atop the highway-hugging
- [Episode 19: Minimalism and the 6-Month-to-Live List](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/10/22/episode-19-minimalism-and-the-6-month-to-live-list/) - Minimalism is intentionally living with only the things you really need. Minimalists maintain that there are benefits to minimalist living, like reduced anxiety, lower expenses, increased productivity, and living a more fulfilling life. But not all minimalists go so far as to reduce their possessions to live out of a van ... for years ... intentionally. My guest today is author David Soto Jr. and he is (or maybe was) one of these van life minimalists. Listen to glimpse into van life minimalism.
- [The Transcendental Professor: Interview with Tom Lutz](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/14/the-transcendental-professor-interview-with-tom-lutz/) - Tom Lutz has quietly been structuring one of the four corners of the Southern California literary scene. We speak with Dr. Lutz about receiving the American Book Award in 2008 and his take on current events.Tom Lutz is a good fellow, an interesting interview, and a good read. Accomplished and world traveled, Lutz is a
- [Fast and Without Too Much Sadness](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/24/fast-and-without-too-much-sadness/) - Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder have created many versions of me and because of that, it's hard to know myself. I think back to being psychotic and wonder who that was, and I think about myself now and still wonder the same thing.
- [Foreword to 'Mixed,' a Journalism Book about Mixed-Race Families in the US](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/10/19/foreword-to-mixed-a-journalism-book-about-mixed-race-families-in-the-us/) - In this Foreword for Nicole Zelniker's journalism book about mixed-race families, Julián Esteban Torres López centers Mixed as evidence of one of The Nasiona’s strongest pillars: the subjective can offer its own reality and reveal truths some facts cannot discover. Mixed takes us on a journey and helps us glimpse into overlooked worlds and engage the spectrum of human experience.
- [Backyard Eden](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/10/03/backyard-eden/) - What is our responsibility to nature? How do you be true to yourself, your neighbors, your city? What can happen when you turn your brain from consumer toward producer? One man gives it a try and finds more than bargained for in an attempted backyard Eden.
- [Episode 17: Writing from Experience](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/30/episode-17-writing-from-experience/) - Publishing has a race problem. Entertainment Weekly reported that only 7.8% of romance authors using a traditional publisher were people of color in 2016. For that same year, NPR found that only 22% of all characters in children’s books were characters of color. This, in a country where people of color are expected to make up more than half of the population by 2044 according to The Center for American Progress. For this reason, writers like Anika Fajardo, who is Colombian and white, and F. Douglas Brown, who is African American and Filipino, are more important than ever. Both were contributors to The Beiging of America, mentioned in our last episode.
- [Episode 16: The Beiging of America](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/27/episode-16-the-beiging-of-america/) - In 2017, editors Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, along with co-editor Cathy Schlund-Vials, published a volume of essays entitled The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. This collection joins others such as Jesmyn Ward’s The Fire This Time and A Race Anthology, edited by Dan Moulthrop and R.A. Washington. Still, books about race, especially about being mixed-race, are few and far between. In this collection, nearly 40 authors told their stories about being mixed-race in the U.S.
- [Documentary Filmmaker Returns to Find Parents’ Ancestral Homes in Mexico and Palestine After Being Forced to Leave Decades Ago](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/27/documentary-filmmaker-returns-to-find-parents-ancestral-homes-in-mexico-and-palestine-after-being-forced-to-leave-decades-ago/) - Chicago filmmaker just launched Kickstarter campaign for production in Mexico for new film that seeks to provide accurate representations of the American immigrant community through her personal story.
- [What Does It Mean to Be Mixed-Race in the US?: New Book, ‘Mixed,’ by Nicole Zelniker](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/03/22/what-does-it-mean-to-be-mixed-race-in-the-us-new-book-mixed-by-nicole-zelniker/) - The definition of families is widening, whether it's because of mixed-race relationships, interracial adoption, or numerous other factors. Today, it is important to hear from a growing population about race, their shifting identities, and what family means to them. At the heart of the issue are the mixed-race families. Many mixed-race children have had difficulties fitting in, whether with one race or the other. In mixed-race relationships, one partner may face racism, while the other may not, or else they will experience racism in different ways. Children who have been adopted into families that identify as a race that is not theirs often find that they struggle to fit in with their families as well as with people who identify as their own race. Not only are these families navigating US American culture at large, but they also must navigate their own family structures and what it means to be mixed.
- ["I Guess I'm More Japanese Than You"](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/05/i-guess-im-more-japanese-than-you/) - Nicole Zelniker’s book, Mixed, is a work of journalism about mixed-race families and their shifting identities. In this chapter from the book, Zelniker interviews Lynda Gomi, who is white, and Kazu Gomi, who is Japanese. They have lived in both the US and Japan and both believe that their cultures are a much bigger difference between them than the color of their skin.
- [Jujubes Represent Sugar](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/27/jujubes-represent-sugar/) - Jae Langton is just like the rest of his family, especially in his love of musicals. The biggest difference is that Jae is South Korean, while everyone else is white. Jae’s parents, Shelley and David, have walked the line for 13 years between celebrating Jae’s Korean culture and letting him know he is just like
- [Episode 14: Disability Inclusion, Intersectionality, and Activism](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/12/episode-14-disability-inclusion-intersectionality-and-activism/) - Much of the already small disability representation in the media focuses on white people, and often men. Although we would never know it from TV and movies, the CDC reports that 19.67% of people of color have a disability compared with 20% of white people. In many spaces, people with disabilities aren’t welcome regardless of race, often unintentionally. Mia Ives-Rublee, a transracial adoptee and the founder and coordinator for the Women’s March Disability Caucus, is working to change the norm.
- [Episode 2: Mireya S. Vela's Vestiges of Courage](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/03/25/episode-2-mireya-s-velas-vestiges-of-courage/) - What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? Mireya S. Vela is that woman. In this long-form interview, we discuss her art, creative nonfiction, social justice, motherhood, womanhood, being marginalized in the United States, and her new book, Vestiges of Courage: Collected Essays, which we, The Nasiona, are happy to be publishing in April of 2019.Vestiges of Courage is a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Raised between two cultures and two languages, Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. She delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. This book is much more than a collection of experiences, though. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family. She digs deep to understand why these things happened and how she survived.
- [Episode 3: Mixed-Race Families](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/10/ep-3-mixed-race-families/) - Journalist Nicole Zelniker, author of Mixed, takes us on personal journeys to help us glimpse into overlooked worlds so we can more fully grasp what it means to be mixed. Zelniker spoke to dozens of mixed-race families and individuals, as well as experts in the field, about their own experiences, with the hope to fill a gap in the very important conversation about race in the US today.
- [Episode 5: Transracial Adoption](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/25/episode-5-transracial-adoption/) - We continue our episode 3 discussion on mixed-race families by digging into transracial adoption. Nicole Zelniker—whose book, Mixed, was the focus of that episode—joins me to interview Leah Whetten-Goldstein about her experience being adopted from China into a white, Jewish family in North Carolina. We discuss side-effects, critiques, misunderstandings, and assumptions surrounding transracial adoption, as well as the beauty of being in a mixed-race family. We get a glimpse into Whetten-Goldstein's struggle to find an identity growing up in a predominantly white community as an adoptee, and she shares the wisdom she's gathered along the way.
- [Episode 13: Passing as White](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/12/episode-13-passing-as-white/) - Since European settlers brought enslaved Africans to the United States, there has been passing. In terms of race, passing means presenting as a race you don’t identify as, such as when former Spokane NAACP president Rachel Dolezal made headlines when it came out she was a white woman passing as black for many years. Not all passing is intentional, however. Sam Manas is white and Panamanian, although because he is much lighter-skinned than most people from Panama, people tend to think he’s only white.
- [Episode 12: Mixed-Race Relationships](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/12/episode-12-mixed-race-relationships/) - In 1958, married couple Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were jailed because they violated the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. In 1964, the couple sued the state of Virginia. Their case reached the Supreme Court in 1967, and the court struck down all state laws forbidding mixed-race marriages. Several decades later, this ruling allowed people like Zyda Culpepper Mellon, who is African American, to marry her white husband, and for Ricardee Franks, who is mixed, to also marry a white man.
- [Episode 11: Mixed-Race Families Matter](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/12/episode-11-mixed-race-families-matter/) - Mixed-race families are becoming more and more commonplace, as evidenced by everything from The Pew Research Center’s data to the latest Census reports. In this episode, we continue to talk about the experiences of those who come from mixed-race families, like Katie Bullard and Jesse Chen.
- [Episode 10: What It Means to be Mixed-Race](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/09/12/what-it-means-to-be-mixed-race/) - Mixed-race U.S. Americans are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. In 2017, 10% of all children in the U.S. were mixed-race, up from just 1% in the 1970s. Evidence indicates that this number will only go up: In 2016, it was reported that “47% of white teens, 60% of black teens, and 90% of Hispanic teens said they had dated someone of another race.” It is for these reasons that interviewees Justyn Melrose’s and Danielle Douez’s experiences are becoming more common.
- [Episode 4: Systemic Abuse of Women](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/12/ep-4-systemic-abuse-of-women/) - We share four essays included in Mireya S. Vela's forthcoming book, Vestiges of Courage, Collected Essays—a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Ms. Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. In her book, Ms. Vela delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family.
- [Episode 7: Motherhood](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/02/episode-7-motherhood/) - Motherhood has often been considered a pinnacle of wisdom and serenity, a sort of joining together of all those parts of ourselves in lesser focus. But in truth, motherhood opens more doors than it closes. It is an endless series of complications and ambiguities that are put into sharper relief by the arrival of a daughter. What emerges from the following four stories is this precise push and pull, pondered through the lens of devotion and loss, of privilege and resentment, of injustice and forgiveness.
- [A Guide to Parenting](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/04/a-guide-to-parenting/) - *WINNER OF THE NASIONA NONFICTION POETRY PRIZE, 2019* I hope you don’t look Asian like me. I don’t want anyone, boy or girl, reducing you to some Oriental fetish. You will never know your grandparents on my side. I hope you will never know the hunger that comes with such loneliness.
- [Swallow](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/29/swallow/) - Framed by the four phases of swallowing, “Swallow” is a personal essay about my first drinking experience and its aftermath. It investigates adolescent friendship, explores mother-daughter relationships, and blurs the line between teenage rebellion and addiction.
- [My Mother’s Suitcases](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/10/my-mothers-suitcases/) - It’s hard to cope with the resentment and demands of an aging parent with dementia. Sometimes, Jacqueline Doyle suggests, what doesn’t make sense becomes clearer in hindsight.
- [Finding Jean Palmer](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/07/finding-jean-palmer/) - *WINNER OF THE NASIONA FLASH CREATIVE NONFICTION PRIZE, 2019* “Finding Jean Palmer” recounts a long quest to locate Hannah Huff's great-grandmother’s grave in a vast memorial park.
- [Embracing the Subjective](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/29/embracing-the-subjective/) - As memoir writers, we must enter the dark waters of memory where facts are few and remembered events are often unstable. But the subjective experience offers its own reality and can reveal the truths that facts can never discover. Subjectivity. The Achilles heel of nonfiction writing. While journalists, historians, and other nonfiction writers wrestle with
- [Diptych: Origins, Neurodivergence](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/13/diptych-origins-neurodivergence/) - A shock medical diagnosis. A child’s awareness of her otherness in the neurotypical world. In her two-panel essay, Deborah Elderhorst ponders the gaps that exist between one person’s perceptions and another’s lived experience, even within the closest of familial bonds. This is a mother’s heart-song to her daughter.
- [Wedding Portrait](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/22/wedding-portrait/) - Centered around the televised royal nuptials between Prince Harry and Ms. Markle, "Wedding Portrait" tells a larger personal story in which racial boundaries are transgressed and questioned. Jennifer Bostwick Owens describes finding the courage to stand up to external censure and sketches a picture of building a life of evolving, ongoing love.
- [About Chains](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/10/about-chains/) - In a letter to her daughter she put up for adoption, Holly Pelesky muddles through the emotional distance from her own mother who tried to leave her father once. An exploration of the tension between mothers and daughters; a reflection on how the choices we make wedge space between us.
- [Miscarriages of Social Justice](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/20/miscarriages-of-social-justice/) - Kelly A. Dorgan recounts her two miscarriages, including one that lasts eight months. Gazing at these experiences through the lens of intersectional feminism, however, she gains improved sight. Born out of her failed pregnancies are her new eyes, eyes that better see the twisting shadows of privilege, inequalities, and oppression across the female body.
- [Nepali Chhori: Interview with Richa Pokhrel](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/20/nepali-chhori-interview-with-richa-pokhrel/) - Conversation with Richa Pokhrel about her blog Nepali Chhori, the vulnerability of personal essay writing, and being a Nepali woman in today’s world.RICHA POKHREL is a nonprofit professional. She is originally from Nepal. Her work has been featured in Duende, LA Lit, and Wendy Angulo Productions. In her free time, she likes to read, cook, hike with
- [Open Season](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/26/open-season/) - Blending styles including personal memoir, creative nonfiction, and photography, “Open Season” lyrically explores what it means to be a woman in America. The vignettes present flashes of microaggressions that women suffer and internalize every day, as well as the consequent battle for autonomous power that surrounds female bodies in public spaces.“Smile, babe. I hate to
- [Saturday Afternoon: Three Views](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/20/saturday-afternoon-three-views/) - As his handprint sears into your back, you wonder how you became the sort of woman who lets a man steer her through a crowded barroom. An old friend, a young waitress, and a once-loved setting help give you a glimmer of the woman you once were, but will it shake you free from the
- [About Time](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/24/about-time/) - My father, born in Hungary in 1906, was often mistaken for my grandfather. Nowhere was the cultural divide between us more pronounced than on a trip to Budapest in 1969. We both let each other down, but it would take decades for me to forgive him for being mortal. When my father opens the front
- [Doctores](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/06/doctores/) - When people are marginalized, their doctors are, too. A woman remembers her childhood and the decisions she and her family made.Grandmother didn’t like secrets. She said to me, “Secrets come from Satan.” I don’t know if she really believed this, or if she liked the power as she hissed it in my ear.She was devastating
- [Picture Days](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/27/picture-days/) - The worn blue robe, the unfriendly room. I’m just holding it together as I wait for the mammogram to expose parts of me I’d rather keep hidden.I’m wrapped in a blue and white gown, one-size-fits-none, held together by my right hand. The belt is missing. I wait for my turn. As much as I want
- [Perspective](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/31/perspective/) - Perspective is more than just a specific view of things, it is the parallel lines that spread outward in all directions but are all sourced from a singular experience. Memoir doesn’t just ask for the what, but also the why, even if that why can never be answered.
- [Berry Patch](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/berry-patch/) - We eleven-year-old girls sat through the film in the cafeteria and watched a movie about pads and how you could menstruate at night lying down. We all worried about the blood that might go straight to the sheets, but in hindsight, that was not important. What was important was desire. The mechanics of the sex
- [Foreignish: Interview with Yaldaz Sadakova](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/interview-yaldaz-sadakova/) - YALDAZ SADAKOVA is a writer and journalist in Toronto. She’s the creator of Foreignish.net, where she publishes memoir stories about the emotional side of immigration. Sadakova moved to Toronto in 2013. Before that, she lived in Brussels, Sofia, and New York. Photography and mindfulness are her other passions.During the interview, Sadakova said something that stuck with
- [Echoes of Tattered Tongues](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/16/echoes-tattered-tongues-memory-unfolded/) - Below are three poems from JOHN Z. GUZLOWSKI's critically-acclaimed book Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded, his book of poems and essays about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. Make sure to read our exclusive interview with the author here. WHAT THE WAR TAUGHT HER My mother learned that sex is bad,
- [Memory Unfolded: Interview with John Z. Guzlowski](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/16/interview-with-john-guzlowski/) - Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, JOHN Z. GUZLOWSKI came to the United States with his family as a displaced person in 1951. His parents had been Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany during the war. Growing up in the tough immigrant neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, he met hardware
- [Search for an Honest Man: Interview with Adriaan Alsema of Colombia Reports](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/09/search-for-an-honest-man-interview-with-adriaan-alsema-of-colombia-reports/) - Conversation with misfit turned journalist Adriaan Alsema of Colombia Reports about being a foreign correspondent, the roots of Colombia’s armed conflict, the role of journalism, and what humbles him about the land of El Dorado.“Do you want to know the truth about the truth?Do you want to know the future of our youth?Well, I could tell
- [Ten Dollars](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/08/17/ten-dollars/) - The narrator of “Ten Dollars” goes out for a night of fun and dancing, but instead finds herself in a nightmare situation. Because she tries to defend her feminist principles at a club, she finds herself protecting her friend from physical danger—a danger that is, ironically, gendered in nature.
- [Love Notes](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/08/15/love-notes/) - A woman infuses her scrawled notes and day-to-day jottings with tenderness. Small words on slips of paper capture moments of youthful passion, maternal devotion, and enduring romance—love notes, the unfinished story of a woman’s life.
- [A Too Personal Retelling of the Modern Romance](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/08/12/a-too-personal-retelling-of-the-modern-romance/) - May Bennet approaches a sadly familiar story (the aftermath of assault) nontraditionally to discuss how past traumas link and entangle, further complicating one's life long after the events have transpired. This essay emphasizes how a history of trauma affects new relationships and how one might regain autonomy in the aftermath of abuse.
- [On What We Gain from Losing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/30/on-what-we-gain-from-losing/) - An exploration of how surrendering to the circumstance of minor travel disasters, like finding oneself baht-poor and identity-less on a Thai beach, can lead to long-overdue liberation and empowerment.
- [Home and the Breaking Point](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/26/home-and-the-breaking-point/) - "Home and the Breaking Point" explores the realities of small-town rape culture as the author witnesses three peers discuss the assault of another, in a story about the price of a place in the conversation.
- [A Guide to Not Comparing Stalkers](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/28/a-guide-to-not-comparing-stalkers/) - A woman catches herself minimizing a dangerous situation in her past by measuring it against what happened to her friend. Giving herself permission to remember unlocks once-forgotten details and allows her to honor her friend’s bravery—and her own.
- [Made of Mirrors](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/21/made-of-mirrors/) - “Made of Mirrors” is the memoir of a young girl and her body. After years of dancing in a room made of mirrors, countless lessons on the theology of modesty, and the birth of her niece, she unlearns and relearns that her body is worth loving.
- [The Sandal](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/07/the-sandal/) - “The Sandal” begins with the discovery of a wounded cat stranded in the middle of a dark road. The narrator’s feelings of helplessness trigger a memory of witnessing child abuse on a city street and feeling similarly incapable of intervening. This story explores the tension between gendered powerlessness and agency.
- [Obituary](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/07/03/obituary/) - “Obituary“ is the story of a woman learning a pastor she once admired died several months ago. As she reads various eulogies in parish newsletters, her inner eye presents her with flashbacks to times when she was close to him, revealing the true nature of their relationship.
- [A Lack of Serendipity](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/30/a-lack-of-serendipity/) - Part memoir and part computer science lecture, this essay explores how what we think of as inconsequential and what we think of as meaningful interact in a range of experiences, from looking for new music recommendations on Spotify to making sense of a romantic relationship.
- [On Addiction](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/24/on-addiction/) - On Addiction is a snapshot of alcoholism from a child’s perspective. It explores the duality of addiction and the duality of loving someone who is an addict. It is also, and perhaps most importantly, a statement of what it feels like to endure abuse from the person whose role it is to care for you.
- [Parting Gift](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/25/parting-gift/) - A childhood best friend, Jesus Freaks, and a dead mother play roles in this story of breached friendship and the pain that mutability and misguided righteousness can bring to a relationship.
- [Poems That Sneak Up and Disturb Your Equilibrium in the Best Possible Way: New Book, 'PLACES & NAMES,' by Carl Boon](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/06/04/poems-that-sneak-up-and-disturb-your-equilibrium-in-the-best-possible-way-new-book-places-names-by-carl-boon/) - The poems in Carl Boon's debut collection, PLACES & NAMES, coalesce two kinds of history—the factual and the imagined—to produce a kind of intimacy that is greater than either fact or imagination. It is this sense of intimacy that brings the poems to life. We encounter real places sometimes—places we see on maps and highway signs—but also places that exist only in the imagination. We encounter names that are both recognizable and almost—or barely—remembered at all: Robert E. Lee next to one of a thousand men named Jackson who went to fight in Vietnam; Jorge Luis Borges next to an unknown boy from Clarita, Oklahoma, who himself would become a poet someday; a man who wishes he were Rocky Marciano hammering the heavy bag in Northeast Ohio, hungry for more than beans or soup. And suddenly it becomes clear how intimately connected in this collection these places and names are as we range from Saigon to northern Iraq; Athens, Ohio, to Libya; Ankara to Pittsburgh; and a strange, sleepy place called Pomegranate Town where someone's infant dozes in the back of a car on a seaside highway. The people who inhabit these places seem, in a sense, to become those places, inseparable from their geographies and histories, often unable to escape, bound by memory, nostalgia, and tradition.
- [Anything but That](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/05/13/anything-but-that/) - “Anything but That” begins with an uncomfortable incident caused by her husband's early dementia. She reminds us that things are not always what they seem. When he forgets her son's birth story, Paris retells it so that we will know how Courage sets the table for Love.
- [Filling in Dark Tunnels](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/29/filling-in-dark-tunnels/) - An exploration of the concept and effect of death from a perspective of a girl who, in spite of having grown up in Mexico, had to censor any confrontations with the end of life—her own and her family's. At the same time, it is a celebration of death within our lives.
- [Provincial Gods](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/22/provincial-gods/) - Deep inside an ancient ruin, writes E. J. Myers, “I came face to face with a deity, and the meeting did not go well.” What does it mean to confront a lost culture’s image of divinity? And in that confrontation, what is the source of the resulting mysterium tremendum?
- [How to Navigate the Imperfect Art of Medicine and Prevent Food Allergy with Food: New Book, 'Eat The Eight,' by Ron Sunog, MD](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/17/how-to-navigate-the-imperfect-art-of-medicine-and-prevent-food-allergy-with-food-new-book-eat-the-eight-by-ron-sunog-md/) - In 2015, after a landmark medical study proved that the early inclusion of peanut in the diet of infants prevents peanut allergy, Ron Sunog, MD, set out to develop a great first peanut food for infants. When most physicians and parents did not embrace this important new information, Dr. Sunog was determined to understand why. Eat The Eight examines how difficult it is to acquire and understand good medical evidence, the complex web of reason and emotion through which people filter medical information, and the imperative to thoughtfully temper the science of medicine with the art of medicine. Parents will learn how a healthful diet can be key to reducing their infant's risk of developing food allergy.
- [She Who Flies Over Ramallah](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/04/03/she-who-flies-over-ramallah/) - You don’t know Zakia? / She is in grave number forty over three, over there. / They put my name on her mud-formed stone and / when I went to see her on that rainy afternoon, my shoes became stuck in a soupy quick sand which pulled me into the city of the always awake (those who no longer yawn after a long day’s labor, or close their ears to dull the screeching sirens of the bombs) / Did you know that Zakia hid in the cavern on the edge of al-Qusoor hill during that summer when the refugees outgrew their stay?
- [The Notepad](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/03/16/the-notepad/) - I take pen and paper with me everywhere I go, even on a hike, where I walk and scrawl at the same time. I figure you never know what you might find. Today, a chance encounter with a loquacious tough guy sets up a skirmish of madscapes and loosened memories.
- [Confronting Our Creative Fears](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/03/04/confronting-our-creative-fears/) - Our best work as writers often begins as fear and self-doubt. While it feels like failure, it is actually the call to collaborate with our inner creative forces. The challenge is not to avoid these insecurities but to embrace them and by doing so unlock our own potential.
- [i wrestle Tom in the park in changwon](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/22/i-wrestle-tom-in-the-park-in-changwon/) - sunshine bottles, changwon heat-lush and dry, we leaned against nude cherry blossom trees, boozed and bullshit late into afternoon. Tom wanted to wrestle, just to see how it felt to tangle with an american
- [Sad Stuff](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/19/sad-stuff/) - When her lifelong best friend died suddenly, Taylor Feld found herself severed from her childhood. "Sad Stuff" celebrates that childhood and explores that friendship, before and after death. It's about how grief transforms, disrupts, and warps. It’s about the levity we find amidst agony. It’s about love outliving.
- [Human and Divine](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/16/human-and-divine/) - In "Human and Divine," human limitations collide with divine expectations as a young pastor-in-training botches the duty to comfort a grieving family and bumbles his way through a dying man's last moments.
- [The Nasiona Literary Prize Winners](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/02/02/literary-prize-winners/) - With our literary contests, we look to identify and celebrate some of the best original, unpublished creative nonfiction and nonfiction poetry out there. _The Nasiona Flash Creative Nonfiction Prize, 2019: Hannah Huff, "Finding Jean Palmer" _The Nasiona Nonfiction Poetry Prize, 2019: Bunkong Tuon, "A Guide to Parenting"
- [Passages](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/02/passages/) - Each time I go back to Tirana, I see big changes, but I seek out the old parts of town, the narrow streets, talk to people who live there and people who are visiting, and describe the unchanging and magnificent landscape. “Passages” describes several visits made to Albania (after my first stay there, which I wrote
- [Reader's Digest, December 1969](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/12/readers-digest-december-1969/) - Life in Hanoi.Pumpkin Pie to Make Your Mother Jealous.A Stranger in My Bedroom.What To Do with a Jar of Pennies.You will learn that a woman has stitchedten thousand quilts since Pearl Harbor;you will discover that Aunt Suelikes to rememberher mother’s world, the factthat hippopotami are born without tails,that the biggest bowling alleyin the world is
- [I Saw It All](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/15/i-saw-it-all/) - Beware of the spiritual journey. You may end up in a place that’s not so comforting. I discovered this hard truth at a meditation retreat in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Vipassana Meditation, the time-honored method attributed to the Buddha, gave me vision, startling vision, and terror. It unanchored me.I’m going about my life pretending it
- [We Are All Dead](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/we-are-all-dead/) - don't mind the dishes in the sink we died before we could clean them the trellis belongs to the ivy now its snaking fingers weaving through the holes we couldn't stop the orange rust expanding across the car's fender because we are all dead the birds chirp peacefully and the bees hover unmolested bellies coated
- [Sights](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/sights/) - With flint and tinder to kindle, we spark a blaze red-yellow-blue as night bedims and outlays the starry convoy of the skies, urging a census of the countless; hours vanish posthaste till sun gilds the eastern rim and dawn onrushes the heavens, flooding the world with glow and with gratitude early risers who climb to
- [Mediocre Existentialist](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/mediocre-existentialist/) - Appalachia is a heritage I both wanted to understand and to escape. A place filled with opioid abuse, the remnants of poverty and coal mining culture, and somehow also, the filthy rich. You slurred about how you loved yourself while you hung from a balcony, two stories in the air, staring at the frozen ground
- [Hepato-Poetics: A Brief Polemic Against the Moon and Heart](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/hepato-poetics-a-brief-polemic-against-the-moon-and-heart/) - "Hepato-poetics: A Brief Polemic Against the Moon and Heart" is part memoir and part reading journal. It is also my attempt to highlight poetry that deals with the liver, as opposed to the more frequently-used and anatomically-erroneous symbol “heart.” Through poets like Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Mary Ruefle, and Kaveh Akbar, I attempt to trace
- [Sihanoukville by the Sea](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/sihanoukville-by-the-sea/) - In 1993, Spalding Gray’s monologue Swimming to Cambodia pulled us in. Within a year of watching it, my ex and I left Oregon to live in the beach town of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. We flew there in small Russian airplanes from the capital, because road travel was against our ESL teaching contracts. Khmer Rouge killed Westerners
- [To Helen, a Handbasket](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/to-helen-a-handbasket/) - "To Helen, a Handbasket" takes a commonplace object—a basket—and uses it as a device to trace the author's grandmother's life from her early existence as a dutiful farm wife filling picnic baskets to her final incarnation as a drug-fueled kleptomaniac breaking glass baskets in airports. The avenues into exploring any life are abundant; they are
- ['Literature Has Never Been Purely National': Interview with Rebecca Ruth Gould](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/literature-has-never-been-purely-national-interview-with-rebecca-ruth-gould/) - The interview focuses on world literature and the task of introducing Cultural Studies to China. This interview will also be published in Chinese in the China Book Review. REBECCA RUTH GOULD is a writer, translator, and scholar whose books include Writers and Rebels: The Literatures of Insurgency in the Caucasus (Yale University Press, 2016), After Tomorrow the
- [My Father in Wild Pants](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/my-father-in-wild-pants/) - Because the ’70s sang. Because of becauses he couldn’t explain from the sand trap at the 17th hole at Brookside, the doctors drinking bourbon and soda in the clubhouse. I know the photographs, only, what emerges between the counter and the stove, what’s been hidden behind the desk since I was an infant. Because the
- [Facing the Fears of Memoir Writing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/08/29/facing-the-fears-of-memoir-writing-memoir-lounge/) - Memoir writing can be terrifying. Having it read can be worse. It can also be deeply satisfying. That look into the interior can produce both soothing revelations and dredge up uncomfortable monsters. But the fear is necessary. Without it, the writer lacks the alertness and sensitivity to produce meaningful work. And without readers, the writer
- [After Party](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/17/after-party/) - Her Pomeranian shot back and forth like the white lines cut out on the coffee table as she tucked bleached hair behind her ear and snorted from the rolled-up bill. She stripped at Blush, the same club she said her father once frequented. After gulping Vladamir and punch from a plastic cup, she blurted, Because
- [When You Rise: Interview with Jim Cavan](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/18/interview-with-jim-cavan/) - Conversation with recovering sportswriter and emerging memoirist, Jim Cavan, about the industry, the craft, and how a rare cancer has affected his family.“To approach the other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from
- [A Memoir](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/19/a-memoir/) - and we were dying a little every day fleshy leftovers on tilted sidewalks failing to leave an imprint even the sun seemed to weep and the shadows never quite faded even as day broke even as we held our hands up hoping for something to cling to ERIN JAMIESON holds an MFA in Creative Writing from
- [Broadway Avenue](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/21/broadway-avenue/) - East Canton, Ohio My grandmother’s house remains gray, remains past what might be recalled of it. A boy and a girl play Yahtzee! in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, and from the car I wonder if anything of her remains inside, if thirty years can make a woman disappear. A strand of hair tucked
- [James Longstreet Constrained by the Economy of the Reconstruction](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/22/james-longstreet-constrained-by-the-economy-of-the-reconstruction/) - During his years in New Orleans Longstreet pursued several commercial ventures including the sale of insurance and membership in the city’s cotton brokerage, either of which, before the war, might have brought him a comfortable return. But the General, who had known command in a different world, was too blunt and naïve for the scarce
- [Detroit Gold](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/23/detroit-gold/) - First came the scrappers, Slicing the drywall muscle for Detroit gold. Dissection of the vein, red conductors. They gutted the city, Broke her teeth, Boarded up her eyes. Then came the scavengers, looking to make a buck off of rotted innards. In their wake, Floating webs of lead pipe, Heaps of human garbage, Scattered lily
- [The Fire Extinguisher](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/25/the-fire-extinguisher/) - When the motor on his boat catches fire eighty miles up a remote Alaska river, the speaker in “The Fire Extinguisher” is forced to see the experience through the eyes of an accompanying Swedish doctor. To protect their privacy, I changed the names of those in the boat. Infatuation with an Alaskan nurse drew a
- [Men Teach Me to Shoot](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/09/28/men-teach-me-to-shoot/) - A little girl yearns for Papa's attention, yet feels regret the moment the pellet gun weighs in her hand. Some men are not to be trusted. She wants to be brave and to be seen by her Papa, although she understands it is safer to remain invisible. Decades later, after she's left yet another abusive relationship, a
- [Awards and Honors for Nasiona Contributors](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/02/awards-and-honors-for-nasiona-contributors/) - We are grateful and fortunate to have among us so many critically acclaimed and award-winning contributors in our magazine's first and second issues. Below you'll find a list of their awards and honors. Click on their names to take you to their The Nasiona Magazine contributions. You won't be disappointed. John Z. Guzlowski, winner of both the 2017 Benjamin
- [La Loca Del Kuuchamaa: Interview with Mireya Vela](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/07/la-loca-del-kuuchamaa-interview-with-mireya-vela/) - What first drew me to Mireya S. Vela was what initially attracted me to the work of Frida Kahlo. Vela’s art and creative nonfiction consider an important question: What is Woman? Vela outwardly displays her pain and frustration, and steps toward making sense of such experiences. Her voice is personal, honest, and penetrates the self in
- [The Girl from Patitiri](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/10/the-girl-from-patitiri/) - Slicing tuna skins pickling eyes in ouzo– comb of Kalamata olives; cubes of feta resembled plastic dice without any spots. The girl from Patitiri carried buckets of water on the back of a mule through villages in nectarine and sea hawk green. She kept a dozen black kittens left black flowers on the garden’s wooden
- [The Things That Save You](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/14/the-things-that-save-you/) - The personal essay is an exposé on loss and absence. Tolu Daniel explores how the most random events influence each other. It should rain. But for some reason the rain is shy and from my window I can see people carrying umbrellas as though pre-empting it. I planned to stay in my house all day
- [Freed Women of a Certain Age](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/23/freed-women-of-a-certain-age/) - This piece narrates my journey as an older woman who attempts to resolve the financial, lifestyle, and professional realities of choosing to start an online freelance business. This is a deeply personal narrative that questions traditional expectations of work in contemporary society and examines current trends in the rapidly changing labor market. A few years
- [Just One More Thing](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/26/just-one-more-thing/) - Think about the hardest loss you’ve been through, perhaps a beloved parent, or even harder, a precious child. What if every horrible thing imaginable happened? What if you lost everything and nearly everyone? How would you cope with that? And further, how would people remember your life? In “Just One More Thing,” Debra Groves Harman explores
- [Blood Wine on a Full Moon](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/29/blood-wine-on-a-full-moon/) - A reflection of Catholicism and Tarot/light occult beliefs; how they intertwine and connect despite being taught they were opposites, and how those teachings affected the writer as an adult. The moon had broken through, just so, turning the long white clouds that stretched to the horizon into a protective cocoon over the earth. They ran
- [The Power of Story](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/10/31/the-power-of-story/) - Stories are the foundation of our civilizations and our societies. Our legends and myths, our scientific discoveries and our explorations, can inform and influence us both individually and collectively. But what separates us also holds us together. What divides can inspire unity, and through story we discover our belonging. It is through story that we
- [Artistic Activism Profundity: Interview with Visual Artist Mark Harris](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/04/artistic-activism-profundity-interview-with-visual-artist-mark-harris/) - Mark Harris’s art judges what is wrong without judging humanity. He immortalizes the pain he sees inflicted on black men in American society without a hint of othering. He somehow manages to include himself inside the discussion, even though he is one of the often othered at whom society hurls unfair, often unjust and horrific
- [Black Man JuJu: Interview with Tyehimba Jess](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/18/black-man-juju-interview-with-tyehimba-jess/) - Tyehimba Jess is the 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. His book, Olio, is a magnificently engineered collection of poems that explore black voices in the decades from Civil War times to the start of World War I.Juju or juju (French: joujou, lit. ‘plaything’) is a spiritual belief system incorporating objects, such as amulets and spells
- [A Thanksgiving Burial](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/21/a-thanksgiving-burial/) - Her father used to cook the turkey on Thanksgiving, but every year it came out of the oven dry and overdone. As a self-proclaimed foodie and frequent cook, she smugly took over the ritual one year, only to discover that cooking a whole bird is more of a burden than she realized.“Well, have you ever
- [Inside the Engine](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/23/inside-the-engine/) - I’ve drank in hangers built to maintain the airplanesmy grandfather operated on,under the eye of a traffic control tower that’s quiet nowin the after-effects of all those solvents.Of course the suds in modern Stapleton bars aren’t enoughto turn my VHS memories to HD or to pinpointthe exact cause of his environmental cancer,just as the roads
- [Intimacy](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/25/intimacy/) - Is it a crime that I liked you for the collapsing breadth of your lips? I keep wondering if my life would have been different had I arrived at the party ten minutes later or had you worn a different shade of lipstick. The point is – isn’t it damning evidence that life’sfundamental joy is
- [The Nasiona's 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominees](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/29/the-nasionas-2019-pushcart-prize-nominees/) - We couldn’t be more excited to announce The Nasiona‘s 2019 Pushcart Prize nominees. We are honored to call our magazine the home to such inspiring work and talent. Congratulations to the following writers. We wish them the best of luck. In order of publication date:1. Carl Boon, “Reader’s Digest, December 1969,” poetry, Issue 2, September 12,
- [The Art of Looking Back](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/11/30/the-art-of-looking-back/) - We all have memories, but not everyone wants to turn their memories into memoir or to shape their life experiences into art. For those of us who want to do it, who must do it, the challenge can be daunting. But in order to turn a life into a memoir, we must cultivate the art
- [Return to Kaimuki](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/03/return-to-kaimuki/) - Julia Wright chases a man to another island in the hopes of getting married, but she leaves her two young sons behind. Her mother has cared for Julia’s illegitimate boys for a year when Julia returns home alone for Thanksgiving dinner.Julia leaned over the top railing of the SS Likelike as it steamed through the
- [Poems from the First Voyage](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/06/poems-from-the-first-voyage/) - A poetic language emerges out of the experience of radically unfamiliar things. These poems capture the first voyage to a new world and reflect aspects of the traveler’s personality, his obsessiveness, and his devoutness and grandiosity.The Shape of the EarthI have always read that the worldcomprising land and waterwas spherical, testified by Ptolemyand others who
- ['Shver tsu Zayn a Yid'](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/11/shver-tsu-zayn-a-yid/) - “Shver tsu Zayn a Yid” follows a young anthropologist discovering his own ethnic identity as a Jew. The process was made difficult—potentially dangerous at times—by ‘background’ anti-Semitism exacerbated by Israeli government abuse of Palestinians, and by his family’s penchant for secret-keeping stretching back five-hundred years.It’s “Hard to Be a Jew.” Being a Jew in the
- [Directory of Destiny (2)](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/26/directory-of-destiny-2/) - – Believe it or not, the ancient Chinese 5-Agent Principle accounts for us all. 1/ Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3)-helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered by earthwith her transparent tendernesscoded with colorless violenceshe is always ready to supportor sink the powerful boat sailing south2/ Wood (born in
- [Authenticity in Memoir](https://www.thenasiona.com/2018/12/31/authenticity-in-memoir/) - What keeps us from being authentic in our writing? Fear, shame, and ego, to name a few reasons, but authenticity can create connection and help readers recognize themselves in even the strangest of stories. To elevate your memoir beyond reminiscing you must bring your most authentic self to the page.
- [The Tall, Tall Tales of Heidi Harris](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/02/the-tall-tall-tales-of-heidi-harris/) - Heidi Harris is a self-taught musician and vocalist whose creative practice is based on an exploration and intermingling of traditional and non-traditional sound sources. A child of New Weird America, New Hampshire-based Harris is known for coloring outside the margins. Let’s put our feet on the ground with them red heels on and let’s go and row … row into dreams, comforting haunts, and sensations of being young or of some psychedelic foreign place with Harris as our tour guide in this two-part series of interviews.
- [Empathy in the Desert](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/07/empathy-in-the-desert/) - Getting caught in a sandstorm in Death Valley makes for gritty contemplation. The aptly named National Park puzzles the author with its past secrets and possible previews of the future. Did a professional dancer really perform without an audience for decades in this desert? Will tougher conditions for all homo sapiens force more empathy from us? Join Tom Molanphy in this memorable tour of Death Valley National Park.
- [hotel outside richmond](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/14/hotel-outside-richmond/) - outside of richmond, virginia–full day’s / drive north of tampa. bulky old tv’s / and a lobby sharp with chlorine, the pool / absolutely alive with the ignorant / joy of children who know not cheap hotels, / only that there is water deep enough / to drown in,
- [Artwalk, Corkscrew, Armchair](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/18/artwalk-corkscrew-armchair/) - You’re at a friend’s art exhibition. The art walk at full swing, paintings are spilling out of doorways. But you are looking around questioning the festivity, wrestling with the value of all this work, and wondering about your own elusive art career, the course artists take, the meaning of it all.
- [Rituals of Ijogwu Festival](https://www.thenasiona.com/2019/01/25/rituals-of-ijogwu-festival/) - Dances of naked women in a single file (Only the darkness covers their nakedness) Carrying on bare heads small earthenware pots Smoked in rituals of the night around flaming logs Singing for Ijogwu, the water goddess Imbuing the air with tingling Relics of the ancient dreams Dawning on the hallows of the grove Far sprung in the distant forest.

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.thenasiona.com/) - The Nasiona is a volunteer-led nonfiction storytelling organization that humanizes the Other by amplifying the voices and experiences of the systemically marginalized, undervalued, overlooked, silenced, and forgotten. Guided by a social justice compass, we actively work toward dismantling systems of oppression and creating a cultural shift through a community-centered podcast, magazine, publishing house, and internship program. We currently focus on the following story topics: being Latina/o/x, being mixed-race, LGBTQIAA+, diaspora and immigration, and womanhood and trauma, as well as stories that glimpse into Othered worlds.
- [Contact Us](https://www.thenasiona.com/contact/) - For submissions, go to our Submissions page.Email us:nasiona.mail (at) gmail (dot) comFollow us on Social Media: Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube
- [About](https://www.thenasiona.com/about/) - The Nasiona is a movement and non-profit organization that advocates for and centers, elevates, and amplifies the personal stories and concerns of survivors of oppressive systems and of those Otherized by dominant cultures. Our work centers decolonization, liberation, empowerment, healing, and transformation. Through our magazine, podcast, publishing house, mentorship program, BIPOC music series, live events,
- [Who We Are](https://www.thenasiona.com/masthead/) - MEET THE TEAM • JULIÁN ESTEBAN TORRES LÓPEZ• AïCHA MARTINE THIAM• NICOLE ZELNIKER• AMANDA LOPEZ• ROBIN GOW• JAY AJA• MONICA WANG• JOE SPARKMAN• OLGA GONZÁLEZ LATAPI Julián JULIÁN ESTEBAN TORRES LÓPEZ co-Founder, Publisher and Executive Director, co-Editor-in-Chief, Podcast Host/ProducerJulián Esteban Torres López (he/him/él) is a multiply neurodivergent, Colombia-born narrative designer, sound artist, public scholar, and liberation culture architect with Afro-Euro-Indigenous roots.
- [Submissions](https://www.thenasiona.com/submissions/) - We are currently open for submissions through April 30th, 2022, for the following three series:Intersectional Identities (Autobiographical Storytelling): Text / Audio / VideoSpanish-English Autobiographical Storytelling: Text / Audio /VideoBIPOC Music + Spoken WordWe pay $15 for each piece selected for publication.By submitting, you acceptto be considered for publication in our online magazine, podcast, anthologies, and/or
- [The Roots That Help Us Grow: An Authentic Voices Anthology, Volume 1](https://www.thenasiona.com/the-roots-that-help-us-grow-an-authentic-voices-anthology-volume-1/) - Transitioning out of the white gaze to become more authentic The Authentic Voices Fellowship, fostered by the Women’s National Book Association and the Women of Color Writers organization, seeks to bring BIPOC women to a deeper level of inclusion in the publishing industry and the literary world at large. Through the words of these inaugural
- [Blue Blood: Essays and Poems, by Robin Gow](https://www.thenasiona.com/blue-blood-essays-and-poems-by-robin-gow/) - We all begin in water and are called back to the water. Blue Blood challenges the rhetoric that trans people are "unnatural" through captivating verses about metamorphosis and meditations on the concept of home. Robin Gow invites readers to resist imposed gender roles and to celebrate identity; to question what their own body means to them. Paperback
- [Publishing House](https://www.thenasiona.com/publishing-house/) - Current Titles The Roots That Help Us Grow: An Authentic Voices Anthology, Volume 1 Transitioning out of the white gaze to become more authentic. Our communities are complex. We are complex. The Authentic Voices Fellowship, fostered by the Women’s National Book Association and the Women of Color Writers organization, seeks to bring BIPOC women to
- [Editing Services](https://www.thenasiona.com/editing-services/) - Are you writing a memoir, a novel, a research article, a dissertation, short stories, poetry, an anthology, or any other kind of document? If so, we may be your one-stop editing, proofreading, and formatting solution. Consider us your personal editor, as we take on a manageable number of clients so we can offer a human-centric,
- [Mentorship](https://www.thenasiona.com/mentorship/) - Your Name Here Your Role Here Interested in joining our team? We’re currently looking for BIPOC folks to mentor. If you have an idea for a project that aligns with our mission and you want us to help you develop and create it, apply below by filling out the form. We’re open to numerous ideas,
- [Issues](https://www.thenasiona.com/issues/) - The Nasiona is a volunteer-led nonfiction storytelling organization that humanizes the Other by amplifying the voices and experiences of the systemically marginalized, undervalued, overlooked, silenced, and forgotten. Guided by a social justice compass, we actively work toward dismantling systems of oppression and creating a cultural shift through a community-centered podcast, magazine, publishing house, and internship program. We currently focus on the following story topics: being Latina/o/x, being mixed-race, LGBTQIAA+, diaspora and immigration, and womanhood and trauma, as well as stories that glimpse into Othered worlds.
- [Vestiges of Courage, by Mireya S. Vela](https://www.thenasiona.com/vestiges-of-courage-by-mireya-s-vela/) - Available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. Vestiges of Courage: Collected Essays, by Mireya S. VelaVestiges of Courage is a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Raised between two cultures and two languages, Mireya S. Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing,
- [PLACES & NAMES, by Carl Boon](https://www.thenasiona.com/places-names-by-carl-boon/) - The poems in Carl Boon’s debut collection, PLACES & NAMES, coalesce two kinds of history—the factual and the imagined—to produce a kind of intimacy that is greater than either fact or imagination. It is this sense of intimacy that brings the poems to life. We encounter real places sometimes—places we see on maps and highway
- [Mixed, by Nicole Zelniker](https://www.thenasiona.com/mixed-by-nicole-zelniker/) - The Nasiona is happy to announce the first book we published under our Publishing House: Mixed, by Nicole Zelniker, with a foreword by our Editor-in-Chief, Julián Esteban Torres López. Available in paperback on Amazon, on Amazon Kindle, and on Barnes and Noble‘s website. Mixed, by Nicole Zelniker; foreword by Julián Esteban Torres LópezThe definition of families is
- [Julián Esteban Torres López](https://www.thenasiona.com/masthead/julian-esteban-torres-lopez/) - Julián Esteban Torres López is a Colombian-born journalist, publisher, podcaster, and editor. Before founding the nonfiction storytelling organization The Nasiona, he ran several cultural and arts organizations, edited journals and books, was a social justice and public history researcher, wrote a column for Colombia Reports, taught university courses, and managed a history museum. He’s a Pushcart Prize and
- [Eat The Eight: Preventing Food Allergy with Food and the Imperfect Art of Medicine, by Ron Sunog, MD](https://www.thenasiona.com/eat-the-eight-preventing-food-allergy-with-food-and-the-imperfect-art-of-medicine-by-ron-sunog-md/) - Available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. Eat The Eight: Preventing Food Allergy with Food and the Imperfect Art of Medicine, by Ron Sunog, MDIn 2015, after a landmark medical study proved that the early inclusion of peanut in the diet of infants prevents peanut allergy, Ron Sunog, MD, set out to develop a great
- [Literary Prizes Winners](https://www.thenasiona.com/literary-prizes-winners/) - With our literary contests, we look to identify and celebrate some of the best original, unpublished creative nonfiction and nonfiction poetry out there.Click on photo to go to author’s winning piece. THE NASIONA FLASH CREATIVE NONFICTION PRIZE, 2019 Hannah Huff, "Finding Jean Palmer" Hannah Huff, "Finding Jean Palmer" HANNAH HUFF is a Southern California-based writer and
- [Privacy Policy](https://www.thenasiona.com/about/privacy-policy/) - Privacy Policy The Nasiona operates the website https://www.thenasiona.com, which is an online magazine whose mission is to cultivate the seeds of nonfiction through publishing and promoting nonfiction and by offering editing and publishing services (Service). This page is used to inform The Nasiona visitors regarding our policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if
- [Magazine](https://www.thenasiona.com/magazine/)

## Playlists

- [Volume 1: Petrichor](https://www.thenasiona.com/album/volume-1-petrichor/) - This first volume of The Nasiona’s music series encapsulates all the glorious highs and the searing lows of navigating the world as an empathetic, curious individual. The works contained in this volume — from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals — express the intricacies of being an artist of color

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/uncategorized/)
- [Interviews](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/interviews/)
- [Columns](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/columns/)
- [Book Excerpts](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/book-excerpts/)
- [Blog](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/blog/)
- [Visual Art](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/visual-art/)
- [Memoir Lounge](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/columns/memoir-lounge/)
- [De Otra Parte](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/columns/de-otra-parte/)
- [Podcast](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/podcast/) - Hosted and produced by Julián Esteban Torres López, The Nasiona Podcast centers, elevates, and amplifies the personal stories of those Othered by systems of oppression and dominant cultures. You can also find the podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Several episodes have also been co-produced by Aïcha Martine Thiam and Nicole Zelniker. Original music for episodes 28 through the present was produced by the Grammy Award-winning team of Joe Sparkman and Marcus Allen, aka The Heavyweights. Theme song for episodes 23-27 is “Lat Dior” by Abdoulaye Mboup — a beautiful song by a classic Senegalese artist, lamenting all of the beautiful culture that has been lost through colonization. The theme song for episodes 1-22 is “Into the West,” courtesy of Tan Vampires.
- [Nasiona Books](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/nasiona-books/)
- [Badasses of the Season](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/badasses-of-the-season/)
- [Diaspora & Immigration Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/diaspora-immigration-series/)
- [Womanhood & Trauma Series — "Give Us a Smile"](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/give-us-a-smile-series/)
- [Being Mixed-Race](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/being-mixed-race/)
- [Being Mixed-Race Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/being-mixed-race-series/)
- [Being Latina/e/o/x Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/being-latina-e-o-x-series/)
- [Inside Look Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/inside-look-series/)
- [Being LGBTQIAA+ Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/being-lgbtqiaa-series/)
- [Snapshot](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/columns/snapshot/)
- [Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/deconstructing-dominant-cultures-series/)
- [Writing Prompts Tournaments](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/writing-prompts-tournaments/)
- [Transcription](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/transcription/)
- [Disability, Mental Health, & Chronic Conditions Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/disability-mental-health-chronic-conditions-series/)
- [BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/bipoc-music-and-spoken-word-series/) - We pay $15 for each piece selected for publication. You may have noticed that The Nasiona Podcast has had a new musical feel, and that in 2021 we produced the first ever The Nasiona album, entitled “Volume 1: Petrichor.” In 2022, we are developing the second compilation volume for our BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series, and we want to consider your work! Music and oral narrators have always told stories that are as powerful, as moving as personal essays, and we at The Nasiona want to honor these tradition. For the second compilation audio volume of our BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series, we seek submissions of tracks that align with our vision of centering, elevating, and amplifying Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, shedding light on neglected and intersectional identity experiences, while also celebrating our beauty, intelligence, creativity, and joy. Whether you record your music or spoken word professionally, or whether you have gone the DIY way throughout; whether you are an emerging indie artist, or have never released a track or album; or whether you have simply felt overlooked by the mainstream musical landscape: we believe in your voice, your story, and your talent; and we want your work! Tell us about growing up as a third culture kid, about living through trauma, about being misgendered, about slice-of-life instances of resolution. Tell us about your elations, your sorrows, your moments of quiet tenacity, your rallying cries of rage. Send us a track (or two, or three!) that tells a story, whether in words or through instrumentals. If it matters to you, it deserves a platform. All genres and languages are welcome. If you identify as BIPOC, we want to showcase your work and profile you. We can’t wait to experience to your work! (Note that we are here to center, elevate, and amplify your work. You keep all the rights to your work.) Learn more about our submissions here.
- [Togetherness, Untogetherness: Stories on Human Connection and Disconnection](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/togetherness-untogetherness-stories-on-human-connection-and-disconnection/)
- [Editors' Corner](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/editors-corner/)
- [WOC Writers' Authentic Voices Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/category/woc-writers-authentic-voices-series/)

## Tags

- [Poetry](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/poetry/)
- [Interview](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/interview/)
- [memoir](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/memoir/)
- [autobiography](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/autobiography/)
- [women](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/women/)
- [Nepal](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/nepal/)
- [biography](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/biography/)
- [immigrant](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/immigrant/)
- [essay](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/essay/)
- [sportswriting](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sportswriting/)
- [loss](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/loss/)
- [cancer](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/cancer/)
- [column](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/column/)
- [history](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/history/)
- [emigration](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/emigration/)
- [immigration](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/immigration/)
- [World War II](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/world-war-ii/)
- [War](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/war/)
- [Slave Labor Camps](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/slave-labor-camps/)
- [book](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/book/)
- [Russia](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/russia/)
- [art](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/art/)
- [journalism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/journalism/)
- [censorship](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/censorship/)
- [artist](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/artist/)
- [graphic art](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/graphic-art/)
- [Appalachia](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/appalachia/)
- [existential](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/existential/)
- [death](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/death/)
- [drugs](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/drugs/)
- [drinking](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/drinking/)
- [poor](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/poor/)
- [life](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/life/)
- [Cambodia](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/cambodia/)
- [expat](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/expat/)
- [rape](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/rape/)
- [virginity](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/virginity/)
- [teenagers](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/teenagers/)
- [drive-in](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/drive-in/)
- [Oregon](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/oregon/)
- [Sihanoukville](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sihanoukville/)
- [newlyweds](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/newlyweds/)
- [ESL](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/esl/)
- [travel](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/travel/)
- [marriage](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/marriage/)
- [moon](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/moon/)
- [liver](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/liver/)
- [family](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/family/)
- [grandmother](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/grandmother/)
- [basket](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/basket/)
- [writing](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/writing/)
- [craft](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/craft/)
- [editing](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/editing/)
- [reflection](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/reflection/)
- [introspection](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/introspection/)
- [activism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/activism/)
- [creative nonfiction](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/creative-nonfiction/)
- [culture](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/culture/)
- [culture studies](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/culture-studies/)
- [literature](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/literature/)
- [world literature](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/world-literature/)
- [China](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/china/)
- [nonfiction](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/nonfiction/)
- [memoir lounge](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/memoir-lounge/)
- [Caucasus](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/caucasus/)
- [writers](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/writers/)
- [rebels](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/rebels/)
- [translation](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/translation/)
- [Europe](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/europe/)
- [Asia](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/asia/)
- [Chechnya](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/chechnya/)
- [party](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/party/)
- [Suicide](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/suicide/)
- [loneliness](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/loneliness/)
- [sexuality](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sexuality/)
- [stripper](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/stripper/)
- [poem](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/poem/)
- [dying](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/dying/)
- [mortality](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/mortality/)
- [hope](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/hope/)
- [subjective](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/subjective/)
- [personal essay](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/personal-essay/)
- [Alaska](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/alaska/)
- [river](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/river/)
- [Swede](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/swede/)
- [post-war](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/post-war/)
- [South](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/south/)
- [New Orleans](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/new-orleans/)
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- [pastor](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/pastor/)
- [communion](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/communion/)
- [grieving](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/grieving/)
- [human](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/human/)
- [divine](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/divine/)
- [sadness](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sadness/)
- [friendship](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/friendship/)
- [Podcast](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/podcast/)
- [wrestling](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/wrestling/)
- [Changwon](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/changwon/)
- [South Korea](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/south-korea/)
- [chess](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/chess/)
- [storytelling](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/storytelling/)
- [oral history](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/oral-history/)
- [Bobby Fischer](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/bobby-fischer/)
- [John Donaldson](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/john-donaldson/)
- [computers](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/computers/)
- [sports](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sports/)
- [Issue 8 | May 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-8/)
- [Yaldaz Sadakova](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/yaldaz-sadakova/)
- [hiking](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/hiking/)
- [interviews](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/interviews/)
- [politics](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/politics/)
- [parenthood](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/parenthood/)
- [Nicole Zelniker](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/nicole-zelniker/)
- [Julian Esteban Torres Lopez](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/julian-esteban-torres-lopez/)
- [Mexican-American](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/mexican-american/)
- [personal essays](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/personal-essays/)
- [Latinx](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/latinx/)
- [child abuse](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/child-abuse/)
- [issue 9](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-9/)
- [literary agents](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/literary-agents/)
- [publishing industry](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/publishing-industry/)
- [publishing](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/publishing/)
- [Palestine](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/palestine/)
- [Ramallah](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/ramallah/)
- [homeless](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/homeless/)
- [mixedrace](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/mixedrace/)
- [Japan](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/japan/)
- [Japanese](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/japanese/)
- [Asian](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/asian/)
- [US](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/us/)
- [US American](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/us-american/)
- [mixed race](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/mixed-race/)
- [Journalist Nicole Zelniker](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/journalist-nicole-zelniker/)
- [author](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/author/)
- [MeToo](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/metoo-2/)
- [divorce](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/divorce/)
- [womanhood](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/womanhood/)
- [conversion therapy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/conversion-therapy/)
- [therapy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/therapy/)
- [trauma](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/trauma/)
- [LGBTQ](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/lgbtq/)
- [repressed memories](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/repressed-memories/)
- [allergy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/allergy/)
- [food allergy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/food-allergy/)
- [medicine](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/medicine/)
- [diet](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/diet/)
- [allergies](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/allergies/)
- [pediatrics](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/pediatrics/)
- [medical research](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/medical-research/)
- [medical evidence](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/medical-evidence/)
- [peanut](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/peanut/)
- [peanut allergy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/peanut-allergy/)
- [infants](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/infants/)
- [Peru](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/peru/)
- [Chavin](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/chavin/)
- [ancient culture](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/ancient-culture/)
- [lost culture](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/lost-culture/)
- [Lanzon](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/lanzon/)
- [civilications](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/civilications/)
- [Amerindian](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/amerindian/)
- [deity](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/deity/)
- [ruin](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/ruin/)
- [ancient ruin](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/ancient-ruin/)
- [badaases](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/badaases/)
- [multicultural](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/multicultural/)
- [resistance](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/resistance/)
- [defiance](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/defiance/)
- [bands](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/bands/)
- [Transracial adoption](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/transracial-adoption/)
- [interracial adoption](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/interracial-adoption/)
- [Day of the Dead](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/day-of-the-dead/)
- [Dia de Muertos](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/dia-de-muertos/)
- [Issue 10 | May 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-10/)
- [Eat The Eight](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/eat-the-eight/)
- [medical study](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/medical-study/)
- [science](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/science/)
- [Issue 11 | June 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-11/)
- [daughter](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/daughter/)
- [tradition](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/tradition/)
- [places](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/places/)
- [names](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/names/)
- [alcoholism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/alcoholism/)
- [agnostic](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/agnostic/)
- [atheism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/atheism/)
- [daughterhood](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/daughterhood/)
- [Su Su Maung](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/su-su-maung/)
- [Burma](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/burma/)
- [diaspora](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/diaspora/)
- [Burmese](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/burmese/)
- [serendipity](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/serendipity/)
- [computer science](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/computer-science/)
- [interactions](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/interactions/)
- [Spotify](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/spotify/)
- [Issue 12 | July 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-12/)
- [sexual abuse](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sexual-abuse/)
- [Give Us a Smile Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/give-us-a-smile-series/)
- [gendered](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/gendered/)
- [agency](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/agency/)
- [helplessness](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/helplessness/)
- [powerlessness](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/powerlessness/)
- [poetry publishing](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/poetry-publishing/)
- [independent presses](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/independent-presses/)
- [presses](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/presses/)
- [poetry collection](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/poetry-collection/)
- [ballerina](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/ballerina/)
- [dancer](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/dancer/)
- [female body](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/female-body/)
- [body issues](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/body-issues/)
- [body image](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/body-image/)
- [modesty](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/modesty/)
- [schizophrenia](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/schizophrenia/)
- [bipolar](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/bipolar/)
- [bipolar disorder](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/bipolar-disorder/)
- [psychotic](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/psychotic/)
- [depression](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/depression/)
- [rape culture](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/rape-culture/)
- [stalkers](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/stalkers/)
- [Issue 13 | Aug 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-13/)
- [letters](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/letters/)
- [Diaspora & Immigration Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/diaspora-immigration-series/)
- [Issue 14 | Sept 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-14/)
- [interracial](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/interracial/)
- [intersectionality](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/intersectionality/)
- [disability](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/disability/)
- [disability inclusion](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/disability-inclusion/)
- [Latino](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/latino/)
- [Being Latina/o/x Series](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/being-latina-o-x-series/)
- [industry](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/industry/)
- [being mixed-race](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/being-mixed-race/)
- [Issue 15 | Oct 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-15/)
- [indigenous](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/indigenous/)
- [multiracial](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/multiracial/)
- [white supremacy](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/white-supremacy/)
- [minimalism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/minimalism/)
- [van life](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/van-life/)
- [Issue 16 | Nov 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-16/)
- [anti-racism](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/anti-racism/)
- [James Shields](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/james-shields/)
- [Issue 17 | Dec 2019](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-17/)
- [Doyali Islam](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/doyali-islam/)
- [vaginismus](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/vaginismus/)
- [food](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/food/)
- [LGBTQIAA+](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/lgbtqiaa/)
- [assimilation](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/assimilation/)
- [eating disorder](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/eating-disorder/)
- [Iran](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/iran/)
- [nude art](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/nude-art/)
- [childbirth](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/childbirth/)
- [purity](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/purity/)
- [Issue 18 | Winter 2020](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-18/)
- [Chicana](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/chicana/)
- [breakup](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/breakup/)
- [Spring 2020](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/spring-2020/)
- [sisterhood](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/sisterhood/)
- [same-sex marriage](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/same-sex-marriage/)
- [self-love](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/self-love/)
- [Issue 19 | Spring 2020](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-19/)
- [issue 19](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-19-2/)
- [Issue 20 | Summer 2020](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-20-summer-2020/)
- [Issue 21 | Summer 2020 Supplement](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-21-summer-2020-supplement/)
- [Issue 22 | Fall 2020](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-22-fall-2020/)
- [Issue 23 | Winter 2021](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-23-winter-2021/)
- [Issue 24 | Spring 2021](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-24-spring-2021/)
- [Issue 25 | Summer 2021](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-25-summer-2021/) - Three years ago this month we went live with our first issue of The Nasiona Magazine. We just went live with our 25th issue. What a ride! In this issue, we deconstruct dominant cultures + tell personal stories about womanhood and trauma, immigration and diaspora, being LGBTQIAA+, being Latina/e/o/x, living between two worlds, and being mixed-race. Co-Editors-in-Chief Aïcha Martine Thiam & Julián Esteban Torres López Editors Nicole Zelniker • Robin Gow • Amanda Lopez Guest Editors Brenda González & Ana Sheila Victorino of Tamarindo Podcast Readers Olga González Latapi • Jay Aja Contributors J.L Torres • Sorur • Lori Graham • Sen Kathleen • Hao Tran • Shay Galloway • Angela Rideau • Mallika Vie • Julián Esteban Torres López • Stephanie Parent • Aamera Jiwaji • Connie Pertuz Meza • Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez • Kellie Kreiss • Pat Hulsebosch • A Whittenberg • Ximena Escobar • Nicole Zelniker • H. E. Riddleton • Georgiana de Rham • Ashlee Lusch • Angela Wei • Alison M. Scott • Gabrielle Behar Trinh • Paulette Smythe • Ingrid Cruz
- [Issue 26 | Fall 2021](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-26-fall-2021/)
- [Issue 27 | Winter 2022](https://www.thenasiona.com/tag/issue-27-winter-2022/)