Issue 21 | Summer 2020 Supplement

Inside Look Series

Episode 33: Journeys: Inbound, Outbound

September 8, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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. […]

Diaspora & Immigration Series

Episode 32: Imaginative Biography: PLACES & NAMES

September 4, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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. […]

Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series

Episode 31: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 2

August 31, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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. […]

Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series

Episode 30: Global International African Arts Movement, Part 1

August 31, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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. […]

Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series

Episode 29: Protesting the Publishing Industry’s White Gaze

August 28, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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.  […]

Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series

Episode 28: Interrogating the Publishing Industry’s White Gaze

August 25, 2020 Julián Esteban Torres López

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. […]

Deconstructing Dominant Cultures Series

Black Books Matter

August 25, 2020 Lisa D. Gray

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. […]