Articles & Essays
Decolonizing Natal Care in Trinidad & Tobago
Medically-managed birthing practices in Trinidad and Tobago are bound to the country’s colonial history. A contemporary resurgence of home births attended by midwives marks an important period in contemporary health care in the country.
“A Forest Called Amazon”: The Last-Warning Campaign
Brazilian Indigenous peoples’ lives are on the line to defend our chance to have a future. They need our help now; we need to wake up. It is time to take a last stand for Indigenous rights, for the Amazon, for the climate, and for the planet.
Teaching Children to Write
The children that poet Robert Glück taught booed the “Poetry Playhouse” and wrote scatological jokes. He asked them for more.
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Multimedia & Performance
Making the Horseshoe Crab Cello
Enter the studio of cellist Jacob Cohen as he builds an electric cello from a horseshoe crab exoskeleton and brings it to life in a performance with drummer, kora player, and vocalist Ismaila Diarra.
The Gift of Gab
Whether improvising their careers as black women in theatre or improvising in the artwork itself, Pat Dillon Moore and Rhoma Spencer employ creativity towards dynamic practices.
The Roads of Yemoja: The podcast
A character-based documentary series on Cuba’s African spiritual heritage, with a focus on the water deity Yemoja (“Yemaya” in Cuba).
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Op-Eds & Editorial Notes
Blind Spots
While the pandemic’s impact on social, political, and economic structures has been unprecedented, the uncertainty, tension, and collapse that people face on a daily basis is not.
Brazil set to take away Indigenous lands & rights
Sign the petition: “Protect the Amazon and Indigenous rights or face international boycott.”
Why I am going on a hunger strike
The starving person must have some kind of demand. My demand is simple. I ask the state to “come out and fight.”
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Photo & Video
The Video Kids
When a resourceful teacher gave a video camera to “the problem kids” they filmed what they knew to be true, and showed it. Now no one can make them stop.
The Prakash Churaman Story
Speaking from jail, Prakash Churaman tells his story of incarceration since his arrest at the age of 15 for a crime he didn’t commit.
And Here Is War, Yet Again
In early 2020, graphic journalist German Andino and filmmaker Ray Styles were preparing to launch the Bidi Bidi Media Lab in Uganda when Covid-related travel restrictions forced them to improvise and collaborate across thousands of miles to co-produce their first animated film together.
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Poetry & Prose
The Painting
Thirty-two years after Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, it was discovered in the bedroom of a deceased woman in rural New Mexico. Only the painting knows how it got there.
What Breaks
A Palestinian girl growing up in suburban Ohio is proud to receive an A- on her 9th grade genocide report. Later, grown up, she asks Can a fact be sad? I wish to know.
Distance of Space
Six encounters at six social distances, told incrementally through prose and needle painting.
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Various
Curse of Geography: Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
In the wake of the 2010 Yushu earthquake, celebrated Indonesian artist, Arahmaiani, spent ten years working with Buddhist monks on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau to cultivate sustainable rebuilding projects and amplify the voices of women in Tibetan civil discourse.
Curse of Geography: Badakhshan
In the inaccessible borderlands of Badakhshan, Tajikistan, the M41 or “Heroin Highway” serves as the primary trafficking route for opium and heroin smuggled out of Afghanistan on its way to Russia and Europe, leaving a trail of uneven development and outward migration.
Curse of Geography: Western Newfoundland
During the early 1990s, when cod stocks in Western Newfoundland were on the brink of extinction, a moratorium on fishing caused the “largest mass layoff in Canadian history” and threatened the cultural fabric of coastal communities reliant on the ocean for their livelihoods.