A Muslim who does not practice or believe is generally regarded as safe. It is in the act of prayer that I become potentially dangerous. Continue reading
Author Archives: NM
On Art and Engagement by Monica Lewis
Do not engage. Do not dispute. Do not contend. Do not alert the world that you too have a body that needs to breathe. Continue reading
Teenage Subversion: On the Link Between Ethics and Aesthetics by Rochelle Hurt
This film in question is Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and its aesthetic failures seem to be a direct result of its ethical failures. Continue reading
A Future Anthropology by Autumn Brown
After reading my story, people often ask me if I see the nature of my characters’ problems as deeply related to our own in the here and now. The answer is a resounding yes. And in fact I see my story, like so much of visionary fiction, as a future anthropology. Continue reading
On Safety, Politics, and Art by Gabrielle Bellot
You must create what you think must be said, what you think should be done… Perhaps the best art takes on the world in some way, destroys it & recreates it, draws reader and writer alike closer to the complexity of the globe or even of that planet’s place in a far vaster universe of which we are specks on a pale blue dot, a dot near-invisible on the map of the cosmos. Continue reading
Our Words, Voices, and Souls by Eric Boyd
It was my feeling of safety which got me incarcerated. I made the assumption that I would be okay; I didn’t read up on the legal system, didn’t bother to pay for a lawyer. I hid from my situation until it consumed me. I can’t make that mistake again. Continue reading
The Political as Personal: On Reading Widely by Alexandra Watson
Later, I will understand his protest as personal: he doesn’t want to be the white guy who wrote a great book that won’t be read by people like me because of who he is. Continue reading
To Write by Karissa Chen
“It’s just a book,” I said, exasperated. “Why do you have to read so much into it?” Continue reading
Impossible, or “The Story of The Story of Everest” by Jeremy O. Harris
My freshman year of college, I had the privilege of being the straight-laced black theatre queen housed in a four man suite… Continue reading
Safe and Sound by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
I remember, once in a writing workshop, a white student wrote a story with a black protagonist. But, the protagonist could’ve been purple or green and the story would’ve been the same. The protagonist’s race was decorative; somebody wanted to spice up the bedroom!
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The James Franco Review 