China’s fifty-five officially recognized “minority peoples” make up less than 9 percent of the People’s Republic of China. Still, they number more than 130 million, and their literature deserves…
Essays
Photo by Christopher Assaf Monica Brown served on the jury that chose the 2021 NSK Prize winner and successfully championed Cynthia Leitich Smith as her nominee. On the final day of the 2…
Photo by Christopher T. Assaf Let’s all take a moment to breathe in some glittering fairy dust and share a wonderful, lovely thought. Let’s contemplate the magic and power of stories and the…
Photo by Fowzia Karimi An Afghan American writer recalls her own departure from Afghanistan in 1980 and the weariness she observed on a 2015 visit back to Kabul. Now, having watched event…
Poet Kali Regenvanu at the market in Port Vila Vanuatu’s fortieth independence anniversary in 2020 sparked an unprecedented literary wave of new writing. Harnessing the colonizers’ langua…
Life and politics are the same on an empty plate, in a body plagued by a pandemic. But in Cuba, people are rising up and challenging the regime. Here, Cuban American poet Carlos Pintado traces t…
Photo by Se Osomajtli Tsawi For Indigenous writers like Zoque poet and activist Mikeas Sánchez, language serves as a unifying element in the struggle to defend lands and life. This essay’…
Photo © by Yousef Khanfar For over 850 years, two Palestinian Muslim families have been entrusted with the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest shrine for Christ…
Photo © by Yousef Khanfar In the age of globalization, Western social theories, particularly those articulating the concept of feminism, seem to have taken over the world. Today the women’s m…
Laila Shawa, Handala / Courtesy of the artist Seventy years of Palestinian fragmentation since Israel’s creation have taken their toll. The Palestinians of today are split into d…
Rawan Anani / Courtesy of the artist A Palestinian-American writer reflects on pieces of Palestinian culture—embroidery, food, dance, a cartoon character—and how they help restore to her a deep…
Sliman Mansour / Courtesy of the artist In memory, Aziz Shihab 1927–2007 In the late 1950s, in the middle of the United States (we lived in Ferguson, a quiet, leafy community barel…
Nabil Anani / Courtesy of the Artist It has been said, Wisdom descended into the hands of the Chinese, the brains of the Greeks, and the tongue of the Arabs. Palestinian writers, po…
Marie Casimir and OU School of Dance MFA student J’aime Griffith are co-choreographing and performing in I Dream of Greenwood, with dramaturgy by Professor Leslie Kraus / Photo…
Fan Yusu from the cover of the inaugural issue of New Workers’ Literature Fan Yusu is a migrant worker from central China. She went to Beijing to work as a live-in nanny (baomu)…
Practicing law in a Red Cross tent are B. C. Franklin (right) and his partner I. H. Spears with their secretary Effie Thompson on June 6, 1921, five days after the Tulsa Race Massacre /…
A double exposure photo taken after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by personnel of the American Red Cross Several recent works on the Tulsa Race Massacre add to an already rich collection o…
Photos courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society, Ella Mahler Collection / University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes eve…
Alexander Tamahn, What Lies Beneath / Courtesy of the artist This year—2021—marks the hundredth anniversary of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Will it take another hun…
Since the economic reform launched in 1978, China has witnessed a vast group of rural women leaving their families behind in the countryside to enter urban middle-class homes as domestic workers.…
China’s “Battlers poetry” is written by members of the new precariat, especially rural-to-urban migrant workers. This is an exciting trend, both in its own right and when viewed as part of…
The entrance to Picun / Photo by Maghiel van Crevel Fu Qiuyun, also known as Xiaofu, is a young migrant worker from Henan, China, and also the organizer of the literature group in Picun (…
A meeting of the Picun Literature Group / Photo by Fu Qiuyun The Picun Literature Group has independently printed eight volumes of Picun literature since 2015 and…
Banner of the New Workers’ slogan in Picun / Photo by Hui Faye Xiao A group of Chinese migrant workers, who call themselves New Workers, have been uttering their voices through the medium…
Giannina Braschi, sitting in the Flying Carpet Armchair (1972) by Ettore Sottsass at R&Company in New York City in 2019. The avant-garde writings of Giannina Braschi are popping up…
