Literary Activism Readers’ Poll
The Results
As part of our cover feature focusing on literary activism in the past half-century, the editors of World Literat…
COVER FEATURE
Literary Activism
Always remember: if you can write the ocean, we will never be silenced. – Craig Santos Perez, @craigsperez The momentum and voice of Craig Santos Perez flame with the opposite of silence.…
Kaninekahake – People of the Flint, fabric collage with acrylic on board, by Alex Jacobs, 2006, private collection, Santa Fe, NM. Image courtesy of Alex Jacobs There is a field. We don’t qu…
Illustration: JR Korpa / Unsplash Sometimes i’m called an “activist-poet,” maybe to make my aesthetically odd poetry seem more relevant or marketable to audiences other than…
Central Park Zoo. Photos courtesy of Poets House Curating an exhibit for the Central Park Zoo, a poet and her collaborators create a celebration of our connection to the physical world, using the…
Photo: Michael Day / Flickr July 10, 1040: Lady Godiva, wife of the Earl of Mercia, rides naked on horseback to force her husband to lower taxes. July 10, 2015: Sandra Bland was pulled o…
Photo: Faungg / Flickr It’s hot in the loading bridge, hot in the birth canal, it’s hot in the striped boy’s heart – we’re two women driving to D.C. for an abortion in my beater sea-green Le Ma…
Photo: Ronnie Brenes Anger is a tool, and like a hammer, it can build a house or tear one down. Sometimes you need it to do both. Marching down Michigan Avenue, the crowd blocked traffic. We…
You Will Grow Together in Your Rage, illustration by Meg Lionel Murphy “You’re the One,” by Fanny (1971) Hell yeah, let this Brown Girl sing because I know what I know and I…
Saad Merie / DeviantArt to Rima Dali, with love Rima Dali in her red raincoat reaches downtown Damascus, silently steps into the intersection stands tall as traffic holds high a red bann…
Collage Mural by Melanie Cervantes, Jesus Barraza, and Lianne Charlie. Photo by Maxime Faure. I’m just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being…
Illustration: A Little Prayer for Those Who Migrate, by Jake Prendez All of us who love books, we are all in this fight together—as writers, as readers, as human beings. A question…
Miktlanziwatl (Lady of Death) © Cara Romero. All Rights Reserved. Abyayala Full of Questions América, I don’t invoke your name. When I bare my heart to the sword, When…
The Weapon is Sharing (This Machine Kills Fascists), by Cannupa Hanska Luger, ceramic, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist. The Zoque and Spanish originals of this poem appear in Mikeas Sánc…
Photo: Júbilo Haku / Flickr A series of troubling questions leads a child of immigrants to write a novel imagining a young Mexican mother deported, leaving her half-American, California-born daug…
Photo: Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie after Ferlinghetti Pity the nation whose freedom melts faster than Arctic ice Whose justice defends sex predators & puts children in jail. Pity the nati…
Photo: Centrifuga / Flickr after a photograph by Sally Mann and Detention Center Concentration Camps
The endangered Serianthes nelsonii sapling on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. More than forty of the endangered tree species saplings were planted around Andersen by biologists from the Unive…-
The endangered Serianthes nelsonii sapling on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. More than forty of the endangered tree species saplings were planted around Andersen by biologists from the…
Photos: “Skedee” and “Cherokee National Holiday — Tahlequah,” from In The Territories, by Shane Brown American Indians should stop weeping over the cruelty of the trail of tears and the long…
Photo: Lucas Poisson / Flickr Leave. No two ways about it, they leave heading out toward night. Desperate, a coastal patrol will look for them, g…
Nancy Eiesland. Photo Courtesy of Candler School of Theology/Emory University A writer remembers Nancy Eiesland, the disabled, feminist theologian whose work became a beacon for her. In the…
PHoto: Michal Venera As one of the original Alcatraz activists in 1969, Dr. Dean Chavers credits the occupation for much of the subsequent sea change in federal Indian policy. The following is t…
Photo © Elena Seibert / Courtesy of Penguin Random House The following excerpt comes from an interview conducted with Cheyenne author Tommy Orange during the 2019 National Conference on Race and…
Illustration: Dustin Mater March 1973 Forever. Always. Never-ending. Continuing. It was snowing in the Southwest, and the wind was cold and harsh the past few days. We know be…
Autumn 2019
World Literature Today’s autumn issue celebrates U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo with poems and an interview inside, and the cover feature devoted to Literary Activism commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Alcatraz occupation that began in November 1969, guest-edited by Allison Hedge Coke. As always, a generous selection of book reviews and other features round out the issue.