Prose
Soumya Rachel Shailendra
“An Elegy for my Mother’s Tongue” is a reflection of loss, belonging, and lamentation through the lens of language. It searches the grammar of lamentations within languages
Juan Lopez
I began writing this piece during my senior year in high school while taking a hip-hop class. This piece is inspired by the events that led up to Kool Herc's back-to-school party on August 11, 1973. It is mainly inspired by the migration to the Bronx that took place due to the construction of the Cross-Bronx expressway and the urban decay that took place after. Illustration by Amelia McCarthy.
Michalina Aniol
I used to walk these streets to my school and back. I wouldn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, dwelling instead on the upcoming assignment that I still had to write. There was no time to waste.
Hafsa Zulfiqua
I’ve lived in many places but mostly I’ve lived in dreams. Dreams that know no borders, boundaries or place. Dreams which flow like dandelions when you blow on them,
Poetry
Zanna Huth
یک
My mother
sends me a message,
to tell me my Grandfather had a stroke.
She never calls when she can’t speak.
Valeria Sibrian Quijada
When I was a child I remember looking out an aeroplane window and seeing a desert. I saw masses of land I had no way of understanding. I was a giant who could see it all.
Doménica Montaño
For NSZ.
Thanks for helping me find myself.
I.
August 18, 2016.
First Name?
-Doménica.
Visual Art
Melih Meric
I like to combine my experience living in a city with absurd fundamentals of daily life dynamics and what I create. I find value in works that capture the essence of orientalism, the structure of the living. I work with the idea of remembrance, especially specific patterns from Turkish culture, often imitating traditional tile motifs. Using printmaking as my main medium, I enjoy works of modular nature, creating continuous abstract patterns.
Reshavan Naicker
This photo series addresses the checkered past of photojournalism by attempting to disarm The West’s conditioned understanding of people from the Middle East and South Asia as either exotic or religious extremists. This inaccurate portrayal by Western media homogenises and dehumanises these people by denying their intersectionality, thereby promoting racist stereotypes. The most famous example of this is Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl for the cover of National Geographic’s June 1985 edition. This image rocketed McCurry to stardom, whilst he did not so much as ask her name, let alone her consent to take the photograph.
Kale Esposito
My art takes the form of R&B/Soul music, printmaking, poetry and painting. Through my art, my intention is to offer a space to heal from the hurt and unite in the love that is innately within us all.
Xiao (Smile) Ma
This work expresses my feelings about xenophobia relating to the coronavirus. I finished this work in the beginning of March, when the virus starting to hit the United States. Hostile behaviors towards other people because of their racial identity can tear our humanity apart. Being racially Asian, I was hurt and attacked by some strangers and some people around me. Emotions gathered and inspired me to create this project. I want to express the importance to love and care for each other at this unexpected time, and the lack of attention we are giving to the world as global citizens.
Film
Jonathan Lee
In "How To Make Kimchi or How To Be Korean", I document my family's method of making Kimchi which has been passed down maternally through my Mom and eventually to me. It serves as an archive for me, working as an anchor to the ever fleeting parts of my Koreaness. I hope that somehow, by learning these things I can begin to solidify the often confusing reality that is often the case in immigrant and third-culture upbringings.
Ayesha Bashir
This piece is a compilation of voice messages from my mother. It deals with the issues that come with being away from home. It portrays how mothers are always worried, tired, and concerned for their children. How habitual we are as human beings, and how hard it is to communicate with distance. This piece includes voice messages in Urdu sent by my mother to me over last year. The messages from my mother start with questions and a tone that almost feels robotic and repetitive. The length of the voice messages is almost always 28 seconds. The audio is accompanied by cold visuals that convey emptiness, alienation, and remoteness.
Podcast
Alyssa Pong
I was surrounded by mouths moving with familiar-unfamiliar tongues, words I had always heard, but never understood. Back then, it was easier to tune their voices out, easier to choose nothingness than to hear it by default. But the language was inescapable.
Andreea Coscai
This audio piece discusses the topic of abortion from a cultural, social and political perspective. It introduces the situation of abortion in Communist and post-Communism Romania, as well as the situation of abortion in 21st century USA. By also including a religious standpoint, this piece tries to capture a meaningful understanding of opposing perspectives on the topic of abortion.