The Storytellers of Empire
By Kamila ShamsieFebruary 2012
Captivated by an image of an atom bomb falling on Japan, Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie asks American writers why, “Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t.”
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Cairo, Hers Again
By Ahdaf Soueif, February 2012Ahdaf Soueif begins a long-awaited book about her Cairo with the first days of the revolution that changed the world.
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The Others
By Porochista Khakpour, January 2012Our guest editor Porochista Khakpour explores the protean category of “Iranian-American” and its assorted manifestations.
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National Subjects
By Aleksandar Hemon, January 2012Ethnic identity training in Bosnia and Herzegovina begins in the classroom.
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The Battle over Pakistan’s Schools
By Kamila Shamsie, January 2012Can a small group of reformers modernize Pakistan’s schools?
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Why Are You Here?
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, January 2012Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on branding, charity, and class in Nigeria's schools.
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Behind The Rise of the Great Powers
By Liu Xiaobo, translated by Josephine Chiu-Duke, January 2012China’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner asks what a TV miniseries can teach us about the direction of the new China. From his new book of essays.
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Suggested Admission
By James Cuno, January 2012Is the dearth of world-class museums in India part of the tragic legacy of empire?
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Gassed
By Avi Kramer, December 2011As a Fortune 500 company’s fracking activities in rural West Virginia leave a polluted and drastically altered landscape, locals are fighting back.
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The Iron Lady
By Shubh Mathur, December 2011The eleven-year fast of Irom Sharmila and the battle for freedom in India’s borderlands.
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The Bridge
By Mourid Barghouti , December 2011In this excerpt from the long-awaited follow-up to his first memoir, I Saw Ramallah, Mourid Barghouti recalls the day his son, the Palestinian, saw Palestine.
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Errata
By Belén Fernández, December 2011New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s metaphorical pile-ups, hollow analyses, and factual inaccuracies have garnered him three Pulitzer Prizes, and frighteningly unchecked power.
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The EST in Me
By Elizabeth Kadetsky, November 2011On a mother’s embrace of the teachings of 1970s self-help guru Warner Erhard.
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Turbo-Folk Tycoon
By Matthieu Aikins, November 2011In Croatia it takes a strongman like Alen Borbas—security tycoon and nightclub owner—to open up a nationalist music to outside talent.
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My Mother and the Prisoner
By Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour, November 2011A son recalls his mother’s advocacy for a framed man.
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Dog Days in Tehran
By Azadeh Moaveni, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour, November 2011What’s it like to own a beagle named London in Iran?
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In Search of Dalí in Tehran
By Iraj Isaac Rahmim, guest-edited by Porochista Khakpour, November 2011Or, how I got advice from Grandpa Moses on Jewish prayers for the notorious Evin Prison.
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Poetry’s Urban Landscape
By Brian Turner, October 2011Our guest poetry editor Brian Turner selects poems that are imbued with the language of the metropolis.
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The Many Ways to Die
by Craig Reinbold , October 2011On the Tucson shootings, reading W.G. Sebald, the limitations of love, and how we manage to keep going.
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Who Killed Che?
by Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, October 2011This month marks the forty-fourth anniversary of Che Guevara’s murder. An analysis of government documents collected in a new book reveals a complex CIA scheme.
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The Driver
by Kate Grace Thomas, October 2011A Lonely Planet guidebook writer in Libya details her experiences filing reports from the Arab Spring.
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The Price of Oranges
by Jason Burke, October 2011A journalist reflects on his encounters with Benazir Bhutto, and on the interconnected nature of food and politics in Pakistan.
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Tell Me Where It Hurts
by Heather Kovich, September 2011A former examiner of Social Security disability applicants had forty minutes to determine a claimant’s fate.
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Calculated Rift
by Robbie Corey-Boulet, September 2011Inflaming ethnic divisions, alleged war criminals in Kenya campaign for higher office.
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Pashean Play
by Jon Lee Anderson, September 2011At a dinner party hosted by an Afghan warlord, Jon Lee Anderson meets one of the last remaining maskharas—an entertainer, professional blackmailer, master thief, and prolific murderer.
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On Change in India
by Siddhartha Deb, September 2011India is indeed rising. So why are more than three-quarters of the country living on less than fifty cents a day? A snapshot of inequity, in four scenes.
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Smoke Screen
by J. Malcolm Garcia, August 2011In Afghanistan, the U.S. military disposes of garbage—computers, motorbikes, TVs, shoes, even human feces—in open burn pits. Are toxic clouds from these sites making everyone sick?
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Under the Table
by Julia Cooke, August 2011An American living in Cuba discovers Havana’s black-market epicurean scene.
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Death in a Box
by Scott Johnson, August 2011The truth and consequences of reporting from a war zone.
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Code of the West
by Jeff Sharlet, August 2011Checking the pulse of Colorado’s blend of faith, politics, and violence, Sharlet comes face to face with a college friend’s colorful political supporters.
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Fellow Prisoners
by John Berger, July 2011The best way to understand the world, writes Berger, is not as a metaphorical prison but a literal one. And what better way to inspire solidarity than seeing ourselves (them) as fellow prisoners?
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The Importance of Good Company
by Greg Bottoms, July 2011James Harold Jennings was a visionary artist and well-known eccentric in his hometown of Pinnacle, North Carolina. And, perhaps, the American brand of fear, fatalism, and nihilism.
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Forgotten but Not Gone
by Eric Benson, July 2011On the fiftieth anniversary of Borges’s first visit to Texas, Eric Benson searches for traces of the fabulist in the Lone Star State.
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Death Doctrine
by John Tirman, July 2011Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Angola were the three rings of the Reagan Doctrine, the war by proxy, and none turned out well. And the former president’s support of despots and violent insurgencies guaranteed a future of errant, and deadly, U.S. foreign policy.
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My First Time, Twice
by Ariel Levy, June 2011Ariel Levy on the rush to lose her virginity at fourteen, recalling: “Nobody would gasp if they heard a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old had lost her virginity. The clock was ticking.”
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The Birth of Venus
by John Berger, June 2011Where there are no words, knowledge comes through physical acts and through the space through which those acts are made.
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The Story of the Story of O
by Carmela Ciuraru, June 2011The Story of O shocked readers worldwide with its sadomasochistic love affair written in a style “too direct, too cool, to be that of a woman.” Carmela Ciuraru examines the life of O’s author.
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From Alienation to Belonging
by Randa Jarrar, June 2011What themes preoccupy these five Arab-American writers? Body image, war, sex, and pizza. Arab-American literature is American literature, says our guest editor Randa Jarrar.
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Pyramid Schemes
by J. Malcolm Garcia, June 2011Will witch hunts for deserters and its initial refusal to arrest Mubarak lead Egypt’s military down a blind alley of violence and tyranny?
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Under the Volcano
by Dara Kerr, May 2011Elected in 2009, leftist Mauricio Funes became the first Salvadoran president to apologize for government death squads. Dara Kerr investigates the massacre and subsequent cover-up, the U.S. role in the killings, and the backdrop for an unprecedented apology.
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Brazil in Three Fruits
by Eleanor Stanford, May 2011After relocating her family to Brazil, a young mother learns the limits of the landscape.
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Chak and Awe
by James Fergusson, May 2011The Taliban is alive and active. James Fergusson recounts his face-to-face meeting, in a mine-protected Afghan village, with one of the feared group’s most powerful figures.
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Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
by Ross Perlin, May 2011Each year at Disney World, thousands of interns earn academic credit for flipping burgers or parking cars. Ross Perlin learns about vague assignments, long hours, and the meaning of the phrase “protein spill.”
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The Un-Shock Doctrine
by Slavoj Žižek, May 2011Despite everything, Slavoj Žižek still believes the Idea of communism is the most appropriate for our end times of crises and monsters.
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Nuclear Haze
by Alexis Madrigal, April 2011The world's first nuclear reactors were fast-tracked while hailed as an economic breakthrough. By the time the public knew the truth, the atomic myth was up and running. As the recent disaster in Japan reminds us, nature always has the last word.
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Of Mines and Men
by Scott Johnson, April 2011A from-the-ground report on how the tapping of Angola’s natural resources has kept the country a killing field, and made it one of the world’s most glaringly inefficient kleptocracies.
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Childhood Reasons
by Amartya Sen, April 2011The new translation of Tagore's childhood memoir tells us much about the man who would later reshape Bengali literature and music (and chastise Mahatma Gandhi), says Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.
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The Accidental Tagore
by Amit Chaudhuri, April 2011On the 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore's birth, Amit Chaudhuri discusses the Nobel Laureate's life and poetry, his embrace of chance in creation, and his meetings with Albert Einstein.
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Nina Here Nor There
by Nick Krieger, April 2011From his memoir, our author finds himself caught between man and woman where tough (and humorous) decisions abound.
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Mapping the Rift
by Raja Shehadeh, April 2011On the verge of arrest, a Palestinian lawyer and author recounts the flight from arrest of an ancestor active during the Ottoman years.
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Crossing Erez
by Richard Moore, March 2011During 2005, while our author lived in East Jerusalem and worked in Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, he moved through at least four checkpoints every day. This is what that was like.
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Plasticize Me
by Peter Manseau, March 2011Will recent advances in human tissue preservation change the way we think about bodies, death, God… and China?
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Guernica Movies: Crossing the American Crises
By Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker, February 2011Filmmakers Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker survey the damage from the financial collapse to the present.
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Camel Ride, Los Angeles, 1986
by Porochista Khakpour, February 2011What is there to hate about a camel?
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Memoir Manifesto
by Deb Olin Unferth, February 2011Guest editor Deb Olin Unferth offers insights into the art of the memoir and introduces the present and future stars of the genre.
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Snapshots
by Antonia Blair, February 2011Homeschoolers like to think of themselves as patriotic trailblazers, but what it really means is they don’t teach their kids about sex, evolution, or global warming.
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Imaginary Appreciations of Myself as Hebrew Poet
by Joshua Cohen, February 2011An ear that seldom errs. Seldom, not never.
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Self Walking Backward
By Rozalia Jovanovic, February 2011When my mother had her second cancer operation, I was in Africa. Gita was angry, because I hadn’t come back from my trip.
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General Anopheles
by James Pogue, January 2011Ending malaria in Africa any time soon is nearly hopeless. And in trying, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Gates may be doing more harm than good.
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Detroitism
by John Patrick Leary, January 2011What does “ruin porn” tell us about the motor city, ourselves, other American cities?
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Bed 18
by J. Malcolm Garcia, January 2011Our author was in Afghanistan to report on women who set themselves on fire to protest their social status. Then it got personal.
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A Beer Manifesto
by Rick Ball, as told to his daughter, Molly Ball, January 2011A math professor prefers lager to hoppy suds.
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Murder Music
by Ilan Greenberg, December 2010Jamaica’s dancehall music is being blamed for the country’s violent attacks on gays. But there are many who don’t see the music as homophobic, only the battle cry of a changing nation. Part 2 of 2.
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Hero
by Mikhal Dekel, December 2010Early Zionist writing evoked the tragic male hero, bound by the cruel destiny of his people and himself. It’s true of many contemporary works, including Kushner and Spielberg’s Munich.
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Public Disinterest
by David Morris, December 2010The U.S. postal service is struggling for survival and broadcast airwaves feed hate. How two key information commons, “owned” by citizens, have dammed the flow of communication and birthed Rush Limbaugh.
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Murder Music
by Ilan Greenberg, December 2010Jamaica’s dancehall music is being blamed for the country’s violent attacks on gays. But there are many who don’t see the music as homophobic, only the battle cry of a changing nation.
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The Toad
by Maura R. O’Connor, November 2010Will protecting an endangered toad trump Tanzania’s need for energy and development?
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La Violencia
by Ed Vulliamy, November 2010From Tijuana east, Ed Vulliamy traces a violent drug war, spreading repression condoned by the U.S., a wall that separates family members, a water supply shut off, and the worship of Holy Death. From his new book.
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Necessary Roughness
by Salar Abdoh, November 2010During 2009’s post-election protests in Tehran, one man is struck into a commitment to the cause.
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Fish With The King
by J. Malcolm Garcia, November 2010As Gulf fishermen are forced to work for the oil company that destroyed their livelihoods, who will train Louisiana’s next generation to fish?
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September 11th and the Democracy of Images
by Susie Linfield, October 2010How New York’s worst day led to its greatest photography exhibit ever.
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The Missing
by J. Malcolm Garcia, October 2010Amina Janjua and the search for thousands of disappeared Pakistanis swept up in the U.S. and Pakistan’s “War on Terror”—in 15 scenes.
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The Roof Beneath Our Feet
by Jay Baron Nicorvo, October 2010Want to become a poet? Spend a summer roofing under the Florida sun.
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Dam Dilemma
by Jack Shenker, September 2010Opportunistic speculators are eying Nepal’s burgeoning hydropower potential. Does wealth or woe lie ahead for the poverty-stricken nation?
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Muslim Grrrls
by Rafia Zakaria, September 2010After successfully employing Islamic law in the U.S. court system, our writer realizes that Sharia and feminism aren’t always mutually exclusive.
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Recovery Mission
by Courtney E. Martin, September 2010After she was raped in the Navy, Maricela Guzman survived an abusive marriage, PTSD, and an attempted suicide. Now she’s fighting to make sure it won’t happen to other women.
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A Not So Secret Ballot
by Jesse Tangen-Mills, August 2010After two rounds of presidential voting, Colombia inaugurated “the warrior,” Juan Manuel Santos, last week. Did the country avoid the voter fraud so prevalent in Latin America? A from-the-ground report.
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An Unfortunate Discharge
By Tim Elhajj, August 2010When he was young and looking for a little direction, our writer turned to the Navy. There, he found many more questions than answers.
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We Are One
by Joanna Eede, August 2010August 9 is International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. With an indigenous uprising last month in Brazil, Survival International’s Joanna Eede celebrates the world’s first peoples in a new book.
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Birth of a Salesman
by Amitava Kumar, August 2010In a new book about the global war on terror, Amitava Kumar shows how criminal guilt has been sacrificed to the political need to haul in suspects. The result? Through crude character assassination, guilt is essentially fabricated after the arrest.
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The Frugal Superpower
by Michael Mandelbaum, August 2010From his new book, Michael Mandelbaum lays out the challenge of the U.S.’s activist foreign policy, including an expensive war on terror, in an age of economic retraction and pending entitlements.
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A Woolly Problem
by Heidi Cullen, August 2010More than 100 years ago, scientists were concerned about global warming. What they forecast is happening, only faster.
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By Bread Alone
by J. Malcolm Garcia, July 2010Some Pakistanis have begun blaming Afghan immigrants for bringing “their” war into Pakistan—one Afghan baker’s story of harassment, corruption, and exile.
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Adopting Guatemalan
by Molly Beer, July 2010International adoption is not always the unambiguous act of altruism it might seem. In Guatemala, it may be creating orphans.
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Black Lines and Several Circles
by Elizabeth Kadetsky, July 2010A New Yorker finds she may be just one degree of separation from a famed impostor.
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Living with the Enemy
By Susie Linfield, July 2010Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture.
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Descent Into the American Dream
by Theodore Ross, July 2010In Vietnam she was a rich woman, but in the U.S. she toiled stocking convenience store shelves. Why did Thao decide to immigrate?
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Obama’s War
by Tariq Ali, June 2010The esteemed historian and novelist on how there is only one path for the United States in Afghanistan: withdrawal.
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Seeds of Suicide
by Marie-Monique Robin, June 2010Before BP destroyed habitats and livelihoods in the Gulf, Monsanto landed in India. A filmmaker on the time of the GM cotton suicides, and what was learned.
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Fighting Flags
by Tamzin Baker, June 2010A year after the Green Movement in Iran (and the day after Flag Day in the United States), an Iranian-American artist with 44 flags wonders where to call home.
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Nixon’s Nose
by Xiaoda Xiao, June 2010In Maoist China, a political prisoner feels his way through a Kafkaesque tableau of rumors, betrayal, interrogation, and execution.
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Partners with Apartheid
by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, May 2010In the 1970s Israel needed friends, and South Africa needed weapons. From a new book, the story of their secret alliance.
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With Their Heads in Their Hands
by Suzanne Menghraj, May 2010What does the disembodied head say to the world? In the final essay in her six-part series, Menghraj discusses saints, icons, and presence of mind in the absence of brain.
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Chomsky Unplugged
by Noam Chomsky, May 2010Chomsky discusses the unpeople of the world, clever uses of the internet and international solidarity, and the conversion of a liberal dove to a principled anti-warrior.
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Prelude to Thunder
by Paul Guest, May 2010The night before a bike ride that would change his life irrevocably, Paul Guest imagined his heartbreaking fate.
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Charged Environment
by Alex Halperin, April 2010Thanks to a history of scarcity in a hostile region, Israel is poised to lead the world in clean technology.
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Third Degree Burns
by Jay Baron Nicorvo, April 2010It’s not navel-gazing MFA graduates who are killing literary fiction, says Jay Nicorvo. It’s blockbuster-hungry book editors and their habit of anticipating anticipations. A response to Ted Genoways in Mother Jones.
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Quixotic
by Edith Grossman, April 2010Trying to translate a 400-year old masterpiece like Don Quixote into modern English would be folly, even Quixotic. But that’s what Edith Grossman does. A foolhardy essay for April Fools’ Day.
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The Huckster
by Theodore Ross, April 2010Need to pick a good prison? Alan Ellis can help. Attorney, author, and self-publicist, Ellis is the creator of a new legal niche—one that places him in the time-honored American tradition of the fast-talking salesman.
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Hate
by Jennifer Jo Janisch, April 2010Days after the United States elected the first president of color, seven high school boys set out looking for Hispanics to beat up in a Long Island village. Spotting Marcelo, they surrounded him, punching and kicking, then stabbed him.
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Nod if You Can Hear Me
by Brenda Wineapple, March 2010Guest nonfiction editor Brenda Wineapple brings to Guernica three essays that speak loudly and luminously to one another across generations.
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Labor Pains
By Rochelle Gurstein, March 2010With 15 million men and women unemployed, our writer argues that the first step to fixing the job crisis is reimagining what Americans should be working on in the first place
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Lucky Girl
by Bridget Potter, March 2010There was a time when illegal abortion was the only option for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
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Bohemian Rhapsody
by Sara Faye Lieber, March 2010When the author gets bedbugs, she finds the toll on her body pales when compared with the toll on her beloved books and further, the threat the bugs pose to the bohemian spirit of New York City.
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The Acre
by Brian Calvert, March 2010After the death of his mother, a down-and-out writer realizes he needs a place, the kind you can’t buy, sell, deed, lease, or fence.
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The Pleasure of Flinching
by Nicholas Sautin, February 2010While amateur Iraq war footage abounds, Nick Sautin asks if the trend represents our “right to view,” or is it porn made from leftovers of a world filming its self-destruction?
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The War and the Roses
by Joelle Renstrom, February 2010Fourteen years after the end of Sarajevo’s besiegement during the Bosnian War, one writer finds a country uniquely capable of embracing the past while moving into the future.
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Writers, Plain and Simple
by Claire Messud, February 2010Women make up 80% of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes?
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In Search of a Modest Proposal
by Corinne Ramey, February 2010For Orthodox Jews, matchmaking and dating are more confusing than ever. Is secularism to blame? Feminism? Or is it part of a greater crisis?
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Sin City (Part 2 of 2)
by Austin Considine, January 2010How Dubai’s legal catch-22 transforms workers from around the world into de facto slave laborers without rights, days off, or pay.
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Mars or Bust
by Eric Benson and Justin Nobel, January 2010While the aerospace community waits for February when President Obama will announce the 2011 budget, effectively setting NASA’s direction for the near future, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin agitates for a manned mission to Mars.
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Sin City (Part 1 of 2)
by Austin Considine, January 2010Where do architectural wonders, coat hanger abortions, virtual slave labor, and a modern underground railroad meet?
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The Kids Are Alright
by Sara Irani, December 2009A week removed from the Student Day protests, some media still claim the pace of change in Iran indicates weakness on the part of student protesters. But could it be a sign of political maturity?
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Delta Farce?
by Pranav Behari, December 2009The MEND rebels of the Niger Delta are on a charm offensive, hosting press on fact-finding missions. Are they legitimate freedom fighters or environmental profiteers?
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Happy Valley Postcard
by Elizabeth Kadetsky , December 2009Is this exuberant college town, named for defying the trends of the Great Depression, a clue into American violence, grief, and longing?
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Seeing in Stereo
by Suzanne Menghraj , December 2009When art sets out to deceive us, do we collude with just our eyes? The author visits an exhibit of trompe l’œil in Florence.
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The Colonized Mind
by Sadanand Dhume, November 2009In Java, Indonesia’s traditionally relaxed Islam has lost ground to an assertive new orthodoxy.
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Chronicles of a Soviet Capitalist (Part 2 of 2)
by Irakli Iosebashvili, November 2009Twenty years later, a Georgian writer recalls the pursuit of money in the years immediately after the Iron Curtain came down.
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Chronicles of a Soviet Capitalist (Part 1 of 2)
by Irakli Iosebashvili, November 2009Twenty years later, Georgian writer Irakli Iosebashvili recalls the pursuit of money in the years immediately after the Iron Curtain came down.
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Bolaño Inc.
by Horacio Castellanos Moya, November 2009Roberto Bolaño is being sold in the U.S. as the next Gabriel García Márquez, a darker, wilder, decidedly un-magical paragon of Latin American literature. But his former friend and fellow novelist isn’t buying it.
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Under the Milanese Bureaucracy
by Michelle Schoenung, October 2009Public health care threw every conceivable obstacle at one pregnant American in Italy—bureaucracy, long waits, condescending doctors—yet she still favors the public option. Here’s her story.
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Loyal Opposition
by Chris Lombardi, October 2009As Afghanistan erupts with redoubled violence, Chris Lombardi recounts the unbroken line of soldiers who have refused to serve (or repented their service) in every American war since the War of 1812.
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There Will Be Blood
by Jamal Mahjoub , October 2009Back in his native Sudan for the first time in years, Jamal Mahjoub observes the capital’s newfound oil wealth and argues that focusing narrowly on Darfur while ignoring the secessionist South could spell big trouble for all of Sudan.
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Drawing on History
by Rachel Somerstein, September 2009This month in Berlin, June Glasson exhibits her series The Foulest of Shapes, ink-and-wash drawings of women engaged in violence and revelry that pose complex questions about what it means to be a feminist artist today.
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After the Flood
by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009Four years after Hurricane Katrina, writer Pia Ehrhardt, a New Orleanian before and after the storm, has guest edited our September issue culling art of all genres with the hopes of identifying how New Orleans is healing.
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White Canvas House
by Rachel Somerstein, August 2009What’s revealing about Obama’s art selections for the White House has nothing to do with gender or race. It’s more abstract than that.
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Food Among the Ruins
by Mark Dowie, August 2009Detroit, the country’s most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm. Mark Dowie’s immodest proposal...
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The Infinite in the Infinitesimal
by Suzanne Menghraj, July 2009How is it that miniature works can express so much? For Suzanne Menghraj, an exhibition of tiny objects conjures thoughts of philosopher Gaston Bachelard, homes designed for low-emission living, dinner in a shed, and the infinite.
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Intelligence Without Design
by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, July 2009By bridging aspects of intelligent design with evolution in a new approach they call “possibilism,” authors Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer probably haven’t solved the American culture wars. But they might have.
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Good Fences
by Ned Stuckey-French , July 2009While building a tree house with his father, Ned Stuckey-French begins to understand the politics at play in the backyards of his suburban neighborhood.
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Dreaming in Hindi
by Katherine Russell Rich, June 2009Fighting cancer, Katherine Russell Rich escapes to India to learn Hindi and throw her life “in the air for a passion.”
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Hurt to Read
by Michael Copperman, June 2009Back in the Mississippi Delta for the first time in four years, a teacher comes face to face with what he left behind.
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In Praise of Failure
by Pierre Bayard translated by Suzanne Menghraj , May 2009Citing French literary gods like Proust and Molière, the French prankster extraordinaire, in a new translation by Suzanne Menghraj, asks, “Isn’t it high time we started thinking about all the crap good writers make?”
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Chain Reaction
by Ben Huang, May 2009One year after the earthquake that devastated central China, Ben Huang contemplates the connections between the quake, Chinese history, and his father’s death.
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Human Nature
by Mark Dowie, May 2009Is modern conservation linked with ethnic cleansing? In an excerpt from his new book, Mark Dowie explores the concepts of wilderness and nature, and argues that the removal of aboriginal people from their homeland to create wilderness is a charade.
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Guided by Voices
by Joel Peckham , April 2009Why every nation needs a poet—an essay on Israel, Palestine, and the United States, from Amman, Jordan.
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Strangers in a Strange Land
by Lis Harris, April 2009Guest editor Lis Harris claims the writer’s mission to catch the fleeting moments that normally pass by unremarked is especially enlivened by the tabula rasa of a foreign country.
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Ruski Business
by Caleb Daniloff, April 2009During the Cold War, Caleb Daniloff, the son of an American journalist who would soon be jailed, spends his Moscow nights drinking, smoking, and black-marketing with Russian metalheads.
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Shadowing the Dogs of War
by Lis Harris, April 2009As conflict once again threatens the heart of Palestine and Israel, our writer takes a look back to one group who, after great struggle, found a way to ford rivers of blood and tear down the walls of their own minds.
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La Poste Américaine
by Tara Bray Smith, April 2009An American in Germany sifts through the cultural signposts, in pursuit of what it means to belong to a particular nation.
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Listening to Birds
by Kirmen Uribe translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin, March 2009From a remote village in Estonia, Kirmen Uribe considers lovers’ vows, and the twittering from the trees.
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Calypso Awakenings
by Suzanne Menghraj, March 2009What a pirate festival, and dancing alone to Calypso, can teach us about the here and now.
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Who’ll Stop the Rain
by Swetha Regunathan, March 2009What if the September 11th attacks had coincided with the ravage of Hurricane Katrina? In India during November’s monsoon and the Mumbai attacks, Swetha Regunathan weighs the connections between weather and terrorism.
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Harm Subsidies
by Mark Dowie, March 2009Investigative historian Mark Dowie argues that the so-called nuclear renaissance ought to be aborted.
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Tick-Tock
by Jennifer Miller, February 2009The daughter of a Jewish-American peace negotiator narrates the drama of her father's surprisingly--and perhaps inappropriately--close relationship with Yasir Arafat.
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Twin Peeks
by Suzanne Menghraj, February 2009Suzanne Menghraj recounts two daring acts of seeing in and around the wilds of New York City.
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Phantom Pain
by Anna Steegmann, January 2009The daughter of a Nazi soldier recalls the spark and fizzle of her tenth New Year's Eve.
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The Man Behind the Curtain
by Kristen French, January 2009For Brazilian-born artist and modern-day trickster Vik Muniz, subverting his own images is all part of the game.
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Fire Inside
by Marilyn Krysl, December 2008In the Sri Lankan city of Batticaloa, an American peace worker watches one woman bravely face the worst the world can offer.
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Preservation
by Ron Tanner, December 2008The inhabitants of the Marshall Islands have endured waves of immigration, exploitation, and America's nuclear testing. Now under threat from rising sea levels, their storytelling culture offers us a cautionary tale.
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The Truth is a Powerful Potion: Guernica Non-Fiction Guest-Edited by Dinty Moore
, December 2008My first instinct is to step aside and let the work speak for itself. That is almost always my first instinct, but in this case, it is certainly the best instinct, since the two works in question are both powerful and compelling.
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Hiding in Plain Sight
by Emily Raboteau, November 2008Quoting Baudelaire, an American passes in Granada.
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Anti-Drudge
by Mark Binelli, October 2008Until his conscience overcame him, David Brock was conservatives' go-to hitman. The inside story of the media watchdog who has Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage--even Stephen Colbert--fuming mad.
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Growing Controversy
by Ruxandra Guidi; photos by Roberto Guerra, September 2008Once the target of the U.S. war on drugs, Bolivian coca is being repackaged by activist farmers in hopes of giving the crop a legal life in this destitute nation.
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Shock and Awe
by Seth Fischer, August 2008Seth Fischer was like most of his friends, protesting a faraway war being fought by people, on both sides, he didn't know. Lance Corporal Eric Vargas changed all that.
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Designed to Survive
by Mahvish Khan, June 2008The Supreme Court ruled last week that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their imprisonment in a civilian court. Having been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and even moved to try suicide, prisoner Jumah al-Dossary was one of the lucky ones. Mahvish Khan reports.
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I Want My AJE
by Julia Dahl, May 2008From our 2008 archives: Al Jazeera English broadcasts in nearly 120 million homes worldwide, but only a handful are in the United States. Here's why.
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Eviction Slip
by Mark Dowie, April 2008While many governments now involve indigenous groups in environmental conservation, India is on the verge of creating what might become the largest mass eviction for conservation ever. Groups like India's Adivasis have come to be called "conservation refugees." Mark Dowie tells their story.
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Sectarian Conflict: Who's to Blame?
by Jonathan Steele, April 2008A survey by Baghdad's best pollster asked Iraqis which "suits you well": Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, or Just Muslim. The biggest category chose the last option. Then came the US occupation.
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Death Metal and the Indian Identity
By Akshay Ahuja, April 2008When writer Akshay Ahuja transported a guitar to India, little did he know he was being led down a rabbit hole to a vibrant subculture by a group that styled itself the Cremated Souls
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Rumors and Retribution
Lewis Alsamari, March 2008In this extract from his memoir, Escape from Saddam, Lewis Alsamari recalls some of the gruesome rumors and boyhood experiences that led to his dangerous escape from one of the world's most feared regimes.
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The Farce of Iraqi Sovereignty
by Jonathan Steele, March 2008Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Jonathan Steele shows the surge's inherent contradictions. To increase security is to rob Iraqis of their sovereignty and their dignity, which will ultimately fuel resistance. There is one solution: Admit defeat, then leave.
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Ghostwriting Gabo
by David Unger, November 2007Guatemalan-born writer and translator David Unger recounts the chance encounter that led to the job of a lifetime: ghostwriter for Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Irrational Waiting
by Salar Abdoh, November 2007What does it take to drive the population of a county crazy? Apparently, just 3 liters of gas a day. Salar Abdoh navigates his way through the meaning behind Iran's fuel rationing.
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Are You Abnormal?
by Nancy Rawlinson, November 2007Join the club... or the Church of the Subgenius that is. A fringe religion that might not be as far out as it seems.
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Slick Torch
by Norman Solomon, October 2007Norman Solomon has made a career of challenging media to tell the truth. In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Solomon takes on Colin Powell, Thomas Friedman, Bill Clinton and hawkish news reporters everywhere in a series of interrelated vignettes.
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Ireland 2.0
by Damien Lennon, September 2007Its Celtic Tiger economy has propelled Ireland from one of Europe's poorest countries to one of its richest. But money doesn't make the country. Why the Irish cultural identity must be re-imagined now.
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My Biafran Eyes
By Okey Ndibe, August 2007What Nigerian writer, Okey Ndibe, sees when he recalls the Biafran War.
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Vanishing Point
by Salar Abdoh, August 2007Writer Salar Abdoh considers the difference between "art" and "evidence" in modern day Iran--and discovers that when those roles overlap, images disappear.
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Future’s So Bright
By Sascha Matuszak , August 2007When the zebaleen, the garbage people of Cairo, were stripped of their responsibilities by the government, nothing but education could save them.
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Moving Violations
by Salar Abdoh, June 2007Iranian writer Salar Abdoh contemplates the codes of modesty of his homeland, and finds himself caught between a New York yoga class and the Caspian Sea.
Part one in a series on Iran -
The Price of Life
by Billy Briggs, March 2007Women are murdered in Guatemala so frequently that the phenomenon has been given a name: femicide. Despite worldwide calls for action, the problem seems only to be getting worse.
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The Last Jews of Cairo
By Josh Weil, November 2006Once there were more than 75,000. Today less than 100 remain. What led to the end of the once thriving Egyptian Jewish community, and how are the few who are left preserving their culture?
By Josh Weil -
The Dragon Mothers Polish their Metal Coils
by Edith Mirante, September 2006Burma's Kayan women brave indignity and exploitation to continue a centuries-old tradition: wrapping their necks in symbols of feminine beauty, otherworldly status, and matriarchal power.
by Edith Mirante -
Suffering for Sale
by Ann Tornkvist, August 2006Photojournalists can make a killing in galleries with war photos. Should they?
by Ann Tornkvist -
Lost Lebanon
By Katherine Darnell, August 2006The Lebanon I enjoyed vanished two days after I left.
By Katherine Darnell -
Writers’ Rooms: “Under Stolen Italian Skies”
by Peg Boyers, July 2006Having grown up with three languages, I have always found translation a handy way of getting at the limitations of language.
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Swarms at the Border: The Dead Heart of Africa
By Hasdai Westbrook, July 2006Will oil bring wealth or war to the people of Chad?
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Firmly Forward
by Mark Binelli, May 2006The Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga continues to push back
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Inside Information
By Jake Whitney, April 2006On the buying and selling of prescription records by major drug companies and pharmacy chains
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Me-Too Drugs
Jake Whitney, February 2006How the drug industry cashes in on drugs of dubious benefit
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Quieter, Softer: A Journey Through the Abortion Debate
Judea Franck, February 2006What if it was your body that was the “battleground”…
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Bagging Doctors
By Jake Whitney, December 2005The five ways drug companies entangle physicians in conflicts of interest. Part 2 of a four-part investigation.
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Writers’ Rooms: “Memory’s Homeland”
by Marjorie Agosin, November 2005I must always write in a solitary space because I am a poet of impermanence, of continuous travels, of imprecise cartographies.
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: M&Ms Make Friends
By Jake Whitney, November 2005Is your doctor prescribing the drugs you need or the drugs a pharmaceutical rep needs to sell? Part 1 of a 4 part investigation.
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The Conscience of the King
by Hillery Hugg, September 2005What Cindy Sheehan and New Orleans mothers share: grief over the government's failures.
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‘No Iraqis Left Me on a Roof to Die’
by Tom Engelhardt, September 2005Two hurricanes, one of them human, had blown through American life; between them, they had linked the previously unconnected.
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My Father's English Friend
by Okey Ndibe, August 2005A British officer and African soldier show that the arrangements of history are subordinate to the call of friendship.
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New Europe Grows Old
by Stephen Henighan, June 2005Bush's desire that Eastern Europeans support any adventure to which the U.S. attaches the 'freedom' label depends on a vision of Europe that's already outdated.
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Speak Softly and Carry a Big Environment
by Jess Taylor, May 2005Just the way it did in the industrialized world, environmentalism can probably make inroads in Brazil fastest as a fashion thing.
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Riding with Critical Mass
by Eugene Karmazin, May 2005This has nothing to do with the current orange alert; in fact, it has nothing to do with terrorist threats or any sort of threat at all. This is the City of New York’s response to a bicycle ride called “Critical Mass.”
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Aceh Abandoned: The Second Tsunami
report and photos by Andre Vltchek, May 2005After a 13-year break, the U.S. is trying to improve relations with the Indonesian military. It is letting go of its concern about Indonesia’s human rights record that led Congress to curb military ties in 1992 and cut off Indonesia’s eligibility to buy certain kinds of lethal military equipment.
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Learning to See Abundance in Liberia
by William Powers, May 2005President James Monroe christened Liberia ''a little America, destined to shine gem-like in the heart of darkest Africa.'' If Monroe's language is anachronistic, his optimism is not; what we have spawned, we can help renew.
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Conversing With the World
Rachel Galvin on The Poet in Society, May 2005Artists are more capable than theorists or pundits in representing the consciousness of the people, because the language of art is a language of immediacy, of spirit, and of the transporting analogy.
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The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature
by William Cronon, May 2005It means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and again—sustainably—without its being diminished in the process.
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Entries for a Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era
by Tom Engelhardt, April 2005Never has an administration spent so much time creating, defining, or redefining terms, perhaps because no one (since George Orwell) has grasped the power and possibility that lay hidden in plain sight in the naming and renaming of words.
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Monkey Wants Banana
a Letter from Brazil by Jess Taylor, January 2005A Brazilian taxi driver's take on George W. Bush.
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Too Big
by Cynthia Fuchs, January 2005Nothing like a deadly catastrophe to make journalists and nations look important. And nothing like the next news cycle to shake all that importance loose again.
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On the Road with Ralph Nader
by Stephen Elliott, October 2004Will someone write a book about America’s historic rejection of third party candidates at the beginning of the millennium? And if they do, will anybody read it?
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Letter from Bohemian Budejovice
by Stephen Thomas, October 2004An Imposter checks in from the Czech Republic
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Catholics as ‘Values Voters’
by Carl Raschke, October 2004If there is any one lesson to be learned from this election, social theorists are going to have to revise slightly what one means by not only the “values voter”, but the “religious right” in this country.
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The Painting, Guernica
by Julián Ríos, October 2004The author explores and explodes Guernica by Pablo Picasso.
The Storytellers of Empire
By Kamila Shamsie
Cairo, Hers Again
By Ahdaf Soueif
The Others
By Porochista Khakpour
Video: Free Word hosts the launch of Writers Bloc February 3, 2012
Conversations With History: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State February 3, 2012
David Chura: Keeping Lock-up Kids and their Families Connected February 2, 2012