Shanghainese
I’ll hear a string of sounds – slick fricatives, ballooning rounded vowels, shreds of distantly familiar tones. It’s a sequence of mismatched notes, sewn together by the timbre of my grandma’s voice. She’ll look at me as she speaks, as if trying to impart meaning, to imprint in the air the
From Africa to the Amazon
In an indigenous community in Northern Brazil, I sat with a group of community leaders in a wooden-clad room. I was taking part in a project with Vaga Lume (‘firefly’ in Portuguese), an NGO that works to improve education in roughly a hundred communities in the Brazilian Amazon. In the community
Poetry
I was Lord of a country no one cared for. The Queen fucked men for money, and the King dug graves. At luncheon, he played Death with his favourite courtiers, kissing them once on the forehead and then declaring them knaves – he buried them living. Nobody cared. A good King kills one man for [&
Fiction
Many people don’t step outside their comfort zones. But I’m not many people. I’m one person. And I’m a journalist. The Croydon Cat Killer is reported to have dismembered and decapitated more than 400 cats across England since 2014. Reports of his activities have spread as far north as Manche
Weekly Roundup: Christchurch, Climate Strike, and the World Wide Web
Christchurch Terrorist Attack A white nationalist terrorist murdered fifty Muslims on Friday, and injured many more. The attack targeted two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand during Friday noon prayers using guns and improvised explosives. The perpetrator was not known to New Zealand security for
Television Loving Care
“In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer.” That’s how every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins. For the uninitiated: Buffy Summers, a sixteen-year-old California schoolgi
Sonnet for My Grandparents
You, doused in sugars from my papa’s cane. You, a sickening cinnamon burning. And this plum amidst your wet, fat folds: pain: It knows of none. Nonna’s dough is churning. Pubescent grand-kids shunned sugar-gnocchi All the while adults gorged, and nonna fed. Tongue-buds grew. Sweet-lover,
Weekly Round Up: Akwaeke Emezi, Fleabag, and HIV Treatment
Non-binary Author Nominated for Women’s Prize for Fiction Non-binary author Akwaeke Emezi has been nominated for the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction for their first novel, Freshwater. Controversially, it is the first time in the twenty-seven year history of the award that a person who doe
