November 19, 2020
A Note from Our Editor-in-Chief
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‟If they only knew the half of it.” |
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While dutiful presidential minions downplay a global pandemic that is killing us, by the thousands, and politicians seek to ‟correct the record” by tossing out legal absentee ballots in Georgia, Kweli contributors are reminded that ‟this is precisely the time when artists go to work.” They move in step to correct historical records, both at home and abroad, in timely works of art. In our November issue, the past speaks directly to the present moment, from ‟Ohio's exclusion of Blacks from sanatoria established to care for tuberculosis patients” in 1928 in the essay, Intended Consequences by Anita Henderson, to Graham Akhurst’s historical account of Indigenous Australian trackers in the 1880s in his short story the True History of the Ned Kelly Gang.
Join us in reading these and other works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry in our current issue on Silences. The cover image for this issue is a vintage photograph of Goldie Edwards and Anna Pryor (standing), who died of tuberculosis at 32 years of age after being ‟put out” by a sanatorium in Ohio.
Laura Pegram
Editor-in-Chief
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Suzanne McFayden was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She offers the nonfiction piece, England, 1977, which deals, in part, with the silences of her father, Vincent Bancroft McFayden. He was part of the Windrush generation, ‟but treated worse than dirt.”
Excerpt from England, 1977 by Suzanne McFayden:
“And the cold,” my father went on, “bwoy, that was anodda ting altogether. I never know I could cold like that. I swear I only took that chef course so I could be in a kitchen and near heat on a regular basis.”
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Graham Akhurst is an Aboriginal writer hailing from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. His short story was inspired by Australian writer Peter Carey and his Booker Prize-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang.
Excerpt from True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Graham Akhurst:
We’d been chasing the Kelly gang with two black trackers. They were like hawks on them tracks pocking sniffing stabbing and pointing we were turned around this direction and that then off again over rocky outcrops and thick scrub and inhospitable land with no leases or squatters. Only outlaws and poor folk would venture to ride over and settle those hard valley ranges.
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Bisa Butler uses vintage photographs to inform her quilted compositions. “My artwork is like a photo album of a Black family,” Butler says, “but also the entire Black diaspora between here and Africa and the Caribbean. This is how we want to be seen.”
Bisa Butler: Portraits, her first-ever solo museum show, runs from November 16, 2020 through April 19, 2021 at the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Kweli means “truth.” As a nonprofit literary magazine, our mission has been to seek out the work of BIPOC writers that “sing the truth.” From our triannual online journal, webinar workshops, year-long fellowships, public readings, individualized editing, annual writers' conference and international festival, Kweli invests in the artistic and professional growth of emerging authors, nationally and internationally, and seeks to address the under-representation of writers identifying as women. If our work resonates with you, we hope you will consider a donation. |
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