Wartime Injustice: When “Yes” Means “No”
The mother-daughter relationship in Hisaye Yamamoto’s fiction is a stand-in for the relationship between the American nation-state and the Nisei male citizens.
Monique Truong and the New Southern Gothic
Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, expands the region and the meaning of “the South” in contemporary literature.
Burlesque Beginnings
From its nineteenth-century origins, burlesque developed into a self-aware performance art that celebrates the female form and challenges social norms.
Revolutionary Writing in Carlos Bulosan’s America
Bulosan’s fiction reflects an awareness of the inequality between the Philippines and the US and connects that relationship to his own class experience.
The Race to Be the Tallest Building in the World
Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Tower is poised to become the world’s tallest building. What’s behind the century-plus drive to build ever taller skyscrapers?
Exploring the Yardbird Reader
Initiated under the editorial directorship of Ishmael Reed, Yardbird made room in publishing for marginalized artists from many walks of life.
What Convenience Stores Say About “Urban War Zones”
The Korean-owned corner shop in a Black neighborhood serves as shorthand for racial conflict, obscuring Los Angeles’s intersectional histories.
Performing Memory in Refugee Rap
Hip-hop and other performative arts offer Southeast Asian American immigrants a way to construct richer narratives about the refugee experience.
I Hear America Singing
Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.
Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing
Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.