REVIEWS

HOLDING LIFE LIGHTLY: CRYBABY WILL DRY OUR TEARS

by

Miah Jeffra reviews Cheryl Klein's fertility and cancer memoir "Crybaby", an exploration of cancer, fertility, eating disorder, queer desire, and the self.

From Tasteful Rude
On October 14, 2022
Categories

Taiwan’s Founding Mothers?: Untold Herstory

by

If America needs more 1619 stories than it does 1776 ones, then Taiwan needs more stories about 228 and the White Terror.

From No Man Is an Island
On October 11, 2022
Categories

Saddiq Dzukogi’s Poetics of Grief

by

Martin Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art describes language as “home of being.” He also describes poetry as a form with powers to disclose “being.”

From Olongo Africa
On October 7, 2022
Categories

Fake It Real Examines the Relation Between Truth and Fiction in the Age of Disinformation

by

The exhibition concerns itself with the spread of fake news and disinformation globally, featuring works reflecting both Taiwanese and international artists.

From No Man Is an Island
On October 5, 2022
Categories

The Longest Memory

by

I am more familiar with the poetry of Fred D’Aguiar than his prose, so I was thrilled when I discovered his debut novel at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra where I was a writer-in-residence in April earlier this year.

From Olongo Africa
On September 28, 2022
Categories

LADY MONDEGREEN’S JUNGLE

by

In 1954 Sylvia Wright, an editor at Harper’s Magazine, wrote a piece for the magazine in which she recalls her childhood. Her mother would read the Scottish ballad “The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray” to her. Here is how young Wright heard the opening lyric:

From Tasteful Rude
On September 27, 2022
Categories

“Demigod: The Legend Begins” Breathes New Life Into Taiwanese Puppetry

by

Pili Puppetry is a well-known Taiwanese glove puppet series, which transposes wuxia tales of martial arts chivalry to a fantasy setting.

From No Man Is an Island
On August 22, 2022
Categories

“Terrorizers” Pales in Comparison to its Edward Yang Namesake

by

This is a No Man is an Island film review written in collaboration with Cinema Escapist as part of coverage of the 2022 New York Asian Film Festival. Keep an eye out for more!

From No Man Is an Island
On August 5, 2022
Categories

Idza Luhumyo’s Hair Politics

by

A piece of intrusion fantasy, its prose carefully measured, tied to a Black woman’s hair.

From Olongo Africa
On July 27, 2022
Categories

MELODRAMA-RAMA: LOCAL FEELINGS

by

A few weekends ago I drove to the teeny beach town of Oceano. I had received a tip that, somewhere on California’s Central Coast, someone was performing live melodramas.

From Tasteful Rude
On June 8, 2022
Categories

The Sound of Ambient Rain with a Progressive Beat: NYORAI’s 雨の音

by

雨の音 (rain sound) is a compact EP, but it manages to take listeners on a unique aural journey.

From No Man Is an Island
On June 5, 2022
Categories

The Spectacle and Politics of Nudity in “Blood Sisters”

by

If we think of film as “visual storytelling”, Blood Sisters certainly gives us the “visual” even if it sometimes leaves us wondering about the “storytelling.”

From Olongo Africa
On May 27, 2022
Categories

A Nigerian Poet’s Dangerous Amorous Episodes

by

In the traditions that established earlier voices in modern Africa poetry, sociopolitical maladies have remained an arch theme. In the words of Omafune Onoge, what rocks African poetry most is the crisis of consciousness.

From Olongo Africa
On May 24, 2022
Categories