Writing is an act of resistance
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Inside the Serotonin Industrial Complex
prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, Dick Westheimer, consumerism, cultural industrial complex, neocolonialism, PoetryBy Dick Westheimer “The only winning move is not to play.” —from the movie War Games “You can’t call it anything else. It’s just slavery.” —Calvin Thomas, who spent more than 17 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, working the fields and cattle processing facilities as part of his terms of…
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Welcome to Amplified Voices, a Special Issue of Writers Resist
Writers Resist, anti-war poetry, anti-conflict poetry, Amplified Voices, anti-war writing, anti-conflict writing, conflict zone writingSince the Vietnam War, violent conflict has been made visible to even the least likely victims—on televisions, then phones, now raging across social media—and its representations are laden with passionate opinions, well-informed and not. From politicians and universities around the globe to PEN America to Oscar Awards speeches, emotionally bloody conflict about conflict reigns over…
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From the Editor of Amplified Voices
By DW McKinney These words—the ones in this note and the ones in this issue—are difficult to write. Do not look away from them. Let them sink into you. I am writing this editor’s note after I have seen a father carry his son, blown to pieces, in a yellow bag, and I fought…
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They Are All Terrorists
Narrative nonfiction, Amplified Voices, anti-war writing, anti-conflict writing, Lori Yeghiayan Friedman, terrorismBy Lori Yeghiayan Friedman is what my (now long-dead) mother used to say to the TV news reports of the bombings, beheadings, settlements, kidnappings, hijackings, imprisonments, killings―the latest eruptions of violence in a region far away, part of a war my mother fled with her family decades earlier. She said it while sitting in…
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Two Poems by Saheed Sunday
a daggerpoint & what is salvation if not how we give our body to beauty to the memory of what does not rust —Othuke Umukoro the Sunday before this one, the catechist warned about hellfire and its odor of smoky taste. he said it would come unto us like the clouds, breaking off whatever…
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Caught in the Crossfire of a Madding Crowd
By J.D. Harlock caught in the crossfire of a madding crowd, the child runs into the arms of her mother and nestles herself ‘neath a limp arm drenched in blood, dreading the glare of the machine that scans the corpses of the agitators that dared to disturb the order it was programmed to maintain,…
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Gauze
By Lisa Suhair Majaj when you learn that “gauze” comes from Gaza you will begin to understand how light passing through translucent fabric illuminates the delicate porous openings between threads that interweave to allow molecules of air and light to flow from one place to another without blockade or border, and you will learn…
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Ofrenda for Resistance
By Jordan Alejandro Rivera Tier I: Inframundo Poppy and cempasúchil petals Intermingled as our destinies Blood, bones, and stems Obsidian spearheads And shattered sugar skulls Tier II: Tierra Tomatoes, white sapotes, and olives Laid out on a lattice-patterned scarf Ten thousand and forty-three Candles flicker in harmony Guiding us here together Wax binds our…
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In Pillars, the Prized City
By Maira Faisal “You ask: What is the meaning of ‘homeland’? “They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky. “You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?” — from In…