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Words Fail: An Interview with JinJin Xu

Charis Caputo

JinJin Xu. What Would You Hear If You Could? #8: Against This Earth, We Knock. Site-specific installation. Old pots (collected in JiangYong), coal ashes (collected in JiangYong), resin, mechanical installation, 2024. Photo courtesy of How Art Museum. Since 2017 JinJin Xu’s head has been full of voices. What the voices are saying is impossible to summarize. Here are some fragments: I tried to feel this is my home.I don’t think I am a foreigner.I hope she’s

Thoughts on the Long Road to Regaining Abortion Rights

Jennifer Baumgardner

On June 26, 2024, a group of feminists whose work focuses on all things reproductive gathered to begin strategizing for the long term about how to regain the rights lost by the Dobbs decision. Our group ranged in age from seventeen to seventy-eight and included a journalist, a playwright, three actors, a novelist, two lawyers, a doctor, and the founder of a women’s health clinic. We started the meeting with a scene from Rose of

“Gloves” and “Scouring Pad”

Evangeline Riddiford Graham

Gloves In another century he gives her a pair of chicken skin gloves. Chicken skin gloves, dark cream from the top of the bottle, worn so close the ripples of her cuticles show through—fine gloves, rolled up inside a walnut shell and carried with a ribbon. Chicken skin gloves. Draped over a mouth, they soften a beard, take the bristle out of a goodnight kiss. How’s this? Wear them to bed, your hands age free

“Edges of Ailey” edited by Adrienne Edwards

Mindy Aloff

Whitney Museum of American Art, September 2024, 388 pp. If you’ve seen any photographs of the choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931–89), it is quite likely that one of them was by Jack Mitchell, whose archive of Ailey photography (now at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture) includes over 10,000 black-and-white negatives and 1,300 color slides and transparencies. Within this archive is a subarchive of double portraits showing Ailey and his cherished leading

Dear Men

adrienne maree brown

Dear Men, This is mostly a note to straight, cis men but it also goes out to trans men, queer men, and all who participate in masculinity. If you see yourself in these words, this is a love note to you. Patriarchy (the system in which those who are perceived to belong to the social role of “man” hold the power and those perceived to belong to the social role of “woman” are excluded from

Janelle Monáe Superstar: A Deconversion Story

Aline Mello

The author and Kurt with Flyana Boss members Folayan Omi Kunerede (left) and Bobbi LaNea Taylor. Photo courtesy of Aline Mello. In my last year at the university, I finally started taking advantage of its discount ticket program. When I saw seats for a musical, I thought, Perfect, and got tickets for my friend Kurt and me. The show was Jesus Christ Superstar, which neither of us had ever seen. I was expecting something quirky

Étonne-moi: Alexey Brodovitch at the Barnes Museum

Mindy Aloff

Alexey Brodovitch. The Sylphs (Les Sylphides), 1935–37. Art Institute of Chicago. Purchased with funds provided by Karen and Jim Frank. Image courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY. In the go-go 1980s, the last decade when print magazines in the US rode high, the last decade before the internet took over time and space, I was given an impromptu lesson in how to be a team player. Or not. The bottom line:

‘Just So,’ About Time,’ ‘Since You Asked,’ and ‘Interior’

Rae Armantrout

Just So Bird shadows crossthe pear tree, slashingup or down,as it slowly leafs out—events!The children like to talkabout what isor isn’t likelyto happen.“Some people dye their hairbut not many,” one saysas she colorsthe dog’s bobgreen.The effortto be definiteis cute, I think:the arch in the middleof her top lipjust so About Time 1“It all happened so fast,”God said.2Everyone knows what “once” meansJust as everyone knowsthat “now”is a new set upeven if nothing much has changed. 3Some

My Abortion Name

Millicent Borges Accardi

Was not mine becauseeven in HS, I knew I wanted no oneto track me down in later yearsor the present for the shamefulact of even getting a pap smearat PP, a pregnancy test ora procedure. So many wordsthat start with the letter P.My abortion name had to be easyto respond to when I came outof twilight, like Emma or Mandy.Like, when someone talked to mein the locker room where Wednesdayabortion patients changedinto white paper robes

Against Language

Charis Caputo

Old Westbury Gardens, Smoggy Afternoon, by the author. The biggest book I own is the Norton Shakespeare, Second Edition. It’s all the plays, annotated: 3,600 pages. Lately I’ve used it to prop up my computer, to enable a more flattering angle on Zoom calls. In the fall of 2020, I was meeting every week on Zoom with a class taught by the writer Anne Carson and her husband Robert Currie. Anne announced one week that

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