Building hope in a hopeless place. The musician sits down to talk about her fight for democratic reform in Vietnam — and how it’s led her to flee her home.
Read more...
“I hope to encourage others to find ways to weave their own blankets, to tell their own stories. We all have so much to contribute. So many stories are still buried due to systemic inequities. I write to crack the earth and say: we are here and our stories are bountiful and necessary — just look at us, we’re beautiful.”
Read more...
To conclude a year of poetry, we’ve explored the broad philosophical questions of how someone becomes a poet and what it means to sojourn through the creative process. We posed these questions to Allegheny county’s four poet laureates; Vincent Folkes, Paloma Sierra, Mj Shahen, and Celeste Gainey.
Read more...
“I was sentenced to 99 lashes just for shaking hands with the opposite sex. … In another instance, when I sent my book to get permission to be published, they censored some of my words. As a woman, if I imagine or write about a romantic connection between two people, it’s censored.”
Read more...
“So by the end of the day, you are just their mirrors, and what you do is just a reflection of who they are. And in fact, it is also a reflection of who you are.”
Read more...
The way in which Bryan Fogel portrays the complex constellations of power — from the press corps to the Saudi crown to the White House — reveals a clear story of how murky the issues of free speech and dissent can be. Though the events surrounding Khashoggi’s death are complicated, Fogel makes one thing definite: more must be done.
Read more...
In a statement given to the Scholars at Risk, his wife Vasantha Kumari said that during her last phone call with Saibaba, he “could speak with great difficulty. We could make out he was breathless, his throat was sore.” With each passing day, it grows increasingly troubling that, even after a positive test for Covid-19, the Indian government and the government of Maharashtra State will continue their practice of denying basic medical care to Saibaba.
Read more...
