The mystery surrounding the origins of the Iko’ots people is that no one knows when, why, or how they came to southern Oaxaca, but everyone seems to agree they arrived from somewhere else. There is speculation that they sailed from El Centro—a vague allusion to Central America, maybe the Miskito...

Seldom has an interview felt more insensitive than the afternoon we arrived at Lukas Avendaño’s family home. Lukas chose not to mention that he had postponed our interview the day before because he was returning home from Oaxaca City with his youngest brother Bruno’s remains, nor that our rescheduled meeting...

The twenty-fifth piece in our Polity of Literature series: Few readers enjoy their agency in a polity of literature more completely than does the child holding a comic book. Left alone with “childish things,” the comic book reader is unpoliced and unimproved. You can see it in the glare of...

The twenty-fourth piece in our Polity of Literature series: Ultimately, the Polity of Literature is a proposition made to readers and writers—what if literature is this? What if to read or write literature is to enter a polity of equals, readers and writers alike possessed of the same authority to...

JANUARY The world is riveted by the news of an unfolding health crisis in China. A mysterious virus ravages the city of Wuhan, prompting the Chinese government to lock down surrounding areas to stem the spread. Morning news alert: Allegedly, the main source of the novel coronavirus is a bat...

The majority of the 2.3 million domestic workers in Mexico live hand to mouth. When strict orders to quarantine at home were put in place in April, many of their employers prevented their household staff from coming to work in order to protect their own families. They terminated domestic workers’ contracts and...

MIRROR | CINEMA | CITY: KARACHI CAPRI Althea Thauberger: The Capri Cinema Project By Zarmeené Shah Through a small window in a closed door, we see the world outside from within a darkened interior space. A man walks by across the street, past a shuttered healthcare shop. It is daytime...

“I really think it’s time to go,” our guide says as he nervously glances at his phone that glows half past five. Around us, as if on an unspoken cue, the air of urgency and anxiety thickens, and it strikes us that we have lost track of time and we...

Chapter 1 – Holes in the Sky MYITKYINA, KACHIN STATE, NORTHERN MYANMAR The half-dozen works of art hanging on the bare wooden walls depict family scenes—they are painted in bold primary colors with rudimentary strokes. Human figures hover ghostlike above the ground. They have no faces, nor do they reveal...