Issue 5

by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés
“The family photos and Super 8 footage document the performances of an immigrant, working-class family attempting a higher status. In sharing these, they sought to prove for themselves and, as noted in the video essay, for their/our families back on the island that they were not only surviving but thriving. In using these home movies and photos for ‘Dancing Danny,’ I am telling a story about family, grief, and memory and very much about love.”

by Cristina De León-Menjivar
“While a number of the writers in this study eventually do attempt to rhetorically balance their realities with illness and their roles as mothers, nearly all of the posts initially tackle the cultural discourse surrounding motherhood, illustrating how it has oppressed and marginalized them in their most personal and private moments.”

by Vani Kannan
“This book made me confront the tension between seductive Eurocentric notions of ‘good’/’beautiful’ writing and the cultural rhetorics frameworks that have deeply reshaped my thinking about writing and knowledge-making over the past five years. Reflecting on Lahiri’s journey as a writer asked me to grapple with the kind of writer I want to be, the kind of writing space I want to co-create with students, and how I want them to understand the relationship between identity, land, and knowledge-making.”