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I Might Need a New Story

essay by Jim Harrison
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Guest edited by:
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michelle Lanier, Johnica Rivers
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A selection of what our readers love, in all the forms we publish: scholarly articles, memoir, interviews/oral histories, creative nonfiction, photo essays, and shorter features.

A Look at
Our Past

Browse past issues and articles from the last 30 years
Recent Features
beep Photo Essay

Not By Ourselves

Showing Up in Western North Carolina

by Jesse Barber
It’s hard to believe it has been ten days since the storm. During that time, I’ve driven almost one thousand miles getting into communities that were devastated by Hurricane Helene and running supplies to folks. I traveled to Marion, Swannanoa, Hendersonville, Brevard, Rosman, Ashe County, Chimney Rock, and Bat Cave. In the first few days, »
beep Memoir

I Might Need a New Story

Post Helene in Damascus, Virginia

by Jim Harrison
I direct an outdoor program at a small college in Southwest Virginia, and if you work at a small, private college, a significant part of your job is recruiting, selling the value of the institution to prospective students. For a college in Southwest Virginia, it’s also been about selling the value of place. I tell »
beep

We Called You in Her Name

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michelle Lanier, Johnica Rivers
Dear Reader: These excerpts—from a welcome by Michelle Lanier and Johnica Rivers and lyrical essay, “Written by Herself,” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs—first appeared in A Sojourn for Harriet Jacobs, a chapbook created by The Harriet Jacobs Project to commemorate their inaugural journeys. * * * We called you in her name. You answered. We rang the »
beep Poetry

The Buford Highway Farmers Market

by Diamond Forde
DO you remember flirting at the fish counter on Thursdays? At the Buford Highway Farmers Market—dark corners, concrete floors, & flags winking in an industrial breeze.
beep Back Porch

Taking Up Space

by Regina N. Bradley
“Sojourning is a daring act of freedom-making and . . . an acknowledgment of reclamation of spaces where Black women and femme folks were historically excluded.” I’m in Edenton, North Carolina. I’m here to do some sacred work. I slowly turn the bowl of white rose petals in my hands. They are moist from freshly »
beep Memoir

Down South

by Jet Toomer
“The longing for home never ceased, and the sojourn Down South would develop into a summer tradition.” For most of my young life I was denied the truth about my southern Black heritage, and the urbanized Americanized culture around me was teaching me to be ashamed. Of course, this dark skin, these pronounced and molded »
beep Art

In the Swamp

Abolition. Imagination. Play.

by Kai Lumumba Barrow, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
“There are so many different ways that people constructed home in places that one would not desire for home.” On my most recent outing with the Black feminist abolitionist revolutionary artist (and dear mentor of mine) kai lumumba barrow, we went looking for Spanish moss for one of her world-unmaking installations. When she pulled up »
beep

A Visual Dispatch

Images, Art, and the Archive as a Portal to Memory

by Colony Little
“The photographs and items my mother brought back with her from Texas tell her migration story, connecting me to the people, places, and events that shaped her life and echo in mine.” In the summer of 2015, my parents rented an RV and traveled from the Bay Area to Fort Worth, Texas, just south of »
beep Photo Essay

In Between

by Ciarra K. Walters
“In the most core-shaking moments of my life, I learned to return to these places to move beyond this physical form and ground my spiritual self.” Self-portraiture is the way I navigate myself back to my body. For years, my body did not feel like it belonged to me until I started photographing myself in »
beep

Lydia

by Sally Greene
“For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” —1 Chronicles 29:15 The Hebrew word translated as “sojourner” in the King James Bible has no exact equivalent in English. While for us the concept of a sojourn »
beep

Habitual Return

by Beatrice J. Adams
“Habitual return highlights the importance of maintaining cultural practices and history between generations to anchor one’s identity and sense of self.” Helen canned peaches, sewed and patched quilts, and prepped her children for a cross-country trek. Her husband, J. L., had set out months ago with her brothers, joining the steady flow of people leaving »
beep

A Rooming House for Transient Girls

Black Women's Spatial Vision in the Black Metropolis

by Jovanna Jones
“Freedom of mobility, accessibility of housing for one night or many, and a safe and secure environment for the many ways young Black women needed to spend their days—that was the point.” One late August night in 1943, Robbie Shields traveled up from Woodlawn in the South Side to Chicago’s northern suburb of Evanston for »
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