The origin of the police is slave patrols. Human beings held in chattel slavery could not escape. Police were used to break strikes and make sure that people could not organize to have decent working conditions. So, the origins of the police were about protecting racial boundaries and protecting property.
Making a Community Safer: Courtney Wise Randolph and Heather Ann Thompson Read More »
“Take this down carefully,” a man told the Los Angeles Times over the phone on the morning of September 13, 1972. “I just bombed an Arab’s house in Hollywood. No Arab is going to be safe in this country. Never Again. Never Again. Never Again.” (1) That day, the Jewish Defense League ( JDL) detonated
Los Angeles Intifada Read More »
I’m just saying this: Yes, I’m locked up, and it is hard. I don’t want to be here. I do not know what this sentence means. But I also hold joy. I am in love. I have fears. I have insecurities. I’m capable of violence. I’ve hurt people. I’ve helped people. And I am more than my struggles.
“Language is Evidence”: An Interview with Justin Rovillos Monson Read More »
“The first time I participated in a sit-in in front of Woolworths, I ran, when the police appeared. As the activism continued, that fear and the importance of being counted changed proportions.”
Threads pulled though: University of Michigan 1960-1964 to Now Read More »
The names of Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and Elijah McClain emerge, phoenix-winged. In Los Angeles, police fire rubber bullets into peaceful gatherings
Once I was out in the general population, my laughing strategy turned to silence. I was given a job assignment in the laundry room and spent most of my non-working hours in the library reading or in the dorm writing letters. When I wrote to family and friends I tried to maintain the fiction that everything was copacetic. But my handwriting told a different story as the words shivered uncontrollably across the page like the last dash of a chicken whose neck has been wrung.
An Excerpt from Tragic Magic Read More »
In 1972, when I was in prison, there were about 250,000 people incarcerated nationally. And in the nearly fifty years since then, there are now some two and a half million people incarcerated.
Thinking Through Necessary Means: Interview with Wesley Brown and Ryan Matthews Read More »
In editing this special issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, an issue on persecution, I didn’t figure I’d find the intimacy of these poems, stories, and essays.
Foreword: A Requiem For Suffering Read More »
MONCHO ALVARADO is a Latinx-queer-poet, translator, visual artist, and educator. They’ve been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Merdian, Foglifter, Poets.org, and other publications. They are a recipient of fellowships and residencies from The Helen Wurlitzer Foundation, Lambda Literary, Poets House, Troika House, the Summer Seminar at Sarah Lawrence College, and won the Academy of American
Meet Our Contributors: Issue 59:4 Fall 2020 Read More »
Announcing the release of MQR 59:3 Cover Art courtesy of Amy Sara Carroll and Donna Senf Carroll Table of Contents Foreword Reginald Dwayne Betts: A Requiem for Suffering Fiction Wesley Brown: Tragic Magic Gloria L. Huang: Another Escape Alberto Reyes Morgan: Salt Matthew Pitt: A Shambles Nonfiction Esmat Elhalaby: Los Angeles Intifada Randall Horton: And
MQR Issue 59:4, Fall 2020 Read More »
