In India, my father asks me to slow down the car at the sight of a speed breaker and not a speed bump. I love the pasta Kareena Aunty makes, not the one Aunty Kareena makes. In India, when you pester someone, they’ll ask you to “not eat their head.” Your boss doesn’t pressure you […]
Culture
Indian English
How to Tell a Pure Rage Story
by Matthew E. Henry
Editor’s Note: This article contains words that are racist and may be upsetting. “…if I could somehow re-create the fatal whiteness of that light…then you would believe…” Tim O’Brien. This is true. All of it. I was invited to read my poetry at a Christian college in the US Midwest. Someone had encountered my […]
New Media/Digital Poetry and the Body
by Amanda Hodes
<h1> The body is. The body is not. What is the body when it is not the body? What can a body be when it is not the body? Is the body ever just the body? What is the body even when we claim it is not the body? </h1> <h2> This is what I […]
“Four Centuries On, It Is Indisputable: The Genius Of Shakespeare Will Never Be Matched” vs. “Yes It Will”
by Clement Obropta
For right-wing British newspaper The Telegraph, the past stays uninvited for an eternity. Author, columnist, and former member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan wrote on Nov. 11, 2023, “Four centuries on, it is indisputable: the genius of Shakespeare will never be matched.” In his column, he chronicles the “greatest act of literary salvage in […]
12 Queer Poetry Collections in Translation to Add to Your End-Of-Year Reading List
Finding poetry in translation where the author or translator directly references their sexual orientation or gender identity (or that of their characters) can sometimes be a daunting task. As a Queer writer and translator myself, I take this as a personal challenge.
N. K. Jemisin on H. P. Lovecraft: Deconstructing the Original Boogeyman
Note: This article displays a poem credited to H. P. Lovecraft. The poem contains a word that is racist and offensive in its context. Howard Phillips Lovecraft has been dead for over eighty years, but his influence on supernatural horror fiction is well documented, and respected in most literary circles today. Since his death, he’s […]
Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl:
The Exhibition
Welcome! Cheryl Mukherji is a renowned photographer, and MAYDAY is ecstatic to showcase her immersive art on our virtual walls. Cheryl is an Indian visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. In her work, Cheryl explores the idea of origin and inheritance, which is embedded in the figure of her mother and her presence […]
50Years Later, the Demands of ‘The Black Manifesto’ Are Still Unmet
by Carla Bell
This story, first published at Electric Literature in 2020, is among its “Favorite Essays About Radicalism and Resistance.” One Sunday in the spring of 1969, James Forman walked into the sanctuary of Riverside Church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, barreled his way to the pulpit, commandeered the microphone, and before many wide-eyed and […]
The Best Short Films of 2022
by Lisa Ströhm Winberg and Clement Obropta
Great short films are like windows on a ship. You look outside them, and you can see a tossing, furious sea, the ocean waves reaching up the porthole, submerging your perspective for an instant. Or you look out and see an endless night. Or glittering stars. Or a sunrise, the kind of sunrise you figure […]
Little Lad-ification
by Ella Gray
A 2007 Starburst commercial introduced the world to the Little Lad, a caricature of an old-timey foppish boy. The Little Lad dances about, tapping his toes and proclaiming his love for berries and cream.