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 […]
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How to Tell a Pure Rage Story
“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.
Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl: Interview with Cheryl Mukherji
by Palak Godara
The white walls of Cheryl Mukherji’s studio apartment demand you to completely ignore them and direct all your attention to her art. To her art that is painted on them, concealing them; leaning against them, hiding them; or lying next to them, complimenting them. A visual artist and writer currently working as a photo editor […]
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 […]
Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
This year, we’d like to specially feature our amazing friends at Brilliant Books, who style themselves “your local, long distance bookstore.” Though they feature a brick-and-mortar store in Traverse City, Michigan, Brilliant Books distinguish themselves as being one of the largest independent online book retailers in the country, and a crucial example of success in […]
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.
Sex, Youth and Power in Julia May Jonas’ Vladimir
by Megan Jones
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is a novel with, as is increasingly prevalent in modern literary fiction, an “unlikable female narrator.” But her unlikability stems from her refusal to sugarcoat the realities of aging and its attendant loss of power.