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Even the Moon Coyolxauhqui’s body was found, like Sandra Bland, like Rekia Boyd, like Jessica Hernandez, guiding the sea of stars, leading the ocean back and forth, endlessly. Coyolxauhqui knew the dangers of violence and man, begged her mother to not give light to those who tug at our elbows like loose seams of string they can unravel. Women dying by the hands of men who envy a woman’s power, that is history, a long Tuesday night, the tide rising. Even the moon was born from a woman’s severed head, her angry heart still rolling. La Malinche Goes to My High School La Malinche transferred to my high school, and already the white kids mock her when her tongue stumbles on English words. They tell her to say teacher, say homework, say fuck. Say it all again in Nahuatl. I warn her about the boy who calls my hair straw because it won’t bend and flow like water. La Malinche counters with the kid who calls her Indian, calls her nuts and berries. Keep your dark skin to yourself, I tell her, so she squeezes herself into whiteness. She hikes her hair up into a high bun,...

Editorial

AWP, Apogee, & Inclusivity

Apogee Journal

29 Mar 2016

As editors and writers who value marginalized voices, we at Apogee continually re-examine the role of institutions in facilitating dialogue and ensuring representation. The yearly AWP conference is one such institution, which both fosters a dynamic and rich literary community, while at times drawing criticism for alienating marginalized writers. Our presence at this year’s AWP conference represents an attempt to negotiate this tension. Through collaboration with other organizations with track records of elevating underrepresented voices, we hope to contribute to important conversations about how intersections of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and other facets of identity shape writers’ and editors’ interactions with literary institutions. We hope to help shape these discussions with a framework of radical inclusivity. We want to encourage writers and literary professionals to use AWP as a whole as a platform for furthering this project. If you’d like to join this conversation virtually, please connect with us on Twitter, using the hashtag #inclusiveAWP. We invite you to join Apogee founders Melody Nixon and Zinzi Clemmons as well as Apogee advisory board member Rachel Eliza Griffiths at their respective panels. From the Margins: Literary Magazines Supporting Writers of Color (Jyothi Natarajan, Ron Kavanaugh, Melody...

Interviews

Thoraya El-Rayyes in conversation with debut novelist Saleem Haddad

Apogee Journal

24 Mar 2016

Saleem Haddad’s recently published debut novel, Guapa, is the story of a twenty-something-year-old gay man named Rasa living in an unidentified Arab country, trying to carve out a life for himself in the midst of political and religious upheaval. The novel is set over the course of twenty-four hours, on the day that Rasa’s grandmother, the woman who raised him, catches him in bed with his lover, Taymour. Here, literary translator Thoraya El-Rayyes talks to Saleem about Arab sexuality under the Western gaze, chain smoking grandmothers, and writing a novel in the midst of the Arab Spring. Thoraya: A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to come across an article in The New York Times with the headline The Sexual Misery of the Arab World by an Algerian writer, Kamel Daoud. He wanted to inform the Generic American Liberal (or whoever it is that reads the NYT) that “sex determines everything that is unspoken” in the Arab world. Everything. The article even came with the obligatory illustration of a veiled woman with her eyes cast downwards – you know, just calling out for the white reader to save her. Sometimes, it seems like you can write any old shit...