race | The Smart Set

Truly Dystopian

Byshera Williams — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:30:53 +0000

In the past few months the term misogynoir — the combination of anti-Blackness and sexism that specifically affects the way that Black women are perceived, treated, and represented in media — has been on my mind more than normal. As a Black woman, the realities of how patriarchy and white supremacy collide to conspire against my personhood are not new to me. […]

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Son, M’ijo

Andres Aceves — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 12:36:57 +0000

This essay concerns gun violence and includes language centered around race and racism in The United States. Mason, my oldest son, hazards a prayer: “Dear God, thank you for my Pokémon cards.” “No, m’ijo, no. God is the most powerful force in the universe. He, She, It — whatever — created the ocean we saw in Mexico, the […]

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Strange Islands

Benjamin Welton — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:46:34 +0000

According to author W. Scott Poole in his book, Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, cinematic horror began with the Great War,” and because of the war’s devastation — millions of dead, entire countries created from the carcasses of old ones, an upending of the Victorian order — a slew of filmmakers in […]

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Taking it to the Graves

Nicholas Russell — Mon, 04 May 2020 11:30:16 +0000

Late in 2018, I made good on my promise to a friend in Ireland of indulging a curiosity I had no reason to suspect would result in any new information. It feels a bit trivial to call the search for ancestry a point of curiosity, especially given how much importance is continually put on such […]

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These Queer Streets

Anne Mitchell — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:53:07 +0000

Chicago is a crossroads, a second city, a chance at a new life. Some people think that the Second City moniker is about being second in size to New York or Los Angeles, but it refers to the city being the second iteration of itself because a large portion of the city burned down in […]

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A River Runs Through Lit

James McWilliams — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 13:31:28 +0000

it rained, fell like Jericho its walls. Water broke through the roof. All our pails were full — Kevin Young, “Flood,” from Dear Darkness “In the morning,” wrote a wistful Henry David Thoreau, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, “the river and adjacent country were covered with a dense fog, through which […]

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Resonating Roles

Byshera Williams — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 15:20:31 +0000

Rolanda D. Bell is an actress and singer from Oakland. Recently, she was featured as Nak in the film Blindspotting (created by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs). Outside of being very excited about this film, I was pleasantly shocked to see Bell, a plus-sized black woman, in an industry that tends to favor standard size, fair-skinned […]

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Pondering Plath

Camille DiBenedetto — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 11:30:38 +0000

Sylvia Plath has a way of showing up in everything I do. I find her in the essays I write, the things I say, the movies I watch — even the clothing I choose to wear. She is ever-present, ever-changing, working her way into my writing and conversations. I spoke with Emily Van Duyne, a […]

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General Franco Jumps the Shark

Robert Latona — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:21:50 +0000

Busy, busy, busy. So much to do, so many traitors to be shot. You’d think a victorious tyrant would have his hands plenty full in the aftermath of Spain’s murderous 1936-39 civil war. It turns out, though, that Generalissimo Francisco Franco had long nursed a secret desire, one he was uniquely in a position to […]

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At the Crossroads

Melinda Lewis — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 11:30:20 +0000

Within the past few years I have succumbed to a period of feminist ennui. It’s not that I no longer think the principles of equality are no longer important, but it seems as if the word and movement, “feminism,” has lost meaning. It has been co-opted, lazily applied, and devalued. I’ve become frustrated by so-called […]

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