In language there is life; in language there is death.
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Review: The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe
Continue reading “Review: The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe”
Relooted and The Brutish Museums: A Dual Review
And what of the museums, of which Europe is so proud? It would have been better, all things considered, if it had never been necessary to open them. Better if the Europeans had allowed the civilisations beyond the Continent of Europe to live alongside them, dynamic and prosperous, whole and unmutilated. Better if they had let those civilisations develop and flourish rather than offering up scattered limbs, these dead limbs, duly labelled, for us to admire.
After all, by itself the museum is nothing. It means nothing. It can say nothing. Here in the museum, the rapture of self-gratification rots our eyes. Here, a secret contempt of others dries up our hearts. Here racism, no matter if it is declared or undeclared, drains all empathy away. No, in the scales of knowledge the mass of all the museums in the world could never outweigh a lone spark of human empathy.
Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonisalisme, 1955 (Dan Hicks’ translation)
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Review: The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty
Each day, Marjana seemed more newly mature, a seedling thriving after the rain. It brought me a sort of wistful pride. How swiftly our children grown up, youthful aspects melting away before we blink.
Chapter 6
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Review: Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae
The sight of her in the golden morning sun is something straight out of a painting. I’m no artist, but even I feel the urge to capture this moment, if only to bottle up the calming warmth that fills my belly.
Chapter 7: Never Wake A Girl Up At An Ungodly Hour
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Review: The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed
Nupol wasn’t a language, not really. It was an argot. A cant. A cryptolect. Although it was loosely based on Inglez, the one language that most people in most berths were familiar with, its vocabulary come from everywhere. Dead Earth languages and multilingual puns. Backslang and gender reversal. Vera, after a certain point you stopped learning it and started cooking it up. It wasn’t language, it was music. Improvisation. The prattle of the disenfranchised, the palaver of the dispossessed, the lingua of the underground. And, like all underground languages, it was made to be disguised.
Chapter Two: Damietta, 23 of 25