Slowing down and sitting with silence: The limits of graphic witnessing in Footnotes in Gaza

Essay by Tova Gaster Art by Keeley Sieben In 1948, the Zionist military forces destroyed thousands of Palestinian villages, violently and irrevocably fracturing Palestinian society. The Nakba echoes through Palestinian collective memory and contemporary politics through the many displacements which have followed, most of which remain under-reported by Israeli-mediated historical recollection. One such suppressed massacre

“I wanted to write an endless book of time”: Metanarrative and Mortality in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids

Essay by Sally Elhennawy Art by Haley Cheng While considering the thematic elements that characterize the literary space occupied by HIV/AIDS writing, it is perhaps just as important to take note of the narrative forms utilized by writers in communicating these themes. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was characterized by a pervasive sense of impending mortality; consequently,

Co-constitutive Crises: Analyzing Rationality and Rhetorical Narratives of Agency in British Columbia’s COVID-19 Pandemic and Opioid Epidemic

Essay by Grace Payne Art by Karen Zhang According to data gathered by the Government of Canada, 3,002 deaths occurred in British Columbia from April 12, 2020 through April 4, 2022, as a result of the COVID-19 virus (bc.thrive.health stats). Meanwhile data released by the BC Coroners Service indicates that at least 2,224 individuals died

Futility and Frustration in Kindred

Essay by Colby Payne Art by Aiza Bragg In Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, protagonist Dana is drawn suddenly into the past, where she must repeatedly save her slave-owning ancestor Rufus to ensure her future survival. In a 1997 interview, Butler stated that her inspiration for Kindred was an interaction with a member of the

Biological-Soliloquies and Ascension to Canadian Canon

Essay by Kishoore Ramanathan Art by Karen Zhang In her contemporary novel Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson employs a unique technique throughout the text in which the narrative voice changes and digresses to discuss biological processes – which I will refer to as biological-soliloquies. Biological-soliloquies are dramatic deviations from the regular voice and narrative style that

Cyborgs, Simulacra, and the Male Gaze: Deconstructing the Female Body in Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita

Essay by Kaleena Ipema Art by Athena Li The cyberpunk comic series Battle Angel Alita introduces its female protagonist in the form of a detached cyborg head, fractured and abandoned in the dystopian landscape of the Scrapyard. Although bodiless, her chipped facial features and fragmented torso deliberately reveal enough femininity to identify not just a

The Consequences of Technologized Relationality in Klara and the Sun and “The Perfect Match”

Essay by Colby Ballingall Art by Amy Ng Human connection is defined as a “person’s subjective sense of having close and positively experienced relationships with others in the social world” (Seppala et al. 412). Psychologists argue that this connection is essential for health and survival (Seppala et al. 411), building on Maslow’s famous theories that

The Angel of Death: Analyzing Departures from the Chronic Mode of Suffering in David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives

Essay by Audrey Castillo Art by Aiza Bragg Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz is an example of “AIDS literature” (Bradway 256) that traverses the queer consciousness during the American AIDS epidemic. It contains the disembodied voices of a population neglected by its government and murdered through the “internaliz[ation of] society’s hate” (Wojnarowicz 179).

“How vain, without the merit, is the name”: Proper Name Usage Invoking Asian Diaspora in Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How To Pronounce Knife

Essay by Aimee Koristka Art by Amy Ng Proper name usage—both in literature and in real life—creates a clear sense of identity for an individual, allowing for distinct separation from one person and another. They are the manner by which an individual is known. Hence, “[p]roper names can be considered as an interface between individuals