MQR Sound

A note about the work “Ideal Customers” from Charlie Sorrenson for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 issue: Never was fashion more fraught for me than in the early days of transition. Clothing stores became a site of both potential power (here was the quickest and most effective means of signaling to the world how I wanted to be perceived) and acute discomfort. I wanted to explore th...

A note about the work “In Defense of Aunt Léonie” from Jodie Noel Vinson for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 YEAR issue: If you knew me in my early twenties, we probably had a conversation about Proust. I spent nine months consumed by his novel In Search of Lost Time , which can sound snobbish or academic but for me was an immersive, intimate relationship, a beautiful secret I shar...

A note about the work “Once I Was Beautiful Now I Am Myself” from Leila Chatti for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 issue: First, the poem’s title is a line borrowed from an Anne Sexton poem. I wrote this poem in a period when I thought I wasn’t writing; rather, I felt I was reacting, or perhaps channeling. I was at a point in my life where I felt both very sad and very powerless. B...

A note about "It's Important I Remember that the Enemy Is Always Within” from Cortney Lamar Charleston for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Summer 2025 issue: In ways established by historical precedent, the United States of America is an empire, but I speculate most Americans disagree. Empire has an appropriately negative connotation—a system of domination and exploitation spearheade...

A note about the poem “For Girls Who Talk Too Much at Lunch” from Steffi Sin for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Summer 2024 issue: My poetry collection For the Ones Who Grew Up In Hong Kong Style Cafés is comprised of twenty-six sonnets, all set in San Francisco Chinatown’s now-closed ABC Café & Restaurant. Each poem is a vignette of a meal the narrator experiences, and the use of Anglic...

A note about the short story “Diaspora Café” from Vince Omni for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Summer 2024 issue: I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, or at least in the genre of coffee shops that has come to characterize American culture: big, busy, expensive. They are great places for working and for people watching. They are also, by and large, very homogeneous. “The Diaspora Café” is...

A note about the poem “13 Ways of Nepantla” from Fernando Trujillo for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 issue: I had been reading Wallace Stevens’s Collected Poems , and I kept finding myself back at “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” which was in his first collection. I was struck by the austerity of the poem, in contrast to other works by Stevens. And I kept returning to t...

Saddiq Dzukogi reads "Bakandamiya XI." from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Glen Retief reads his fiction piece "Ghost Fish" from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Chika Unigwe reads her fiction piece "Miracle in Lagos Traffic" from MQR' 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Matthew Shenoda reads his poem "Capitalism's Migration" from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Afua Ansong reads her poem "Light in Exile" from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Shahilla Shariff reads her poem "Exile" from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani. Photography in the video appears courtesy of Shahilla Shariff.

Leye Adenle reads "The House of Oluawo" from MQR 's Spring 2024 special issue African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, guest edited by Chris Abani.

Dalia Elhassan reads “everything, everywhere, all at once” for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”. Read the text for this piece on the MQR website.

Afua Ansong reads “Armor of Light” for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”. Read the text for this piece on the MQR website.

A note about the poem “Exile” from Shahilla Shariff for the Michigan Quarterly Review ’s Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: An object from ordinary life—an unusual chocolate wrapper—was the aperture which transported me to my African childhood and to writing “Exile.” Rooted in memory, a series of seemingly disparate fragments were animated by unexpected enc...

A note about the short story “The Last Voyage of Ibn Batt​​ûta” from Amira Géhanne Khalfallah for MQR’s Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”:   Onboard The Amsterdam or Ibn Battûta’s Last Voyage follows Marouane, a 22-year old Moroccan man, from his hometown of Tangier to the far regions of the world he crosses unexpectedly in his quest for survival and freedo...

A note about the poem “Mmiri III” by .CHISARAOKWU. for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I am working on a poetry collection that explores African women’s practice of meaning-making in the wake of sexual harm. Mmiri III is the first part of a much longer poem that captures dialogue between two women with this shared his...

A note about the short story “Let Them Eat Kandolo: Grain Mongers June 2023, Chongwe, Zambia” from Mwanabibi Sikamo for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I love a good market. Not a pristine library of products boxed away from touch and smell, trolleys rolling over hospital-white floors market. Not even a friendly-farme...

A note about the short story “Let Them Eat Kandolo: Amainsa 1992, Kabalenge, Zambia” from Mwanabibi Sikamo for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I love a good market. Not a pristine library of products boxed away from touch and smell, trolleys rolling over hospital-white floors market. Not even a friendly-farmers, loose...

A note about the short story “The People of Gehenna” by Tom Olali from translator Richard Prins for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: As a translator of Swahili literature, the texts I find most compelling are the ones that might show something new to the English language. When I first read Tom Olali's novel Watu wa...

Dalia Elhassan reads “homegoing” for the Michigan Quarterly Review 's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”. Read the text for this piece on the MQR website.

A note about the short story “My Hairdresser is Dead” from Emelda Nyaradzai Gwitimah for the Michigan Quarterly Review ’s Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: It took me a full 12 months to be able to complete 'My Hairdresser is Dead'. I don't consider myself any type of non-fic writer but my grief needed an outlet and storytelling is cheaper than...

Elizabeth Mudenyo Reads “mom makes time” for MQR 's Spring 2024 issue "African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations". Read the text for this poem on the MQR website.