Category
Winter 2022
Somdeng “Danny” Thongsy never imagined he’d one day be a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Not after overcoming the many obstacles he faced as a formerly incarcerated Southeast Asian refugee. “Even to this day, I think about all… Continue Reading →
During Ouagadougou’s rainy season, it is a warrior’s task to get to the periphery of Burkina Faso’s capital city to the neighborhood of Toudbweogo. There are no roads, running water or electricity. Here, houses are built in mud and in an… Continue Reading →
Mirna Ruiz’s fierce red lipstick was a telling symbol. It matched her assertive self description: “I am a brave Latina immigrant woman fighting for justice,” she said, as we opened our zoom interview at the end of her long workday…. Continue Reading →
On an overcast San Francisco day, Robert Ho and his birding partner, with cameras in hand, walked into the embrace of Golden Gate Park, the expansive strip of public land that stretches three miles from the middle of the peninsula… Continue Reading →
It was the second Friday I spent under South Africa’s stay-at-home order due to a dramatic spike in Delta variant cases. It was the end to another week of taking Zoom and WhatsApp calls confined to the four walls of my apartment…. Continue Reading →
In the hallway of the Ethnic Studies building at San Francisco State University, Philip Nguyen is chatting up a colleague in Vietnamese while holding a heavy book in hand. It was his first time back at work since the pandemic… Continue Reading →
The bright lights flicker before a video message from a questionable doctor displays on the giant screen. The doctor, perhaps from an inverted, utopian universe, instructs the crowd in a robotic voice about the effects of a substance called “Rushium.”… Continue Reading →
The moon is still hanging full above the Southern Mexican city of Chilón when Victor Manuel Lopez Jimenez unlocks the cooperative’s heavy metal door to check the colmenas, or hives in English. By seven in the morning other co-op members begin to… Continue Reading →
My grandfather’s wife and children never expected him to survive when a 1,700 pound cherry picker collapsed on his spine while harvesting walnuts. He plummeted multiple stories to the earth, where he should have met his death. Though he outlasted… Continue Reading →
In his newly established office, Christian Marcel Ratianarivo is surrounded by white walls and sits in an uncluttered desk with nothing but a laptop, pen, and notepad. After spending much of his career in other regions of Madagascar, he is… Continue Reading →
