Table of Contents

Director’s note

Essays

Why I Write
Getting ready not to be
Samuel R. Delany

The Heavy Air
Capitalism and affronts to common sense
Anne Boyer

Unbothered
On black nonchalance
Namwali Serpell

Notes Upon Arrival
Diary of lost love
Bhanu Kapil

Impetus/Impetere
The hauntologies of slavery
Jonah Mixon-Webster

The Anti-Extinction Engine
Actuaries of the apocalypse
Anne Boyer

Wildness
The willingness to be defeated
Maria Tumarkin

Fiction

The Reason Why
Yiyun Li

Poetry

The Promise of Threat
Jonah Mixon-Webster

Plays

You
Julia Cho

On Sugarland
An excerpt and annotation
Aleshea Harris

Portfolio

Lorraine O’Grady
The cultural construction of identity

Conversations

Yiyun Li and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
The merits of imperfection

Aleshea Harris and Douglas Kearney
Signal, noise, and presencing Blackness

Bhanu Kapil and Jonah Mixon-Webster
A dialogue on somatic practices

Alexander Chee, Julia Cho, Susan Choi, and Cathy Park Hong
On jeong, language, and ghosts

Namwali Serpell and Maria Tumarkin
Unethical reading and the limits of empathy