June 15, 2021

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the newest annual issue of Barzakh! And what a year it has been! 

At this time last year, Donald Trump was President, the US was the one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic, and BLM protests were taking place across the US and the world. 

It was within this context that we chose the theme the thirteenth issue of Barzakh: invisibility. The world had been brought to its knees by an invisible virus. The resulting lockdowns meant that people were seeing less of each other. The disproportionate effects of the virus on marginalized and historically disenfranchised groups was bringing to light systemic inequities that had existed long before the pandemic had started. The murder of George Floyd brought greater visibility to the brutality that so many Black and brown people have suffered at the hands of police. And BLM protestors were attempting to keep this suffering visible by saying the names of victims like Breonna Taylor as loudly as they could. 

No matter how modest, a literary journal helps to make people visible. But we don’t mean this in any abstract sense—we mean it almost literally: a journal exposes people to other people. We’ve seen it happening already. We, as editors, have had the pleasure of working with our contributors. Some of our contributors have already read each other’s work. Some of them have already emailed us to say how much they admire the work of their fellow contributors. Some of them have already liked each other’s work on Twitter and Instagram. 

Like I said, it’s modest, but it’s not nothing. In fact, it might be everything. But at the very least, it represents an aspiration: that Barzakh might be a platform that helps us to become more aware of each other. 

With that in mind, we’re happy to report that the sixty-three artists and writers who contributed to this issue represent at least twenty-four countries and five continents. In Arabic, the word Barzakh is used to refer to a place that exists between death and resurrection, and as a journal with an “internationalist stance,” our hope is that Barzakh will be something like Barzakh: which is to say, a space that exists between borders. 

The work of these writers and artists would exist without a journal to publish it, so in a sense, a journal is a bit like show and tell. And we are a bit like little kids, standing at the front of the classroom and saying, “Hey, look at all this writing and art! Isn’t it neat?!”

We’re excited to show you the stuff we think is neat, and like nervous little kids, we hope you’ll think it’s neat too.

Welcome to the thirteenth issue of Barzakh.