Before After
To deconstruct something is not to destroy it, but to understand how it was built, part by part; what can our new narratives teach us about the reality that’s been there all along?
The reality we live in today is illuminating fundamental truths about who we are as individuals and as a society. From the personal — how much social interaction we truly require in a given day — to the institutional — faulty systems that underserve those who are most vulnerable — the coronavirus pandemic has become a mirror that shows us the best and the worst of who we are, and can be. For some, being quarantined is an inconvenience; for others, it is incapacitating. For still others on the frontline, it’s an impossibility. The inequities that are endemic to our societal structures are glaringly obvious when we are ousted from our usual cocoons of comfort, familiarity, and avoidance. Regardless of what segment of life we come from, the context of our everyday has been disrupted; how, then, can we rethink how we fit into the social fabric?
We want to define things in ages or chapters, but perhaps the truth is that our existence is one long book written on one single, infinite page. What other new truths are we discovering as we sink into yet another week of lockdown? Perhaps it is that we actually do require our partners to be out of the house for eight hours a day in order for our relationships to work. Maybe it’s that we really do want to put others’ needs before our own — but only if we’re sure our own needs will be met afterward. Perhaps we’re realizing how the time and care we’ve poured into our communities is coming back manifold; maybe we’re recognizing that there has never been a better time to commit to each other, to deepen our connections, to say: yes, always, through this, and through everything.
For this issue, we want to examine the truths and the lies that we’re uncovering amid this global pandemic. With this call, we seek to elevate the already and the always, the ordinary and the overlooked. We want to know: What lies do we believe though we know better? What lies comfort us? And what truths about the worst part of ourselves are we slowly starting to reckon with? There is a certain quiet and space for reflection at the center of the disruption that is worth descending into, even if it is difficult. Tell us about a time you had to reevaluate a value system you grew up with. Tell us about a truth that sustains you through hardships, something that has acted as a pillar you return to in times of uncertainty. Tell us about the language of loss, and how truth and lies might inform its shape. To deconstruct something is not to destroy it, but to understand how it was built, part by part; what can our new narratives teach us about the reality that’s been there all along?
The featured image is “Burning frayed rope at breaking point” by Chernetskaya.
- All Post
- 12: Before After
I have wasted these curses on minor disappointments.
I could talk your ear off about the current state of Mexican-American literature.
anjing my mother calls you. / how dare you defy what god has given you?
What makes a country great? Surely the answer doesn’t lie in vast tracts of forest land that have been converted…
I want to talk to you about awe / what it means to turn / yourself over
I am standing at the ironing board, running a hot iron over a folded and stitched-together strip of quilting cotton…
TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, creates the featured art for Issue 12: Before After
The first time I watched you kill a fish, you were methodical and emotionless, striking it in one blow.
“I need you to do something for me,” you said as you sat across from me in the locker room.
When we raise our hands now, the air is flush / with vacancies.
My students & co-workers worry / if I return to America, I’ll catch COVID / or a bullet in my…
retracing frowns is how we forego boundaries, to chase greener passports.
Four weeks. Four weeks and still the virus. Things that were once normal now seem absurd.
Dust remembers what we try to forget, preserves the hidden, and keeps evidence in wait.
The way restaurants work has never been fair — yet everyone just seems to accept it.
it is a form of mothering / to hurt yourself / rather than others