by Zitkála-Šá When the spirit swells my breast I love to roam leisurely among the green hills; or sometimes, sitting on the brink of the murmuring Missouri, I marvel at the great blue overhead. With half-closed eyes I watch the huge cloud shadows in their noiseless play upon the high bluffs opposite me, while into… Continue reading The Great Spirit
Category: Prose
Fiercer than a Tiger
Surprising as it may seem, poetic political protest is a longstanding tradition in China, going back to the classic Book of Poetry (or Book of Odes) and other ancient texts. (See, e.g., Odes 191, 193, 195, 197.) Below is a famous fragment from the classic Book of Rites. In passing by the side of mount… Continue reading Fiercer than a Tiger
James Bond: The Spy Who Nearly Came in from the Cold
by Jonathan English [As the new Bond film No Time to Die showcases a character who has deepened, growing more mature, emotionally honest, and even sacrificial, the following groundbreaking article looks back nearly 60 years to explore overlooked depths in the 1962 Ian Fleming short story "The Living Daylights." Further, as illuminated here, the dark… Continue reading James Bond: The Spy Who Nearly Came in from the Cold
Awakening Love: Christian’s Descent into the Underworld in Moulin Rouge!
by Jonathan English Twenty years ago now, Baz Luhrmann’s brilliant cinematic marvel, Moulin Rouge!, blazed across the silver screen. It would go on to receive eight Oscar nominations. Still, many critics seem to overlook its depths, bedazzled and almost blinded to deeper meaning by the film’s surface splendor, fast-paced brilliance, and abundant musical allusion.[1] For… Continue reading Awakening Love: Christian’s Descent into the Underworld in Moulin Rouge!
My Grandmother
by Ruirui Kuang We landed in Sweden, my mother and I, and got ready to meet my father at the airport. It was just the two of us that day; my grandmother was not with us. The lone figure of the shriveled old woman waving goodbye in Beijing had been as firmly rooted to the land as… Continue reading My Grandmother
In Line at the Kremlin, or The Ghost of Kremlin Present
Portraits of India
by Sumit Dua In the summer after my first year of medical school, I decided to travel to India to visit family. At the same time, I wanted to really learn photography and had purchased a Canon film camera during that first year. So I took the camera with me to craft images of India as… Continue reading Portraits of India
Observing Día de los Muertos, San Miguel de Allende, México
Satyagraha: Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Resistance
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said, “the line separating good and evil passes . . . right through every human heart.” Humanity has always struggled internally, in the space between our better angels and our darker thoughts. As division and hate blight our body politic, the compelling moral power of Gandhi’s satyagraha remains a vibrant and ever-relevant resource. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the Civil Rights Movement were deeply inspired by . . . (An essay by Jonathan English)