By W. Scott Olsen Just off Peoria Avenue and 11th street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a clear midsummer morning when the temperature is already 83 degrees and the forecast passes 100, a sign for Meadow Gold milk and ice cream holds to scaffolding atop a large brick shelter, an historical
Last month, Paul Worley, whose translated volume of Tsotsil Mayan poetry was released as a North Dakota Quarterly supplement contributed a translation of Martín Tonalmeyotl’s “The Train” to well-known literary translation site, Asymptote. As the U.S. continues to wrestle with borders, immigration, and immigrants the act of translation becomes a particularly
Culture of Bribes* Rebecca J. Romsdahl This is the second of four essays reflecting on Egypt. Please also read the introduction to see how they are all linked. Enjoy! Our first day of touring Egypt took us outside Cairo to the historic sites of the oldest pyramids at Dahshur and Saqqara.
Migrants, Exiles, and Refugees: Reading Literature in times of Racism Gayatri Devi 1. When news reports started coming out last week of the sitting president of the United States referring to Africa, Haiti and El Salvador as “shithole countries” in the presence of other elected politicians, my mind recalled the
Democracy in Traffic* Rebecca J. Romsdahl This is the first of four essays reflecting on Egypt. Please also read the introduction to see how they are all linked. Enjoy! After two hours sitting on the runway and ten and a half hours of flight time, our fellow passengers seemed very happy
Touring the gaps between rich and poor* Rebecca J. Romsdahl On January 25, 2011 the Arab Spring Revolution erupted in Egypt. My partner and I were transfixed by the news reports as demonstrators and police clashed in cities across the country with tear-gas and water canons being used against people
The Vietnam War. Dr. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Perf. Peter Coyote (Narrator), Huy Duc, Duong Van Mai Elliott, et al. Florentine Films, 2017. Documentary. Review by Matt Masur America’s war in Vietnam, which ended almost fifty years ago, has never really faded from the country’s memory. Every American military intervention
Next week, some of the North Dakota Quarterly crew going to get together with some pretty fun folks and talk about punk rock in the Trump era at Ojata Record in Grand Forks. The event is partly to celebrate the publication of Brian Schill’s new book, This Year’s Work in the Punk Bookshelf, Or,
Bjork’s Utopia as Utopia Mark Stephen Jendrysik Bjork’s Utopia is a challenge to our times. In our current age, calling anything “utopia” flies in the face of the prevailing ethos. In an era beset with pronouncements of doom using the word utopia in anything but an ironic sense might seem
Crystal Alberts When I received notice on December 7, 2017 that William H. Gass had died at the age of 93, I uttered a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word under my breath—one that I am sure Gass would’ve found absolutely appropriate—and checked the news source: Expatica.com. My mouth contorted itself into a
North Dakota Quarterly 