Annesha Mitha's headshot: A woman with long, dark hair and dark eye makeup wraps her arms around a brass pole, leaning her forehead against it. Wisps of hair fall across her face, which is in profile. The frame cuts off at her shoulders.

An Index of Earth Words

ANNESHA MITHA
This planet is mine and I belong to this planet. I know because when the dirt hits my tongue I feel almost joy. The earth here tastes like blood, which I haven’t tasted in many years, but I remember it, I remember being a child and cutting myself on an open can my mother had left in the kitchen, so long ago the memory comes to me as if from underwater.

Memories of the Rise and Fall of VICE China, 2015-2022

RUONAN ZHENG
Amidst glittering disco balls, fast drum beats, and fake US dollars tossed around by a random rapper, I am introduced to a guy who used to work for Vice China, making short documentaries. His exact greeting was: "Send my best regards to the bosses; I too graduated from there."

Skyline with buildings.

Translation: Two Poems by Edith Bruck

EDITH BRUCK
Pretty soon / When people hear a quiz show master / Talk about Auschwitz / They’ll wonder if they would have guessed / That name / They’ll comment on the current champion / Who never gets dates wrong / And always pinpoints the number of dead.

Bruna Dantas Lobato

A New Kind of Campus Novel: Bruna Dantas Lobato on Her Debut Novel

BRUNA DANTAS LOBATO
But primarily, I wanted to write a contemporary long-distance relationship immigrant novel. I’ve always felt like a lot of immigrant novels didn’t capture my experience; those novels are about leaving something behind and going toward this other future. But I was trying to live two lives at once.

Forbes and Martha

SARAH CARSON
What’s to be scared of in a world without ending? It’s those of us who don’t get to stay, that is, who want answers. As if fear is a kind of desire, the most desperate kind of want.

cover of "Last Acts": a desert street corner with a cactus, convenience store, streetlight, and blazing blue sky.

What We’re Reading: September 2024

HILDEGARD HANSEN
For me, to read is often to go in search of something extremely specific but inarticulable, and to be dissatisfied if it is not there. In G. H., Lispector articulates it for me: "a kind of quaking happiness all over my body, a horrible happy unease in which my legs seemed to vanish, as always when the roots of my unknown identity were touched."

Using The Common in my first-year seminars has been fun, fruitful, and helpfully startling for these classes.”

—Martha Cooley, Associate Professor of English, Adelphi University Receive classroom subscription discounts, lesson plans, and more when you TEACH THE COMMON »

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