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Free Expression Under Tyranny: an Interview with Colette Bahna

September 14, 2020 Interviews

RAED RAFEI interviews COLETTE BAHNA.
Translated from the Arabic by Raed Rafei.

Pharaohs, Distorted Body Parts, and Eclectic Symbolism

From her home in Syria, Colette Bahna has been producing short stories, novels, plays, television scripts, and journalism since the 1980s. Despite the raging war in her home country, Bahna remains tenaciously attached to staying there.

Bahna’s writing is infused with symbolism: ancient Egyptian history, biblical stories, and folk tales all allow her to write about life under despotism. With dark and piercing irony, she manages to go beyond the confines of the Syrian experience to compose timeless stories about injustice, tyranny, freedom, and love.

Lebanese journalist, translator, and filmmaker Raed Rafei spoke with Bahna about her short story “و/Waw,” which appears in Issue No.17 of The Common; interconnectedness in her texts; writing during times of oppression; and her decision to remain in Syria.

The Common is Hiring: Be Our Next Interviews Editor

September 11, 2020 News and Events

The application window for this position is now closed. Thank you to everyone who applied!

The Interviews Editor organizes and edits a monthly interview feature for The Common Online. (Examples of recent interviews can be found here or here.) Additional interviews may be coordinated by TC’s central editorial team, in consultation with the Interviews Editor. A biannual honorarium is available for this position.

Review: Water & Power

September 10, 2020 Reviews

Book by STEVEN DUNN

Reviewed by ELLY HONG

It’s not as though the military fiction canon ignores social commentary; books like Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22 certainly have a lot to say. But while many celebrated works in the genre feature criticisms of war and the armed services, water & power is the first of them I’ve encountered whose critiques discuss the racism, sexism, and homophobia running rampant in military culture. (At least in Navy culture, which the book focuses on.) The most climactic moments are not just battles and bombings—they’re also things like the Tailhook Scandal, a three-day symposium after which eighty-three women and seven men reported sexual misconduct. “A group of up to two hundred men who lined the corridor outside the hospitality suites around 10:30 each night” engaged in behaviors ranging from “consensual pats on the breasts and buttocks to violent grabbing, groping, clothes-stripping, and other assaultive behavior.” Steven Dunn, a Black West Virginia native, experienced Navy culture close up during his ten years of service.

Balconies, Anachronisms, Lamentations

September 9, 2020 Dispatches

By NATALIE BAKOPOULOS

Athens, Greece

Here in Ann Arbor, unable to travel, I am missing the Greek balcony, a private and public space: it’s neither in nor out but something in between. Poet Alicia E. Stallings, who lives in Athens, notes on Twitter: “Very Athenian neighbor quarrel tonight: we fired up the grill in the yard to pretend like it was a Friday, but it turns out lady upstairs had just done her laundry. Words were had.” (It was indeed Friday, but what is Friday anymore, anyway?) When I write her about this, laughing, she adds that the woman also menacingly suggests she might water her plants while Alicia’s husband works on his laptop below.

In the early weeks of quarantine, from balconies in Athens, friends filmed videos of their neighbors clapping for health care workers. On Easter, when Athens is often eerily quiet, as many Athenians return to their home villages, say, or travel to an island, the quarantined city’s balconies shone bright with candles.

Poems From The Life Assignment

September 8, 2020 Poetry

By RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO

Join us as we celebrate The Common contributor, Ricardo Maldonado’s, Pub Day with poems in both English and Spanish from his debut book of poetry, The Life Assignment.

I Give You My Heart

I find myself on my feet with fifteen leaves.
Everything carries its own light on the walls.

I woke up to slaughter, my heart opening
to cemeteries of moon—

the parasites, the drizzle. The mud crowning
the undergrowth with immense sadness.

I knew death when I dressed
in my uniform.

I found the index of solitude: my country
in its legal jargon, its piety, its fiction—

Yes. It loves me, really.

I give my blood as the blood of all fish.

Issue 20, Fall 2020: 10 Years of The Common

September 4, 2020 News and Events

Issue 20 of The Common will be here this fall. Subscribe by September 30 to find this hot pink celebration in your mailbox! In addition to the global, place-based stories, essays, and poems you’re used to reading in The Common, this issue also includes a portfolio of writing from and about the Lusosphere: Portugal’s colonial and linguistic diaspora. You’ll find works in English and in translation, and explore Lisbon, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and even Luso-American families and communities here in the States. 1 year subscriptions start at $12.

Subscribe now, so you can have your cake and eat it too!

Friday Reads: September 2020

September 4, 2020 Reviews

Curated by ISABEL MEYERS

In this month’s Friday Reads, we’re hearing from our volunteer readers, who consider submissions for print and online publication. Their book recommendations range from poetry collections to recent novel debuts and Flannery O’Connor short stories revisited through the lens of anti-racism. Read on for new quarantine entertainment and keep an eye out for a second round of recommendations from our volunteer readers, out later this fall.

Recommendations: Thin Girls by Diana Clarke; Shiner by Maggie Nelson; Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor; Cherry by Nico Walker, Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano.

Ghost Town

September 3, 2020 Poetry, Studio

Words by SALLY BALL

Images by MICHAEL EASTMAN

Writers on Writing: Blessing Ofia-Inyinya Nwodo

August 31, 2020 Interviews

This interview is the first in a new series, Writers on Writing, which focuses on craft and process. The series is part of The Common‘s 10^th anniversary celebration.

Read Nwodo’s dispatch, “The Capital of God’s Own State.”

Blessing Ofia-Inyinya Nwodo studied Adult Education/ English language at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where she earned the “Best Female Writer” award. Her short story “Vaginismus” was featured in Erotic Africa: The Sex Anthology by Brittle Paper and she was awarded the Highly Rated prize in the Nigerian Travel Story competition organized by Travel Next Door in 2016.

August 2020 Poetry Feature #2: Philip Nikolayev translates Alexander Pushkin

August 28, 2020 Poetry, Translation

Two poems by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

Table of Contents:

Night
The Burned Letter

Philip Nikolayev is editor of Fulcrum. His poetry collections include Monkey Time (Verse / Wave Books) and Dusk Raga (Salt).

Alexander Pushkin (1799-83) is widely regarded as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

Night

It’s for you that my soft and affectionate voice
Disturbs at this late hour a silent night’s repose.
Where by my bed a melancholy candle glows,
My verse rushes along, burbles and overflows
In brooks of love, filled with you, and at last I see
Your eyes, out of the dark shining, smiling at me,
And finally my ear makes out the cherished words:
My gentle, tender friend… I love you… I am yours!