“The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?” George Saunders At one point in the eighteen-month period during which I revised my memoir, This Is My Body, I tried to quit. I’d tweaked, tooled, and re-imagined many, many sentences. And these were not just any sentences.…
We are thrilled to feature Sarah Easley’s final project from Dr. Castromán Soto’s “Graphic Novel in African American Literature” course. Titled “Molding Clay,” this amazing series of papercut art compositions imaginatively visualizes excerpts from W.E.B. Du Bois’ well-known speech/essay, “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Sarah Easley is a visual artist and recent Rice graduate with degrees in Visual and Dramatic Arts and Political Science. Working primarily in sculpture and illustration, Sarah explores…
In this stunning video essay, “DIASPORA,” Sanvitti Sahdev, Kelly Park, and Joyce Chen meditate upon the intimate threads that weave the complex webs of their transnational identities. Considering their relationship to diaspora, Asia, America, and “home,” they craft a profoundly nuanced portrait of the complicated ties that can at times bind, while at other times connect. This project was created in Prof. Marte-Wood’s “21st-Century Asian American Literature and Racial Formation” course.…
