Issue 24 | Spring 2021

The essay considers the experiences of being biracial in the late 1990s through the college application process. It ends with a reflection on the persistence of the idea that society does not allow for a “biracial” or “multiracial” category, and that those of us who are mixed-race must demand it. […]

“A Poor Puerto Rican Girl’s Bread”, by Mydalis Vera was inspired by the structural social inequalities in the United States of America. Puerto Ricans have long been disenfranchised by policies that have robbed them of their land, ushered them into new concrete jungles, and created infinite ladders in the climb to socioeconomic freedom. […]

“Like many, I learned a lot in college. I learned that I didn’t like sociology and that it was pretty easy to finish a minor. I learned that I matter and that toxic people aren’t worth my time. And slowly over the course of those years, I learned that I was bi.” […]

The summer after her junior year of college, the author lived alone in a house of five, or she thought she did. This essay tells the story of discovering that somebody who did not belong in her house was there without her knowledge, and the lasting effect it has had on her sense of safety in her home. […]

This essay explores a few assumptions and real-world events about what we as children are taught to believe regarding the social concepts of family, fraternity, and fidelity. Formative experiences from the author’s childhood turn the home-spun concepts of familial love, brotherhood, and justice on their heads. After all is said and done however, there is love in the world—genuine love. None of us is perfect, but perhaps the critical period for human decency spans not weeks or months, but a lifetime. […]

A meditative piece on a brief encounter witnessed a few years ago on Albuquerque’s Jefferson Street on a winter afternoon: in the daily grind of just trying to get where we need to go – physically, figuratively, spiritually – we are faced with the realities of our circumstances. And when we connect as humans, it is oftentimes done so when we stop to really see each other, to pay witness to the brief, fleeting, often ignored struggles that become our everyday life. […]

“Lesbian Y.A. Novel” is a fragmented coming-to-terms with lesbian identity across hometown, high school, and college. Interspersed with anecdotes about lesbian bars from Artforum’s “Confessions On The Dance Floor: Reveries From The Gay Bar,” this essay contemplates what it means to be a lesbian in any space — warm or cold, closed off or open. […]

This story about LGBTQIA+ yearning and the hardships of navigating one’s boundaries — while also trying to be open to the experience of falling in love — explores how much we give of ourselves in order to get the most minuscule response, and then call that response affection because as LGBTQ+ people, we rarely know what healthy reciprocity is, especially when we’re young and still learning. […]

Listen to our first musical compilation album, entitled Volume 1: Petrichor. The works contained in this volume—from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals—express the intricacies of being an artist of color in a too-often indifferent world. Artists: San Palo, Whitney & The Saying Goes, Stephanie Henry, Tony Tennyson, whenthecitysleeps, Chromic, Beezy Montaña, Mallika Vie, Annah Sidigu, Eki Shola, Samantha Pearl, and Jinnat. […]

Julián Esteban Torres López lays out The Nasiona’s Earth Day Manifesto: “We are standing on a fault line. We’re at what can become a historic crossroad and turning point, or simply a return to the status quo … a status quo that will only continue to degrade our planet and the vast majority of its inhabitants. Our soil is ready for a new harvest. Our seeds need to be watered.” […]

And the winner of THE NASIONA’s Micro-Nonfiction / Poetry Writing Prompts Series, Tournament #5: FORGETTING IS WORSE THAN is … […]