Title: Fais Do-Do
Year: 2013
Issue: 110
Cover image: Index Three Composition Two. Courtesy of David Castillo Gallery. © 2012 Xaviera Simmons.
We are thrilled to feature a suite of Black poetry in this issue, along with photographers, artists, architects, and writers who catalogue the textures and colors of Africa and the African American experience. History imprints itself upon the poetry and art featured in Transition 110 and also the prose: Diane McWhorter returns to Birmingham, Alabama and finds that the virulent politics of discrimination continues to flare in the streets of Birmingham—not only in the black community but also among immigrants. Ed Pavlić looks at race and gentrification in San Francisco through two films; and David Adjaye talks about art and architecture, saying “the generative roots of architecture indicate that it is the support, the frame, for bodily rituals. And ritual is how architecture is birthed.” History meets the contemporary in these pages, and the present continues to be seduced by the past: in this issue we witness the contemporary’s tempestuous love affair with history; what is born is at times beautiful and at times awful.
Featured Fiction: The Open Door of Paradise #OpenAccess
an excerpt from Contours du jour qui vient
by Léonora Miano
translated by Michelle Chilcoat
Contributors: Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, David Adjaye, Romare Bearden, Jayna Brown, Michelle Chilcoat, Vida Cross, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Issam Abdel Hafiz, Dell M. Hamilton, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mark Jefferson, Roxane Beth Johnson, Rickey Laurentiis, Diane McWhorter, Léonora Miano, Toyin Odutola, Chris Ofili, Ed Pavilć, Richard Prins, Metta Sáma, Jamel Shabazz, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Xaviera Simmons, John Sims, Jeff Sonhouse, Afaa Michael Weaver, John Wilson.