Title: White A$$holes
Year: 2017
Issue: 122
Cover image: Donald Trump plug. 3D printed sandstone. ©2016 Fernando Sosa.
In an era that many had wished to call postracial, Transition 122 ‘White A$$holes’ responds to the Trump presidency. With a new U.S. Administration empowering xenophobic tendencies and threatening to reverse decades of progress towards civil rights, contributors call for continued vigilance and aggressive dissent if we expect the arc to continue to bend towards justice. Editor Alejandro de la Fuente reflects on the written word as a powerful form of protest. Cornel West offers hope, and summons W. E. B. Du Bois to ask, ‘how shall integrity face oppression?’ in an era of escalating despair. Testimony on the fallout of Trump’s election also from Tope Folarin, Chika Unigwe, Armstrong Williams and many others.
Issue 122 also celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the Roots miniseries with materials touching on the global influence—from Egypt to Canada to Australia—of Alex Haley’s family saga, guest edited by Erica L. Ball and Kellie Carter Jackson. The issue continues the exploration of slavery’s aftermath from the Jim Crow era to the present with Naa Baako Ako-Adjei’s call to remove To Kill a Mockingbird from recommended reading lists and Sven Beckert and colleagues’ work to hold the mirror to the stain of slavery on Harvard University’s past. Finally, Mark Auslander reflects on material culture and the role of objects in imagining and establishing lineage by the descendants of slaves.
Poetry by June Beshea. Fiction by Shannon Joyce Prince and Sada Malumfashi.
Read the issue on Project MUSE
Letters and Opinions from: Alejandro de la Fuente, David Chariandy, Tope Folarin, Philip Lewis Henderson, Uchenna Ikediobi, Kheven Lee LaGrone, Ladan Osman, Chika Unigwe, Armstrong Williams, Mary Serumaga.
Essays by: Kellie Carter Jackson and Erica L. Ball; John Thornton; Matthew Delmont; Clare Corbould; Raphael Lambert; Martin Stollery; Natalie Graham; dann j. Broyld; Ebony Coletu; Naa Baako Ako-Adjei; Sven Beckert, Balraj Gill, Jim Henle, and Katherine Stevens; Mark Auslander.
A talk by: Cornel West.
Fiction by: Shannon Joyce Prince, Sada Malumfashi.
Poetry by: June Beshea.
Artwork by: Milton Bowens, Joseph Holston, Whitfield Lovell, Tsoku Maela, Fabrice Montiero, Raja Oshi, Cedric Smith, Ransome Stanley.