Read Issue No. 2: Nascence
content warnings for this issue include: COVID-19, death, mention of suicide, and racism
About This Issue
The body begins with each breath as oxygenated blood cells reshape and form every sinew of muscle. Every thought we have feeds our sense of identity, but, in turn, identity is also informed by our thoughts. We must hold the idea of constantly growing in order to live at all.
But what does it mean to be constantly emerging in this way? It’s exhausting, but in order to live, we have to keep taking breaths. We must.
Marginalized people are forced to confront ourselves more often than not in this way. For most, breathing and knowing oneself as they are are unconscious acts, but it’s not so when so often physical safety isn’t ours automatically, and we are pigeonholed and labeled as things we’re not. We have to constantly emerge, and we have to choose to do so very, very often.
Maw’s second issue, “Nascence,” is filled with the voices of emergent people. This is their space to enter and begin on their own terms. What happens next on the page isn’t always happy or performative, but it’s necessary to live. And…it’s new.