Transition 120, "You Are Next," celebrates the artist's power to capture, convey, and make visible the particularities of marginalized or misrepresented identity.
Aida Muluneh's arresting images play with tropes of nostalgia and hope while defying a century of photographic stereotypes of Ethiopia; filmmaker
Khalik Allah offers an intimate, raw look at street life on a Harlem corner;
Sheldon Scott (cover artist) takes performances of black burden and respectability to the breaking point for his body, and his audience; and the late
Leila Alaoui's stark, life-sized portraits both illustrate the rich cultural diversity of Morocco and aim to de-exoticize her subjects.
Also, two pillars of the African literary tradition weigh in on "the language question."
Ngugi wa Thiong'o decries the "literary identity theft" of Europhone African literature, while
Amos Tutuola (in a previously unpublished, typewritten essay) explains that his ideas are
Yorubaish and "African in conception," though he writes in English. Plus, news from the
Christopher Okigbo Foundation! All contributors in this issue nimbly navigate what philosopher
Achille Mbembe calls "a geography of circulation and mobility" in his explication of what it is to be Afropolitan. With fiction by
Regina N. Bradley; poetry by
David Ishaya Osu,
Aziza Barnes,
Xandria Phillips, and
Michelle Whittaker.
Read the issue on JSTOR,
ProjectMUSE (coming soon).
Order from IUP!
120 Featured Article
Camera Ministry free access!
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In a post-screening talkback, filmmaker
Khalik Allah talks with
Tommie Shelby about his depiction of life on a Harlem street corner in the film "Field Niggas," and about responses to his work from his subjects, and the public.
"When I shoot, I never use a flash and often times I have to tell people like, yo, walk with me down to the light. Walk with me into the light, into the storefront. But I remember driving home one night. I was like, yo, how many people did I tell to walk with me into the light tonight? Like it sound like something Christ would say to someone. You know what I mean? So then I was like, yo, this is camera ministry."
- Khalik Allah
Read Camera Ministry
Letters & Opinions
Since its launch in 1961,
Transition has been a vibrant, international forum for the exchange of ideas and our Letters to the Editor section featured some of the most impassioned and memorable expressions the journal had to offer. While the Letters section was dropped from the journal's lineup many years ago, we are pleased to revive this forum and welcome letters for publication. Letters and Opinions up to 1000 words in length can be sent submitted to
transition@fas.harvard.edu for consideration, with the subject line Letter to the Editor.
