Home by Jennine Capó Crucet

A few years ago, in the fall of 2011, Kweli published a scene from what would go on to become my first novel, but I didn’t know that then. Their decision to publish something from what I was still afraid to even call a novel gave me the confidence to keep pushing hard on what I knew—but could not yet really admit—was a very important project to me. It was the first sign that I was on to something, and for a piece of that book to first appear in Kweli—a journal I’d wanted to be in because of its expressed goal of supporting writers of color, a commitment often said but not really felt when it comes to other magazines (or maybe I mean that it’s something many journals like to say, but rarely do editors actually do anything outside of the token gestures to commit to such a goal)—meant everything during the struggle to tear that book out of me. Kweli is that kind of important: a high-quality publication fundamentally committed to putting new and emerging writers alongside giants like Edward P. Jones. Who wouldn’t be buoyed by that kind of faith? 

In choosing work for this fall issue—launching right around the time I saw the first glimpses of what my own book could and would be—I wanted to capture that same sense of something larger looming behind the work, that same sense of anticipation and hope. I wanted to showcase work that felt on the brink of something huge, something momentous for both the writer and the reader—something urgent and untamable and almost scary. I looked for compelling voices, voices searching for home. They’ve found a loving one here.



Jennine Capó Crucet
Tallahassee, Florida
October 17, 2014

Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

CONTENT

Prose

Anoche, Dearly Departed by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Books Can Only Take You So Far by C. Adán Cabrera

Three Marías by Phillippe Diederich

Beauty Treatments by Ru Freeman

Emperor of the Universe by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Loaves and Fishes by Vanessa Hua

Mistakes Were Made by Shaaru Menon

Dr. Cubanita by Cecilia Milanes

A Love As Good As by Anjoli Roy

An Introduction to the Monster by Tiphanie Yanique

 

Poetry

Permission by Nadia Alexis

Self, With Praise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Self Portrait, With Decay by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

The Woman and The Branch by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Sunlight by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

My Mother Walks Naked Into the Kitchen by Raven Jackson

Miss Brim on Mr. Hook by Raven Jackson

i watch papa bury our dog in a grave the size of a pond by Raven Jackson

Skully by Jacqueline Jones LaMon



Interview

A Sense of Rupture, Laura Pegram Interviews Jennine Capó Crucet



This guest edited issue was made possible with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).