Telling the long-lost story of the extraordinary female Beat poet
Thank you for the cool stream of air
You make with your grey wings
Six inches away from my pinky finger
There is a photograph taken inside a mill in Fall River, Massachusetts that depicts three rows of cotton spinning machinery that extend out toward the edges of the frame, as if the person taking it were hovering above the centermost row. The…
I have been searching online for news stories and government reports about the 1991 Crown Heights riot in New York City — a three-day clash between the African-American community and the Hasidic Jewish…
Why Was His Honor Corresponding with Khrushchev?
On 31 Chambers Street, the New York City Office of Records looks underwhelming compared to the ornate City Hall across the street or NYPD Head Quarters, the hulking One Police Plaza, in whose shadow it sits. Inside the atmosphere is similarly unimpressive. The main entrance…
I talked to Wei Zhang online last night. Due to the limited information about him online, I only knew only that he was one of the Chinese artists who emigrated to New York in the 80s — nothing else. I want to write a story about the new life in New York of a group of Chinese artists…
Out in the South Bronx, on the corner of Prospect Avenue and East 161st Street, are two adjacent low-key storefronts occupied by the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association. It may not look like much, but it’s the home of an organization that helped…
The word archives always look boring and out of date in my head. Where I come from, the word — pronounced almost the same in Arabic — refers to old, unimportant forgotten data that no one cares about. But while taking a…
“Jackson Heights, New York, would never know that there used to be a group of Chinese having classes on world literature here,”Danqing Chen, one of the Chinese artists who took part in those classes, wrote in the epilogue of the…
The №7 train surfaces and climbs above ground after passing under the East River, winding through glistening newly-encroaching skyscrapers and glorious graffiti-bombed lowrises before turning into the straightaway over Thomson Avenue. From the…