Rethinking War Journalism

Friend of Apogee Sara Novic has a great essay up at The L.A. Review of Books on the West’s relationship to journalists in war zones: Are the limits of Western empathy really so shortsighted that a single British or American citizen being shot at is of more interest than hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavians enduring the same or much worse fates? Judging from history, the former has both more literary and political currency. Sarajevans living for years without running water in their besieged city were easy enough to ignore, but a few Westerners without toilet paper get two-book deals. When Harper’s decided to commemorate the siege of Sarajevo, they did not bother to speak to a Sarajevan.

Not Just Guilty: A White Response to the George Zimmerman Case

This is the first of two essays that reflect on what has happened in the months since the trial of George Zimmerman. You can read Apogee’s original response to the not guilty verdict here.   by Melody Nixon, Editor-at-Large   Have we already forgotten about Trayvon Martin? There’s a kind of disbelief that is so strong it makes you wish you didn’t have a body. When I first learned of the not guilty verdict I was punched in the gut with horror and surprise. The deep horror of Trayvon Martin’s story – and George Zimmerman’s story – is tied so inherently to the body: First, to Trayvon’s body with darker skin, with smaller frame than George’s, without armor. Secondly, to George’s body, to the car it sat in, the gun it held, the property it thought it was defending. W.E.B. DuBois wrote, “How does it feel to be a problem? To have your very body and the bodies of your children to be assumed to be criminal, violent, malignant?” How does it feel, too, to be consumed and distorted by your own power? What malignancy, crime and violence wait there? The horror of this story is tied in an indirect...
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A Queer Aperture: Mia Nakano and the Visibility Project

by Cecca Ochoa,  Editor   Mia Nakano is a photographer, served as the  founding photo editor for Hyphen Magazine, and is currently the lead artist for the Visibility Project. In August, Ochoa met with the photographer in her Oakland home to discuss the project. All images copyright of Mia Nakano, visibilityproject.org.   A thought experiment: Imagine a body without race or gender. What do you see? Imagine a body with race and gender. Who do you see? Last week, Germany announced that it will be the first European nation to put a third gender distinction on birth certificates. Nepal instituted a third gender citizenship certificate earlier this year and Sweden has recently established a third gender pronoun. These are exciting wins for the LGBTQ community whose mainstream US efforts have been ardently and monogamously wed to gay marriage at the expense of issues like trans healthcare and representation for (binary) gender non-conforming individuals.