A note about the short story “The Last Voyage of Ibn Batt​​ûta” from Amira Géhanne Khalfallah for MQR’s Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”:   Onboard The Amsterdam or Ibn Battûta’s Last Voyage follows Marouane, a 22-year old Moroccan man, from his hometown of Tangier to the far regions of the world he crosses unexpectedly in his quest for survival and freedom. It all begins when the young man, with dreams of reaching Europe, secretly joins the crew of a boat. But the Amsterdam, the Dutch warship where he hides, is on its way to Syria. During the Mediterranean crossing, Marouane is discovered by Ernst, the ship's captain, with whom he develops a relationship that neither of them fully understand. Both are soon initiated into an entirely new way of viewing the world.

This novel is particularly attentive to the phenomenon of radicalization. It is also draws heavily from my investigative journalistic work. For twenty years, I reported on North Africa and Middle East. This experience allowed me to dig deeper into the question of why young men are drawn to ISIS. At the same time, this book is far from being a journalistic report; it is a story that questions identities, the meaning of exile as well as the nature of religion, and their relation to the world. It is a contemporary tragedy, the one we live everyday, through the media if we are lucky. It is the story of an ongoing war that might seem far away, but which hits us a little more every day until it reaches us in the most intimate places.

A note about the poem “Mmiri III” by .CHISARAOKWU. for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I am working on a poetry collection that explores African women’s practice of meaning-making in the wake of sexual harm. Mmiri III is the first part of a much longer poem that captures dialogue between two women with this shared history—though in different times and different geographical spaces—as they determine what it means to have this history and be free. Water enters my work because of its dynamic nature—it holds within itself multiple states of being, yet is always free, exists everywhere. It’s essence can not be created nor destroyed. Water, thus, invites exploration of the indestructible self. Those whose bloods have traversed the waters understand this. The voice in this excerpt is from the young woman who descended from the Igbo people of present-day Eastern Nigeria. She resides in a threshold (liminal) space created in harm’s wake.

A note about the short story “Let Them Eat Kandolo: Grain Mongers June 2023, Chongwe, Zambia” from Mwanabibi Sikamo for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I love a good market. Not a pristine library of products boxed away from touch and smell, trolleys rolling over hospital-white floors market. Not even a friendly-farmers, loose and bottled vegetables piled onto bunting lined folding tables market. No, I like a full bodied, bursting at the seams, assault on all the senses, never know who or what you might encounter market. A cacophonous African market.

In Lusaka my favorite hunting ground is City Market, which sprung out of necessity. One seller nails together wooden offcuts from her local carpenter. She piles her merchandise on the makeshift stand; a few tomatoes, maybe some greasy, freshly made fritters. The next day she is joined by someone selling roasted cassava and groundnuts, and so it goes until you have a government-sanctioned market.

As I enter City Market my heart races. I must be on high alert to avoid bumping into other buyers or sellers. I do not want to get run over by the rushing wheelbarrow boys who hiss to warn me of their presence. I walk through the hall heaving with Salaula, breathe past the earthy dried fish and tobacco, and then I am among the sacks full of grains, roots, mushroom, and other things that were not on my list.

It was on one of these jaunts, basking in the abundance that was reminiscent of childhood trips to the village that the seed for this food memoir sprouted. How could we have so much and yet still not have enough?

A note about the short story “Let Them Eat Kandolo: Amainsa 1992, Kabalenge, Zambia” from Mwanabibi Sikamo for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I love a good market. Not a pristine library of products boxed away from touch and smell, trolleys rolling over hospital-white floors market. Not even a friendly-farmers, loose and bottled vegetables piled onto bunting lined folding tables market. No, I like a full bodied, bursting at the seams, assault on all the senses, never know who or what you might encounter market. A cacophonous African market.

In Lusaka my favorite hunting ground is City Market, which sprung out of necessity. One seller nails together wooden offcuts from her local carpenter. She piles her merchandise on the makeshift stand; a few tomatoes, maybe some greasy, freshly made fritters. The next day she is joined by someone selling roasted cassava and groundnuts, and so it goes until you have a government-sanctioned market.

As I enter City Market my heart races. I must be on high alert to avoid bumping into other buyers or sellers. I do not want to get run over by the rushing wheelbarrow boys who hiss to warn me of their presence. I walk through the hall heaving with Salaula, breathe past the earthy dried fish and tobacco, and then I am among the sacks full of grains, roots, mushroom, and other things that were not on my list.

It was on one of these jaunts, basking in the abundance that was reminiscent of childhood trips to the village that the seed for this food memoir sprouted. How could we have so much and yet still not have enough?

A note about the short story “The People of Gehenna” by Tom Olali from translator Richard Prins for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: As a translator of Swahili literature, the texts I find most compelling are the ones that might show something new to the English language. When I first read Tom Olali's novel Watu wa Gehenna, I had the thrilling experience of never knowing what set of rules the author was going to defenestrate next. This particular excerpt often reads like a Socratic dialogue, but the interlocutors form a mind-bending trinity of God, Satan, and Self. Elsewhere, reality turns out to be dream and dream turns out to be reality, the dead are resurrected and the resurrected are put to death, and characters shapeshift like they're the author's imaginary playthings – which, of course, they are! By reveling in the artifice of narrative, I feel Olali reveals a great deal about the artifice of human society and consciousness.

Dalia Elhassan reads “homegoing” for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”. Read the text for this piece on the MQR website.

A note about the short story “My Hairdresser is Dead” from Emelda Nyaradzai Gwitimah for the Michigan Quarterly Review’s Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: It took me a full 12 months to be able to complete 'My Hairdresser is Dead'. I don't consider myself any type of non-fic writer but my grief needed an outlet and storytelling is cheaper than therapy, right? My hair is woven into my Black womanhood so intrinsically, that the piece was a way to grapple with all those meanings, deal with my new reality and changing hair condition in a cold climate, while paying homage to the woman who'd basically acted as my healer and therapist at some of the most important points in my life.

Elizabeth Mudenyo Reads “mom makes time” for MQR's Spring 2024 issue "African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations". Read the text for this poem on the MQR website.

A note about the poem from Andrea Cohen for MQR's Winter 2024 issue for our Winter 2024 issue: I first saw Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne in the Borghese Gallery about twenty-five years ago. That seeing has stayed with me—as has my eighth-grade copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

A note about the poem from Joshua Robbins for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: This poem is one in a book length sequence of antiphonal exchanges between a contemporary Job-like speaker who’s met with a response from a God who is vindictive, lost, stubborn, self-conscious, etc. “Philomela in Texas” was one of those rare poems that settled very quickly once I saw my son twirling in his socks and heard his jeremiad against the Gospel of Texas Pageants and its gender-normative decrees. Haven’t you loved someone so much you would eat them? God’s response to this is simply, “Have this moment, but you know what’s coming.” And of course we do.