In the Silence: International Fiction, Poetry, Essays, and Performance

Here are the voices and visions from a world having need of an angelmost of all an angel of reality to help us see the Earth again, its people, and objects, to hear its tragic drone, and to recognize what it is to be human. The writing ranges from Burma/Myanmar to South Asia, China, Central America, Africa, and the U.S. From the oration of Frederick Douglass in the 1850s and the reportage of Walter F. White in the Jim Crow South during the 1920s. From the Apache genocide in the American Southwest, to the displacement of Rohingya in Burma, and the massacre of Tutsi in Rwanda. Despite the dark reality that the authors record, we recognize, as artist Claudia Bernardi says, that life is worth living, no matter what.

In the Silence is the Winter 2022 (34:2) issue of Mnoa. It features photographs of the Rohingya people by George Constantine.

Alok Bhalla is a scholar, translator, and poet based in Delhi, India. He is a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and editor of the four-volume Stories about the Partition of India. Penny Edwards is professor of Southeast Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Kingdoms of the Mind: Burmas Fugitive Prince and the Fracturing of Empire. ko ko thett is a bilingual poet and author of collections of poetry and poetry translations in Burmese and English. Kenneth Wong teaches Burmese language at the University of California, Berkeley. His short stories, essays, and poetry translations have appeared widely. Frank Stewart is a writer, translator, and founding editor of Mnoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing. See more