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“We aim to be a clearing house for the freshest, most compelling, most curious ideas about race—indeed, about what it means to be human—today,” says Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois Professor in the Humanities at Harvard University, and co-publisher of Transition. “There is no party line.” With his longtime friend and collaborator, Professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy Kwame Anthony Appiah, Gates has made Transition a venue for unusual, and sometimes contentious, writing on ethnicity and identity. An official publication of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, Transition—like Afro-American Studies itself—has become a fixture on the intellectual landscape of America.
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Transition was founded in 1961 in Uganda by the late Rajat Neogy and quickly established itself as a leading forum for intellectual debate. This series carries on a tradition of the original’s tough-minded, far-reaching criticism, both cultural and political.
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Cover Image: Photo courtesy of Thomas Sayers Ellis. Modified design by Zi Lin. |
From the issue:
“What is the community? is not a question that one can easily answer, and to make the community the bearer of human rights, and to define duties toward its preservation, predisposes one to an incarcerating conception of identity, one which eventually endangers the very notion of human rights.”
—Souleymane Bachir Diagne
“Democratic ideals must come to terms with economic ideals for the empowerment of the least among us. What is needed is less mysticism and more rational analysis of social situations—whether in Africa or elsewhere.”
—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
“Mr. George takes a fifty-euro note. It has some markings on it, reddish brown, above the stars of Europe. He wipes it down with a cloth on which he has sprinkled a transparent fluid. The note emerges pristine.”
—Petina Gappah
“In the same week that Luxolo came in, a teenager was stabbed in the heart with a screwdriver; a mother of three children was shot in the head by her boyfriend; a middle-aged man was attacked with an ax; and a teenager was beaten to death by his neighbors after having stolen a CD.”
—Rebecca Rosenberg
“Purging territory designated as home of outsiders appears to be the most decisive and only accessible expression of power available to people in desperate conditions seeking to regain control over their lives and the spaces they inhabit.”
—Moradewun Adejunmobi
Plus: Poems from Sonata Mulattica, by Rita Dove
- We deeply mourn the passing, on April 17, 2008, of Aimé Césaire, a member of the Transition editorial board and a giant in both francophone letters and world politics. We intend to publish in upcoming issues of Transition new translations of Césaire’s poems, along with a variety of commemorative tributes to the man, his work, and his legacy.
- We are delighted to report that two pieces published in Transition 97 (2007) have received awards for excellence and will be reprinted in major anthologies. Jamal Mahjoub’s “Salamanca” (pp. 138-147) has been selected for inclusion in Best American Essays (2008), and Emily Raboteau’s “Searching for Zion” (pp. 52-87) has been selected for inclusion in Best American Nonrequired Reading (2008) and Best African American Essays (2009). Congratulations to Jamal and Emily! Subscribe to award-winning Transition magazine today!
- We are pleased to announce that Transition: An International Review is now published by Indiana University Press. Beginning with the first issue in 2008, the magazine will appear three times per year in a 176-page format. In addition to fiction, creative nonfiction, narrative journalism, art and cultural criticism, political commentary, book reviews, poetry, and interviews, we also hope to include in future issues letters to the editors in response to the ideas published here. We invite our readers to participate in the dialogues initiated by our authors by sending their letters to: Editors, Transition magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, 104 Mount Auburn Street 3R, Cambridge, MA 02138; or via email: <transition@fas.harvard.edu>.