A Statement in Solidarity—and Amplifying BIPOC Voices

While our country grapples with the insidious presence of white supremacy and the fraught history its presence has produced in our institutions, we at The Cincinnati Review want to express our solidarity with those protesting racial injustices—not only the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery in the past few months, but countless other Black people and people of color who have lost their lives as a result of those inequities and hate.

We are heartened by the intensity of the conversation right now, and we’ve let The Offing know that we sign on to their statement “We Stand with the People,” which says, in part, “Silence is a form of complicity. You make a conscious choice when you do not speak up about the violences afflicted on your fellow human. You legitimize the harm that will be placed upon future generations with a ‘wait and see’ approach. We will not be silent, we will not be complicit. … We condemn white supremacy. We condemn systematic racism. We condemn power structures that protect and support racists and white supremacists. We condemn the inaction of any and all people in the face of discrimination. ”

While as an organization and as individuals, we at The Cincinnati Review sometimes have limited funds, time, or energy, we know that we have a unique position, in that we connect writers to their readers. Today, we’re using that platform to amplify the voices of some of our BIPOC contributors on social-media platforms (best viewed as the Tweet thread; the Facebook post includes links in comments, and this post has a list of links).

This is by far not an exhaustive list, and it’s weighted toward pieces we’ve published in the past two years, ones that are more present in our minds. We’ve tried to include a range of voices and subject matters; our Assistant Editor Sakinah Hofler said it best in her post on “Blackifying Stories” this fall: ” The black experience, just like every other racial and cultural group experience, is diverse.”

Still, even within this group, a few pieces stick out to us today: “Black Life circa 2029” by KB, in which the speaker imagines a future without police, based on an experience told through negation: ” I don’t clutch my / steering wheel when black-and-white cars appear close. / I don’t get handcuffed or questioned—my lover doesn’t / have to hold me.”

And in a piece from our issue due out soon—perhaps even next week, depending on the speed of the mailing service—Tanya Everett’s play-in-progress, A Dead Black Man, confronts directly the issues we’re all discussing now. As one character says, “I am to be caught in the web of someone else’s hatred—is there any possible escape? In the movies I would be whisked off by a webbed creature or flung upon someone else’s back. But in reality—I might be taken off on a stretcher—or more than likely: I may not make it off—at all.” Another worries about his safety when he leaves home: “What gon’ happen when I uh . . . when I’m out at the wrong time, and I’m wit’ the wrong cats—or I say the wrong thing to the wrong cop? (beat) I jus’—I don’t wanna not come home to them . . . I don’t wanna not come home to them . . . I gotta come home to them . . . “

We realize the list below is just the first thing we can do as a magazine, and we’ll be listening and learning over the next few months as we work to be useful, committed allies, to demonstrate our resistance to anti-Blackness in a helpful way, to examine our own racist tendencies and challenge them, and—most importantly—to amplify the voices that need to be heard loudest today.

From the print magazine:

Oliver Baez Bendorf, “Impervious”
Nancy Chen Long, “Reverberation”
Erica Dawson, from When Rap Spoke Straight to God
Kevin Dublin, “Be Smooth”
Tanya Everett, excerpts from A Dead Black Man
Bernard Ferguson, “you’re welcome”
Rage Hezekiah, “Our New House” and “Sex Education”
Marcus Jackson, “A Loneliness So Pure”
Samyak Shertok, “Operation Rhododendron”
Adrienne Su, “Latin Club Always Had Pizza”
Ojo Taiye, “how do you describe a genocide?”