On Freedom:
Spirit, Art, and State

Series Editor Frank Stewart.
Guest Editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain.

The various meanings of freedom are difficult to explain in the discursive language of theory and philosophy. But authors of fiction, poetry, and other narrative forms—using metaphor, parable, and figurative speech—are often at home with what is difficult and too subtle for reason alone.

Residing in countries throughout Asia and North America, the authors in On Freedom help us understand the need for cultural, spiritual, and intellectual freedoms in order to have a life that is fully realized.

Essays in On Freedom are by Japanese writer Mutsuo Takahashi, Tibetan Woeser Tsering, and American Phil Choi. Drama is by American writer Catherine Filloux. Fiction is by Chinese writers A Yi and Zhang Yihe; South Asian Sukrita Paul Kumar; Americans Quan Barry and Andrew Lam; Canadian Susan Musgrave; American Thersa Matsuura, now living in Japan; and Filipino Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. Poetry is by Chinese writer Chen Dongdong; Burmese Khin Aung Aye, Thitsar Ni, and Tin Moe; and Americans W. S. Di Piero, Tess Gallagher, Melissa Kwasny, and Naomi Long.

The art is by well-known photographer Linda Connor.

Extract

Tears
A strand of gray hair
a decade gone

In those Years
the honey wasn’t sweet
mushrooms wouldn’t sprout
farmlands were parched

The mist hung low
the skies were gloomy
Clouds of dust on the cart tracks
Acacia and creepers
and thorn-spiral blossoms
But it never rained

—from “Desert Years” by Tin Moe, translated by Maung Tha Noe and Christopher Merrill

200 pp., winter 2012 (24:2), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-3855-3
Project Muse
JSTOR