FRONTIERS
AUGMENTED

Ancestral Stiles: Caribbean Abolitionist Home Practices

The first time she went to church, she was a dewy six years old. Her grandmother wanting her safe and protected, in the tradition of many Jamaican matriarchs, believed the sooner her spirituality was developed the better her life would be. Grandma did not have much to give her, but she could make sure that for church she was clean and in a new pretty dress with matching...

Mobility Matters: A Black/Caribbean-Canadian in the Midwest

It was in Canada, our home [on] Native land,^[i] a white settler colony, that I realized I was Black, a process that developed over time spatially and temporally. Indeed, the journey to the “here and now” is marked by multiple migrations from Jamaica to Canada and then to the United States of America. Both forms of mobility s...

Skin

In New York, I feel naked without eyeliner. I wear fake glasses during my distance learning classes, and sunglasses when I go for walks. It is brief, but necessary. The trueness of my color belongs only to me.

My partner asks me why I am so beautiful. I can never answer her, though I know it is love.

Every morning, I wake up silently. Eyes dry. Already angry. Disappointed by the air in my lungs.

I think I’m mad at the world. But I’m not.

The world spins as it always has, indifferent to the suffering of all but the wealthiest people.

<...

Unraveling Colourism’s Hold

I was an ugly girl. Mainly, I agreed I was one because I didn’t believe people lied about ugly.  People might lie and tell you that you look good, or they make like you enough that this colors their vision of you and thus, renders you pretty to them.  But people usually call ugly as they see it fit to do so. I presumed that people were either...

For Ava-Grace

I met my niece, my only sister’s daughter on January 18^th. She was three going on four months. I took in her tiny toes, and fingers, her facial features and wondered who she resembled most. I saw my sister’s eyes and her father’s nose, my mother’s lips and my dad’s ears. As I looked at her I whispered, “aunty has been waiting for you AG,” and she looked at me...

First Night, Early Days

Tonight was the night - 10:13pm my cell phone showed. In just a few minutes, my partner Alison and I were going to meet an “animator” who would take us to meet the “ladies.” Standing by a corner in an infamous “red light district” area in Barbados, my palms were sweating and my heart raced. I looked at Ali every few minutes with a nervous grin. We were at the meeting sp...

A POWAFul Story

I know what sisterhood feels like, but I am not talking about what siblings should share. This is something deeper because it is a connection that exists among women regardless of biological relations. “Blood thicker than water,” they say in Belize, but sisterhood like this sometimes actually exemplifies what those who share DNA should have. It is that kind of bond that...

Introduction

2019 marked the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Yet the turbulent events of late 2019 and early 2020 are stark reminders that Iranians continue to resist for their liberation. Since the very beginning of that uprising, the status of gender politics and its relationship to the revolutionary project has been a site of debate and contestation both among revolutionary actors and outside commentators.

Art Exhibition

The five artists showcased here all grew up in the 1980s, the first decade following the 1979 Revolution and the decade of the Iran-Iraq War. Their varying artistic approaches make their works distinct from the victimizing images of Middle Eastern women highly romanticized by the orientalist gaze.

Archive of Incomplete

This paper investigates the concept of “incompletion” in the art projects made during revolutionary times by focusing on the interrupted career of women artists in Iran during 1960s and 70s. By pointing at the vast number of incomplete artworks and unfinished films that were produced in Iran during the revolutionary era, this research highlights the importance of creating an archive for incomplete art projects.

Urban Experience in Tehran

Moving beyond narratives of a controlling state and restrictive social and cultural norms, this essay shows the nuanced experiences of women as they navigate public spaces and explores some of the ways in which the city and its public spaces work as both prohibitive structures and emancipatory contexts.

Rewriting Gender in Post-revolutionary Iran

Through an analysis of narratives from legal experts and practitioners of white marriage in Iran, this article reveals the motives for electing this practice, and the ways in which it is made legally and socially navigable. When situated within official state discourses and implementation of gender laws, this analysis brings to light the power and agency that Iranians have in controlling gender and sexuality norms and discourses.

Verdicts of Science, Rulings of Faith

This essay offers an account of the contemporary treatment of transsexuals in Iran, situating the official process in a discursive nexus that includes the law and psychology as well as psychiatry, and is engaged in establishing and securing a distinction between the acceptable “true” transgender/sexual and other categories that might be confused with it, most notably the wholly unacceptable category of the “true” homosexual.

Interview with Orkideh Behrouzan

Dr. Orkideh Behrouzan speaks with co-editor Azadeh Tajpour about her childhood in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War and how these experiences are represented in her creative and scholarly work. In particular, this interview centers two of her creative pieces which bring to light the impact of war and militarism on one’s experience of gender and youth.