Consequence Volume 17.1 is full of prose, poetry, and visual art addressing the consequences of war and geopolitical violence. In this issue, a theme emerged of how affecting a difference doesn’t only have to happen on a global scale — it can and should include the more local ones.
This is expressed in “A Trip to Kosovo” where a doctor returns to the war-torn country to navigate its broken bureaucracy in hopes of getting his nephew immediate cancer treatment (a piece that pointedly ends with: If the world can be saved, it will be by small acts of kindness). It appears in “Withdrawal” with the narrator always answering his phone in case it’s a fellow soldier or a refugee in dire need. It’s there in “The Lucky Ones” as a director for an adoption agency in Korea reveals to women the tricks necessary to help their babies find safe homes.
Maybe the most conspicuous example of this theme, though, is in the Translations Feature, which consists of works written in Arabic and centering on the Palestinian experience. Translations Editors Parisa Saranj and Fathima M. frame all ten pieces of the feature by stating, What else can we do but bear witness to the pain of our fellow human beings? Literature has been the first recordkeeper of what humans are capable of doing to and for each other.
