I am losing sense of reality, or rather my established order across memory, sleep, and the present are growing into such a fluid sensorial mass that the bifurcation between fact from fiction has become arbitrary. I am no longer invested in the boundaries which demarcate and domesticate my perception of the world, but am living in the apex now. And just as my chest descends with each breath and I think there is no bottom to the body, I am filled with air again, returning.
— Reilly Thompson, Editor
So where do we go after the initial descent?
Even with our decision to change the format of Chinquapin, we wanted to tell a story. Like stages of grief we are experiencing and working through everyday of this pandemic. After the darkness, comes the period of introspection.
The writings in this issue were written long before the current public health crisis and most recent displays of institutionalized violence and murder against black people, perpetrated in large by the police. These writings cannot begin to capture the tremendous pain being felt by oppressed communities all over America and the world.
They are a small glimpse we are offering into the suspension. Into the time of reflection, sunken but hovering over the bottom. Right now we are inside looking out.
No Justice, No Peace
Black Lives Matter
— Taylor Real & Daniel Sanchez, Co-Editors in Chief