‘The UN's shiny red and white SUVs were too conspicuous, and the entire Liberian police force had three vehicles’
In Liberia, the Mamba Point Hotel is the place where the Westerners stay. There is a wide, graceful veranda facing the sea and a walled garden hinting at jungle. Just up the road, late in the spring of 2004, a machine-gunner peered out from the sandbagged booth of a United Nations checkpoint. Close …
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
Jack Losh reports from rebel-held Bria in the Central African Republic, where fighting has forced thousands into a displacement camp.
Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.
‘The morning Helin walked out to die, she dressed carelessly in a loose T-shirt and jeans.’
‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’
‘I found that the torrent of inner voices I habitually heard began to organise itself in relation to the landscapes I passed through, the things I saw.’
