Shame

Editor's note · excerpt

In National Shame, Yingmeng writes: "The most revolutionary woman should claim, of her own accord, to be the nation's shame." This is the first issue in which the magazine speaks plainly. We no longer take the long way around. Three pieces of prose and fiction on how the female body has been repeatedly named — as shame, as shameable, as unspeakable — by the state, by patriarchy, by the intimate room. Three poems by LYJ on how to keep breathing once named, how to keep not-speaking. Yingmeng's National Shame. Qiusakura's Women and Images. Qiusakura's Psycho. Three writers, from three positions, looking at one fact: the female body does not belong to the state, the male gaze, the husband, the father. It belongs to her. This is not a manifesto. This is writing.