Letter from the Editor
Winter 2024

የእድገት ሂደት || Yeigdet Hidet

/ye·IG·dit hee·dit (Amharic)

The trajectory of growth.

To mark the launch of ISSAY! Magazine, our community gathered on a summer night over food, music, and joy.

There, M:ST Board member, activist, and visual artist Marina Crane of The Oceti Sakowin Oyate spoke.

In lieu of a land acknowledgement, Elder Marina held us through the waters of her life and the history of her people. Suspended in the wisdom of matriarchs like Elder Marina are oceans of clarity from which we might harvest a few drops.

When we started crafting the Winter 2024 issue, we knew we wanted to honor the threads of knowledge that secure one generation to the next. In art spaces, the works of long dead white men loom large over all sub-disciplines, while locally the emphasis on the “emerging” is constant. Devoid of references, time and again old ideas are repackaged for new times. Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and author of The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America, writes extensively about the tide of neglect that sweeps our society's elderly into underserved care centers. Unjust and untenable, Poo posits we’re watching in real time as the care economy collapses, leaving everyone–workers, recipients, pillars of the past and inheritors of the future–worse off. Similarly, as the zeitgeist moves onto the next new thing with break-neck speed, it’s difficult to ignore what might be getting lost in the discard. Which keepers of wisdom are left behind and who will be deprived of their sagacity in times to come. 

The fervor for youth will never not be with us, but this collection takes pause to ask: where might our histories lead? From the evolution of language to music to memory, this issue is a compilation that doubles as an audit of the things we borrow, carry, change, and abandon over time. With rare and true honesty, writers Jard Lerebours and Annum Shah wade through all that is left in the wake of a fading past, a past that struggles to stay intact in the mind's eye. Grief, a constant but grounding companion. With deep generosity, Soledad Fatima Muñoz and Alexia Bréard-Anderson open the door for a conversation bound by friendship. Alive in their exchange and in Soledad’s creations is the bitter work of keeping the present honest. 

Separately and together these artists weave, strand by strand, reflections on heritage. Fibers that stretch across Chile, Haiti, Pakistan, now pierce through frozen Canadian soil as we take a moment to stop and look back.

- Elsha Yeyesuswork Editor in Chief