by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Gertrude Berg is the most famous cultural icon you’ve most likely never heard of. The Jewish-American writer and actress played her most famous character, Molly Goldberg, for over 25 years on radio and later television in the first situational family comedy. At the height of her long career, Berg was named by Billboard magazine as “the first lady of radio,” won the first Best Actress Emmy ever awarded, and was voted the second most-respected woman in America after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

There have been many obstacles that threaten the already shaky power sharing agreement between the ZANU PF and MDC political parties, stalling much needed progress in Zimbabwe. Convincing the donor community to assist or investors to come back to the country when things are upside down like this is like asking ZANU PF’s Robert Mugabe to leave office.

by Shailja Patel
- Kenya -

And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him: I sing because I sing

And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people….

From “Poem Of The Land” – Mahmoud Darwish

This poem evokes my friend, Philo Ikonya, who has also sung while being violently seized by police. Philo is the President of the Kenya Chapter of PEN, the worldwide association of writers for freedom of expression. She is a lifelong activist, an artist to her fingertips. She looks unflinchingly at the horrors of poverty and violence and brings the voices of their survivors into the spaces where powerful elites gather. She mentors Kenyan girls raped in the post-election violence, protests government corruption, and wields her pen with fierce, lyrical intelligence in the global media.

by Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch
- USA -

“We need the NGOs to bring firewood in lorries [trucks]. If they do not, we have to keep going. We have heard and seen rape with our eyes here outside the camp. In one day, three people were raped. On another day, two were raped...One 10-year-old girl was raped twice. There is no response from the government. We invited the governor to come and sit in a meeting with us, but [he] refused.” — a refugee in Iridimi Camp, Chad

by Shreyasi Singh
- India -

Divorce seems to have acquired a new label – Made in India! Data shows the country, known to be tradition-bound, conservative, and family-centric, is in the throes of a divorce spiral, with the number of cases increasing exponentially over the last decade.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

In Demark, despite strict immigration laws, it isn’t uncommon to see large groups of young Filipina women congregating on train station platforms or giggling together in public. In Copenhagen, state-sanctioned domestic workers are often employed as au pairs – a community that is largely comprised of young Filipina women.

Domestic workers perform all sorts of household duties, ranging from childcare and caring for the elderly to cleaning, laundry, cooking, and yard work. Many are immigrants – some documented, some not – and even among the most well paid, highly valued legal workers, domestic employment and au pair agreements can be complicated situations.

by Emily Rose Herzlin
- USA -

Katie’s eyes twinkle mischievously from across the classroom, sparkling from behind her red hair falling over her face. I wave at her, and her gaze never totally meets mine. She raises her hand and gestures back to me briefly, not sure whether I am a friend. Just as quickly, her attention goes elsewhere, back to her work.

Eleven-and-a-half year old Katie attends a rigorous school where the students are pushed harder than most of us have ever been pushed in our lives. Her curriculum consists of learning how to identify familiar people, make a snack, sort laundry, and rollerblade. Katie has autism, and is one of just a handful of girls at the school she attends that specializes in the disorder. The student body consists of just under thirty students, only four of whom are girls.

by Melissa Costa
- USA / Brazil -

Regina sings to loud Brazilian country music while her skillful hands turn old Santa Claus hats into dresses and pieces of beverage cans into ornaments. Immersed in nostalgia, Regina relives her difficult past, drawing inspiration from her life to create art.

“When I was fifteen days old my parents left me in an orphanage in Botafogo (Rio de Janeiro),” she recounts. At 12, she was adopted by a woman who mistreated her, and soon after, she ran away to escape the abuse.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

The opening scene of Sterlin Harjo’s new film Barking Water perfectly sets the film’s tone. Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) lies dying in the hospital when old flame Irene (Casey Camp-Horinek) busts him out, loads him into her Volvo station wagon, ditches his wheelchair, and hits the road. The dialogue is sparse, the vista is breathtaking, and the emotions between Frankie and Irene are both real and complicated.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

In December 2008, Binghamton, New York, became one of just six cities in the United States to enact laws protecting against weight discrimination. The others are San Francisco and Santa Cruz (California), Urbana (Illinois), Madison (Wisconsin), and Washington D.C. The only state in the country to have such a law is Michigan.

Sondra Solovay, an attorney based in Berkeley, California, says fat people are often victims of discrimination and abuse in employment, social settings, places of public accommodation, and among their peers. She belongs to a growing community of people who describe themselves as "fat activists" who routinely fight the bias against heavier people and push for anti-discrimination laws. In a nod to the gay reclamation of the word “queer,” they're also reclaiming the word "fat." Says Marilyn Wann, a San Francisco-based activist, "If we claim it with pride, nobody can use it against us."

by Pushpa Iyer
- USA -

At the entrance to the eerily preserved torture rooms in Tuol Sleng (the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia), there is a sign bearing the face of a distinctly Cambodian man who is laughing. Marked in red on his face is a cross, informing visitors that laughter is prohibited.

Our local host, from the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, tells us that some Cambodians laugh when they are confronted with something uncomfortable, as a way to deflect their uneasiness in not wanting to display their innermost feelings. ‘Deeply-offended’ foreigners made an official complaint when they encountered laughing Cambodians in this starkly preserved museum. As a result, Cambodians, or at least some of them, are now deprived of dealing with pain and trauma in their own way.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Unlike many actors in the film industry, Parker Posey’s aspiration is not to be an A-list Hollywood star. Her career path has circumvented mainstream filmmaking, which – in her own words – does not produce singular voices or tell human stories.

In her quest for authentic storytelling, she has opted for riskier projects. Barely forty, Posey already has 53 movie credits to her name. Some of her most memorable and celebrated roles have required taut emotional performances, portraying mostly eccentric and conflicted women. She is well known for her turns in Party Girl, where she played a hard partying 20-something in New York City, Best in Show as a hilariously high-strung dog owner and the controversial art film, House of Yes which deals with incest. Her sporadic appearances in blockbuster movies can be counted on one hand with small parts in Scream 3, Superman Returns and You’ve got Mail.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

“They start arriving an hour before we open, and by the time we unlock the doors at 9 am there is a crowd of people waiting to get in. Within seconds, all of the computers are taken – and they are full for the next twelve hours until we close.” That’s how my husband Michael Hahn, Technology Coordinator, describes the need for free computers and Internet in this Phoenix suburb of around 250,000. It doesn’t surprise him that upon my arrival just before opening, I nearly trip over a middle-aged man and his son who are sitting on the sidewalk, hovering intently over a laptop.