What is a curse in a broken world? A kind of intervention, a magic, other language that intervenes where existing language is not enough–or part of the problem.
Continuing the work of the AALR Tarot Cards, the AALR BOOK of CURSES is a hybrid, formally dynamic piece of magic and literature, one that opens up how we understand justice, engage injustice, and who gets to decide what counts as each—especially in the era of 45.
To call a curse a curse, to name it a malediction, is to accept an assailant’s eye view of history. It is to look from the vantage point of power upon a challenge to the status quo as necessarily immoral–when that challenge is often the only recourse of the disempowered in a world designed to keep them that way.
The curse, reimagined in this fashion, is justice inside the empire.
Join us in cursing colonialism, the English language, elephant poachers, Asian fetishists, white chefs of “ethnic” cuisine, prison guards, abusive partners, killers of hope, those who keep silent, and more. Our BOOK of CURSES includes an “advent calendar,” so we can count down to next Lunar New Year together, opening each new box to find a curse with illustrated glyph and instructions. In our accompanying spellbook are literary elaborations on each of the curses–essays, poems, fiction, graphic narrative–along with tissue paper to tear out, trace the glyph onto, and burn to release the curse into the world.
Curses by Li-Young Lee, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kazim Ali, Monique Truong, Rajiv Mohabir, Brandon Shimoda, RO Kwon, Sally Wen Mao, Ed Lin, Mimi Thi Nguyen, Johanna Hedva, Kai Cheng Thom, Hiromi Itō + Jeffrey Angles, Shailja Patel, Ronak Kapadia, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Regie Cabico, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Shawna Yang Ryan, Brandon Som, Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, Khaty Xiong, and Nayomi Munaweera, with illustration by Matt Huynh.
Issue coming in June 2018! Pre-ordering available in mid-March. To support the project by donating, visit our Kickstarter campaign.