SUMAC

Dear readers and artists,

With Nowruz behind us, we all have new wishes for the year ahead of us, but I believe we all have one that is front and center in our minds: for the violence to end and basic, human rights for all. While this wish is filled with hope, I feel like it is also drenched in sadness. Sadness that we have to wish for this at all. It’s in moments like this I feel so helpless, paralyzed by guilt that I’m doing enough, and confusion about what I can do so that I am doing is enough.

I started Qafiyah because I wanted to feel like our community could have a win. After so many pieces of mine centered around things unapologetically Middle Eastern were rejected, I wanted to find a home and a community for myself and my art. But there wasn’t one. I hope that the Qafiyah Review has become a place where you feel that the work, and writers resemble your experiences. A place where you feel you can be unapologetically MENA/SWANA, whatever that means to you.

Qafiyah has become a place of comfort for me, a place where I feel what I do is fuel for change. And that fuel is created by every writer and artist who submits their work to subvert stereotypes that have been forced upon us. MENA/SWANA people are LGBTQIA+, students, mothers, artists, rebels, fighters, dreamers, innovators, teachers, writers, and more. We have always been more. More than Princess-Jasmine-terrorists. I hope Qafiyah speaks to the more inside you. I hope it will continue to do more for the community that has supported it since the beginning. Thank you to all the readers and submitters, Qafiyah would (literally) be nothing without you. Thank you to my family and friends who have supported this dream since the start.

Happy readings,

Celina Naheed (EIC of the Qafiyah Review)