About the Issue
Prejudice and what lies behind it
The photographs and communication strategy for the first issue of Continental Literary Magazine are based on the fact that everyone’s perceptions are shaped and limited by prejudice. To put it simply, none of us is free of prejudice.
We have used for this issue photographs from the series Squares and Urban Flow by Hungarian photographer Ádám Magyar. Magyar is a highly refined tinkerer who works at the edge of technical innovation in his images. He is a computer geek, college dropout, self-taught photographer, high-tech Rube Goldberg, world traveler, and conceptual artist of growing global acclaim whose works have featured in innumerable exhibitions. We would like to thank the Faur Zsófi Gallery in Budapest for helping us work together with Magyar.
Magyar’s photographs, including images of crowds taken from above, elegantly capture the theme of the first issue of the magazine. They remind us that prejudice is faceless. It cannot be tied to a
specific ethnic group, as it lurks somewhere in all of us. The images do not refer to any particular minority, and thus we avoid influencing our reader. Rather, we seek merely to emphasize the
pervasiveness and, indeed, universality of this problem.
The Continental Literary Magazine fights prejudice by offering readers a diverse array of individual stories. It fosters a dialogue on this sensitive and sometimes embarrassing subject and breaks taboos. It shows that prejudice is a problem which we must all face and that our prejudices can, perhaps, be shed.
FROM THE ISSUE
All of time’s layers are in motion //claims upon light and dark Are rising//their splendid heads and hair (silk) Mouths in moist recesses //whatever else they may enjoy In this time of absolute pride. Pale cross on the brow // near to zero and infinity (one day you’re everything for him next day you’re […]
At first I didn’t exactly understand what this meant since after all, we are all people of some color. Furthermore, I wondered how I could begin to approach this tricky question without leaving myself vulnerable to attacks on innumerable fronts. There are shades of skin that are lighter and others that are darker, and […]
Kodak, one of the most familiar names on the market in the world of photography, launched research into ways in which to produce darker tones simply in response to interest from chocolate producers and furniture factories, that were increasingly impatient to have photographs that captured a diversity of shades. At the beginning of the […]
It has no single form. And that’s the point! Can we trust in that which constantly changes its appearance? In Blind Hope? It could be a beggar on the street corner, or a young woman, servant to a house, marched off to Auschwitz together with her masters, to the Danube Delta or Vorkuta where she […]
Seven years ago, as fate would have it, I arrived in Indonesia for the first time in my life, on Vesak. Vesak is the celebration of the birth, enlightenment, and departure from earthly existence—or Parinirvāna—of Gautama Buddha. Parinirvāna cannot really be called death, much like the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. From the perspective […]
In the intimacy of stripped-bare sounds I cannot remember any voice My hearing is failing my memory of sound or there is a rift so acute and deep that it escapes comprehension. I step on the fragile November ice no it’s nothing unsafe // only tread inspired by water on the field path and […]
‘Wanderselig,wundertrunken Übt ein Vogel seinen Mund’ (Hugo Ball: Kind und Traum) Infants trumpet into elefánt-clouds bu-bo bu-bo: winged lions sing underwater nothing to see do you dare to look into the akvárium do you see letter-snakes rumble on your tongue “the good heart flutters in a bell jar” “churchbells rise upwards” (Kassák) the image is […]
Many years ago, in Berlin, I met a Hungarian writer. He was tall, smoked a pipe, and walked slightly bent forward, his black suit topped with a matching black hat. He had a child’s smile and a mole on his left cheek. Though both of us were multilingual, none of our languages matched. We were […]
at the swimming spot you meet bodies marked by birthing, bearded vaginas, viral rashes on thighs (your own), gold chains and shame. swimming holes understand inclusion, not epiphany: you can sharpen your claws on them all day, but never wash away the tiredness and dust of the city (thus the showers) chlorinated water loses all […]
We barged along the silence of that winter. Wheat fields labored in the choke of ice. By the barracks my father shifted from foot to foot. Nothing else moved in that frozen country. My mother, stock-still and angry. My sister and I, motionless. Motionless, other soldiers. By the barracks he swayed with eyes half-closed, […]
The District Military Administration for Prague 6 was located right next door to the local police precinct and the district court. Across the street loomed a spacious palace, built in historicist style during the First Republic, between the First and Second World Wars, for the Ministry of Defense, which was still located there. Around the […]
on October 4, 2021 We have asked the linguist credited as being the most cited living scholar of our time about race, language, cancel culture, the world order, and the climate catastrophe. At 93 years of age, Professor Chomsky is doing fine. The same cannot be said of the world. Over the course of roughly […]
The photographs and communication strategy for the first issue of Continental Literary Magazine are based on the fact that everyone’s perceptions are shaped and limited by prejudice. To put it simply, none of us is free of prejudice. We have used for this issue photographs from the series Squares and Urban Flow by Hungarian photographer […]
(Sex On Wheels?) (Sexual Healing?) You’re so pretty for a girl in a wheelchair. Angelique Vito has to laugh; it’s just one of the more memorable things well-meaning people have said to her. Oh, it’s so unfortunate you can’t have children. Oh, you’re such an inspiration. “They see me in this chair and the thinking […]
Some things are clearly visible even if they take place in the middle of the night. The peak of the spire, topped with a rusty revolving rooster, affords a view of the square and the adjoining streets. The gently creaking rooster’s field of vision takes in the whole of the tranquil and unexciting town of P., located […]
In the autumn of 1944, the Russians poured across the border at Battonya, pushing out the Germans as they approached. They swallowed up our village of Gerla before rolling on toward the horrors of Budapest. The residents were terrified to death, but the village barely lost more than during peace time. Still, hardly any of […]
They’re scared of sweetened beer, their spidery wives go screwing in the bushes assured of their descent, but even so the children born of this fucking are usually merfolk (which renders the rut less legitimate). I’ve seen their tweets: a migrant hid centaurs in a gypsy part of town, they write, and inspect the colour […]
Not so long ago, on the way back to my birthplace, my wife and I stopped at a town in the province of Vojvodina, in northern Serbia. We were craving a Turkish coffee. We found a roadside diner on whose façade the establishment’s name was displayed in neon Cyrillic letters. It occurred to me that […]
Bird existence //in the shadow of constellations We are the patience of stones //in freezing snow Where are we now advancing in which time of light? How much nearer //to time before the creation of dreams? How many constellations // nearer to time before the mirror?
It was midday. In the conference room, the senior lab technician turned on the radio. He turned the dial and found Bond, a station based in the east of the country. The chief midwife entered the room holding a paper bag. She sat down at the table and took out a half-liter bottle of mineral […]
I was sitting in my apartment in Bolgona when I got a phone call from Gábor Gyukics, my Hungarian translator. I had been to Hungary several times, and my poems had been included in two anthologies. For a few years now, depending on how busy I’ve been or he’s been, Gábor has tried to set […]
It’s winter, a winter ten years ago. We’re sitting in the office of the national child protection network, we’re sorting the adoption papers of our child to be. Worn chairs, tired employees, tired paint peeling in flakes on the windowsill. I’ve been watching it for minutes, and the lead-grey sky outside above the rooftops. We […]
I am terrible at saying “No.” I’m too eager to please, or, more accurately, I am terrified of disappointing people. But it’s more than that. I rarely feel like I have a right to say “no.” And so I say yes to nearly everything or I say nothing and people interpret my silence as consent. […]
The dog is barking because Roma are walking down the street. The dog can tell they’re not familiar. By smell. They’re strangers. More barking, more passing Roma. Roma are walking down the street, the man says as the couple prepares for bed. How do you know? The dog’s barking. The dog’s only doing what’s expected […]
“It’ll be great!” the teacher said, wanting to forget that morning, “it’ll be great.” She had staggered into the kitchen, not quite herself because she hadn’t yet had her first coffee. As usual, she’d been holding her phone in one hand, filling the kettle with the other, and for some reason the phone had slipped […]
Perhaps I should begin by stating that I watch a lot of reality TV. I started early—as a child I watched almost every season of The Real World. The show felt like an urgent missive from a life I desired: young people interacting with other young people in some metropolitan enclave, all of them vibrant […]
Szinai was having trouble with his vestments. His eyesight was poor, both for close-up and for distance. During the Friday evening Torah interpretation, he wore glasses for myopia so he could see the faces of the congregation from the pulpit[1]. He knew the prayer by heart, he kept the prayer book open in front of […]