AND WE CAME OUTSIDE AND SAW THE STARS AGAIN

Mexican American writer and educator Stavans has gleaned powerful responses to the pandemic from 52 contributors who share their experiences in deftly crafted essays, poems, photographs, and artwork. Lines from Dante’s Divine Comedy provide the title for the book and its five sections: “A Mighty Flame Follows a Tiny Spark” focuses on the eruption of the plague; “The Path to Paradise Begins in Hell,” on the need for a road map; “I’m Not Alone in Misery,” on empathy; “Faith Is the Substance of Things Hoped for,” on hope; and “ ‘Love Insists the Loved Loves Back’ is the door through which we might come outside again and see the stars.” The impressive cast of contributors—Jhumpa Lahiri, Mario Vargas Llosa, Claire Messud, Ariel Dorfman, Rivka Galchen, Daniel Alarcón, and others—reveal feelings of fear, loneliness, and, for some, a surprising sense of connection. As Argentinian journalist Javier Sinay writes, “even though a coronavirus particle is seventeen million times smaller than a human being, in the war of the species, for a moment already too prolonged, it has been able to corral all of humanity with its spikes.” An overwhelming sense of dread is not new to several writers. Quarantined in Copenhagen, political cartoonist Khalid Albaih writes, “I am sorry to break it to you, but your ‘new normal’ has been the ‘old normal’ for billions of Brown and Black people around the world. For many of us, restrictions, repression, and deprivation have been a constant feature of our whole lives.” For Majed Abusalama, who was raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, being locked down in Berlin, where he lives now, “brought back memories from the first Intifada.” Although many look optimistically to the future, for others, the pandemic has laid bare a long plague of inequality and hatreds.

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