“April is the cruelest month,” once wrote the 20th century poet T.S Eliot in what would become one of his most acclaimed works, the sprawling anthology called The Waste Land, “breeding/lilacs out of the dead land/mixing memory and desire.” Eliot referred to the advent of spring post-First World War, a time of negotiated peace nonetheless made tragic by the shadow of past violence, during which in the poem, Eliot conducts a vividly melancholy search for meaning. Although the April of this year...

In West African tradition, a unique fixture of local communities was known as a djali , a specialized societal role that served a unique set of varied purposes. Functionally, djalis held a multitude of positions - ranging from acting as direct aides to kings to accompanying villages and sometimes even particular families. The latter was more common by far, as the role they performed was that of a narrative historian, using oral and musical conventions to record and reference the course of...

In 1873, the federal government of the United States passed a law known as the Comstock Act, a motion that would later go on to have startling influence on the future trajectory of literary censorship. The Comstock Act was pushed for by a group known as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, headed by its titular leader Anthony Comstock. Comstock was a proclaimed reformer that advocated for the restoration of classic, religiously founded, values in literature and communication....