“With all due respect to the collective concern, I will remind you that I, as a Romani (Gypsy) woman, have no door to close. I cannot isolate myself from the world’s horrors, and this is the thrust of my call for literary activism. Through poverty and discrimination, I wrote, and if I had not written, my life would not have changed. I still face these ravages, but I face them with the power of publication behind me, with the assertion that I can make a rogue life of my trades, my art, and academia, and that when I write about the Romani experience, I am writing towards equality. It is absurd to assume that because I support literary activism that it is the only activism in which I, or any other writer, partakes. The purpose of my part in Amy King’s piece “What is Literary Activism” was to demonstrate that activism begins with words, voice, and visibility. How can you fight for your struggle, for basic human rights, if people do not know that your struggle exists? If they do not hear a word about it? Literary activism sounds through the streets and right through those shut doors you mention. To worry that we, the assembled writers, do not understand the point of activism is unnecessary, myopic, and patronizing. We need a battle cry; we write the battle cry. And mine is born from my experience. Speaking only for myself, rest assured that I do not have the privilege of isolating myself from the streets.“
—Jessica Reidy, penned from the road
There is a regenerative front that has been fighting a golden horde of militaristic technocrats, white supremacists, Zionists, corporate feudalists – whatever angle you see the transnational hydra through the looking glass – for hundreds of years in this current iteration. Some call their uprisings abolitionism, anarchism, mysticism, you can call it whatever you like; all may be a valid method to rending this empire depending on how you wield them.
Within literature’s spheres of being there have been those who transcended the Word to resonate through the hearts of humankind straight to the core of the world. These people have existed since the beginning, risking life and limb not for the future to pause for deeper interpretation but to push those who would take up the mantle to surpass our ancestors’ meteor might.
It is an honor to introduce the 41st edition of ANMLY’s nonfiction section. I want to thank Sarah Clark and the team of ANMLY for bringing me into the fold, my co-editor and cousin, Mizzy Hussain, for guiding me through my first iteration, and our readers who acted as lightning rods on this journey through curation. As a novelist, nonfiction tethers me to the soul of all that matters through every braided possibility. Not long ago I conjured the concept of A Blade Called Privilege for the far flung future. Then, now, and always, I’d like to become an encouraging force for those of us who choose the Word as a transformation somewhere beyond script into eventual, actual, blades aimed true.
Thaer Husien
October 2025
Featured in this folio:
ANMLY #41 Nonfiction Team
Mizzy Hussain, Nonfiction Co-Editor
Thaer Husien, Nonfiction Co-Editor
leena aboutaleb, Nonfiction & Poetry Reader
Fred Banks, Nonfiction Reader
Joefel Bolo, Nonfiction Reader
Jie Venus Cohen, Nonfiction Reader
Siddharth Divakaruni, Nonfiction Reader
Amax Jimmy, Nonfiction Reader
noam keim, Nonfiction Reader
Ìjàpá O, Nonfiction Reader
Shranoup Tandukar, Nonfiction & Poetry Reader