Forthcoming in June

Boogie Man

In Transition 108, our authors take "the long view from the levee" and survey the muddy flow of African/American history. From the banks of the Mississippi to the back roads of Ivory Coast, manmade dams and barricades block access to our homelands. But the past has a way of leaking through: West African aesthetic forms in the work of an American sculptor, old soul food joints in the New Newark,  the scars of racism in contemporary Cuban art, and the sweet sound of the Gospel Train replaced by Soul Train, a form of secular testifying that taught us to moonwalk down the line.

 Issue 108 Table of Contents

Featured Article

"Tense and Tender Ties"
a review of Janny Scott's A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother (2011)
(pdf)

Kimberly DaCosta  

Psychologically conflicted, confused, traitorous, tragic, and deracinated: the public vocabulary used to describe multiracial people has hardly changed since the days when state laws banned marriage between black and white. Zeroing in on interracial kinship, Kimberly DaCosta close reads Janny Scott's biography of Barack Obama's mother.

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50th Anniversary Event, New Museum, NYC

Transition was founded in 1961 in Uganda as an East African literary magazine. The brainchild of a twenty-two year old writer of Indian descent named Rajat Neogy, it quickly became Africa’s leading intellectual magazine during a time of radical changes across the continent. Read more about our history and our current staff. In December, Transition celebrated its history with fans, contributors, and editors of the past 50 years.

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