In September 1945, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir together with a group of friends launched their literary journal, Les Temps modernes, they declared, “…We at Les Temps modernes do not want to miss a beat on the times we live in. Our intention is to influence the society we live in. Les Temps modernes will take sides.”

Here at Enkare Review, we take sides. We have posited before, in our second issue’s editorial, that Enkare review is, “…more than a mix of the words and thoughts and creative products of the few artists and writers and poets featured here,” but that it is “the product of an ongoing engagement between all of us — readers and editors and writers and poets and artists — who make up Enkare Review.” In the call for this issue on inclusivity, we insisted that to act ‘neutral’, and to stay silent would not only be foolish, it would also be false. We continue to stand by this conviction. We reject the demand that we be ‘objective.’ Our affiliations are apparent: to justice, to openness, to expansiveness, to creativity. We are partisans of this thrilling, precarious, wondrous space of African creativity we are all working in and for.

And so we share our Inclusivity

mini-issue. We admitted that we would stumble, that we might falter. Thank you for your patience with us. We present this issue knowing that we have been silent for months, knowing that we have, in the recent past, been subjected to actions whose consequences continue to be felt in our personal lives and the work we share. We present this knowing that we are not the first, and will, unfortunately, not be the last African art space to have to change their location, physical or online, as a result of breaches in trust. We apologize to all the creators whose works were erased from our online archives; we have been steadily restoring these entries. It would be easy to blame inexperience or zealous commitment to the art over seemingly more prosaic questions of data security. We will spare you the excuses. You trusted us with your work, and we hope you continue to do so; we do not take the privilege lightly. For those who gifted us their attention, please continue to share in the community we are building together.

In this mini-issue, we present poems by Chelsea Coon and Ugochukwu Nwafor. We also present a Lolita-esque short story by Jekwu Anyaegbuna that made us pause.

We are still here. We will not be deflected.

Stay with us.

Enkare Review Team
January 2019