Editors’ Letter: Reinventing What We Don’t Trust

The American Southwest, to many of us, is a Hollywood landscape: the reliable backdrop of old Westerns, sadistic hitchhiker tropes, and of course, the iconic Thelma & Louise. Featured in every road trip movie in cinematic history, from Easy Rider to Crossroads, there is both a danger and a distinctly American idealism attached to the cracked earth and cacti and heat bubbling up from the ground. 

So it is no coincidence that, in a time both mid- and prescriptively “post”-pandemic, several pieces in this issue speak to the desert, directly and metaphorically. Ask anyone and they will have some feeling about the desert. For some, the open-skied, tumbleweeded, no-gas-stations-for-100-miles vibe resonates freedom: a ghost existence, where disappearing and reinvention sound the same no matter how you say it. For others, the rugged reality of the dry, scorched climate and too much space to fill symbolizes the hardship of human isolation. There are those who live it, those who crave it, and those who get lost within it. No matter what our real or imagined relationship is to the desert, whether it’s that of hardship or freedom, we must ask ourselves: who benefits from us insisting those things are different?

In the time since publishing Issue 9, a lot has changed—not just for us as individuals, but for the global landscape. While this has always been the case—so much happening always, and all at once—the too-late or too-soon return to normalcy, depending on who you ask, can feel like a twisted, horizontal hope. A solution of no solutions. While the global south is being pummeled by the disease, in North America we are taking off masks, refilling popcorn buckets, and debating summer vacation spots. We know life’s hurtling forward has always been inevitable, but after a year stuck in pause, the machine of the future beginning to stir awake can sound frightening. Faced with change after learning how completely uprooting unchosen change can be, some of us may be compelled to cling more than ever to our small human safeties, while some of us are itching to break free. But whether our new beginning is an oasis or a mirage, where to run to and who to trust is still up for debate. Many of us are left to contemplate if it might be safer to simply stand still and wait for a sure sign of rain. 

Perhaps there is a reason so many of life’s questions come back to creation: we are always seeking new ways to reinvent what we don’t trust. Reimagining old spaces and faces. Telling new stories about the same suffering, finding fresh voices in the rubble, watching the dust settle enough to breathe without coughing. This is the power behind literature and art: creating records of our survival that help us survive through their creation, and help others survive through the many ways our words survive and expand beyond us. It’s the reason why we splinter ourselves into a million pieces we share with the world in literary journals, art shows, and pronouncements on social media. It is the reason The Hunger exists.

This issue marks an incredible milestone of 10 issues since publishing our first in 2018. And just as every other issue has given us something to cling to, this one—much like the desert landscape itself—is overflowing with new beginnings, old wounds, lurking beasts, and beauty that sprouts despite the most dire circumstances. This issue is an open sky and a lonely walk home. It is falling to your knees and standing up. It’s your voices ringing out through the silence, a message radiating for each of us, a reminder: you are still here. 

Lena & Erin
Editors & Co-Founders