From the Editors
Editorial Statement
When my grandfather came to this country, his cousins were in the furniture business. “Up and down all those stairs, that’s tough,” my father tells me as we walk out of a 99-cent store in Bensonhurst. “He didn’t understand why he would do that work. He had a trade.” These days, talk of my future over dinner tends to wander from Korea to LSATs, from the Dow to sustainable agriculture. At school, in the midst of Muir, my father calls to say, “You’re at Stanford with all those nerds, you know, engineers or whatever, who may say they know what they’re doing with their lives, but that’s Mars and beyond on the Starship Enterprise.” Sitting on my futon under a typewritten sign that reads No Talk of the Future Here, I tap the crust of microwaved tea off the mug’s lip and watch the fragments hesitate in the air like gnats.
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About Leland Quarterly
Leland Quarterly: A Statement on Literature, Culture, Art, and Politics is a general interest magazine that showcases the very best in Stanford University undergraduate art and writing.Our mission is to tap into the almost incomparably diverse talents of Stanford’s undergraduate student body, soliciting a wide array of poetry and prose, and working closely with authors to achieve a publication of superior content and design. Leland’s statement – from fiction to poetry, essays to reviews – will be enduring, common, recognizable, and extraordinary.
Featured Articles
The Fool and the Schoolmaster Weep with Rapture
The cannon bewitches the body…the school compels the soul.” -Ambiguous Adventure Some ten years ago, while my mother and I lived in Dakar, Senegal in an overlarge white concrete building between the ...
Princess Gets A Boyfriend
“I’m Goose,” the boy says, extending his hand. He smiles, flashing a mouth full of silver braces and saliva-coated rubber bands. He has little eyes and big glasses and a ...
Functioning Society
“Fuck Big Boy Burgers,” Larry mumbles to himself as he tries to slam the door at yet another greasy fast food joint that has refused him a job. The slowing ...
Creative Non-Fiction
Meals for Three Watch, little child
She stands on a step-stool in a sunlit kitchen in Damascus, watching her grandmother’s pale hands fashion food for a family of ten. Although her grandmother tries to shoo her away, the bird-like six-year-old perches at the old woman’s side everyday, straining her small neck to catch every motion. She learns how [...]
Criticism
Infinite Zest: Thoughts on Gogol Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe;
I was not offended.
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit.
George Clinton, “Maggot Brain,” 1971
It’s hard to say whether this kind of thing—making a case for [...]
Online Exclusive
This cup of coffeeWhite Styrofoam armies march out onto every street and come together in neat columns, cupping brown heat, melting through the slush of the city. Fragrant coils of energy seep through the veins of the machines. Puffs of warmth. Steam tunnels breathe in silence under the city. Shadowed skies above swirl the surface in dark ripples. [...]
