To feel like a stranger, to feel foreign in your own time, extraneous in your own reality, is intrinsic to the human experience, just as much as falling in love or stargazing. Just as much as storytelling. It might be the reason why we all crave stories and why our first issue, Folklore, was so well received. It is also probably one of the reasons why we travel: to find ourselves by getting lost. And so, we wanted to hear stories about those who left, no matter their reasons, and about those who stayed, despite what their hearts told them.
But tightly knotted to being foreign is the idea of belonging. And this is really (and probably unsurprisingly) the underlying theme of this issue, the thread that ties together our eight short stories.
There is a word in Spanish that I love. Morriña. As many of our beautiful words do, it comes from Galicia. It is the sweet-and-sour sadness that comes with reminiscing about one’s homeland. In our collection, however, home is the people who make you feel morriña even before you have left, as Gracie, the protagonist of Fiona Nicol’s “Pig Latin,” becomes painfully aware of the summer before leaving for university.
Tightly knotted to being foreign is the idea of belonging. And this is really (and probably unsurprisingly) the underlying theme of this issue, the thread that ties together our eight short stories.
For the ensemble cast of Holly Fleming-Gunn’s “Girl Dinner”, and Bailey, the young boy in “Gallows Hands,” by P. W. Garrick, home is the people who they love and who love them back. The people who make their lives brighter, easier, warmer. The people who will literally save them from danger, and pick them up if they fall, time and time again.
Of course, leaving all and everyone behind can also be a blessing, as it happens in Moir McCallum’s “Foreign Affairs” and Alasdair Watson’s “Scorrie”—the opportunity to find yourself and rediscover what really matters, disguised under the awkwardness of a culture you don’t know well and the difficulties of a language you haven’t yet mastered. “Conversation Between Two Outsiders,” by Naomi Head, is the perfect portrayal of this disconnection between the foreigner and the place that receives them.
For many, leaving will be a sacrifice, as “A Child of Amphitrite,” by Andre Fryer, tells us in a beautifully painful tale of almost-mythical eco-justice, served by the hands of those who were never seen, rising to save their (our) planet. And for some others, myself included, leaving holds a special kind of magic as you create new bonds in strange, fascinating, new worlds, opening your heart with such a strength that you are forever part of the places you have been to, and they will always be a part of you. Exactly as the magical crow of K. C. E. Harrison’s fable “Straying Beyond City Limits”.
In a time when being foreign seems only acceptable for some people (and only for a short period of time), the theme of this issue feels important
It is very easy to forget that we were once nomads. We have for millennia attributed ourselves the ownership of a land we once stumbled upon by pure luck, and have never stopped trying to forbid others from doing the same in their pursuit of happiness. In a time when being foreign seems only acceptable for some people (and only for a short time), the theme of this issue feels important.
Today, even if it doesn’t seem like it with our 21st-century-low-fare airlines and international free-movement agreements, travelling (and consequently, feeling foreign, maybe just from time to time) is still a privilege. And so is to read how others experience and understand the beautiful world we share.
Whether you take this magazine with you on your daily train commute, on a plane to your next holiday destination, or simply to bed tonight, we hope you enjoy reading this collection as much as we have enjoyed working to bring it to you