Dear Creatives and Readers,
Our mission to make space outside the margins was born last summer, out of a history of unrest.
Because, not despite this, we remain storytellers and healers—the offbeat and unconventional. Our work does not have be based in tragedy, and it isn’t edited for mass consumption. It is funny and joyful and risky and heartwarming. Here we exist freely.
Our Volume 1 issue, which established this community, will remain a pillar of Arcanum Magazine. Though our look has changed, what we are striving for remains.
With this in mind, it is with great pleasure we introduce the theme of our upcoming issue…
Imagine a Black Future
Inspired by, but not limited to—
The (1974) film—Space is the Place where Sun Ra, the space age prophet, lands in Oakland after having been presumed lost for a number of years.
Born in Flames, the (1983) film set ten years after the most peaceful revolution in United States history, it presents a dystopia in which the issues of many groups are dealt with by the government.
Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1989), a first-person account of a young writer who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation.
Fear of a Black Planet (1990), a studio album exploring themes of organization and empowerment within the Black community with reflections on the institution of racism by Public Enemy. Listen here.
At Arcanum, we are finding ourselves in evolution. We hope our upcoming issue inspires you to believe in, create, and share in our collective desire to be free and individual dreams. To our creatives: you are more than deserving of everything you need and want. The root system located in the top right corner of this letter will continue to appear on our print edition. While we are imagining and evolving, we still would like to think of ourselves as interconnected. Like trees, we breathe life into this world and each other—sharing our diasporic language, culture, resources, and nourishment through our roots.
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” —Toni Morrison, Beloved
In solidarity,
Arcanum Editors