Hello /
Qué tal
Malasaña has quickly become a collective voice we could not have anticipated. An uprising of sorts--an homage we have been longing for that could only begin to honor the spirit of its namesake. After the French seize of the city in 1808, an uprising occurred against French soldiers by the people of Madrid, leading to the death of 15-year-old Manuela Malasaña.
An uprising is as much a composition of voices as it is a physical conflict. The chorus of rebellion is sonorous, and we believe this to be the case of this new issue. Rebellion through literature & art is obviously not a violent conflict, but a deeply intellectual one, one felt through its dedicated communities across decades and centuries. The voices included in this issue are the voices we’ve been listening/feeling for--the voices of those who have fight and will within. Voices that need to be heard and are far too often silenced.
This magazine has a film of sweat on it/a breath-barely-out-of-water, lips puckered and grabbing at the air within it/a flood light humming on a vacant athletic field, mottled with bugs and illuminating it. It is, in a way, an extension of ourselves and of all invested in it.
An enormously exciting product of this all is how inundated we have become with submissions and voices we hope to highlight. And in light of this, we are shifting all of our submissions to Submittable. That page will be available sooner than later in fast anticipation of our collecting material for the summer issue. We are so grateful to all of the incredibly-talented writers who have been with us to start, and we so hope to find you in our queue in the future.
Read, as we do, for the voice when you cannot find it/for the hope you may be unable to hope/and for the sensation unique to you: lying, back-on-the-ground, head cautiously touching, too, across the empty pavement in the middle of the street in the quietude of the suburbs, ears peaked in anticipation of what may come.
This is not what we could ever have anticipated, but it is Malasaña. We are so grateful for your coming along with us.
Con manos, besos, mejillas en flor--
Jacob Rivers and Cole Phillips
Editors
Malasaña | Hudson, NY| Cargo Collective | Portland, ME | 2021