Editors’ Letter

Dear Mister community,

We missed you.

When we chose movement and migration as the animating themes of our fourth issue, we could not have known how violently they would come to press against the present. What began as an expansive inquiry has sharpened into something heartbreaking and profoundly urgent. Writing from our desks in Georgia and Boston, we meet you inside that urgency.

Movement is a condition of being alive on this earth. Rivers cut new paths when the ground resists them. Continents rearrange themselves across centuries of slow pressure. The earth groans and sighs beneath us, reminding us that nothing living remains fixed. Migration predates nation-states, exceeds policy, and is indexed in the body. It is inherited across generations, carried in gesture and tongue, hidden when necessary, surfacing when called.

The works in this issue approach movement through memory, dreamscapes, play, and return. They are not comprehensive of this moment, nor could they be. But we hope they offer you something to hold onto: a sense of company and continuity, if nothing else.

If there is a call within these pages, it is toward reciprocity. Many of the artists and writers in our network come from immigrant communities or are children of migration themselves. Their stories have shaped Mister since its inception, and will continue to serve as our lodestars as we approach our next chapter. We hope their work might serve as a reminder that care is not suspended in the abstract. We encourage you to get involved with local organizations monitoring ICE, and materially supporting your immigrant neighbors if you are in a position to do so. Show up where you are, and offer what you can.

To our contributors: thank you for your patience and depth of engagement. Exciting things are ahead.

LOVE YOU

Tima Swaray & PJ Livingstone

Editors-in-Chief