Our journal is a place to recognize the imperfect linguistic bridge we’ve constructed between cultures. 

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Here is the place for all the messy explanations, the “it’s complicated” caveats, the mixing of scripts and alphabets, the fluid flip of the switch between languages and cultures that doesn’t make sense to everyone. This journal is for those who know the vast differences encompassed in the world, and can sit in the uncomfortable space of not knowing how to translate it. 

 

Knowing is something we’re conditioned to do: Google searches, auto-translate, immediate lists of answers for the oddball questions we have (check your browser history, I’m sure they’re there). But we fail to spend time not knowing. Because it’s uncomfortable. It hurts a little when we can’t speak our second language perfectly without our phone or the auto captions of the Meta AI glasses filtering the world into a reality we’re more comfortable understanding. We glaze over foreign, italicized words simply because we haven’t seen that combination of letters before. unabridged is the place where we can explore the water that flows under the bridge. All the stuff we glance past in our search for something that fits our reality, our language. 

 

We invite you to sit in this uncomfortable place with us.  Writers, please do not corral your story into a single language; readers, please have curiosity to explore parts of the world we don’t understand.