CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS & INTERVIEWS
Universal Table/Wising Up Press is developing a series of projects in the coming year, both books and social conversations, focused on citizenship and constructive acculturation in order to add an engaged but also musing, exploratory voice to the current questions about immigration we face as a country. We do so with the hope of creating a more generous, nuanced and open conversation that acknowledges the genuine doubts and grievances on both sides: "No matter how long we live here, no matter what we do, you will never see us as equal." vs. "All you want are our resources, not our ideals."
Our special focus is the social and psychological dynamics of naturalized citizenship, especially for women, and, in particular, the various repercussions of an intentional, personal commitment to values of individual equality and liberty that may be quite different from the values of a girl or woman's country and culture of origin. We do so with the understanding that these experiences will invite those of us who have unreflectively received citizenship as a birthright to think more deeply and clearly about what intentional commitments we need to make as citizens in a country whose essential claim to unity is the voluntary, intentional commitment to the core values of individual equality and the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness made repeatedly by different waves of immigrants in whom we each find our own progenitors.
We are issuing Calls for Submissions for three anthologies that focus on groups whose perspectives we think are especially valuable in expanding different dimensions of this conversation:
- Refugee and Immigrant Women who have chosen to become citizens as adolescents or adults
- U.S-raised Illegal Immigrants who feel fully naturalized by language, education, culture, and values but have at present no legal avenues to citizenship
- Adopted Chinese Daughters who became citizens in U.S. families through the adoption process
We are looking for memoirs, essays, fiction and poetry that are firmly grounded in experience and combine passion, clear thinking, empathy and self-reflection.Natural Woman: Naturalized Citizen
Deadline: October 1, 2010Chinese Daughters
Deadline: November 1, 2010Except for the Paper, as American as You
Deadline: December 1, 2010
WISING UP PRESS WRITERS COLLECTIVE
We're pleased to announce the beginning of our Writers Collective. Please go to the following pages to learn more about it and how you might join. We will be publishing single author works of poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction on themes of interest to Universal Table.
ABOUT WISING UP PRESS
We decided to create a small press to expand and support our various Universal Table programs - and because we love the written word, especially when it is used passionately and authentically to explore themes of abiding importance to us as individuals and as a society. Many of our publications focus on literature by contemporary writers because of the power of narrative to help us identify safely with others who may at first seem, by appearance or circumstances or culture, very different from us. Stories make the world feel more manageable by increasing our ability to tolerate suffering, to experience empathy, to marry hope and pain in a way that honors the reality in each of them. Stories teach us, in the very listening, in the very act of identifying with the storyteller, or the characters, that the existence of other points of view is a richness not a danger. In our own lives, most of us find it difficult to tell stories that have good roles for all of us, that can see our differences, however profound, as mysterious, unpredictable, but ultimately gracious - an invitation into a blessing story larger than any one of us can write alone. We want our publications to serve as an invitation to stand in that richer relation - empathic, musing, open to new meaning - with ourselves and with our neighbors.
