Issue #03: Unlocked

A monthly curation of Black, Global Indigenous, and POC voices

Unlocked is a monthly selection of content from Locked In, an unofficial BIPOC writing community on Substack. Each month’s issue will be curated by a different Locked In member, chosen from a monthly call for members to share posts that they’re most proud of. If you identify as BIPOC, request to join our private community.

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Welcome to our third issue of Unlocked! Thank you for being here. Every month, we ask our BIPOC writing community to share posts that they’re proud of.

Today’s issue of Unlocked is a special one. We’ve tapped one of our Locked In members,

Noha Beshir

, to curate some of her favorite reads from submissions from the Locked in community for the month of July.

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I’m Noha, a member of the Locked In community. I write Letters from a Muslim Woman, a newsletter that shares the joys and challenges of being a visibly Muslim woman in a sometimes unfriendly world. One post that I’m excited about from this past month is about getting injured and having visible bruising on my face, and grappling with how the world sees bruised hijabis.

Here are a few other community submissions from July 2024 that I loved and think that you will, too.

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SPORTS

Kyrie Irving's Greater Finals Performance, by

Cole Henderson

I’ve been a sports fan since my 6th grade teacher introduced me to both hockey and fandom. I love the redemptive power of sport. I love the way it makes you feel all the feels, the highs and the lows, the wins and the losses. Cole’s piece about Kyrie Irving is sportswriting at its best. It’s about basketball, sure, but it’s also about legacy, sonhood, fathers that are tough on their boys, and so much more. This part, especially has stayed with me for weeks since I first read this essay.

To touch a Black man’s head. It’s an act typically reserved for the trusted caretakers of cranium molding and head hair enhancement—parents, parental figures, barbers, hairdressers, and maybe boo-thang. Relinquishing the consent for another Black man to touch another Black man’s dome means there is love between the two and a yearning for a brotherly connection that disarms masculinity at that moment. Father/son pictures of dads palming their young son’s head signify lineal connection, an eternal bond, a congenial attachment everchanging.

Kyrie Irving's Greater Finals Performance

CREATIVE LIFE/TRAVEL

Personal History of La Mar, by

Ines Bellina

I love going down rabbit holes and learning about topics I haven’t previously given much thought. This piece about Lima, Peru’s gastronomic scene in the unlikely neighborhood of La Mar is is both fascinating and entertaining. Ines covers this new “it spot” from the perspective of a local who finds her home in the throes of gentrification. But she doesn’t go for the easy answers here. In fact, she asks more questions, leaving me with a lot to consider.

To say La Mar was better before the restaurants popped up is something I would claim to appease a specific type of international gaze that wants to make blanket statements of other areas of the world through their own experiences in Brooklyn or what-have-you. (A gaze that is, quite often, comfortably gentrifying their own cities.) That doesn’t mean I endorse everything about this change or that I am not left with questions about whether old-time residents are better off or not.

Personal History of La Mar

TRAVEL

Sarajevo Is Trying To Tell Us Something, by

Zefan

I read this with my whole body clenched, nodding along as Zefan recounted her visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina and her attempts to learn what a genocide in our past can teach us about current day atrocities. As someone who feels the need to witness the current Palestinian genocide, I felt the echoes of repetition as I read. Trigger warning: everything.

When I leave the museum, I look around. Sarajevo sits in a basin, surrounded by hilltops and mountain ledges where the Serb army stationed, readying their aim at citizens walking the streets. I look up at the Yellow Fortress, where tourists and teenagers now climb up to for sunset, and imagine a sniper there, taking aim at my forehead.

Sarajevo Is Trying To Tell Us Something

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Are You China?, by

Lani V. Cox

As a child of immigrants who considers English her first language, I found myself nodding along to nearly every word of this essay, including the part where Lani struggles with the expectations of Thai people watching her speak. I also loved reading about the way language affects how we think and feel (which I wrote about here just last week).

Watching their faces while I try to speak is like watching cats trying to hang on to curtains, or misjudging the jump from the kitchen counter and flopping into the trash can. Meanwhile, if a white person fumbles with their language they clap, cheer, and confetti drops from the sky because they’re OBVIOUSLY a foreigner making an effort. I, on the other hand, am an Asian who should know better. Curtains.

Are you China?

DEATH

HEART and ATTACK, by

Raju Tai

Raju’s piece here is both simple and profound. In it, she recounts her first close up experience with death, through the death of her friend’s father. It reminded me of my first realization of mortality, at my cousin’s death, at the age of 13. This is a quick read but one that will stay with you for a long time.

My heart scribbled the word Death, and clenched its fist around it.

Here I am, writing thousands of words each year, to practice opening my palms.

HEART and ATTACK

EXPAT LIFE

Am I Still A Woman Who Wanders?, by

Rahma

As you can probably sense by now, I’m drawn to pieces that explore themes of belonging. The wanderer is often portrayed as one who doesn’t belong, one without roots. But Rahma explores rootedness in this piece quite literally, as she considers whether she can still be a wanderer after buying a home in rural Italy. This piece was welcoming and warm, while still filling me with a sense of possibility.

Yes, I am still a wanderer, even if I stay still, even if my wanderings take place somewhere deeper, somewhere buried and unseen.

Yes, I do want to wander. Yes, my roots will reach down deep and reach out wide and look for yours.

Am I Still A Woman Who Wanders?

This issue of Unlocked was curated by

Noha Beshir

, who writes Letters from a Muslim Woman. It was edited by

Marc Typo

who writes Raising Myles. To be considered for feature, request to join the Locked In community.

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Missed an Unlocked Issue? Catch them below:

Issue #02: Unlocked

Issue 01: Unlocked