Liminality & “Liv[ing] within the all of it"

The pieces within this collection confront this sense of being on the edge – at the cusp of human understanding, offering a distinctive outsiderly perspective. In fact, the figure of the outsider reappears throughout the pieces, wandering on the boundaries between worlds, offering a singular outlook. And yet, despite the outsiderly experience articulated in these writings, there always exists a profound ‘liv[ing] within’. As we witness through these texts, and as Ta-Nehisi Coates explains, despite the violence and trauma of the present, ‘this is your world… this is your body, and you must find a way to live within the all of it.’ Living within and without, from the ‘world-weary’ youth in Taiwan achieving agency through challenging authoritarian structures in music, to young women seeking solace from the dangers of the world within each other, the following pieces offer a record against cruelty and injustice.