A Note on a F.A.Q

If you picked up this journal on a whim because it’s free and it caught your eye at one of the many locations we distribute on campus, you probably asked yourself “What is Amendment?” Maybe you’ve read the copyright, the mission, the intro and the content and have it figured out. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re looking to submit your work to or join the editorial staff of Amendment or our sister publication Poictesme, and you don’t quite get the difference. Both of these student-run publications have a variety of art and writings. At first glance, the difference between our journals and the necessity of having two art and literary journals may not be so clear and may even seem redundant. That’s when people look at me and say, “Tell me about this journal.” They want me to sell it to them even though our offering is free, but I just want to say, “Read it.” The easy and often repeated answer is that we are a journal and organization dedicated to providing a forum for students, faculty, alumni, and the Richmond community to discuss issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and identity through art, creative writing and critical essays. That response is a mouthful and difficult to repeat twenty times back to back at the student organization fairs, and it doesn’t provide an answer to the people who have read the journal already and still don’t quite get it, but it’s the only response I can give without doing what I am about to do, which is launch into metaphor and poetic waxing. These people are often asking for more than the “what.” They are asking about why it’s relevant to discuss these issues and how the content of the journal relates to the mission, and furthermore, how the pieces in the journal connect to each other. They are expecting some kind of cohesion and pre-planned fluidity. Considering the political climate of the world, the approaching 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the U.S., and that we have elected the first African American President of the United States

of America, I hope that our readers will not wonder at the relevance of a journal with globally, socially, and politically aware content. And while the submissions may not always blend together and transition into an overarching and obvious theme, there is a connection that may not be apparent when looking at just the text, just the image on the page. These poems, these paintings, these call-to-actions, these photographs document a struggle to understand and come to terms with the issues that we all grapple with and, hopefully, overcome. One piece may show the struggle with an abstract idea and the physical manifestation of it, while another piece may come from an artist who has conquered a problem and is calling to her fellow travelers, “Try this path.” This journal contains maps of trails that twist and bend down dark paths, and yet even the darkest paths hold a promise of light. This journal is an archive, and when you study it, you will see what many individuals struggled to understand in themselves and the world this year. If you look at multiple years of this journal, maybe you’ll see that the issues we have wrestled with haven’t changed that much at all. And yet we continue to record our battles in art and in writing and share our journey, and, perhaps, there is a kind of hope in that. Thank you for reading Amendment.

Celina Williams

editor-in-chief 2007-2008