GLOSS

pencil drawing of the Wheel of Fortune gameboard on fire, spelling 'VANNA LIVES' without the letter A's. In script beneath, it reads, 'or, Vanna White is Alive and Well in Southern California.'

Vanna Lives, or: Vanna White is Alive and Well in Southern California by Sara Jane Stoner // cover by Morgan Võ

To what has your Wheel been yoked? To what hasn’t it? In the raucous spit of a thousand missing letters, special correspondent Stoner sends us her reports on the marriage of Hell and the American living room. To be read beneath the diamond sharp gleam of a professional smile. Is it laughter? Is it crisis? We’ll wake you when it’s over, and over, and over again.

Eyewitnefs testimony

I didn’t know her, this dead woman, her skin glowed a living amber. Her body occupies the minds of a legion. I never met her and yet I knew her. I knew her suffering as I knew my own. And I knew—don’t ask me how—but I knew that millions of others saw it too. Though they did not feel I did not feel. And as events progrefsed, we feared what I saw and wished it, her, gone.

how to order

If you would like a * .pdf * of Vanna Lives, please make a donation of $3 or more to The Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, and send a screenshot of the receipt to: frogs.of.gloss@gmail.com

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The AAAWA aims to amplify work that critically analyzes discourse on Afghanistan in the U.S. mainstream, where Afghan voices are routinely ignored or reduced to cultural tropes. Through its forums, AAAWA illuminates a multiplicity of issues ranging from hybrid identities to gender and sexuality to the multigenerational impacts of war, including the ongoing ramifications of U.S. imperialism and capitalism.