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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #136
Granta 136: Legacies of Love
What happens after you fall in love? The essays and fiction in this issue of Granta look at the risk and reward of loving someone. 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' by the late African-American filmmaker Kathleen Collins, captures the atmosphere of the Civil Rights movement in New York and the dangerous risks taken by its activists. In an iconic essay 'Africa's Future Has No Place for Stupid Black Men' young Nigerian writer Pwaangulongii Daoud delivers a passionate elegy for his friend C-Boy, a gay activist in homophobic Nigeria. And Claire Hajaj describes a perilous journey from Raqqa to Allepo to Beirut, for a refugee from Islamic State. Suzanne Brogger describes the pain of being stalked; Emma Cline depicts a taut sibling relationship; Steven Dunn on a violent childhood; and Gwendoline Riley on first love. Also in this issue: FICTION Patrick Flanery, Victor Lodato; POETRY Vahni Capildeo, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Sylvia Legris and Hoa Nguyen; PHOTOGRAPHY Jacob Aue Sobol with an introduction by Joanna Kavenna"
224 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2016
8 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Sigrid Rausing
45 books52 followersSigrid Rausing is Editor and Publisher of Granta magazine and Publisher of Granta and Portobello Books. She is the author of History, Memory and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia: The End of a Collective Farm and Everything is Wonderful, which has been translated into four different languages.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 19, 2021
This issue is from Summer 2016 — not sure if reading this now counts as being fashionably late, but I'm glad to have arrived.
Legacies of Love includes fiction, essays, poetry, visual art, and photographs that each touch upon the myriad forms the emotion takes, from familial and romantic to the love of self, country, identity, life. As may be evident, this makes all the pieces either neat hits or clean misses.
The greatest of the hits for me was the late filmmaker Kathleen Collins' "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love":
Amongst the selection of fiction, I also enjoyed Victor Lodato's "The Tenant" and Steven Dunn's "Potted Meat". A memoir fragment by Suzanne Brøgger titled simply as "Diaries" also captivated me for the sheer grace with which the author captures various shades and inflections of love in it — love for her boyfriend; the bizarre strange 'love' that stalkers have; the love of fans who misplace their addresses to symbols rather than people, and the fear of the love that must follow when you are pregnant.
I was similarly moved by Pwaangulongii Dauod's essay on C. Boy, an LGBT organiser and activist, titled with a line he'd left behind: "Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men". Claire Hajaj's piece on Syria, on the other hand, felt as if it had been included merely on account of its timeliness.
Most of the poems seemed to me like an incomprehensible mess, but Melissa Lee-Houghton's managed to leave a mark. Even so, Jacob Aue Sobol's Sabine; a series of portraits of the intimacies of love in, and along with, the harshness of the Arctic wilderness; felt more fluid and like poetry than anything else in the volume.
3.5 stars.
Legacies of Love includes fiction, essays, poetry, visual art, and photographs that each touch upon the myriad forms the emotion takes, from familial and romantic to the love of self, country, identity, life. As may be evident, this makes all the pieces either neat hits or clean misses.
The greatest of the hits for me was the late filmmaker Kathleen Collins' "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love":
‘It’s the year of “the human being”. The year of race-creed-color blindness. It’s 1963.’With a captivating narrative full of subtle punches set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in America, this one singlehandedly renewed my belief in the potency and forcefulness of the short story. I recommend this highly, especially since it is no longer behind a paywall (read it here).
Amongst the selection of fiction, I also enjoyed Victor Lodato's "The Tenant" and Steven Dunn's "Potted Meat". A memoir fragment by Suzanne Brøgger titled simply as "Diaries" also captivated me for the sheer grace with which the author captures various shades and inflections of love in it — love for her boyfriend; the bizarre strange 'love' that stalkers have; the love of fans who misplace their addresses to symbols rather than people, and the fear of the love that must follow when you are pregnant.
I was similarly moved by Pwaangulongii Dauod's essay on C. Boy, an LGBT organiser and activist, titled with a line he'd left behind: "Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men". Claire Hajaj's piece on Syria, on the other hand, felt as if it had been included merely on account of its timeliness.
Most of the poems seemed to me like an incomprehensible mess, but Melissa Lee-Houghton's managed to leave a mark. Even so, Jacob Aue Sobol's Sabine; a series of portraits of the intimacies of love in, and along with, the harshness of the Arctic wilderness; felt more fluid and like poetry than anything else in the volume.
3.5 stars.
July 24, 2016
One of the strongest issues of Granta this year, centering on love of all sorts - of family, home, country, body, soul and mind.
Amazing choices from all over the world, too.
I ached looking at Jacob Sobol's photographs from Greenland, of the icy life of the village and his lover, Sabine. Just amazing.
Kathleen Collins - raised in relative wealth in NYC, she muses on the interweavings of black and white in the 1960s. Powerful stuff.
Emma Cline - and where is Arcadia? How to fit into a family by marriage when you see the dark cracks within it?
Steven Dunn - Learning to draw and live your dreams when all surrounding you thwarts that.
Patrick Flanery - Adoption of a damaged child who yearns to be part of a painting that makes sense to him. The travails of adoptive parenting. And the joys.
Victor Lodato - One of the most powerful stories, I think. A wounded woman tries to make good over many years with a young boy whose sensitivity and gift she sees.
Suzanne Brogger - the diaries cut through to the chase of sharing life for the first time amid horrific odds. Gaining and losing self and self-worth, trying to remain true to fiercely held beliefs, navigating the personal in a public world gone mad.
Gwendoline Riley - "Get...behind...the project...or...get out!" Deft movement between the present tense in an attempt to make a relationship with a difficult man to the past times with a searching and difficult mother.
Claire Hajaj - the searing story of Helin, who, alone with her daughter Lulu, escapes Assad and Isis and a host of other war mongers and terrorist organizations, and seeks help. Just heartbreaking and an apt microcosm for the millions of refugees who fled and flee and die and languish and find new lives.
Pwaangulongii Dauod - staccato and sad recounting of the life of C-Boy who tried hard to make visible safety for Nigerian "others" - gay, trans,and "others." "We are neither a theory nor a movement. We are open space: Africa's newest genre. We are the unemployables, dissidents, techies, pan-Africanists, designers, etc., coming out...in our different corners, to challenge the centuries-old notion that Africa does little thinking, trades badly and is even worse at buying."
The four poets included in this anthology are amazing, too, especially Melissa Lee-Houghton.
Amazing choices from all over the world, too.
I ached looking at Jacob Sobol's photographs from Greenland, of the icy life of the village and his lover, Sabine. Just amazing.
Kathleen Collins - raised in relative wealth in NYC, she muses on the interweavings of black and white in the 1960s. Powerful stuff.
Emma Cline - and where is Arcadia? How to fit into a family by marriage when you see the dark cracks within it?
Steven Dunn - Learning to draw and live your dreams when all surrounding you thwarts that.
Patrick Flanery - Adoption of a damaged child who yearns to be part of a painting that makes sense to him. The travails of adoptive parenting. And the joys.
Victor Lodato - One of the most powerful stories, I think. A wounded woman tries to make good over many years with a young boy whose sensitivity and gift she sees.
Suzanne Brogger - the diaries cut through to the chase of sharing life for the first time amid horrific odds. Gaining and losing self and self-worth, trying to remain true to fiercely held beliefs, navigating the personal in a public world gone mad.
Gwendoline Riley - "Get...behind...the project...or...get out!" Deft movement between the present tense in an attempt to make a relationship with a difficult man to the past times with a searching and difficult mother.
Claire Hajaj - the searing story of Helin, who, alone with her daughter Lulu, escapes Assad and Isis and a host of other war mongers and terrorist organizations, and seeks help. Just heartbreaking and an apt microcosm for the millions of refugees who fled and flee and die and languish and find new lives.
Pwaangulongii Dauod - staccato and sad recounting of the life of C-Boy who tried hard to make visible safety for Nigerian "others" - gay, trans,and "others." "We are neither a theory nor a movement. We are open space: Africa's newest genre. We are the unemployables, dissidents, techies, pan-Africanists, designers, etc., coming out...in our different corners, to challenge the centuries-old notion that Africa does little thinking, trades badly and is even worse at buying."
The four poets included in this anthology are amazing, too, especially Melissa Lee-Houghton.
February 16, 2017
Granta used to be a surprise and a delight, sort of like a longer version of Harper's Readings. Here the stories are as committed to uneventfulness under the sacred writ of lit fic, but without the wordplay to shore them up. Take a tale about a lonely drunk who moves into a farm house, strikes up a friendship with an illiterate neighbor kid, and helps him by making him read Tolstoy to her. It pretty much ends the way you'd expect, only toned down because that's soooo easily confused with subtlety, but like Spielberg attempting seriousness, only dulls the narrative and makes its bromides all the more bile shootingly awful--not a wild arc of puke mind you, no technicolor yawn, but a cautious beige that matches the library furniture. A story about Syria feels like it's slapped in there to be timely. Daoud's essay and Kathleen Collins' Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' were the only pieces that felt like the old Granta. Find them elsewhere.
February 2, 2020
This was another pretty good issue of Granta. It contained a fair bit that will stick with me for while.
Kathleen Collin's essay on the Upper West side, "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love" was pretty interesting.
I was a big fan of Emma Cline's exploration of the complications involved with a spouses family in "Arcadia".
"Interior: Monkeyboy" by Patrick Flannery, about finding a connection with an adopted son was brilliant.
"The Tenant" about an alcoholic loner and her relationship with the landlord's son was well worth a read.
I also "enjoyed" the tragic essay on homosexuality in Nigeria, Pwaangulongii Dauod's "Africa's Future has No Space for Stupid Black Men."
Kathleen Collin's essay on the Upper West side, "Whatever Happened to Interracial Love" was pretty interesting.
I was a big fan of Emma Cline's exploration of the complications involved with a spouses family in "Arcadia".
"Interior: Monkeyboy" by Patrick Flannery, about finding a connection with an adopted son was brilliant.
"The Tenant" about an alcoholic loner and her relationship with the landlord's son was well worth a read.
I also "enjoyed" the tragic essay on homosexuality in Nigeria, Pwaangulongii Dauod's "Africa's Future has No Space for Stupid Black Men."
December 4, 2016
One of the worst Grantas ever. 135 was filled with perceptive, clever, meaningful Irish writing. This, except for the last two stories, reads like a really bad MFA writing program rejection pile. Dull, plodding, mostly pointless. I'm embarrassed for American writers. Get out and live.
December 26, 2016
Very good issue. Especially liked the pieces by Kathleen Collins, Steven Dunn, Patrick Flannery, Victor Lodato, Claire Hajaj and Pwaangulongii Dauod. Other selections were just okay and the poetry incomprehensible (I always say that about poetry, I guess).
October 4, 2025
I never knew such a thing as Granta existed: a literary magazine devoted not just to fiction and essays, but to the world itself, refracted through many voices. Discovering it has been like opening a door to a hidden library, one that speaks directly to the soul.
My first issue, Granta 136: Legacies of Love, was an awakening. Within its pages I encountered lives and truths I might never otherwise have touched. A story from Nigeria revealed how love and identity can be criminalised, how people can be arrested simply for being who they are. Another piece traced a tender bond between a woman tenant and a boy from a broken family, showing how love can grow in the most unexpected, fragile spaces.
What astonishes me about Granta is the variety: each issue feels like a mosaic of human experience—tragic, beautiful, surprising, and profound. Love here is not sentimental, but elemental, capable of shaping lives and leaving behind legacies of both light and sorrow.
This magazine has touched me deeply. It has already introduced me to new writers and new ways of seeing, and I can’t wait to open the next issue, to be surprised and moved again.
April 19, 2018
Interesting collection and well curated – different aspects of love and loss, and their relationship to each other, examined in a variety of contexts. The collection was bookended (almost) by two pieces that use love/loss to examine racial contexts: Kathleen Collins ‘whatever happened to interracial love?’ addresses a “moment” in the 1960s where the tension of interracial relations was being addressed and embraced; Pwaangulongii Dauod’s ‘Africa’s Future Has No Space For Stupid Black Men’ addresses the persecution the gay community faces in Nigeria, and the social response to it, looking in which homosexuality is decriminalised and embraced, and in a distinctly African way. Other highlights include Patrick Flanery’s ‘Interior: Monkeyboy’ about a gay couple adopting and connecting to their new son through provocative artwork, and the poem which closes the collection: ‘The Heart Compared to a Seed, c. 1508 (after Leonardo da Vinci)' by Sylvia Legris with its focus on love, growth and art provided a fitting end which tied up many of the themes.
November 16, 2017
Another solid collection from Granta. "Interior: Monkeyboy" by Patrick Flanery and "The Tenant" by Victor Lodato are stellar. Melissa Lee-Houghton's poem is a kick and the penultimate story about Syrian refugees is heartbreaking, infuriating, and hopeful, altogether.
Well done!
Well done!
February 6, 2017
Excellent writing and short stories of all types of love....from all over the world
March 14, 2019
Granta 136: Legacies of Love was a very eclectic composition of works centred around the central theme. I particularly enjoyed 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?', 'Potted Meat' and 'The Tenant', but the overall standouts were 'Raqqa Road: A Syrian Escape' and 'Africa's Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men', which were both so moving in uniquely different ways.
Memorable Quotes
Introduction - Sigrid Rausing
“Love and pain, love and loss: the two are twinned. To know love is to know (or to imagine) the loss of love.”
“Love is haunted by loss; generosity is haunted by guilt.”
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? - Kathleen Collins
“Everyone who is anyone will find at least one ’negro’ to bring along home for dinner. It’s the year of ‘the human being’. It’s 1963: whatever happened to interracial love?”
“...to her the young freedom rider of her dreams is colorless (as indeed he is), that their feelings begin where color ends, (as indeed they must), that if only he could understand that race as an issue, race as a social factor, race as a political or economic stumbling block, race is part of the past. Can’t he see that love is color-free?”
“Negro’ sons went forth to the Woolworths and Grants and Grayhounds of America to prove to their fathers that they could eat and sit and ride as well in the front as in the back, as well seated as standing.”
“And what of love, instead of politics? What of that nubile fleeting sensation, when one is color-blind, religion-blind, name, age, aid, vital-statistics blind? What about the love of two ‘human beings’, who mate, in spite of or because of or instead of or after the fact of?”
The Tenant - Victor Lodato
“She didn’t read much anymore, but she kept the books on her shelves. Occasionally she took one down and picked out a sentence – speaking it out loud, then swallowing it like a vitamin.”
“Harland shook his head, amazed that she’d somehow done it – improved him. Hell, she’d nearly made him beautiful.”
First Love - Gwendoline Riley
“Oh well I’m not allowed an opinion you see, not having been to art school’, she said. ‘My opinion’s worthless apparently, so ... but I think they’re all crap, yes. Absolute crap, so ...”
The Price You See Reflects the Poor Quality of the Item and Your Lack of Desire for It – Melissa Lee-Houghton
“...now I need to always risk losing something to feel safe.”
Raqqa Road: A Syrian Escape - Claire Hajaj
“It’s a fatal human flaw; we burrow when we should flee, we cling to our homes until the last barrier is breached, until running is the only option left.”
Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men - Pwaangulongii Dauod
“Tears taste like salt. Our tears. We are salts. Africa’s salt. And we are here shedding tears because we are trampled upon on every side. But these men don’t know this: that the more they trample upon us, the tastier we become.”
Memorable Quotes
Introduction - Sigrid Rausing
“Love and pain, love and loss: the two are twinned. To know love is to know (or to imagine) the loss of love.”
“Love is haunted by loss; generosity is haunted by guilt.”
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? - Kathleen Collins
“Everyone who is anyone will find at least one ’negro’ to bring along home for dinner. It’s the year of ‘the human being’. It’s 1963: whatever happened to interracial love?”
“...to her the young freedom rider of her dreams is colorless (as indeed he is), that their feelings begin where color ends, (as indeed they must), that if only he could understand that race as an issue, race as a social factor, race as a political or economic stumbling block, race is part of the past. Can’t he see that love is color-free?”
“Negro’ sons went forth to the Woolworths and Grants and Grayhounds of America to prove to their fathers that they could eat and sit and ride as well in the front as in the back, as well seated as standing.”
“And what of love, instead of politics? What of that nubile fleeting sensation, when one is color-blind, religion-blind, name, age, aid, vital-statistics blind? What about the love of two ‘human beings’, who mate, in spite of or because of or instead of or after the fact of?”
The Tenant - Victor Lodato
“She didn’t read much anymore, but she kept the books on her shelves. Occasionally she took one down and picked out a sentence – speaking it out loud, then swallowing it like a vitamin.”
“Harland shook his head, amazed that she’d somehow done it – improved him. Hell, she’d nearly made him beautiful.”
First Love - Gwendoline Riley
“Oh well I’m not allowed an opinion you see, not having been to art school’, she said. ‘My opinion’s worthless apparently, so ... but I think they’re all crap, yes. Absolute crap, so ...”
The Price You See Reflects the Poor Quality of the Item and Your Lack of Desire for It – Melissa Lee-Houghton
“...now I need to always risk losing something to feel safe.”
Raqqa Road: A Syrian Escape - Claire Hajaj
“It’s a fatal human flaw; we burrow when we should flee, we cling to our homes until the last barrier is breached, until running is the only option left.”
Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men - Pwaangulongii Dauod
“Tears taste like salt. Our tears. We are salts. Africa’s salt. And we are here shedding tears because we are trampled upon on every side. But these men don’t know this: that the more they trample upon us, the tastier we become.”
February 19, 2017
the photographs by Jacob Aue Sobol represent the best section of this issue, as for the fiction: so professional, so boring.
Read
August 6, 2016The most memorable story, for me, in this edition is Patrick Flannery's Interior:Monkeyboy. Having lived a similar life, I can attest it's veracity in detail and to the intentions (and fears) of the narrator's first-person account.
Whatever Happened To Inter-Racial Love, by Kathleen Collins, is a good period piece of the civilrights Sixties. Arcadia, by Emma Cline has a familiarity. It is set in the rural Northeast US, which is the place I'm reading from.
First Love, by Gwendoline Riley captures the sickening childishness and the vitriolic revulsion that can accompany those mad, passionate, promising, unreal affairs.
Pwaangulongii Dauod and Claire Hajaj have stories that personalize the harsh realities for Gays in Nigeria and Syrian refugees, respectively.
Whatever Happened To Inter-Racial Love, by Kathleen Collins, is a good period piece of the civilrights Sixties. Arcadia, by Emma Cline has a familiarity. It is set in the rural Northeast US, which is the place I'm reading from.
First Love, by Gwendoline Riley captures the sickening childishness and the vitriolic revulsion that can accompany those mad, passionate, promising, unreal affairs.
Pwaangulongii Dauod and Claire Hajaj have stories that personalize the harsh realities for Gays in Nigeria and Syrian refugees, respectively.
September 12, 2016
Rating a journal is hard, but overall this one feels more successful--whatever that means in this context--than issue 135.
Favorite piece: a short story by Patrick Flanery--new to me--called "Interior: Monkeyboy," about a male couple in London who adopt an emotionally wounded six-year-old boy. Spiky, and unafraid to expose various forms of human ugliness. Unfavorite piece: a short story by Emma Cline called "Arcadia." Basic specimen of polished contemporary realism without much soul. The remaining work is generally quite good. Nonfiction on escaping Syria with a sick child and gay communities in Nigeria.
Favorite piece: a short story by Patrick Flanery--new to me--called "Interior: Monkeyboy," about a male couple in London who adopt an emotionally wounded six-year-old boy. Spiky, and unafraid to expose various forms of human ugliness. Unfavorite piece: a short story by Emma Cline called "Arcadia." Basic specimen of polished contemporary realism without much soul. The remaining work is generally quite good. Nonfiction on escaping Syria with a sick child and gay communities in Nigeria.
December 19, 2016
This wasn’t the strongest Granta issue for me, but I was excited to get to read the short story by Kathleen Collins (her new book is getting some attention, so I was happy to sample it here). For me, the strongest stories in this issue were those by Patrick Flanery and Victo Lodato. I particularly liked how the Flanery story was accompanied by a reprint of the painting that plays such a large role in the story.
December 7, 2016
The story of the Syrian refugee by Claire Hajaj is a must-read.
August 27, 2016
Didn't get on with any of these.
April 4, 2017
i especially enjoyed interior: monkeyboy, the tenant, diaries, raqqa road: a syrian escape, and africa's future has no space for stupid black men.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews