Issue 29: Fathers

JUNE 3, 2025

Safety, terror, admiration, silence. Fathers can evoke so much — even in their absence. This month, we explore the realm of fatherhood, and questions of legacy, ownership and indebtedness.

In Brazil, claiming paternity is dangerously easy. In a dispatch originally published in Revista Piaui and translated by Jessica Sequeira, Allan de Abreu reveals how a Portuguese businessman illegally took two newborn babies out of Brazil, after paying their mothers to allow him to obtain sole custody. Facebook groups aimed at brokering these types of deals are still easy to find, he reports.

Photographer Ophélie Loubat tells the story of a woman who decides to have a baby alone, without a father, after years of medical struggles and painful relationships. The absence of a romantic partner turned out to be “one fewer burden,” she says.

Several pieces in this issue reflect on the intimate experience of being a father. Amir Ahmadi Arian writes about the Iran-Iraq war and wonders if the trauma he experienced in its aftermath, as a young boy, might transmit to his own son. In a series of drawings, illustrator Nishant Jain reflects on why he decided to start sketching his young son. And in a moving piece of fiction by Valérie Mréjen, translated by Katie Assef, a father tries, again and again, to connect with his daughter.

Paternal relationships also exist, of course, outside of the family. In an essay, Morten Høi Jensen examines the paternalistic impulse that governs Denmark’s postcolonial relationship with Greenland, and what the territory means to Copenhagen’s political elite. In a review of J.M. Coetzee’s new book about language and translation, co-written with the translator Mariana Dimόpulos, Carey Baraka delves into questions of authorship, mother tongues and the dominance of English as a global language.

— The Editors