Isabel Pabán Freed

Kernel Magazine Volume 6 is out now! Thank you to everyone who joined us at our launch party in San Francisco, where you heard Isabel Pabán Freed read the first portion of this essay: a reading of Twitter as novel/carnival/feast, inspired by the late Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. It was a joy to read and edit; I don’t think we’ve every published anything quite like it.

He was a stranger. His friend, who stood guard, was also a stranger. There was a stranger sitting across from us, who they had also trapped, and she had mostly looked away out the window until he was done; a few minutes later, the train stopped, and we escaped. I had just turned 23. I minimized this experience for five years. I did not allow myself to admit that it had affected me.