Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: What We Carry Forward

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor-in-Chief

Les Misérables at the West End, featuring the 40th Anniversary London cast. Photo courtesy of the production.

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in a London theatre watching Les Misérables, a musical I had not seen for many years, based on a book I loved as a teenager.

I had mixed feelings about going. I knew it would be a good performance, but I had already seen the musical twice and wondered whether the experience would offer me anything new. Instead, the soaring, grief-filled music took me by surprise. Perhaps it was the perspective brought by time and distance, or simply the experience of encountering a familiar story at a different stage of life, but I found myself unexpectedly moved by both its force and its continuing relevance.

Les Mis left me thinking about memory, grief, repair and redemption: Themes echoed throughout this issue, beginning with Alaina Zhang’s thoughtful review and analysis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We often speak of "moving on" or "moving forward" as though healing requires us to leave the past behind. But perhaps the more difficult—and more honest—task is learning what to carry forward.

The pieces in this issue approach that question from many directions. In the Writers’ Room, Mikaela Brewer’s short story, "On the Wildfires: Of Course She Ran Back," follows a young girl walking home through wildfire smoke, confronting an environmental crisis her generation did not create but will nevertheless inherit. In Poet’s Corner, a discussion of Amanda Gunn’s "Ordinary Sugar" considers memory, ancestry and the ordinary acts through which people remain present in our lives.

Two feature essays examine darker forms of inheritance. In the first instalment of a three-part series, Randa Ali explores the environmental costs of war and the damage that continues long after the immediate fighting has ended. Temi Jolaawo’s "It’s in Our DNA: The Resurgence of Eugenics and Health Propaganda" examines how discredited ideas can return in new forms when the histories behind them are forgotten or deliberately distorted.

Elsewhere, "Dinner Isn’t Debt: What Paying the Bill Reveals About Romance, Power, and Control" considers the expectations we bring into intimate relationships, while "Searching for a Voice in Politics: Youth Are Citizens Now, Not in the Future" challenges us to recognize youth as full participants in civic life now, rather than treating their voices as preparation for some later point when their citizenship will finally count.

We also share key insights, notes and quotations from our recent live podcast event, Beyond Words: Addressing Anti-Black Racism and Discriminatory Language in Schools, along with Farhaan Batchkhan’s essay, "Racist Language Is Never Just a Joke: On Building a World Worth Belonging To."

And last but certainly not least, our spotlighted artist, Patrick de Belen, invites us into grief, memory, responsibility, silence, scars, wounds, and how they coexist across creative work and relationships alike.

Together, these pieces ask us to consider not only what we remember, but what our remembering requires of us.

We are all shaped by what came before: The stories our families tell, the histories our countries choose to remember or forget, the landscapes altered by decisions made long before we arrived, and the private joys and griefs that change how we move through the world. But inheritance is not the same as destiny. Part of becoming fully ourselves, individually and collectively, is deciding what we will carry forward, what we will repair and what we must finally learn to put down.

I will end with a recommendation to see Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey—or better yet, to read the original. I particularly recommend Emily Wilson’s translation, although Wilson herself has offered a decidedly critical assessment of the film.

Regardless of how faithfully the adaptation captures Homer’s work, the story’s enduring themes reinforce an idea that runs throughout this issue: Every generation inherits a world shaped by memories it did not personally create. We inherit stories, wounds, traditions, warnings and unfinished work.

Our responsibility is not to hand the next generation a version of the past stripped of discomfort. It is to help them carry its hard truths without being crushed by them—and to trust them to create something wiser and more compassionate from what remains.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor-in-Chief, The 44 North Media

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Playing the Long Game

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor in Chief

A chess set overexposed in pink, purple, and blue hues

What if the most radical act today is not to react, but to pause?

Chess is not just a game. It is an ancient philosophy of attention—a way I first learned to analyze the world from my father, who taught me to play as a young child. We’d sit together on the living room floor with a board and a beautifully carved chess set between us, as he guided me through the moves and the stories of each piece. Over the years, he used the game as a metaphor for life: patience, strategy, and the understanding that not every threat needs an immediate response. I stepped away from the game for many years but returned in 2016, when it proved to be an excellent anxiety reducer during the particular politics of that year. When the world feels like it’s moving too fast, I still turn to the board. It reminds me that wisdom often lies in the pause rather than the rush.

It asks for patience, wisdom, and the ability to think beyond the immediate move. The game rewards restraint, foresight, and the understanding that not every threat needs an immediate response; that the dramatic move is not always the wise one.

Lately, I have been reflecting on the discipline required to “play the long game” in both my own life and the world around us at this moment. We live in a time that rewards reaction: outrage is immediate, drama permeates the air in real time, and power is often performed through impulsiveness rather than judgment. But force without thoughtful strategy is not mastery; it is instability, chaos, and the erosion of our own judgment.

That feels especially true now. As war escalates between the United States, Israel, and Iran, and as political life in the U.S. continues to be shaped by bluster, performance, and short-term domination, it is hard not to notice the absence of genuine discipline on the global board. There is an added irony in watching Trump threaten to strike Iran “extremely hard” and send it “back to the Stone Ages” while appearing, once again, to misread the strategy of the very regime he claims to be overpowering. The lesson is clear: intelligence and power are not the same thing, and finesse—in politics as in life—is rarer than it should be.

At The 44 North, we are interested in something quieter yet more demanding: thoughtful attention, moral seriousness, and the long view. This issue reflects that commitment in different ways – from questions of gender and power to stories about surveillance, selfhood, and control. Again and again, the pieces in this issue ask what it means to remain clear-sighted in systems that would rather make us reactive, doubtful, or numb.

You’ll find that spirit in our review of Inter Alia, Suzie Miller’s play about the slow, cumulative violences that can unsettle even the most accomplished women in male-dominated spaces. You’ll find it in our latest Artist Spotlight featuring Capsule Community, and in this issue’s Writer’s Room selection, “On the OSAP Cuts: Could We Have Stratified the Cold?” You’ll find it, too, in the second- and third-place winners of our essay contest, which examine surveillance, optimization culture, and the erosion of inherent worth with urgency and intelligence.

This issue also includes Andrea Gibson’s powerful poem: “In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don’t lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down.” Its title feels like its own kind of opening move: vulnerable, precise, and brave.

On the political side, we are pleased to feature work from Sylphia Basak and Cole Martin, whose pieces explore public anxieties around artificial intelligence and the geopolitical stakes of the Strait of Hormuz. More broadly, this issue also marks an exciting next step for The 44 North: the addition of a new team of political writers, including Basak and Martin, who will be contributing analysis and commentary between issues. At a time when public discourse is often flattened by speed, certainty, and outrage, we are proud to be making more space for political writing that is thoughtful, independent, and unafraid of complexity.

We are also happy to share that our newsletter has officially moved to Substack and is reborn as Points North: a place for field notes on culture, politics, and the world around us, alongside updates on our latest issue, podcast episodes, events, contests, and more. We hope you’ll join us there – not just to read, but to reflect, to question, and to play your own long game.

If chess teaches us anything worth carrying into daily life, it is this: patience is not weakness. Restraint is not retreat. To pause, to think carefully, to resist manipulation by headlines and noise—these are not acts of passivity, but of discipline. They are how we protect our judgment. And with it, our humanity.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Theatre Review: Inter Alia

by Alaina Zhang ​for The 44 North, Newsletter & Reviews Editor

Rosamund Pike. Photo by Manuel Harlan.

“We're all failing a generation of boys, and therefore we’re failing a whole generation of girls.”

Jessica is being fitted in her judge's robe for the first time. It’s supposed to be a glorious moment—a recognition of her success—but she feels more anxiety than pride. She watches her son Harry and her husband Michael look at her, then whisper something to each other. They laugh. She doesn’t know what they said. The room is full of mirrors, reflecting a harsh sun.

She wishes the whole process would quicken—numb the powerlessness. She’s worried this moment will tip the family balance; her husband didn’t get nominated as a judge…

A live theatre play written by Suzie Miller, which premiered globally in 2025, Inter Alia follows the journey of maverick London Crown Court Judge Jessica Parks as her son is suspected of rape. Mother, wife, judge—her life is a series of transitions between these different roles, until the rape case brings reality crashing down. These identities suddenly find themselves forced to pick sides. 

On one hand, the play is another story about teenage crime among others, such as Defending Jacob (2020) and Adolescence (2025). However, after seeing Inter Alia, I found myself thinking about what it means to live in a family where you’re the only woman. Jessica’s life is not an individual case, but one among many other women, wives, and mothers in the current age. Living as a wife who is always trying to protect her husband’s ego and a mother whose son is becoming more distant than ever, Jessica is in a constant loop of wondering if being “too successful” is the reason she finds herself alienated in her own family, and from the husband-son conversations she witnesses as a bystander. 

I was not fortunate enough to have seen this in person, but the charisma of live theatre was contagious even through the movie theatre screen. The Jessica Parks played by Rosamund Pike is so real in her struggle—her successful career is constantly overshadowed by the men around her, small violences that threaten to make her doubt herself and what she has achieved in an occupation also dominated by men. 

Recently, I attended a language exchange meetup where one of the topics was “Is it better to be married than to be single?” My mind drifted to Inter Alia. Yes, Jessica finds motherly fulfillment through her relationship with her son Harry, and romantic love in her husband Michael, but those familial relationships cannot be untangled from the legal fiasco which threatens to destroy her own independence and career. She begins to wonder if she failed as a mother. She finds herself becoming the lawyer she hates the most, defending a potential rapist against the words of an innocent young woman whose life might be ruined by sexual assault. 

As I heard the arguments for why being married was better, the one argument that was repeated over and over again was “You’ll be lonely if you’re single.” This was also spoken from a group of mostly women, citing their personal experiences, and something about it made me feel uncomfortable. 

Inter Alia, among other things, is a word commonly used in legal contexts to indicate that a particular assertion or claim is one of several possibilities. Marriage is only one lifestyle among others. Making loneliness the main argument and instilling a societal fear in women that not marrying is subjecting oneself to an unhappy life, is the very type of thinking that Inter Alia warns audiences against. I’d like to think that the play is not anti-marriage, anti-family, nor anti-children, but that it supports the many amazing, unique ways for a woman to live in the 21st century, not bound by phantom, patriarchal fears of solitude and misery.