Samjoko Magazine

09/01/2026

How does one save their nation’s cultural identity in the face of a foreign invader? This is one of the questions posed in the unfinished war diary, LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR, by the late Victoria Amelia.

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on February 22nd, 2022, Victoria was on a trip in Egypt to see the pyramids with her 11-year-old son, Andriy. Leaving Andriy behind in Poland, she crossed back into Ukraine two days after Russian tanks rolled into her country’s borders. This decision of Victora’s to return back to her homeland proved to be one of the more difficult aspects of the book to understand at first.

Who willingly faces war when they can remain somewhere else in relative safety? Why run headfirst into a hostile invasion of one’s country if one does not have to? The reasoning behind Victoria’s decision to return to Ukraine is one of the more intriguing aspects of her war diary. Anyone who claims that Ukraine does not have an identity of its own separate from Russia must read this book, and would only shy away from LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR so that they can maintain their firm yet mistaken belief of this war’s justification.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, Victoria was a well known and respected Ukrainian writer. She was a member of PEN International, and was offered a UK publishing deal for her book, Dom’s Dream Kingdom. She had a nice apartment in Kyiv and had traveled around the world to give speeches on various cultural icons of Ukraine.

Yet when Russia decided to invade Ukraine, Victoria did not flee a conflict that would inevitably lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of her countrymen. Instead, she left her son safe in Poland with her aunt and grandmother (a home she would have surely been welcomed to also stay), and re-entered Ukraine to become a war crimes researcher. Her focus was upon women, mostly Ukrainian artists, as they dealt with Russia’s brutal assault of their homeland. These women’s attempts to save cultural artifacts of Ukraine which Russia was and is currently trying to erase is described in profound detail throughout Victoria’s war diary. Small libraries containing books that had not been put into digital form so that if they are destroyed, the words written within would be lost forever. Paintings that reveal the history of Ukraine that are literally irreplaceable. Local museums housing the culture of Ukraine. Homes where famous Ukrainian philosophers lived. Nationally recognized poets and writers living in villages that were being overtaken by Russian forces. Some of these artists fled deeper into Ukraine to Kyiv or nearby cities. Those who stayed behind in Russian occupied territories for one reason or another were killed with bullets to the head, and then buried in mass graves.

LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR reaffirms a basic truth that humans are coming to terms with as a species: war is pointless. We are no longer primates in the forests throwing excrement at each other. We have moved past the effectiveness of taking our neighbor’s lands and resources by force. Though the history of humans is the history of warfare, the future of mankind rests in working together, in putting aside our differences so that we do not completely destroy ourselves with our world-ending weapons of mass destruction. Victoria Amelina’s act of recording war crimes was an attempt to bring justice where injustice was committed, but her book also serves as a warning to those who have outlived her. LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR is a guide on how not to treat other human beings, on what not to do to another nation which is simply trying to exist.

Before Victoria Amelina’s death, she was awarded a year-long residency in Paris in June 2023, which she had planned on taking to complete her war diary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead of staying safe in Kyiv until her departure to France, she decided to travel to Kherson one more time to record the story of the wife of the conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko, who had allegedly been killed by Russian forces. As she sat in Kramatorsk at a pizzeria with a delegation of Colombian authors after a long day, a Russian missile hit the building, killing 64 people and severely injuring Victoria, who died on July 1st, 2023.

The question one is forced to ask in reading of her demise is what was the point? What was solved by her death? Is the future of humankind improved by this writer being killed in a missile attack?

For those soldiers who pressed the button that sent the missile, for those generals who ordered the attack on that city, are their lives now better as a result that a woman who was an author was killed while eating a slice of pizza in the late evening?

LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR is an unfinished manuscript by Victoria Amelina. Instead of ending in an epilogue, the war diary ends in her translated poem, simply titled Poem About a Crow. The first stanza is thus:

In a barren springtime field

Stands a woman dressed in black

Crying her sister’s names

Like a bird in the empty sky

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on February 22nd, 2022, Victoria was on a trip in Egypt to see the pyramids with her 11-year-old son, Andriy. Leaving Andriy behind in Poland, she crossed back into Ukraine two days after Russian tanks rolled into her country’s borders. This decision of ...

07/25/2026

Poetry advice from Eric Shaffer

07/25/2026

Eric Shaffer reads his poem HOW I LOST MY LIBRARY CARD: https://www.samjokomagazine.com/adding-a-page-to-the-pop-up-book-of-nightmares

07/13/2026

FIONA’S GUARDIANS by Dan Klefstad is a complex narrative told from multiple perspectives. The novel examines the business aspect of being a vampire, as well as the recruitment efforts of strigae hunters. The center of the story’s maelstrom is Fiona, a 250-year-old immortal. She has various human servants who do a wide range of tasks for her. Their central role is to procure blood bags from hospitals so that she will not have to kill humans to live her unlife.

Fiona and the other immortals in her cabal had made a decision to avoid killing humans in the modern era. In this way they hoped to remain undetected, purchasing the sustenance that they need from hospital employees through their human guardians, who also take care of the finances for their masters.

There are several servants that do Fiona’s bidding, but like with any employment, there are employee betrayals and sabotage when a feeling of being used, exploited, or not appreciated is perceived. Two of the first guardians introduced in the beginning of the book is Daniel, who has been working for Fiona for years after she took him from another immortal, Soren; and Wolf, a new hire who answered an ad that he quickly finds cannot be turned down once he learns enough about the job details during the interview. Daniel is devoted to Fiona, and Wolf is simply curious about how vampires exist and who his new employer truly is.

On the other side of the equation are monks whose holy mission is to slay the strigae. They too put out ads to attract potential holy warriors to do a job that is incredibly dangerous. They use weapons like wooden bullets that will kill strigae if it strikes them in the heart. The monks seem to be quite good at their job. Though they take losses, they manage to kill quite a few vampires throughout the narrative. Fiona is the trickiest quarry of them all. FIONA’S GUARDIANS will leave readers guessing at how the cat and mouse game concludes at the end of the book.

The vampire theme has been written about so often that any deviation from the standard mythology is always refreshing. What another writer can do with a monster that has books, movies, games, television shows, and steaming series is always interesting to experience. FIONA’S GUARDIANS took an usual path that is sure to intrigue many fans of the genre.

FIONA’S GUARDIANS by Dan Klefstad is a complex narrative told from multiple perspectives. The novel examines the business aspect of being a vampire, as well as the recruitment efforts of strigae hunters. The center of the story’s maelstrom is Fiona, a 250-year-old immortal. She has various human...

07/13/2026

Content Creator Magazine publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays & screenplays, photography & art

07/13/2026

ForewordWe at Samjoko have been on a kick lately. A quixotic quest. A mission. Perhaps a fool’s errand, but an ideal that we have begun to hold dear. We are trying to convince all writers who are seriously trying to publish in any form: short stories, poems, or essays in magazines, journals, antho...

06/27/2026

THE FIFTH SEASON, by N.K. Jemisin, is Book 1 in the Broken Earth Trilogy. As such, it is hard to quantify what the first in the series is actually about. What can be said is that the narrative universe of THE FIFTH SEASON takes place on a planet similar to our own, which is referred to as Father Earth. In this world, there are people who are born with the ability to affect nature. Their power is generally focused upon the earth itself, though they seem to be able to do more than just cause/stifle earthquakes and create volcanic eruptions. These people are called orogene, but are sometimes referred to as rogga, which they consider a slur.Books & Literature

The planet of this narrative universe has gone through Seasons, which are great environmental catastrophes that cause massive destruction and wipe out the comms, or cities that manage to develop between the seasons. Because the orogenes are in tune with the earth, they too can cause destruction and death, so the Stills, or people without such powers who are also the planet’s majority, hate orogenes, hunt them down, and kill them. There is also a group of super powered individuals called Guardians who control the orogenes through violence and intimidation.

THE FIFTH SEASON is told from three point of views. One PoV is a little girl name Damaya; the other is a woman named Synenite; the last is through a second person PoV, and she is Essun.

There is no overarching plot that begins off the first book of this series. Essun is seeking her husband, who has murdered their child when he discovered that the boy is orogene. She wants to kill him for this, and she also wants to rescue her daughter, whom her husband has taken.

Damaya is living in a barn after it is discovered that she is orogene. Her negligent parents give her to a Guardian, who brings her to an academy for oregenes. At the academy, called the Fulcrum, the orogene children are taught to control their powers and be a benefit to the comms living on the broken earth.

Synenite is already a high-ranking member of the academy and has four rings. The rings are a way to designate how advanced orogenes are in their skill of orogeny. The most powerful of them have ten rings.

Whereas Essun has a clear narrative goal (the finding and killing of her husband), both Damaya and Synenite are simply surviving the different events they find themselves in. Because there is no definite narrative direction for two of the three characters, THE FIFTH SEASON has a slowed narrative pace. Readers learn about the characters’ world without there being an apparent end goal to many of the events happening.

There is a lot of death and tragedy in THE FIFTH SEASON. N.K. Jemisin does a good job of making readers feel like they are living on a dying world; or, at the very least, a world where civilization struggles to exist. Mysteries are set up for Book 2 and Book 3, though there is a feeling throughout the narrative that the situation of the humans of this world is not going to improve. An idea that is mentioned throughout the book is that Father Earth became angry with the life on its surface a long time ago and has decided to eradicate humans, whereas once Earth tolerated them and even found amusement in mankind. In this way, THE FIFTH SEASON can be classified as ecofiction. The humans in the past r***d the planet, and now the planet is fighting back.

This gives a clear warning to those reading the book.

A tragic ending in the final book, titled THE STONE SKY, seems almost assured, as an angry planet is going to always have the advantage over mere humans. How does one get forgiveness from a planet they have ruined because of their selfish desires?

THE FIFTH SEASON has almost all black characters, which is refreshing in a fantasy book. It won the Hugo award and is a best selling series. For those looking for a genre book that does not feel like more of the same, THE FIFTH SEASON is definitely worth reading for a unique experience.

THE FIFTH SEASON , by N.K. Jemisi n, is Book 1 in the Broken Earth Trilogy. As such, it is hard to quantify what the first in the series is actually about. What can be said is that the narrative universe of THE FIFTH SEASON takes place on a planet similar to our own, which is referred to as Father

05/10/2026

Can a black author find success in America’s cultural landscape without sounding “black”? This is the question posed by the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett in his novel, ERASURE.

ERASURE is a first person narrative narrated by Thelonious Ellison, a university professor who writes dense and unreadable retellings of Greek tragedies. One day, he discovers the work of best-selling author, Juanita Mae Jenkins, who wrote the novel, We’s Live In Da Ghetto. Monk, Thelonious Ellison’s nickname, is deeply offended by Juanita’s book, which is written in Ebonics and has made the author fabulously wealthy and absurdly popular. Well respected periodicals call We’s Live In Da Ghetto a masterpiece of African American literature.

Monk laments the fact that his literary fiction based on retellings of Greek tragedies has no readers and so makes him no money, while a hack writer like Juanita Mae Jenkins is considered a black literary genius. ERASURE leans a bit into fantasy when it is revealed that Monk not only has an agent, but has had five books published that are, as described in the novel,” dense, unreadable, and do not sell.” One traditionally published book, maybe two, but five? He has not won a Pushcart Prize once, but three times, which also reaches into the realm of literary fantasy considering how absolutely loathed Monk is by his peers.

However, his current manuscript keeps being rejected by publishers, and when he suddenly has to financially take care of his mentally ailing mother after his sister is killed by an anti-abortion fanatic, Monk decides to abandon his literary principles and write a novel about a young black teen who speaks with Ebonics, curses every other word, has a goal to buy a gun so that he can rob the Korean grocery store owner, has s*x with multiple women as young as fourteen years old, and has four babies with four different baby mammas. This book, which Monk eventually calls F**k, becomes a best seller, and he makes millions of dollars when the movie rights are sold.

ERASURE is doing a lot of things, though largely it is criticizing the publishing industry and English academia, in one form or the other. The fact that one of Monk’s books, which is based upon Greek mythology, is put in the African American section of a bookstore, shows how the publishing industry cannot look past the fact that a writer is African American, even when the subject he is writing about has nothing to do with black identity. The fact that literary critics and consumers see Monk’s book as “real” because it portrays a black male who encompasses all of the negative stereotypes that are held about black people, is detailed in all its narrative absurdity in ERASURE. Van Go Jenkins, the central character of Monk’s farcical book, is ignorant, loves chicken, loves having s*x even if it verges on r**e, insults his mother, has a father that has stepped out on the family and is probably a homeless wino, has multiple children by multiple women, and whose highest inspiration is to rob the Korean storeowner at gunpoint. Monk writes what America expects a black person to be, and by reconfirming their prejudices, they label his novel F**k as “real”.

The theme of ERASURE has been touched upon by other black writers in the past. Robert Townsend’s HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE (1987) mocked the movie industry’s insistence that black people be portrayed, as the film says, “as a slave, a butler, or a street hood,” which causes the main character to open a “black acting school” that teaches black actors such acting techniques as “how to talk jive” in order to get parts. Spike Lee’s BAMBOOZLED (2000) features the return of a black minstrel show, where black actors paint their faces blacker and proceed to embody all of the worst stereotypes held about African Americans by white Americans, to grand financial success for the producers of the show.

Percival Everett’s ERASURE is the latest cultural icon to point out the perceived notion that black art and entertainment must sound black if it is to find success by mainstream audiences of white and black consumers, a point which is underscored in the novel. ERASURE was made into the movie AMERICAN FICTION, which was released in 2023.

Can a black author find success in America’s cultural landscape without sounding “black”? This is the question posed by the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett in his novel, ERASURE .

05/06/2026

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04/15/2026

Isabelle Hardesty’s THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR tells the tale of Juliette, a young girl who is an actress in a telenovela. For readers who are unfamiliar with this term, a telenovela (often misspelled telenova) is a Latin American television soap opera or serialized drama, combining high melodrama with a limited number of episodes, distinct from open-ended soap operas. They are defined by intense, emotional story lines focused on romance and interpersonal conflict.

THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR reflects this form of entertainment in many ways. Juliette, the star of the narrative, lives near the swamps in Florida. She has been friends with the animals in the region throughout her childhood. At the novel’s opening, she travels to the wetlands seeking snake poison with her best friend, Victor. Their relationship is one of the strongest points of the book. When Victor, who we discover is a witch, has to make Juliette forget a passionate encounter between the two of them by using magic, readers are left to feel that they know more about a secret world than the heroine.

Of course, as the novel develops, Juliette learns what role she must play in the narrative. In Belle Fleur, the witches cannot fully use their powers except for Victor. Their abilities have been taken away from them, but after Juliette discovers a gem in a box while out on the snake poison expedition with Victor, she finds out the hard way that with great power comes great responsibility, and even greater risk.

For within the shadows of Belle Fleur is Thane, an evil witch who wants the Destroyer witches, those who serve him so that they can come out of the shadows and rule humans as he believes they rightfully should.

If this sounds familiar, it should. THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR has several similarities to the Harry Potter series. Juliette’s parents were killed a long time ago. She is left with a scar, on her arm instead of her forehead, which is a result of the battle between her parents and Thane. However, unlike Harry, Juliette is of Haitian descent, which is a nice change from fantasy fare which usually displays European influences.

The world building of THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR would have been enhanced if more Haitian mythologies were interwoven in the narrative, as the magical system in the novel feels a little too standard.

Juliette being an actress in a telenovela is another unique aspect of the narrative. Here, too, the novel would have benefited if that aspect of her life was delved further into. Juliette recalls how important telenovela’s were to her as a child growing up. They are cheesy and the acting is notoriously bad, but viewers, like her family, would gather together and be drawn into the drama and melodrama of the productions. Seeing more of this in the narrative universe of THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR would have added a unique flavor to the story line.

Overall, THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR could have had tighter prose and another edit, but it is fantastic that a fantasy story with Haitian witches is being written, as Isabelle Hardesty has created a series featuring Julliette that already stretches across several sequels.

Isabelle Hardesty’s THE WITCH OF BELLE FLEUR tells the tale of Juliett e, a young girl who is an actress in a telenovela . For read ers who are unfamiliar with this term, a telenovela (often misspelled telenova) is a Latin American television soap opera or serialized drama, combining high melo