Whetstone Magazine

Even I’m having a hard time keeping up. Every edition is a victory and gives us reason to celebrate and reflect. There is lots of symbolism in the number 10. It is a marker of significance—a perfect score, the first meaningful interval after the beginning, a decade. When I was starting Whetstone, my only objective was to finish that first edition. The shape has shifted, only somewhat, but not the mission. We’ve actually drifted more toward what I always hoped it could be, but never could’ve accomplished on my own. Whetstone is a magazine about movement. It is why our focus centers on the place from which we emanate in our respective journeys, the origin. We need this perspective to make sense of today. We are in the place where diaspora intersect and overlap.…

Melissa Alexander Melissa Alexander is a photographer, occasional filmmaker and self-proclaimed Around the Way Girl based in Atlanta, GA. Born with an innate sense of justice, joy and curiosity about the world around her, Melissa’s work explores the interrelational intimacy that exists within the African diaspora. Her work is her protest, celebrating bold and beautiful Blackness. Michael Butterworth Butterworth is a coffee educator and freelance writer based in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the cofounder of the website thecoffeecompass.com. Mónica Andino Mónica Andino is an illustrator, designer and art instructor from Honduras. She has been dedicated to her work for more than 10 years, collaborating with magazines, brands, publishers, cultural centers and museums from all around the world. She has received recognition from different competitions and institutions like The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures,…

Saccharine confections are often associated with emotional love. From finely engraved chocolate Easter bunnies and crème-filled eggs to jellybeans and marshmallow peeps, all classes of extravagant and inexpensive forms of sweets related to the vernal equinox are pregnant with procreative metaphor, rejuvenation and endearment. But to taste love itself, in the carnal sense, is most definitely a savory endeavor. Even sugar enthusiasts such as anthropologist Dr. Sidney W. Mintz—whose extensive research focuses on the socioeconomic power structures spawned by delicate white sugar crystals—concede this point. “If there were one taste one might expect to be linked with physical love, I suspect that it would not be the taste of sweet but the taste of salt,” he wrote in the journal MLN. Sweat, tears and other delightfully messy secretions of romance and lovemaking certainly smack…

Every now and then, my dad gets a text message from a local Turkish supermarket and rushes out the door: He’s just been told that a fresh batch of his favorite peppers has arrived. These peppers are not from Turkey, but his native Kosovo—and he’s got to move quick or he might miss his chance. He is one of more than a thousand Kosovars on a list at the Hilal Food Centre in West London that is kept up-to-date with the whereabouts of somborka peppers throughout the year. This is a relatively new phenomenon for the Kosovar diaspora, who hadn’t always found it so easy to get their hands on the goods in their newfound homes across Europe and the U.S. Shortly after the Kosovo war in 1999, the main method the…

The attack on Pearl Harbor—December 7, 1941—unequivocally ushered the West into the Second World War. For Canada, which entered in September 1939 as part of the British Commonwealth, tolerance and humanity towards people of Japanese descent dissipated following the air raid on the Hawaiian naval base. The United States swiftly took action in 1942 by uprooting more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast in fear that those classified as “enemy aliens” were a threat to national security. The Canadian government followed suit with the War Measures Act of 1942, seizing property and forcibly removing men, women and children from the coast of British Columbia, despite the majority of them being citizens who had been born in the country. Approximately 12,000 Japanese men were exiled to remote mining communities…

During low tide, you can see the breeding gardens. Special net-bags containing oysters are tied with rubber bands to supports anchored in the seabed. In the coming hours, the sea will completely submerge the area. Oysters are numbered from 1 to 4 according to their size, with 1 as the biggest. According to Éric, boss of Les Jardins Ostréicoles de Tatihou, No. 2 is the perfect size, fleshy and tasty. The oysters are purified for 48 hours in controlled water before being packaged, despite the fact that the sea where they grow is pollution-free.…