Grappling With Growth

Aug 23, 2023

The Fall 2023 issue of 大象传媒 Magazine is arriving in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands now, chock-full of stories and ideas revolving around the idea of 鈥淕rowth.鈥� In the letter from the editor, 大象传媒 Media Executive Editor Evette Dionne writes that the stories in this issue 鈥渃omplicate the issue of growth as morally good or 产补诲.鈥�

Dionne is an award-winning journalist, pop culture critic, and magazine editor who covers culture and politics through the lenses of race, gender, class, and size and is the author of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul, and Lifting As We Climb.

She spoke with 大象传媒 Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on Rising Up With Sonali about the magazine鈥檚 feature stories and op-eds centered around the theme of 鈥淕rowth,鈥� including a redefinition of economic prosperity, the growing pains of an increasingly diverse nation, Black food-growing traditions, the dangers of artificial intelligence, and much more.

The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of 大象传媒 Media.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined 大象传媒 in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.