The Liberator Magazine
The Official Publication of the College of Liberal Arts
Written by Christina Lopez. My childhood was written in windblown dirt against my neighborhood’s sidewalks. The infrequent rainstorms left a brown aroma upon the earth, the citadel of mountains surrounding the city were composed of brown dirt. The brown was in my brother’s skin, my mother’s hair, and my father’s eyes. The brown was everywhere. As a Hispanic born in […]
Written by Christina Lopez. Images from The Jibs website, Facebook page, and Twitter account. The strum of an out-of-tune guitar ricocheted off the grimy walls in Austin’s Hole in the Wall bar. Lead singer, Will Clark, fumbled to the microphone and cleared his throat. “Hi, we’re The Jibs,” he began, “and uh…we’re gonna play some songs for you.” The Jibs […]
Written by Grace Schrobilgen. Images and designs by Shelby Stebler and Sophie Hollis. As cousins Shelby Stebler (UT Austin sophomore) and Sophie Hollis (Wake Forest University sophomore) laid on a beach three years ago, complaining about their cell phones constantly falling out of their too-small pockets, they had no idea it would evolve into a business venture-turned-political statement. Their company, […]
Written by McKenzie Hohenberger. Childhood literacy, like most childhood hobbies and skills, bears an invaluable developmental responsibility. What starts as flipping through a picture book quickly transforms into the liminal body of literature called children’s series. This specific area of literature streamlines every last bit of its utility toward building a reader. Children’s series cater to a need for stability, a […]
Written by Carrissa Davis. Images by Carrissa Davis (unless otherwise credited). I walked into Spiderhouse at 7:03pm, one Tuesday night, to attend the Austin Poetry Slam. I sat in an empty chair amidst rows of empty chairs, early enough to stare at my phone in nervous trepidation. The chairs soon began to fill up quickly, with groups of friends or […]
Written by Nikki LaSalla. Images by The Texas Tribune. The stage was set: a picture of the Alamo Mission displayed on screens flanking the small panel. As the speakers walked out, moderator Stephan Harrington said what most of the crowd was surely thinking: Why was Phil Collins, winner of seven Grammy Awards, Disney legend, English singer-songwriter, speaking at a panel on […]
Written by Dylan Preston. Austin is an idyllic place. From the wildflowers in bloom, to the chug of traffic, to the playful shouts at Barton Springs and Zilker Park, the hum of the days here is music to many of our ears. But there are days when we crave something more sonic than the slow rhythms of Austin’s normal offerings. […]
Written by William Moessinger. The history of cinema is marked with countless examples of new technologies that started off as “temporary” trends and ended up as permanent industrial standards. Inventions like sound and technicolor were initially met with reluctance and skepticism by producers and artists alike. (Charlie Chaplin complained that sound “has spoiled the most ancient of the world’s arts…and […]
Written by Julián Muñoz Villarreal. The 1990s is an awkward decade for college-aged students. We get invited to a 90s themed party and immediately begin Googling everything about the decade in order to find something to wear. Suddenly you start questioning if you were actually born anywhere near the decade in question. Bill Clinton played the saxophone? Aren’t chopsticks in […]
Written by Madeleine Kenney. Zombies. Pride and Prejudice. You don’t normally expect these two nouns in the same sentence, much less a movie title, but the newly released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie has somehow frankensteined two radically different genres into something brilliant. To bring everyone who is not in the Jane Austen fandom up to speed, Pride and […]
Written by Cynthia Turner. Comedians have for years defended their work against the tides of political correctness. The notion of limiting their work to avoid offending an individual with a specific set of beliefs would contradict the very essence of comedy. This past weekend on the Yellow Stage at Fun Fun Fun Fest, even in a space where few people would […]
Written by Cynthia Turner. Photos by Cynthia Turner. The idea of graffiti as art or desecration is a debate I remember noticing at a very young age. I still do not have a clear stance on the issue. However, I do believe that every human needs self-expression. We need words to last through a permanent medium to know that our thoughts […]
Written by Sarah Lynn Neal. “I feel very young at 60,” Sandra Cisneros said, smirking beneath her glasses at this year’s Texas Book Festival panel celebrating her work in fiction and poetry. Held at Austin’s Central Presbyterian Church, the panel commemorated her latest literary venture: the memoir. Her 2015 book entitled, A House of My Own: Stories of My Life explores […]
Written by Annyston Pennington. “October, 2007. The Santa Ana winds are shredding the bark off the eucalyptus trees in long white stripes,” Maggie Nelson began, reading from her latest novel, The Argonauts, at an event on Monday, September 18th. Nelson, an author and critic, was invited for a reading and discussion hosted by the University of Texas’s Dr. Ann Cvetkovich for […]
