FOURTH WAVE NEWSLETTER

New Editor, New Stories, New State

Brought to you by an SF Bay Area native transplanted to the Midwest

Dre Cáceres

Sent as aNewsletter

7 min readMay 30, 2024

Photo by author. Big Arkansas River Park, Wichita, KS.

Greetings, my fellow writers, readers, critical thinkers, and enjoyers of Fourth Wave. This is

Dre Cáceres

, your new Newsletter Editor. I am writing to you all from a small-owned cafe and full-bar in a historic part of Wichita, Kansas called Delano, the place I call home since November of last year. Hanging from the sky-blue paneled walls are art pieces from local members of the community; last month it was a local photographer and this month it is a local artist’s horror-movie-themed paintings. Near a corner booth, I sip hazelnut black coffee and a two-dollar mystery beer (this week it’s a Voodoo Ranger IPA) as rockabilly music plays through the speakers. I eavesdrop on a row of patrons talking to the bartender about drunk Shakespearan plays. This is not the typical bar I frequented when I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, yet it is the exact type of cafe that I was looking for when I moved 1,300 miles from Sacramento, California.

In fact, one of the first few days after I first came across the Vagabond Cafe, I noticed a patron with pride pins who looked very obviously queer to me. I told my partner, “This is my type of cafe.” A handful of days later, as I was sitting next to a large group of patrons talking about queer literature, I found myself joining a queer book club. The following week, my professor over Zoom said, “Dre, you seemed to have found the queerest cafe in Kansas.” That was the moment I started to feel like I could potentially belong. This could really be my new home.

I would like to take this moment to fully introduce myself to you all.

Patsy Fergusson

, Fourth Wave’s founder, was my high school journalism teacher for the entirety of my four years when I was a staff writer on the school newspaper before graduating in 2013. It was not until many years later that I would find myself coming back to journalism, writing an article for Fourth Wave amidst the ongoing pandemic. I’ve always been a writer, especially a poet, but I often find myself stuck, just as every writer encounters a type of writer’s block — but for me, it is like writer’s paralysis. But with the increase in articles and poetry being published on Fourth Wave, I was offered an opportunity to edit this newsletter, engaging with and highlighting the many contributors. I am excited to be among your newest editors, and among the growing list of contributors to Fourth Wave.

But back to Kansas . . .

I am still absorbing the many differences that come with moving from a politically liberal state like California to the much more politically and culturally conservative and hyper-religious state of Kansas. Patrons of the Vagabond have shared that their experience as a born-and-raised Midwesterner is that Wichita is comparable to Sacramento, minus the population difference. In many ways, I would agree: the historic Delano looks very similar to Old Town, but probably smaller. You can reach any part of town within 20 minutes; everything is close by; heck, even my home is a walking distance from the Delano businesses I frequent. But there is much less to do recreationally, the weather is unpredictable, and I have both a basement and a cellar I will need to maintain during tornado season (which apparently I am currently in). But all of those things are trivial compared to the political agendas of ultra right-wing, conservative representatives of Kansas and neighboring states like Oklahoma, especially when it comes to intersectional feminist topics of interest to me like queer youth and trans rights. These are topics I will be delving deeper into as I engage with the social and political work of the Midwest.

For this newsletter, which includes links to every story published on Fourth Wave since the last newsletter went out May 7, I would like to highlight the wide range of topics and contributors — from revolutionary mothers to people trying to decolonize the language of a multi-colonized country. Many of these stories and poems were nominated for a boost this month, but only about 63% of them were approved by curators to receive wider distribution; those are marked with an asterisk.

I hope you will look over this rich list and find a few stories that you want to read and enjoy. And don’t forget to clap, highlight, or comment to support your fellow feminist and womanist writers. As the tagline says, Let’s start something!

With all humanity and in solidarity from the gayest cafe in Kansas,

Dre Cáceres

Newsletter Editor
Fourth Wave