Literary Nonfiction

Like a lot of people, I imagine that if I make my telepathic frustration with whomever NPR is interviewing strong enough, I can call it activism. And then I am angry at myself for being one more ineffectual, self-satisfied, ego-driven jackass yelling at the radio. Like anybody, I like to look at pictures of animals …

1 Teh-chang came home a couple of days after the surgery, wheeled out of the hospital with a cotton bandage wrapped around his head cartoon-style and, even stranger-looking, a white mesh Styrofoam netting gathered into a point on top of that, which made him resemble a delicate fruit packaged for long-distance transportation. He had survived …

The settlement, or rancheria of mission Indians, after being established was placed in charge of a trustworthy Indian, Hipolito, from whom it took its name of Politana [located in the San Bernardino Valley]. The little mission flourished exceedingly until 1812, which was known as “el ano de los temblores’’ (the year of earthquakes), when the …

You can see them, if you look closely, in all the old photographs: my fingers flush at the knuckles and nails, squeezed tight as window blinds so no light can slip between. It’s Christmastime in this one. We’re standing in front of the flocked plastic tree. The parcels beneath it, shiny gold with silver bows, …

On my medical records, the procedure’s sometimes called a scar revision, which makes more sense if one considers that the flesh on my right cheek had nearly a year and a half to heal into a scar, smooth as a wax taper’s cooled drippings, before the reconstructive surgeon reopened the matter. More often than not, …

Three months before my husband and I married, we moved to a house on the route of a ghost tour. It didn’t stop outside our door, but one block away was a haunted graveyard and a house that when photographed had white orbs hovering outside its upper windows. The tour guides wore long black coats …

In the Silk City, seventeen-year-old Jennie Bosschieter makes ribbons inside a factory. Men work the vats of the neighboring dye houses, coloring so many miles of silk thread that they could connect Paterson, New Jersey, to the Netherlands, the country where Jennie was born, thousands of times and still leave enough to spare for the …