I am sleeping when the pain starts, dreaming of full hospitals and empty classrooms, a dark tunnel, dates on a computer screen, a diminishing roster of students, dead links, a riot of wildflowers—yellow to orange to code red—a superbloom of fires. My body jerks. My eyes open in the dark, and I am sucking air. …
“Ntxawm.” The harsh monosyllabic sound startles you. It’s midsemester, and you still hesitate to answer when your professor says it—though you are the one who asked him to use this name. It should be normal in this setting: in this Hmong language class, full of other Hmong students, your name is the most ordinary one—but …
for my brother, David, who has been lucky enough to be loved by many I One of the unforeseen outcomes of my mother’s death in my senior year of college was the A-plus I earned on the final project in my Editing and Publishing class at the University of Nevada. The assignment was to self-publish …
Rudolf Steiner, nineteenth-century “spiritual scientist,” theorized that human development unfolds in cycles of seven. He mapped humanity this way, in neat piles of seven, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional milestones he believed the average person meets as they move through these cycles. From birth to age seven, we develop the will to …
“I Ran (So Far Away),” A Flock of Seagulls I used to run to this song. I was fifteen with lush blond hair and newly sprung boobs and found it hilarious to hit the pavement at the same tempo as its iconic chorus. I’d run through the neighborhood where I’d grown up, hoping someone I …
I run from the house, pushing the dusty screen from its window frame and sliding my body down the stucco side. I am seven when I run, my fingertips soiled by the escape, my palms and little-girl thighs scratched by the rough wall, the resistance, the dirt upon impact. This is the first time I …
I was six years old when my mother’s ex-boyfriend moved in next to us. My family was living in a tiny stucco house with a view of our next-door neighbor’s garden shed, and this was where Kenneth P. took up residence. He renovated the shed himself, nailing on a tin roof, installing a functional toilet, …
Associate Editor Andy Sia: Tracing the seams between the outer and the inner world, Jodi Cressman’s quietly observant essay reveals the stratifications of gender and family in a Mennonite and farming household. Among other things, I’m drawn to the animals in this piece, which populate the speaker’s world and take on bigger significance. Listen to Cressman read her …
Assistant Editor Blessing Christopher: Preeti Talwai’s essay lands on the taste buds and ripens into an impactful narrative about time, family, displacement, and chronic illness. It further examines the thin line demarcating what is considered delicious/desirable from the things that are almost sickeningly sweet. Listen to Talwai read “Mango Season”: Mango Season The little patience …
In a fascinating miCRo essay, Fee takes us on a tour of the microwave’s unexpected origin story.