A Notebook is No Place To Keep a Secret

Posted on by Alex Juarez

“Kenji’s Notebook” by Jean Chen Ho

Tuesday evening, Fiona rode the 6 train downtown after seeing Kenji home from the hospital. She’d tucked him into bed and made sure the packet of OxyContin lay within his reach on the nightstand, next to his notebook. He looks terrible, Fiona had thought. Like a wilting jack-o’-lantern left out long after Halloween, a face falling into itself. She didn’t want to admit that she felt afraid. Kenji was thirty-two, six years older than she was. He had cancer of the mouth and throat. On alternating Tuesdays, she and Jasper, her boyfriend—her ex-boyfriend, that is—took turns sitting with Kenji while the chemo drained into his arm. He was on his second round of six-weeks, and skeletal from it. Kenji was Jasper’s best friend, but Fiona had grown to love him, too. Four months ago, Kenji got the prognosis: surgery to clear out as much of the cancer as they could manage, then radiation and chemotherapy. A month and a half later, Fiona learned that Jasper had been sleeping with a woman in his writing program at Hunter. She’d read about it in Kenji’s notebook, snooping around one night while he slept. 

It was July now, and Fiona was biding her time. She’d survived her first year at NYU Law, on top of everything else. It had been the most punishing eight months of her life. She and Jasper had come to an agreement about living together through the end of their lease. Neither one was in a financial position to move out before then. Fiona claimed the queen bed; Jasper took up residence on the futon. He owned full access to the TV, but she had the window-unit AC in the bedroom. They exchanged information about Kenji’s recovery and not much else.

The humidity hung nearly solid on her walk from the Canal Street station to her building on Mulberry and Hester. In the lobby, Fiona checked the mailbox marked Lin & Chang. It was empty—Jasper must’ve picked up their mail already. She climbed the five flights up to the apartment, considering how she would tell him that Kenji needed another surgery. He’d lost too much weight. His doctors wanted to put a tube in his stomach so that Kenji could feed himself protein shakes through a plastic funnel. She heard the TV blaring from the hallway. Fiona imagined Jasper parked on the futon, staring vacantly at the extra-wide flat-screen, that outsized monstrosity he’d insisted on buying last fall. He needed it for “research”—plus the Netflix subscription, DVDs in the mail every week—narrative structure, beats and silences. Four o’clock in the morning on Black Friday 

he’d camped out in front of Kmart on Astor Place to get the deal that included a free DVD player. She put her key in the deadbolt and waited a moment, gathering herself before she turned the knob. 

A soccer match played on the TV, the field a million light pixels of blinding, verdant green. Jasper turned toward her, his face in profile backlit by the brilliant pitch. He asked how it went with Kenji tonight. 

“Can you not get crumbs everywhere?” She cast a weary glance toward the bag of Utz chips in his lap. “I saw two roaches last week.” 

“Big ones?” He scanned the floor around his feet, as if searching out evidence of the roaches she accused him of attracting. “I haven’t seen any since the exterminator—” 

“I have to tell you something, but don’t freak out.” She was still standing by the door with her flats on. “They said he needs to have another surgery.” 

“The hell?” he said. “They found another—” 

“No, no,” she said quickly. “You know it’s hard for him to swallow anything now.” Nudging her shoes off, Fiona leafed through the pile of mail on the small table next to the door. The Con Ed bill, a couple preapproved credit card offers, a reminder for a teeth-cleaning, and—what’s this? A save-the-date postcard for her friend Amir’s wedding in October, upstate in Woodstock. 

Fiona explained what the doctor had said about the procedure Kenji needed.

“A feeding tube?” said Jasper. “Jesus.” 

“Are you free Friday? He’s scheduled for ten in the morning,” she said. “Or else I could ask to take off work—do a half day.” Fiona was clerking for an appellate judge this summer, a coveted internship she’d won over other 1Ls in her cohort. The work was demanding and joyless—not that she’d expected anything different—but she was glad for the solid hours of citation research, memo drafting, and proofreading, which kept her from feeling like an object unraveling in six different directions.

“I can do it,” said Jasper. “I’ll go.” 

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” 

“Yeah.” He turned back to the TV. 

Clutching the save-the-date in her hand, she brushed past the futon and into the bedroom. She shut the door and flipped on the AC, then sat down to study the postcard. Amir, her law school buddy, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, lavender silk tie. He grinned sheepishly, as if aware of and slightly embarrassed about his disarming handsomeness. His arm was curled around his fiancée’s waist: Khadijah, a glamorous Black woman who stood half a head taller than him. She was a pediatric resident at a children’s hospital. They were perfect together. Fiona crushed the postcard in her hands.

“Oh shit!” Jasper shouted from the living room, startling her. “Fuck yeah!” She realized he was yelling at the TV. Fiona shook her head. She knew Jasper was scattering potato chip crumbs everywhere. Well, he could sleep with the roaches crawling all over him. She didn’t care.

All she wanted now was to make it through the end of the lease in peace. Less than two months. Fiona didn’t know where she would go, but she would find some place. She’d have to put out feelers soon to see if anyone she knew needed a roommate, to ask for leads on upcoming vacancies. By September, Kenji would be done with the chemo. She’d be back in school, her second year. Maybe she could move into Kenji’s apartment, just for a while. He had a place in Harlem, a spartan bachelor’s studio he’s kept since his time at Teachers College. They could help each other, thought Fiona. Both of them, in remission. The fact that Jasper would hate it made the idea more delicious. 

In March, Kenji had told them the news after finally getting what he thought were swollen lymph nodes checked out. The three of them were standing outside a crappy midtown sports bar where they’d just witnessed Cal massacred in the first round of March Madness. There was a Japanese American boy on the starting five, a lanky shooting guard whose last name also happened to be Mura, and Kenji had told everyone at the bar that he was the player’s cousin, spinning a story about youth league booster clubs, aunties who pounded and sold exquisite mochi back home in Gardena. Fiona and Jasper had gone along with it, because every time Mura put up points, someone sent them a round. In the end, however, Mura’s offense wasn’t enough to save the team from elimination. As they were saying goodbye, Kenji headed uptown and Fiona and Jasper downtown, he’d slipped in the news in a quiet, by-the-way voice. 

Fiona wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “What? What did you say?” 

“Throat and mouth cancer,” Kenji said. 

“What?” she said again. “But you don’t even smoke.”

Kenji shrugged. They were all quiet for a few moments.

Jasper had been the one to break the silence. “What happens now?” 

Kenji told them his surgery was already scheduled for the following Thursday. 

“Where? What hospital?” Fiona shoved him. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” 

“I’m sorry,” Kenji said after a moment. “I didn’t know how— what to say—” 

“Bro.” Jasper hesitated. “You scared?” 

The night traffic coursed down Seventh Avenue, flashes of light in the dark. Fiona was glad for the buzz she felt from all the shots. 

“Kenji, do you want to—I don’t know—come over to our place?” she said. “Get another drink somewhere?”

Kenji shook his head. “I still have to finish grading some papers tonight.” He glanced up the street and folded his wool beanie down over his ears, raised his arm to hail a cab. One pulled over for him. “Mura out.” He bumped forearms with Jasper and then submitted to a tight hug from Fiona.

They made love that night with a tenderness they hadn’t shown one another for months, in bed or otherwise.

She didn’t want to let him go. His long black hair, which he wore down that night, spilled over her shoulders. She breathed in his shampoo, but underneath it, behind his earlobes, she thought she smelled something murkier, darker. Even after he dropped his arms, she held on to him, and she only let go after he made a show of prying himself loose from her grip. 

The subway ride back home was quiet. Fiona looped her arm into Jasper’s on the walk from the station and felt him squeezing back with his elbow. They made love that night with a tenderness they hadn’t shown one another for months, in bed or otherwise. She felt guilty for only having noticed its absence now. “I’m sorry,” she murmured in the dark, after they’d finished. “I’ve been so busy, trying to keep up with all my school reading—I haven’t been around for you.” 

Jasper’s back was turned to her. Fiona pressed her breasts and stomach against him, nuzzled his neck with her nose, her lips. “How are you, baby? What’s going on with your writing?” He didn’t answer her—she figured he was asleep.

“I love you,” she said softly. “Jasper Chang. I love you.” 

The soccer match over, Jasper pulled the futon out flat for the night. Lying down, he listened to the sounds coming from behind the bedroom door. The moan of the blow-dryer told him Fiona was perched on the edge of the bed—she never went to sleep with her hair wet, an old superstition she’d made him follow, too—probably wearing one of his ratty T-shirts that she’d long ago claimed for pajamas. Then, the asthmatic rubbery sound of the window being thrust open. Fiona ducking out for a smoke on the fire escape. 

Jasper clicked off the local news in the middle of a report from the Bronx—a brick factory spewing orange flames from its windows—and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He lay there, cramped, bitter about the unfairness of it all. So he’d made a mistake. Was she so perfect? He’d never confronted her about it, but he suspected Fiona and her Pakistani friend from law school—what was his name?—liked each other more than the normal amount. Late-night study sessions and whatnot. Had he ever said anything? No way. Wasn’t his style to be so petty, register every little concern. Point being that he, Jasper, could overlook certain things. How could Fiona be so ready to toss out the whole relationship, these past six years? She didn’t mean it. She couldn’t mean it. It was a mistake. A big misunderstanding. They were getting back together, he knew it. She knew it. Kenji knew it, too. 

Helen Park. He’d been resentful that their classmates assumed the two struck up an alliance because they were the only two Asian American fiction writers in their year. In fact, Jasper had intentionally ignored Helen’s friendly glances during the orientation events. He’d also made a point to steer clear of Phuong Ly, a poet in the year above, to combat the stereotype that all Asians stuck together. Jasper wasn’t going to be pigeonholed.

He thought Helen was a lesbian at first. She wore her short black hair gelled into spikes, a rotating uniform of loose chambray shirts topped by colorful fringed scarves, and always, some clown lipstick was painted on her mouth, bright tangerine, sparkly purple, and, occasionally, goth- metal black. He made it through the fall without engaging her much, but a month into the spring semester, she’d plopped down next to him at the bar where everyone congregated after workshop and called him out: “You’re avoiding me, right?” Though her lips were parted in a smile, she delivered the line as if lobbing an insult, her eyes glittering. He’d noticed then that Helen had a tooth on the side of her grin shaped like a fang. 

“I have a girlfriend,” he blurted out. 

Helen snorted. “Relax,” she said. “Girlfriend. Cool. Well, what is she?” 

“What do you mean, what is she?” he said. “She’s a law student.” 

Helen shook her head. Her hair didn’t move. “No, I mean, like—is she Asian?” 

“She’s Taiwanese,” Jasper said. Helen raised an eyebrow. “So what?” 

“Why don’t you ever invite her out with us? Everyone else brings their boos and randos.” 

“I don’t know, she’s busy.” He didn’t want to tell her that Fiona would find their conversations—about books, writing, their professors—insufferable. 

Jasper had long suspected that Fiona wasn’t totally on board with his writing ambitions. The program was designed to accommodate working professionals, but Jasper had insisted on quitting his day job—communications department at a charitable foundation—to fully immerse himself in the MFA. He had some savings and took out a student loan for tuition and living expenses. He’d wanted to chance a higher amount, max out both the subsidized and unsubsidized federal limits, but Fiona had advised against it. What about all your law school debt? he’d said. That’s different, she replied. After I finish I’ll actually— She didn’t finish the sentence, just let the words hang there. He’d been stung by her frankness, though he knew she was only being pragmatic. 

“Why’d you ask if she’s Asian?” Jasper said. 

“You seem like—I don’t know.” Helen shrugged. “Your stories in workshop—” 

“What?” 

She shrugged again. 

Helen was only a year out of college, the same age Jasper was when he moved to New York with Fiona. That night at the bar, she told him to stop writing stories about white people. He’d scoffed and then they’d argued—“Just because I don’t indicate what race the characters are doesn’t automatically mean they’re white!” “Um, yeah, dude, it reads like that, sorry to break it to you.” “Not true. That’s your own racist reading bias. Not my problem!”—until Jasper realized their raised voices had attracted everyone else’s attention. The others from their workshop stood around the bar clutching PBR cans, staring at them.

Jasper stood suddenly, knocking over his barstool. He tossed down a few bills and stormed out. Helen followed him. They shouted at each other out on the sidewalk. Frustrated, he grabbed her hard by both arms—he thought maybe he would shake her. An alarmed expression crossed Helen’s widened dark eyes. Jasper remembered himself. Then, she was leading him to another bar, where they took shots and kept arguing, but there was laughter in it now, and something else; something more dangerous, Jasper recalled. Later still, when he followed her up the stairs to her apartment on Delancey—Helen was going to lend him her copy of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee—Jasper thought: Nothing’s happened yet, and nothing might happen, anyway. Pull yourself together, Chang.

When he got home that night, Jasper took a scalding shower before falling into bed with Fiona. Six years together: Fiona wasn’t the first girl he’d slept with, but she was pretty close to it. Jasper promised himself it was only going to be that one time, with Helen. The sex wasn’t anything spectacular, and her room smelled vaguely like cat piss. The next Monday after workshop, however, they fucked again; then another time, another day of the week, until Jasper couldn’t remember why it mattered, as though he’d somehow believed that cheating on Fiona, if done on a Monday, gave him moral immunity. For whatever reason, to whatever ends, he wanted Helen, and he had decided to let himself have her. 

By the time Kenji told him and Fiona about the cancer diagnosis, Jasper had been hooking up with Helen for three months. That week, Jasper couldn’t help but feel pulled back from some precipice he hadn’t known he was standing on. Kenji was his best friend, and Fiona was his girl, still. One day, he was certain, she’d be his wife. He had to stop seeing Helen. There was no romance between them, only the intoxicating fumes of mutual derision, which each accepted for erotic intrigue. That, and their mutual loneliness. Helen made no complaints when he ended things. He returned the copy of Cha’s poetry to her, unread. 

The faint line of light under the bedroom door snapped black, and Jasper heard Fiona settle in, the comforter rustling. An image of Fiona’s bare legs, her inner thighs brushing softly against each other, passed through his mind. He missed her, and the missing was tinged with anger and shame. The beginning of a dream cast its net over him: Fiona straddling him on the futon, the gray outline of her body in the darkness of the living room. Her fingertips on his nipples, teasing. They hadn’t touched one another since somewhere near the end of April, when Fiona had found out about Helen, after everything was already over. Kenji’s fault, punk ass with that notebook. But Jasper couldn’t even be mad—dude was fighting cancer, right? 

Jasper startled awake at four in the morning, the world still dark. The apartment was suffused with the smell of melted butter and hot sugar, as it was every morning, rising from the Italian bakery that occupied the ground floor. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, tried to float back to sleep, but felt suddenly chilled by the sensation of being watched. 

“Fiona?” Jasper rubbed his eyes again. “You okay?” He sat up on the futon. A figure stood by the bedroom door.

“What if,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “What if Kenji doesn’t—” 

“He’s doing so good,” Jasper said. “You can’t think like that.” He patted the space next to him. She stepped toward him on silent feet and sank down. After a moment, he put an arm around her. 

“Are you crying?” 

She shook her head and turned her face toward him, as if to prove she wasn’t, even though it was dark and he could barely see. He shifted, enough to close the small distance between their mouths. Fiona met him there. 

They kissed a few times before he pulled the T-shirt over her head. Jasper cupped his right hand over her breast, found her nipple between his fingers, and pinched it, hard. She gave a small gasp. With his mouth on hers, Jasper moved his hand to her neck. Under his thumb he felt her pulse jumping. Her hands were tugging at his shorts. He pushed her down on the futon mattress. All of a sudden Jasper remembered how it was, the frenzied pleasure of sex with someone you loved and who you knew loved you back. He wanted to call her a bitch for how she’d been treating him. He fought the urge to say, I love you— 

Jasper stayed silent and kept thrusting, the palm of his hand pressed against Fiona’s neck. He was only doing what she liked—to be brutalized, just a little. Made to acquiesce, pinned down, her vagina slapped and bruised. And afterward, he knew she liked to be held. He tightened his grip around her throat. She whimpered and moaned, writhing underneath him. They moved together in the dark, as one. They generated heat. The air seemed to buzz in Jasper’s ears, the sound of honeybees. He held his breath. He waited for her to come. In another minute, she arrived. 

Friday morning, Jasper was dressed and downstairs before nine. Kenji’s surgery, scheduled for ten at Mount Sinai uptown. Outside, the vendors on Mulberry Street were setting up for the day. He strolled past a fruit stand piled high with lychees, clusters of longan, bright pink dragon fruit the size of his fist. 

Earbuds in, an old DJ Shadow playlist keyed up, he passed one stall after another on Canal Street selling junk souvenirs: miniature jade figurines, knotted red rope ornaments, novelty lighters and keychains, and those conical bamboo hats. Maybe they were all storefronts for illegitimate businesses. Knockoff designer handbags, miniature turtles, bootleg DVDs. Or something more sinister? Poor girls imported from China, some trained to work at massage parlors, jerking out perfunctory happy endings, others assigned to long hours crouched at the gnarled feet of hardened Manhattan women, scrubbing calluses and sawing off toenails. 

He swiped through the turnstile at Lafayette, recalling the time he and Kenji had staggered into one of those shady massage parlors south of Canal with a neon-lit OPEN sign. Three in the morning, they were both faded as hell, elbowing each other forward and knocking over shit in the small front room. An older woman who reminded Jasper too much of his mother ushered them into a dim hallway behind a red beaded curtain. In the end he had backed out. He smoked several cigarettes on the sidewalk while he waited. Kenji swayed out half an hour later, the red from all the tequila shots drained from his cheeks. He laughed, and threw an arm around Jasper’s neck. “Worth it,” he muttered. “God damn. You’re a pussy, you know that?” Then he ran for the gutter and vomited into it, bent over with one hand pressed on the sidewalk. 

Jasper came above ground a half hour later at Ninety- Sixth and Lex. Two blocks west, and two blocks north. The surgery building was brand-new and clean-looking. Upstairs, a set of blue chairs lined the waiting room, and a yellowing philodendron relaxed in one corner. Only two of the seats were filled. An Asian man in his seventies, his face sallow and dotted with large brown spots, sat beside someone who must be his son, because the younger man had the exact same face, without the liver marks. Neither one looked up when Jasper shuffled past them up to the glass window at the back of the room. A young white nurse sat typing into a computer. Jasper asked if Kenji had arrived and checked in already. 

“Last name?” 

He told her, and she thumbed through a stack of papers next to the keyboard. “Philip Mura for the gastroendoscopy?” She looked at him for confirmation over a set of seafoam-green reading glasses. 

“The what?” He’d forgotten that Kenji used his English name for official records. “It’s for his stomach.” 

The nurse told him the procedure would be done in about an hour and a half. 

Jasper sat down at one of the blue chairs. He glanced over at the father and son. If they gave him an opening, Jasper would gladly explain the story. Was it wrong? The thrill he got from telling people his best friend had cancer, and then waited for the glimmer of sympathy in their eyes as he nonchalantly elaborated that he was Kenji’s primary caretaker—well, one of them, anyway. 

Jasper planned to write about the whole thing: how the surgeon split open Kenji’s neck to scrape off the tumors, cut out a third of his tongue, and then stitched in a circle of flesh from the inside of his left forearm. Next, the radiation treatments that burned purple scars into Kenji’s chin and throat. That was when he’d stopped talking—hurt to use his tongue, hurt to swallow down spit—and started using the notebook to communicate. 

The chemo bags were supposed to be the last thing, poisoning any chances of future growth. But now, while Jasper sat waiting, Kenji was on a table back there. A hole, two inches below the sternum. A plastic tube for funneling liquid food. Weird, Jasper thought. Weird, gross, and sad. A winning trifecta for a short story. Maybe he’d weave in a backstory about the Japanese American internment during World War II. A wound in the chest . . . he groped for a metaphor. 

That would show Helen he wrote fiction with Asian American characters. He’d prove her wrong. 

He considered calling Fiona. Jasper hadn’t seen much of her after what happened early Wednesday morning. She’d made herself scarce the last couple nights. 

The handsome young man in the hospital waiting room peered out the window with his intense brown eyes . . . An intentionally bad line. Jasper smiled, and then looked toward the clock on the wall. 

Jasper didn’t expect the wheelchair escort. Kenji had on a Team Japan jersey—the World Cup semifinals were broadcasting later tonight. The shirt hung on him like how it might look draped on a coatrack. Jasper probably had a good forty pounds on him, since the chemo. Even Kenji’s head had shrunk, the most disconcerting part of the weight loss. 

“You good?” Jasper asked. Kenji raised a thumb in the air.

Downstairs, Jasper hailed a cab crawling north on Madison. Kenji sat waiting in the wheelchair, squinting against the sun. The cab pulled to the curb, and Jasper took a hold of his friend’s elbow to guide him into the back seat, then shut the door for him. He walked around to the other side and got in. 

“Where to, chief?” the driver asked. Jasper gave him the block.

Months before, when he’d confided in Kenji about slipping up with Helen, he hadn’t considered the possibility that Kenji would be angry with him. They were supposed to be boys. Homies for life. They’d been floormates in Unit 3 when Jasper was a freshman, Kenji a third-year transfer at twenty- four—he bought everyone’s beers. Jasper never thought for a second that Kenji would take Fiona’s side of things—he’d been the one to convince Jasper the massage parlor didn’t count as cheating. It was like watching porn, or going to a strip club, Kenji had said about the place on Doyers. Strictly professional. Jasper needed a friend to talk to about the Helen situation. Kenji had scolded him, like he was some immature kid. 

And then, Kenji had done the worst: he leaked the secret to Fiona. He swore it happened by accident—Fiona had opened up the notebook and read it without his permission. There was a confrontation, then retreat, which led into Jasper and Fiona’s present stalemate. 

He wondered if Kenji liked the chemo days with Fiona better than the ones with him. Did they laugh? Did she tell stories to entertain him while his body swallowed up all that medicine?

Kenji said he was staying neutral; he loved them both. Still, Jasper couldn’t shake the feeling that Kenji had been irretrievably lost to him. He didn’t know when it happened: Kenji belonged to Fiona now. 

In the back seat of the cab, Jasper glanced over at Kenji dozing. He wondered if Kenji liked the chemo days with Fiona better than the ones with him. Did they laugh? Did she tell stories to entertain him while his body swallowed up all that medicine? A maddening thought: What if after all this, Kenji and Fiona got together? One time at the gym, Jasper caught a glimpse of Kenji’s dick in the locker room—uncircumcised, and fucking huge. 

The cab lurched to a stop in front of Kenji’s building. Upstairs, he helped get Kenji settled into the bed. Jasper checked the fridge: nothing but a Brita pitcher and bottles of vanilla-flavored Ensure. An old stick of butter in the door. He glanced back at Kenji’s sleeping figure before he slipped out quietly. 

Jasper called Fiona from the sidewalk outside Kenji’s building. “I want to talk,” he said. He asked what time she’d be home tonight. 

“About what?” she said. “Is Kenji okay?” 

“About me and you.” Jasper paused. “The other night—” Fiona sighed. She said she’d be home at six. 

Fiona met Jasper at the apartment after work, as she promised. She asked how it went with Kenji’s gastroendoscopy this morning. 

“Fine,” he said. 

“I’ll go up there tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to ask him if I can stay with him—” 

“Fiona.” Jasper’s voice was shredded. “I want to work things out. You know that.”

“The lease ends after August,” she said. “I can probably be out before then.” 

“What do I have to do? What do you want me to say?”

“You’re not listening to me.” 

They sat on opposite ends of the futon. Fiona faced the giant TV screen, refusing to give Jasper her eyes. 

“There’s nothing to work out,” she said. “We already talked about this.” 

“Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. Couples therapy. Anything.” 

“Two months ago, we decided this was what needed to happen—” 

“What about the other night?” he said. “You barely say two words to me for how long, then all of a sudden—”

“What happened to you?” Fiona examined her hands. Her voice was quiet. “You used to be different.” 

“I said I’m sorry about— I made a mistake. I told you, it didn’t mean anything.” 

“I don’t care about her,” Fiona said. “I don’t care what it did or didn’t mean to you. It doesn’t matter to me.” She stood and paced the room, because she couldn’t sit next to him any longer. 

“I’m so confused.” Jasper’s eyes were wet. “I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t understand—I’m still me. I messed up. But I’m still the same—” 

“I want this to end. I want to move out and be done with it,” she said. “I don’t know what the other morning was.” She hesitated. “It wasn’t . . . anything.”

“You’re lying,” he said. 

She watched him cry, the whites of his eyes turning red. Fiona felt a bitter satisfaction at his suffering, and a tinge of pain for him. She felt embarrassed that she was enjoying this. She didn’t want to enjoy it. She didn’t want to be cruel. But the feeling was there, all the same. 

“Don’t do this,” he said now. “Please, baby. Don’t give up on me—what we have—” 

Fiona didn’t answer. She stood there with her arms crossed, as still as anything. 

“The other morning,” he pleaded. “I know you felt something.”

Fiona shook her head. 

“Look at me.” Jasper waited. “Please.” Fiona turned her head toward him and met his gaze. Over the back of the futon, he reached out for her hand. 

“I used to think, there had to be nothing left, for me to leave.” Fiona stayed where she was, arms crossed. “And I thought there was nothing left between us. Only Kenji. Taking care of him. Making sure he’s going to be okay.” 

“There’s a lot left—there’s us. Me and you.” Jasper let his arm hang down over the back of the futon. 

“Not enough,” she said. 

“Don’t say that,” he said. “That’s not true.” 

She sat back down on the futon, next to him. They were silent for a while. She curled her legs up and hugged her shins. “Can you do me a favor?” She paused. “Can you help me shave my head?”

“What?” 

“Kenji’s been so down lately, I think it’ll cheer him up.” She paused. “Help him get through the rest of chemo.” Jasper didn’t reply. He sat leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. 

Fiona glanced over at him. The way Jasper looked at her then, like she was a wonder, something magic, Fiona knew that she would always love him. She’d forgotten that feeling, the pleasure of being seen by someone you loved and who loved you back. For a moment, before she stepped into the future on her own, and the past—their past—closed for good, she reached for him as if through a door, and she held on to his hand. How soft the skin of his palm against hers, how warm and familiar his fingers. How dear he was to her, after all. Jas per had been her first love. He would always be that. 

The next morning, Fiona headed uptown to check on Kenji. When she got above ground at 125th, she reached for her cigarettes. Her knuckles brushed against a crumpled ball of paper and it fell out of her purse, landing on the sidewalk at her feet. The save-the-date for Amir and Khadijah’s wedding—she didn’t know why she’d been carrying it around. Fiona bent down to pick it up. She unfolded the postcard, smoothing her thumbs over the wrinkles creased in the paper. When Amir had announced his engagement in an email to their clinic last quarter, she’d replied with her congratulations, and he’d sent back: “You’re next!” 

In the last six years, she and Jasper had talked about marriage, and kids, in a vague way. Last year, they’d agreed to wait until after they both finished their degrees before getting engaged. Fiona had once been able to imagine the wedding with confidence. Jane, her best friend, standing up there by her side. Kenji next to Jasper, of course. Now she wasn’t sure about anything anymore. What would happen to her this September, when she turned twenty-seven, without him in her life? A long time ago, she’d pressed Jane for her honest opinion after she’d met him at Fiona’s graduation at Berkeley. “Honestly? You won’t get mad?” Fiona braced herself. “Just kidding—he seems great, Fi. Is he really writing a novel? What does that even mean?” Fiona’s friendship with Jane in the last four years had lapsed into something dormant—last they talked, months ago now, Jane had been dating a woman named Carly, though Fiona couldn’t get a read on how serious things were between them. 

She strolled in the direction of Kenji’s building, the sun on the back of her neck, her newly shorn crown. She felt self-conscious and kept touching her head. Were people staring at her? Did they think she was some kind of escaped Buddhist nun? When she passed Kenji’s brownstone, her feet kept moving. She was still smoking the cigarette. 

Fiona thought about the notebook. When she’d leafed through the pages that night while he slept, Fiona knew it was a violation of Kenji’s privacy. Still, she felt it was her duty as a friend to monitor his state of mind from week to week. The notebook was part communication tool, and part journal. Kenji had lines copied from Neruda love poems, quotes from Kant and Hume on existential meaning, a series of zen koans and his earnest attempts at answering them. A few entries of recorded dreams. A list of medications. Then she’d come upon a page, just a few lines: Enough about me, what’s up with you? Did you stop seeing that girl? How’d she take it? You okay? 

She’d touched Kenji’s shoulder to wake him. Showed him the page. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—but what is this? Is it Jasper?” Kenji had brought his hands up to his face. He took the notebook from her and then he’d thrown it across the room. It had hit the wall with a dull thud.

Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?

Posted on by Jo Lou

The novel The School for Good Mothers begins with Frida Liu–a single working mother who is at her wit’s end–having a bad day that culminates in her losing her daughter to protective services. As her punishment she will be part of a new program to rehabilitate bad moms and if she is successful, then and only then can she get her daughter back. It’s a shocking, scary and biting satire of a culture that will not stop surveilling women’s bodies and minds. It’s the kind of book you interact with–yelling What?? Nooo! then curling into a ball or having your stomach drop at the drama. Tearing through the pages then slamming it shut, afraid of what comes next. Laughing and then snorting because it’s also wildly funny which I’m still so amazed by because how can it be all these things at once?

There is no book I’ve been yearning for longer than Jessamine Chan’s debut novel. I met Chan in graduate school more than a decade ago. She’s the reason MFA programs exist. She’s that mythical person you’re told to find in your graduate program. The one who builds exciting and inviting communities wherever she is. That writer and reader you can share work with forever. Since then, I have been privy to all the ups and downs that come with writing a novel. Then add into the mix having a baby when you weren’t sure you were ready for a baby, when in fact you were writing a dystopian novel about not being sure about having a baby, and it makes sense this book needed time to gestate. But holy shit was it worth the wait.

Chan and I talked over Zoom about parenting, art, identity and power, and just who gets to decide what makes a good mother in an inequitable world. 

Diane Cook: Were there questions about motherhood or the future that you were trying to get at by writing The School for Good Mothers?

Jessamine Chan: It’s really hard to put the why of it all into words, because for a really long time, I feel like I was just working out personal questions with the story, because the fear that was driving the writing of the book was really just me being really afraid of having a baby and becoming a mom and taking on that responsibility and changing my life. So I definitely felt like the book was a way to process all that fear and pressure. 

I think I also just felt really troubled by modern American parenting culture. Like, even as someone who wasn’t a parent and who was just observing it through my friends who had children, or reading about it in the media, and then reading books about it when I was doing novel research, it just felt so oppressive.

There’s this external cultural pressure, but also all this internal pressure to feel loving and joyful and grateful and patient at every single moment, which just felt so stifling in a lot of ways.

And then I had my baby, and then I was actually living in this hyper-intense parenting culture that I had been satirizing. 

DC: And did having your baby affect the direction of the book? 

JC: Well, the good thing about being a very slow writer is that it’s almost like the book grew alongside my baby, because I was revising the chapters so slowly that eventually the book and my child were around the same ages. So I could write about babyhood when she was a baby.  

And then when she was a toddler, I stole tons of dialogue and also learned about how much a toddler of that age talks, or eats, or how they move. And so, that all got folded into the book. So many of her toddler and infant milestones and memories of her babyhood are woven into the book, I feel like I built a baby memory book within the book. So, instead of finishing her first year baby album, I’m giving her a dystopian novel.

DC: There’s this moment in the book I want to talk about. When Frida is awaiting the verdict on her mothering the Judge–Frida’s judge!—tries to console her by saying basically, Hey I have two kids and four grandkids so, I understand how anxious you are right now. It’s such an awful moment. The kind of thing that slices so deep and is so insidious; this idea that because we have had the umbrella experience–being a mom!—that we understand the ins and outs of every other mother’s experience. She assumes her experience is everyone else’s experience, and if it isn’t, well that’s on them.

This whole dystopian apparatus you’ve set up in this future world comes from a total lack of empathy for, or the ability to relate to, people with different experiences than your own. It struck me as one of the basic building blocks of the book—this inability to see mothers as individuals and only see them as robots that can be programmed to care for their children. 

JC: I think what I was trying to get at, with this dystopian school and these oppressive new rules, was the idea that it’s possible for anyone to know better. A lot of people in power believe that they know better, or they know best for a particular family, or what’s best for the child in a particular family.

One inspiration for the book came from a Rachel Aviv article in The New Yorker called “Where Is Your Mother?” which followed a single mom who left her toddler at home alone and then never got him back again.

But what struck me about the article was that the woman was an immigrant. She wasn’t American. And they were judging her parenting, her personality, her way of communication, and her depth of feeling by very American, Western standards—this Western ideal of how a mom is supposed to behave and how tender she’s supposed to be. I just felt so angry on that mother’s behalf. There was this other system coming in and telling her what the standards were supposed to be and why she was a failure. And they weren’t taking into account that she was from a different culture or any details of her personality. She was a person who deserved a second chance, but never got one.

What surprised me—once I started reading about the issue of termination of parental rights and kids who get taken away from their parents—was that it was so much more pervasive than I thought, which was just shocking because it feels like the greatest nightmare of all to have your kid taken away by the government. But that’s happening all around us.

DC: When Frida gets to the School, she notices mostly Black and Brown moms, a few white moms scattered in. So, in this dystopia, mothers are being surveilled, but not all mothers. Like, every mother has done something that they are not proud of or that they regret, right? But not every kind of mom is represented in that place. And so it made me think about who gets surveilled and who are the ones that the state or this governing power thinks needs intervention?

I haven’t had many chances to read about Asian American women being messy on the page… Just being flawed in all the ways that make people more real as characters.

JC: I wanted the book to gesture at the fact that the way that we are surveilled is different depending on race and class. And that we don’t all face the same amount of monitoring from the government or the police. What I learned in the reading I did was that the circumstance of getting caught up with Child Protective Services and potentially losing custody and being dragged through the courts primarily happens to poor Black and Brown women.

DC: She also notices that she’s the only Asian American or Chinese American mom there. 

JC: In reality, someone of Frida’s race and class would not typically be caught. So she’s alone and the ultimate outsider. And so that gave me, as the writer, a much broader perspective. 

And I feel like I haven’t had that many chances to read about Asian American, or Chinese American women, being messy on the page, and not making the right decisions or being selfish. Or being self destructive and desiring or even having anxiety and depression. Just being flawed in all the ways that make people more real as characters. I wanted Frida to get to be messy. 

DC: Do you think that’s partly why she gets caught? She doesn’t fit into a flat stereotype and maybe that made the world take notice and surveil her more?

JC: I don’t necessarily think that was it. I mean, I’ve had white friends whose children are sitting in the car, who run back into the store to pick up their wallet off the counter that they forgot and they come back to the car, having been gone for 30 seconds, and there’s someone standing at their car door saying, “I was about to call the cops on you.” And that is in suburban Connecticut. I wanted Frida to have her very bad day in a world where there’s a lot of those good samaritan phone calls to the police, but not have support in her community.

DC: No one is rooting for her.

The way that you judge a person’s fitness as a parent is always gonna be informed by your experience of race, culture, and class and what you think good and bad parenting is.

JC: I wanted her to be not at ease in her community. Throughout my whole life, I’ve often been the only Asian person in the room. And I guess I wanted to speak to that in some way. It’s so ingrained in my experience of being a person in the world to be the only person who looks like me in the room. Sometimes I’m in a crowded space and I’m sometimes the only person of color. And it’s been like that since childhood. It’s an experience of always being an outsider and always having the slight discomfort of not seeing people who look like you.

I never imagined giving Frida any Asian allies in the School. I guess I wanted to write about race in a way that asked more questions rather than me making any grand statements.

DC: It’s so interesting that the mothers in the book end up taking care of robot babies as a stand in for their real children, because it feels like they’re being taught to be robotic moms. Like, you cannot be a mother without fluctuations and feelings. You cannot be a mother without making mistakes and having to apologize to your kid. I apologize to my daughter often because I do something that I know was human but kind of shitty. You know what I mean?

JC: But I think the feeling bad about the shitty moments is something from today’s parenting culture.

30 years ago, moms had shitty moments and didn’t apologize. They just got on with their day because there wasn’t a culture. Which is part of the culture of motherhood that I’m satirizing—where you not only have to have a perfect house, perfect career, and perfect marriage, you also have to be 100% on point for your child at every moment of the day and love it every moment of the day. And I feel like that’s really oppressive.

The idea of reeducation and parenting classes [in the book], that is from real life. The version I wrote is insane, but there is a kernel of truth in real life where there are court mandated parenting classes and parenting coaches and manuals. And your progress is judged in order to get custody of your kids again. I thought it was so bonkers, but it’s just part of our system.

DC: Even if we all agree there needs to be more room for mothers to define what good parenting is, it seems impossible there won’t still be a limit or line that moves someone from the acceptable to unacceptable category. And so there will always be people whose actual job is to judge and then inform others of where they fall. 

In some sectors of American culture, once you’re a mother, that role defines you and negates the rest of your personality or anything that came before.

JC: This book is not proposing answers and I’m not proposing answers. Do I have a way of fixing a flawed system? No. But I think I wanted to call into question whether or not any of those decisions can be made free of bias. Because individual judges and individual social workers are making decisions that will potentially change a family’s life or a person’s life forever. But how can those decisions be made in a vacuum? How can those decisions ever be fair? Because the way that you judge a person’s fitness as a parent is always gonna be informed by your experience of race, culture, and class and what you think good and bad parenting is.

DC: There’s this section early in the book when Frida is waiting to hear about what will happen to her, and she fully expects to get Harriet back because there really is no other possible reality in her mind and she’s describing how she’s gotten her room all ready for her and—

JC: You sent me an email saying, “She stocked her fridge. No.”

DC: It fucking destroyed me. Because, I mean, I’m not spoiling anything by saying she doesn’t get Harriet back then. She has to go to the School to be reeducated. But there’s a couple pages where we learn what exactly the counselors and case managers observed and reported about her. It’s all so contradictory and reading it you get this sense like water funneling and going down a drain. You realize there was no way she could ever do anything “right” in the situation. Because it’s all in the eye of the beholder who already has a judgement or a perspective in which Frida is bad. 

JC:  There’s this premise that these decisions are gonna be objective, but how can it be anything but subjective?

DC: One thing I loved though is that these characters, who are being punished for their bad mothering, sometimes push back against the idea that they are bad. They think, “There must be something good about me… right?” The only way they get their kids back is to conform to these state sanctioned standards which are totally out of reach, and yet they defiantly hold onto pieces of themselves even though the stakes are so high. Can you talk about balancing their sense of self and their role as moms?

JC: I wanted to explore how Frida holds onto her integrity while being indoctrinated. In some sectors of American culture, once you’re a mother, that role defines you and negates the rest of your personality or anything that came before. The oppressive state standards were my way of taking something that bothered me about our culture and making that feeling literal. So instead of saying, yeah, mothering should be your first priority, the School says “All you are is a mother. You should have no other thoughts or desires besides your child’s safety and well-being.” Which makes the mothers desperately cling to what remains of their identity and keep some part of themselves secret and out of reach.

DC: We talk about being art moms sometimes. Why do so many art moms have such a hard time justifying their work? Do lawyer moms and doctor moms and teacher moms have just as much angst as I do about the time I want or need to spend working versus being with my children? 

JC: For me, what’s hard about being an art mom is that the art requires complete immersion and devotion and concentration and so does the human child. And I think what’s hard about the balance is that there’s no set structure for it. I’m sure it’s also very, very hard to be a professional in most anything right now. I’m sure just parents in general are having a hard time. But I think what’s hard, for me, about being an art mom is that I could technically be working on the art all the time.

DC: Yes, me too.

JC: It just requires a different conversation in your head to prioritize the work when the work is art, because the world treats that as not real work. I have found it hard to ignore that message that what I’m doing is a selfish pursuit. And so I constantly have to have the conversation that it is okay to do this thing that the world sees as maybe selfish or foolish and unworthy and to take time away from my child to do that. So it’s a whole other layer of pep talks. It’s just hard to get rid of the guilt. Like I don’t want to feel guilty, I just do. And I can see why all the messages from society are wrong, but the guilt—it’s still there.

DC: What’s amazing is that I found myself succumbing to suggestions in the book about how I should behave as a mother. The school is so certain of their standards that I would start to think they’re right. I’m reading as a mom and thinking to myself, “Wait, I don’t do that–should I be doing that? Like, I don’t talk to my kids in motherese, should I be???” And I’d have an anxious moment before I remember this is satirizing this absolutist thinking about what mothers should be. It’s incredibly potent. 

JC: The satire was my way of processing my thoughts, feelings, and anxiety about a generally upper-middle-class and white American parenting culture and all the pressure. I found, and still find, the sheer number of instructions about any parenting task or decision to be overwhelming, so part of the satire was taking the idea of instruction and making it insane.

Through satire and using speculative elements, I wanted to call into question who is making those rules and whether it’s possible to ever have a set of universal standards that’s separate from the influence of race, class, and culture. How can the teaching of parenting ever be truly objective?

Hot, Medium, or Mild? Jenessa Abrams Values How You Want to be Critiqued

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?”, we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This month, we’re featuring Jenessa Abrams, an essayist, fiction writer, literary translator, and practitioner of Narrative Medicine. Check out the 4-week online non-fiction workshop Abrams is teaching about decentering the reviewer, and instead reviewing books through a social and political lens. We talked to her about good and evil, chocolate caramels, and why baking is a writer’s ideal hobby.  

What’s the best thing you’ve ever gotten out of a writing class or workshop as a student?

Hot, Medium, or Mild

At the start of a nonfiction workshop in college, Cris Beam said: “Before we talk about your work, we need to know how you want us to talk about it. Tell us, on a scale of hot-to-medium-to-mild, what level of intensity you’re ready for.”

The sound of my relief was audible. The suggestion that my feelings mattered, that bleeding out on the page might affect me psychologically, that I could be serious about bettering my craft without sacrificing my safety, was nothing short of life changing. Her care gave me permission to write into experiences of danger with the knowledge that, in her hands, I’d be treated with respect and dignity. 

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever gotten out of a writing class or workshop as a student?

I would not have guessed anyone could misunderstand this assignment so thoroughly.

I would never encourage a student to give up. Writing can save you. It saved me.

A college professor scrawled that on the last page of my weekly creative writing assignment (I photographed it). His prompt instructed us to tell a story from a collective perspective. Usually, weekly assignments were brief sketches, the seeds of something, a few pages at most. But that prompt unearthed something inside me. A story I’d been circling around, really hiding from, emerged when I wrote it from the vantage point of two children instead of one. I turned in an eight- or ten-page story. My professor didn’t comment on a single moment, word, sentence, or phrase in the piece besides his closing assertion that I’d misunderstood what he wanted. 

Writing isn’t for your professor. Writing is for yourself and for your reader and for the artform.

What is the lesson or piece of writing advice you return to most as an instructor?

The first draft of a novel is you telling yourself the story.

I read that advice shortly after finishing the first draft of my debut novel. I’d sent the draft off to my agent in a flurry, working on a two-month deadline that meant the draft was really hundreds of pages of ideas, bones, sketches of who my characters were, slivers of what they wanted. The novel was stuck behind fogged glass. You could see the shape of something if you looked closely, but so much of it was still blurry. I so badly wanted that advice to be untrue, but it wasn’t. Very often, our first drafts are singular, magical, delicate sketches of what our stories or novels or memoirs will become, but in the beginning, we’re writing them to figure out what the story is. In some ways, that’s the hardest part. Once we know the story, once we have distance from it, then we can shape it into something meaningful for our readers.   

Does everyone “have a novel in them”?

To me, that question is a bit like the question: Are people born inherently good? Maybe. Maybe not. But I certainly don’t have the power to determine that for someone else (frankly no one should). I do think everyone has a story inside them. The story of why they are who they are. Of what happened to them. That story isn’t justification for violence or cruelty, but it can help us understand them better. I wish more people had the privilege of time and space to tell theirs.

Would you ever encourage a student to give up writing? Under what circumstances?

In my senior year of college, I had a professor (see question 2) who, during our final workshop, which doubled as a holiday party at his home, announced to the class that I was not talented enough to be a real writer. Then he coaxed my classmates along, encouraging them to say disparaging things about me. I sat on his sofa, pinching the fat on my thigh, trying not to cry. Then he placed a chocolate caramel—a caramel I’d brought him as a gift—into his mouth and smiled. So, no. I would never encourage a student to give up. Writing can save you. It saved me. Not everyone will get published. But writers don’t write for the sole purpose of publication. At least they shouldn’t. Writers write to tell a story, to make someone feel something, to help them understand themselves better, to figure out what they think and who they are.  

What’s more valuable in a workshop, praise or criticism?

The moment you let someone else into the room, the room stops being yours.

At its worst, praise can artificially inflate a writer’s ego, discouraging them from probing their work and trying to make it better, but at its best, praise can make a vulnerable writer feel like they matter, like their perspective is valid, like even if they don’t conform to an arbitrary style or writing exercise or way of expressing themselves, that doesn’t mean their art is any less important. The best workshops begin with praise, then move into criticism.

Should students write with publication in mind? Why or why not?

See question 3.

Fear is the crushing weight on the keyboard. Preventing us from facing our shame, our anxieties, our darkness. Write without thinking about how anyone will feel when they read it. The moment you let someone else into the room, the room stops being yours. Stay in that room by yourself as long as you can. Make the thing that only you can make. Then revise the hell out of it.

In one or two sentences, what’s your opinion of these writing maxims?

There is no one size fits all. In anything. Writing or life. Take the advice that speaks to you and discard the rest.

  • Kill your darlings: Some sentences sound like velvet, but don’t make you feel anything. Cut them, but save them in a separate document. Tell yourself you’ll use them later. Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.
  • Show don’t tell: There’s no shame in saying something plainly. Abstraction often creates distance. Go ahead and just name the thing.
  • Write what you know: Write from an emotional truth, but let that truth lead you into spaces that are unfamiliar to you.
  • Character is plot: I used to refuse to let anything happen to my characters. Their stuck-ness was the story I was telling. It turns out that we’re always feeling and changing and growing and regressing and backpedaling even when we’re depressed and unmoving. 

What’s the best hobby for writers?

For me, the answer is baking. I think the best hobbies are ones that allow writers to complete a task from start to finish, preferably with tangible results of their labor, like coarsely salted pretzel rolls or sugared rhubarb tarts. The writing process, from draft to-revision-to-submission-to-rejection-to-re-submission-to-eventual publication is so long, so shapeless, and so often lacking in hope, that having proof, something one can hold in their hands, makes the journey a little easier.  

What’s the best workshop snack?

Anything that helps make you feel safe or more comfortable is advisable. My favorite is a box of chocolate caramels (see question 5).

Who Gets to Have Gut Instinct in Big Screen Action Movies?

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

It was my gut, not my mind, that first suggested to me that the films I was consuming represented less a leap for womankind than an interminable box step routine. My feminist hackles had been, for a time, smoothed by the presence of preternatural beauties with STEM degrees in even the silliest movies, like Dr. Jane Foster in Thor, Dr. Grace Augustine in Avatar, and Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Indeed, women onscreen are respected for their intelligence and permitted to inhabit leadership roles more than ever. But somehow, I still felt nauseated when I watched these movies because I realized that while women are portrayed as smart and competent onscreen, it is only men who get to have gut instinct. Franchises like James Bond, Indiana Jones, Batman: all revolve around indispensable male leads saving the day—and one is more likely to encounter a franchise based around undead Egyptians (The Mummy) than around actual mothers. Consequently, while Hollywood would like to believe that it is making progress through its representation of smart women, what it is actually doing is presenting a smokescreen that continues to posit the ability and intelligence of men as distinct and superior.

This storytelling trend is particularly apparent in blockbuster films across action and adventure genres, which have grossed over 100 billion dollars between 1995 and 2021. These genres’ broad cross-sectional appeal is largely due to them reflecting commonly held social values back at their audiences—and in turn, effectively helping generate these values—which makes them telling barometers of social beliefs and progress.

Take action spy film Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018). Sixth in the Mission Impossible franchise, it stars Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in yet another installment of Tom Cruise running, Tom Cruise shooting guns, Tom Cruise leaping off buildings, Tom Cruise driving very fast, and Tom Cruise practicing parkour in scenic locations. Some missing plutonium and biological weaponry also feature. Tom Cruise jumps from building to building, from success to success. When asked on multiple occasions how he will achieve the impossible, he answers simply “I’ll figure it out!” to the point that it becomes a catchphrase. And we, the audience, trust that he will.

While women are portrayed as smart and competent onscreen, it is only men who get to have gut instinct.

Herein lies the catch. Tom Cruise’s character is the story’s hero because of his skill, his intelligence, and his intuition. He gets things right and is ultimately the only one who can save the day because of something instinctual and in-built rather than learnt. Granted, there are seemingly powerful female characters in his story. There is British spy love interest Ilsa Faust; CIA Director Erika Sloane; black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis; and the protagonist’s ex-wife Julia Meade, who is a doctor rather than a spy, but who still helps defuse a bomb. Yet for all that these women’s professions and witty repartee do to signal them as being intelligent and self-sufficient, they lack the gut instinct that effectively confers upon the male protagonist the role of real leader and hero. Each woman (barring perhaps the arms dealer) finds herself hoodwinked and in need of help.

Take CIA Director Sloane, played by Angela Bassett: she is shown to be a leader, yes, but a cold and rigid one who is surprisingly easily manipulated. It is as though the moment she was written in as a leader, the film’s creators had her exchange any and all stereotypically feminine qualities—many of these useful in leadership roles—for a tailored jacket and an empathy deficit. The film could have made Sloane’s storyline more complex through subtext interrogating why she behaves as she does. Perhaps her rigid attitude stems from the pressure that follows women in leadership roles; the pressure to embody less flexible and more hard-line, stereotypically masculine traits. Regrettably, however, no such subtext is explored. 

As for the film’s other female characters, Julia the ex-wife (Michelle Monaghan) is lured into a trap, and although Ilsa the British spy (Rebecca Ferguson) is highly competent, she still finds herself tied to a chair while Tom Cruise engages in a gun fight helicopter chase. The movie tells the audience that these women are competent authority figures, yet its story shows them as lacking the intuition to get themselves out of trouble without a man’s help.  

The movie tells the audience that these women are competent authority figures, yet its story shows them as lacking the intuition to get themselves out of trouble without a man’s help.

This pattern is evident across a wide range of action films. The classic starting point for American disaster films, for example, is that of a male protagonist in a strained relationship with a typically ex-partner (female) who experiences a call to action as a cataclysmic event threatens human life and the world. Throughout the film, he will lead his family through various near-death experiences, clutching a blonde primary-schooler to his chest and sprinting towards conveniently abandoned off-road vehicles. When disaster strikes, he knows what to do—making evident that he is not merely the dysfunctional, disenchanted suburban dad presented at the film’s start (and reflected unflatteringly in his estranged female counterpart’s eyes). Rather, the film’s events make clear that he is instinctively and inherently heroic, and that he always had it in him to be a hero, if only given the chance.

The above paragraph broadly describes the emotional plotlines of Greenland (2020), Extinction (2018), San Andreas (2015), 2012 (2009), War of the Worlds (2005 – hello again, Tom!), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004), among others.

The narrowness of this pattern is striking, as is the message it subliminally reinforces. Of course there is value in creating escapist fantasies that help celebrate the protective dad qualities and buoy the egos of the straight, typically white men who might identify with the male protagonists of these films. However, the straightness, whiteness, and maleness of these lead characters shows either a lack of imagination in storytelling or an unwillingness in Hollywood to create much-needed variety in action films. 

Moreover, the near-identical man-woman relationships central to these films illuminate significant biases underpinning portrayals of gender, gut instinct, and heroism onscreen. Take 2012, where John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis (henceforth Hero Dad), a struggling writer living in a gloomy bachelor pad littered with Herman Melville novels. His former wife, Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet), is polished and put together and operates as the primary child carer. Hero Dad is a mess by comparison, and his ex appears concerned about his parenting skills and general capacity to be a responsible, functioning adult.

The film’s plot makes Hero Dad integral to his family’s survival. He is even rewarded by the film’s end with (spoiler) the rekindling of his romantic relationship with his ex-wife, whose sweet-natured boyfriend is auspiciously crushed to death by heavy machinery at the film’s ¾ mark. The implication is that although his ex-wife appears to be the family lynchpin at the film’s start – to the extent that she could be read as “mean” or “nagging” in her concerns about his abilities, “making” him look bad by comparison – she is ultimately a less valuable parent than he is, particularly during crises. The film also implies through the couple’s romantic renewal that she either failed to see Hero Dad’s true qualities or made a mistake in ever daring to replace him with a new beau. 

The irony here is that of all individuals likely to survive an apocalypse, the highly organized, “household manager”-type mother would surely be a strong candidate. Were I in an end-of-the-world scenario, I would be inclined to follow the person who keeps a running list of essential items in her head as opposed to the Hero Dad who can admittedly break road rules with panache, but who fails to notice when food in the fridge has expired. Then again, perhaps that is simply my supposed lack of gut instinct talking. 

If you’re a woman, you’ll still be tied to a chair while the man is flying the helicopter.

Whether the action movie protagonist is Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, the Hero Dad of one’s choice, or various other male leads, heroism and leadership are attributed in large part based on gut instinct—a quality these male characters almost always possess. In a field of highly competent female supporting characters, the hero of Mission Impossible is marked out as such because of his intuition. “I’ll figure it out,” he says, and he inevitably does. He does not have a plan; plans are for second-rate heroes and leaders – like women! Because no matter how much you work or train, or repeatedly prove your intelligence, or climb the ranks of the CIA as a Black woman, or go through rigorous training to become a British spy … if you’re a woman, you’ll still be tied to a chair while the man is flying the helicopter. I – a woman, unsurprisingly – do not make the rules. 

The association of gut instinct and raw talent with leadership, heroism, and men is yet another sexist barrier repeatedly raised in film and television, as well as in real life. Consider the framing of competence, skill, and intelligence in some of our most famous and prolific film franchises. James Bond can fail physical, medical, and psychological examinations in Skyfall (2012) and still be the only agent who can save the day. Indiana Jones is elevated from “intelligent academic” to “hero” through his devil-may-care attitude and the fact that he is not just some bookish wonk: he is out there learning in the field and exploring (and exploiting) the world! Luke Skywalker spends far less time learning fighting skills than Princess Leia, but for all her training as a warrior and a diplomat, it is she—and not brash, impulsive, preternaturally skilled Luke—who is chained half-naked to Jabba the Hutt. 

This pervasive notion that women get to be smart but not natural, instinctual heroes, is perhaps most clearly visible in cultural products such as action films, where heroism and leadership tend to be macho. Women may be present; however, they are usually leather-clad, gun-toting, highly sexualized team members: competent, but not enough to dominate the storyline. Nevertheless, this trope – the downplaying of women’s intelligence and leadership – exists across other genres as well. Think of how in the Harry Potter series, it is second-fiddle Hermione who is book smart, whereas Harry, the hero, gets to have gut instinct. Dig a little, and it becomes clear that the association of leadership with gut instinct and maleness is entrenched across myriad stories. 

Indeed, women in stories are allowed to be book smart. They are allowed to be competent and bold: training hard, besting the male protagonist in a duel, then whipping off their helmet to reveal a mane of hair so lustrous it could make a Pantene commercial cry. They are allowed to be indispensable to the hero’s success. But rarely, very rarely, are they seriously considered for the hero or leadership role themselves. They are always a touch off center screen, voicing the narrative prompt “What will we do?” 

Women, men, and leadership operate similarly in stories as to how they do in reality. In real life, women with straight A’s earn less than men with a C average, and men apply for a job or promotion when they meet only 60% of the qualifications while women apply only if they meet 100% of them. And in stories, women are hitting the books and jumping through training hoops while the male hero, confident in his own exceptionality, simply walks around obstacles with a narrative free pass. We are told these women are the brightest witches of their age or the sharpest spies in MI6 – but direction will inevitably be granted ultimately to the action man hero and his trusty gut instinct. 

At this point, one might ask: but what about the women depicted as intelligent, competent leaders? Wasn’t James Bond’s boss played by Judi Dench? 

At this point, one might ask: but what about the women depicted as intelligent, competent leaders?

It is true that the representation and presence of women in leadership roles has indeed improved over the past decade in particular. If I want to watch female love interests successfully pilot submarines, for example, I can sacrifice my last brain cell to either Aquaman or The Meg. We feminists love choice. Nevertheless, I would argue filmmakers are often still limited in how they conceptualize female intelligence and leadership. Intelligent female leaders and heroes are too often portrayed as cold women (Judi Dench as James Bond’s superior; Kate Winslet in the Divergent films), highly sexualized women (Lara Croft in Tomb Raider; Irene Adler in Sherlock Holmes adaptations), or both (Milady in The Three Musketeers; Elizabeth Debicki in The Man From U.N.C.L.E). Either one is a femme fatale – written not least as a sexual object for the straight male gaze – or a cold #bossbitch archetype; namely, a woman leader who is so powerful and competent that she can only be a rigid, emotionally stunted control freak. 

It is interesting to note how real-life prejudices against women leaders are replicated onscreen. Rarely are women allowed to be perceived as both competent, effective leaders and emotionally intelligent humans not blinkered by their lack of traditional feminine virtues, such as empathy and people skills. It is almost like such stories are suggesting female leaders are inherently non-maternal and unnatural, and can only retain power by being horrible bitches! Crazy!  

When a story shows a woman as being either cold and powerful, powerful but titillating, or emotionally intelligent and a second fiddle, it reinforces real-life sexist double standards. Even in fantastical scenarios invented for the big screen, we cannot seem to imagine women leaders who are not fundamentally lacking or deficient in some way. Even in storytelling, women are not allowed to have it all. As in real life, the perception in stories that women leaders are fundamentally flawed leads to an erosion of trust. Women leaders cannot be relied upon to save the day. They tick all the professional boxes but there is still something missing. Tom Cruise is chosen to star in an action spy film, again. 

As in real life, the perception in stories that women leaders are fundamentally flawed leads to an erosion of trust.

It is rare to see competent, intelligent, center-screen women in film and television. It is rarer still for them to reach the story’s end without being repeatedly sexualized for the male gaze; made hyperbolic and two-dimensional in their cold intelligence; or belittled by being sidelined during an action sequence. Onscreen depictions of women leaders in particular risk typifying a sort of faux feminism: these women are competent, but inflexibly so – a rigidity that often leads to their downfall.

For this reason, it merits highlighting positive examples of women heroes and leaders who take up space onscreen, especially in contexts historically associated with men; who behave effectively; and who are never shamed, beaten, or degraded by their storyline. 2017’s Wonder Woman, for instance, was refreshing in its depiction of a woman in a style reminiscent of classic male hero: protagonist Diana stars in a war narrative, inhabits a highly masculinized hero role wherein she is physically invincible, and is never narratively “put in her place.” Other examples of smart, competent women permitted to unapologetically own their screen time include the eponymous Xena (Xena: Warrior Princess, 1995-2001) and, more recently, the strong-willed Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack (2019). Such characters are noteworthy for being shown as confident and powerful without being punished for it, or at least not in a manner presented as justified – and if they do suffer censure, they always get the final word.

It is also worth noting that these three women characters are all either queer or queer-coded, suggesting greater liberty is permitted to female characters who already canonically exist mostly beyond the male gaze (or at least, beyond the male reach). Given film and television’s increasing acceptance of queer identities, this correlation suggests more effective female heroes and leaders could be coming to our screens. Nevertheless, a limitation of this trend is that these women are potentially “permitted” stereotypically masculine qualities – like heroism, physical strength, and gut-based intuition – in part to uphold heteronormative standards sometimes imposed over queer relationships. Indeed, while these characters’ masculinity offers much-needed positive depictions of masculine women, the emphasis on it simultaneously reinforces butch/femme dichotomies between these characters and their love interests. Such dichotomies can be read as compulsorily heteronormative for implying that in queer relationships in particular, one partner must always embody the stereotypical role of “the woman” and the other of “the man.” I would also argue that storytelling continues to operate within the bell jar of patriarchy if women characters must embody traditionally masculine traits in order to be allowed to lead and succeed in their stories.

That said, although these characters are often recognized for their masculinity, they also exemplify a healthy blend of masculine and feminine qualities – perhaps even providing an alternative template for action films’ hyper-masculine male heroes and leaders. While Diana, Xena, and Anne spend the bulk of their time striding purposely, getting tasks done, and refusing to be belittled or sidelined by other people, their emotional journeys are central to their storylines without detracting from perceptions of them as competent, effective heroes and individuals. They are respected and shown to be both strategically and emotionally intelligent. Barring the fact that two of these women are to varying degrees immortal, and one is a snob: could this be closer to the incarnation and behavior of truly aspirational, human female heroes?

Writing competent female heroes and leaders for the screen should not be mission impossible.

Writing competent female heroes and leaders for the screen should not be mission impossible. If you tell your audience your character is competent and intelligent – perhaps even more competent and intelligent than the brawny two-dimensional action man – then show her leading, being listened to, and getting things right. Have her win the way angsty male, alcoholic test-failing secret agents are regularly allowed to win. Because at the end of the tale, this trend of associating women with book smarts and training smarts – but not instinctual smarts and born-leader smarts – ultimately implies that the place of women really is always one step behind the male hero. Their depiction onscreen suggests their intelligence and skill are learned rather than innate, and therefore quietly lacking and inferior to those of men, and their leadership secret sauce of pure masculine instinct.

Funnily enough, in the months following the emergence of the coronavirus, it was women leaders who were especially praised. What do Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, and Taiwan all have in common? Proactive government responses to the coronavirus; low pandemic-related death rates; and female leaders. Granted, it is simplistic and essentialist to conclude that female leaders are effective by virtue of gendered attributes: after all, these countries also benefit from being developed and relatively egalitarian, which fosters women in power. Yet, at the very least, this pattern suggests women leaders deserve to be up there with the boys—”born-leader” mentality and gut instinct irrelevant. Indeed, it is almost as if the leadership secret sauce that so many male heroes and leaders possess onscreen is really just an excuse to belittle competent women, and to keep them one step behind a mediocre man.  

Women have long shown that they have what it takes to lead, both onscreen and in real life, if only they are respected in their leadership roles as men would be. One does not need the gut instinct of Tom Cruise to recognize it is time we stopped patronizing them.

Mami’s Gone, Let’s Ditch the Babysitter

Posted on by Alex Juarez

rosie the robot

While Mami works the hotel rooms, Susana, la vecina and our babysitter, talks mad shit, says Dad doesn’t pay child support because of what a banshee Mami’s become, says Mami doesn’t know how to Mami, “Look at how she doesn’t even comb your pelitos,” “Look at how she lets you paints your fingernails like a girl,” “Look at how you can still see the dirt under your nails como un cochino,” says Mami is built like a garbage dumpster and how she and I need to stop eating and talking all that junk. 

I tell Susana her face and hairdo are como un Chow Chow, and her face snarls and she bares her teeth, proving me right, and she yells for me to get out of her house. On all fours, I bark at her, pant, and skedaddle.

I don’t tell Mami because she has enough to be mad about and plus I want my eleven-year-old freedom. Nobody notices when I stop going over and Gull starts coming over.

Like Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown, my buddy Gull slouches everywhere covered in grease, Dorito crumbs, and probably piojos. He smells like socks. Gull’s his name because of an eye that wanders around birdlike. He strays the streets like the holy callejeras of La Virgen de Guadalupe Avenue. Swishing them bird hips. I want that type of freedom: to be a gull. 

On the nights Mami has no mornings to wake up for, she brags about her body to the phone. 

“I’ve got that Coca Cola bottle shape,” she whispers to a man, who is not Dad, who is not the man who called me a faggot when I was eight and then never returned.

I wonder if she measures herself in ounces or liters as she sardines her body into a dress fashioned from Goodwill curtains. Rhinestones trace the floral pattern. Mami presses on lashes, paints her lips and lines her eyeballs but honest to God no matter what she puts on she always looks like big-butted Rosie the Robot to me. Mami’s government name is Rosalinda. She glides out of the bathroom, out of the living room, out of the house. The screen door slaps, and I look out to make sure wheels haven’t replaced her feet.

Gull and I turn to each other. We make robot noises and giggle and kiss and fly away.

9 Novels With Narrators Retelling Stories They’ve Heard

Posted on by Jo Lou

Remember My Dinner With André? Wallace Shawn and André Gregory sit down for a dinner during which, among other things, André Gregory opines at length about his weirdo experiences at the radical fringe of experimental theater. 

Now imagine, if you will, a film called My Dinner With My Dinner with André’s Wallace Shawn, in which someone—let’s say me—has dinner with Wallace Shawn, and Wallace Shawn proceeds to tell me everything André Gregory said to him in the original film. 

Would it be a celebration of the ways in which stories are transmitted through our culture, or would it be an unhinged mess, hovering on the edge of madness? We’ll probably never know. (On the off chance Wallace Shawn is down for it, I’m available.)

Years ago, I was on the verge of abandoning the draft of what would become my novel Mouth to Mouth. I’d been wrestling for a long time with the idea of a relationship between a drowning man and his rescuer, but I kept hitting dead ends, unable to settle on the right point of view. Then I reread one of the books on this list and it cracked the whole thing open for me. The way forward, I realized, was to embed the act of storytelling into the story itself. And so, in Mouth to Mouth, the successful art dealer Jeff Cook unspools the story of his rise to our unnamed narrator, a former college classmate he hasn’t seen in almost two decades, thereby transforming a first-class lounge at JFK into an impromptu confessional.

Nested narrators have been around since the dawn of storytelling, one storyteller passing on a story they heard from another, mixing direct and indirect dialogue as they repurpose it second-hand, but the following books take the technique to a whole other level, whether to splinter the idea of a central voice, question the nature of storytelling, rupture the forms we’ve become accustomed to, or, as it were, to make the novel novel again.

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

Juan Preciado, the narrator—initially, at least—of this surreal masterpiece, comes to the town of Comala in search of his father, Pedro Páramo, having promised his mother that he’d make the journey after she died. He finds the town abandoned. A straightforward opening belies the narrative complexity that follows, as the book shifts from Juan’s narration to another “I” (Pedro Páramo himself, in the past, which is not immediately obvious), and then into a third-person omniscient that lets everyone in the village, past (inhabitants) and present (ghosts) have their say. Rulfo claimed that the novel’s structure was “made of silences, of hanging threads, of cut scenes, where everything occurs in a simultaneous time which is a no-time,” which while likely confounding the casual reader, yields sublime rewards for the dedicated one.

Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard

This second novel from Austria’s pre-eminent rant-meister is narrated by a doctor’s son following his father on his rounds through the gloomy and treacherous countryside, calling on one patient after another, all of whom suffer from various horrible ailments. For 80 pages or so, it’s a parade of grotesques, then doctor and son arrive at the local castle, Hochgobernitz, where they encounter the suicidal insomniac Prince Saurau, whose unhinged philosophical monologue dominates the next 80 pages. How unhinged? At one point, Saurau quotes, verbatim, passages from a dream in which he watches his son writing. The debut of what would become Bernhard’s trademark style, Gargoyles answers the question: What would Heart of Darkness be like if Conrad had let Kurtz take over halfway through?

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Opening with an author’s note which declares that Pi Patel’s survival narrative will be told in the first-person, but that “any inaccuracies or mistakes are mine,” Life of Pi announces itself from the start as an act of literary ventriloquism. Martel deploys his frame narrative paradoxically, both to buttress verisimilitude—as many novelists have done before him—and to undermine his protagonist’s narrative. In doing so, he spins an old-school tale for modern times, one that reminds us that some fictions are worth believing.

Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

Jacques Austerlitz, transported as a child from Prague to England in 1939, raised as Dafydd Elias by a Welsh couple, recovers his identity and comes to terms with his past, including the fates of those who were left behind, in this atmospheric and meditative masterpiece from the late German writer. The nameless narrator, a contemplative and diaphanous figure, encounters Austerlitz several times over 30 years and listens to his harrowing story. In summary, indirect dialogue, and direct dialogue, Austerlitz’s voice and experience permeate the book and—crucially—the narrator as well. Why Sebald uses a narrator rather than letting Austerlitz tell his story directly is a question without a simple answer, but the narrator’s somewhat permeable presence is integral to this unique novel.

Infinity: The Story of a Moment by Gabriel Josipovici

A chronicle of the personal and creative evolution of Tancredo Pavone, an aristocratic Sicilian avant-garde composer, Infinity consists entirely of an unnamed narrator’s interview with Pavone’s former manservant, Massimo. Pavone’s eccentric soliloquies, faithfully recreated for the narrator by the unflappable Massimo, shine with profundity and humor as we bear witness to a guy bearing witness to a guy bearing witness to them.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

An encyclopedic patchwork of fiction, essays, and meditations, Nobel laureate Tokarczuk’s co-called “constellation novel” is narrated by an unnamed Polish writer averse to putting down roots anywhere in particular. Reading the first chapters, one might expect Flights to develop as an extended autofiction or a memoir-a-clef, but it isn’t long before the form ruptures and admits a panoply of narrative modes. Some chapters are thick with indirect dialogue, others are written entirely in first-person from different characters’ perspectives. The writer-narrator reappears throughout, but it’s Tokarczuk’s twin themes of travel and wonder that make this wild miscellany cohere.

Outline, Transit, & Kudos by Rachel Cusk

Faye, the narrator of these three novels—Kudos to Cusk for breaking the nameless narrator mold—is a recently divorced writer and mother of two boys about whom we don’t learn much in the way of biographical detail. She proceeds through the trilogy as a kind of non-detached oral historian, taking in the stories of the regular people she encounters and relating them to us, verbatim at times, indirectly at other times, always with a piercing attention to detail and a generous intelligence. More than any author on this list, Cusk commits to passing the mic, and the result is stunning. It’s not hyperbole to say that she’s discovered a new way forward for the novel.

62 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2022

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

In early 2016, I started compiling a list of books I was anticipating by women writers of color because, as a reader and occasional critic, I was having trouble finding such titles. If I was coming up short, I thought, then others surely were, too, and maybe it would be useful if I published my findings.

That first list became one of Electric Literature‘s most-shared pieces of 2016, and before long, to my surprise, I heard it was helping inform other publications’ books coverage, teachers’ syllabi, and book prize considerations. Since then, I’ve put together such a list every year with Electric Literature; meanwhile, I continue to hope that publishing and American letters will become so fully inclusive as to render this effort obsolete. We’re not there yet.

About the methodology: these are some of the 2022 books that I, personally, am anticipating, and the list is front-loaded toward the earlier part of the year, as there isn’t as much information yet about books publishing in the fall and later. The term “of color” is a necessarily flawed label with ever-adapting nuances and interpretations. And though I love and require poetry, as a novelist and essayist I’m less aware of what’s to come in poetry, so here I address only books of prose.

If I’ve missed a title you’re excited about, please consider supporting it by preordering it from your local independent bookstore, placing a hold at your library, telling others about it, or all of the above. These are difficult times for so many people, very much including writers, booksellers, librarians, and the bibliophiles who work in publishing. 

In a lifetime of loving books, I’ve perhaps never been as thankful as I have in recent years for the light that books can provide. Please join me in celebrating the books coming our way.

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades (Jan. 4)

This debut novel about a group of young women of color in Queens is narrated in the bravura, underused first-person plural. Alexandra Kleeman says Brown Girls is “seething with raw, exuberant life,” “an epic told in the register of the yearning, vivid experiences of its characters.”

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (Jan. 4)

Chan’s debut is about a Chinese American mother placed by the state in a government reform program for “bad mothers.” Carmen Maria Machado says it’s a “terrifying novel about mass surveillance, loneliness, and the impossible measurements of motherhood.” I initially heard about this novel in Midtown Scholar, a gorgeous bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and have looked forward to reading it ever since.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (Jan. 4)

In the months following Hurricane Maria, a Puerto Rican radical who’d left her children to be raised by their Brooklyn grandmother returns to their lives after they’ve become adults: one child a beloved congressman, the other a wedding planner for powerful people in Manhattan. Jaquira Díaz calls Olga Dies Dreaming “an unflinching examination of capitalism, corruption, gentrification, colonialism, and their effects on marginalized people.” 

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho (Jan. 4)

I have long maintained that there aren’t nearly enough books centered on the intricate, fascinating complexities of close female friendship, and I’m so glad to learn that Ho’s novel Fiona and Jane follows a deep friendship between two Taiwanese American women. I must read this book. Publishers, please give us more books about friendship.

People Change by Vivek Shraya (Jan. 4)

The author of I’m Afraid of Men, The Subtweet, and God Loves Hair—all three of which are Lambda Literary Award finalists for, respectively, transgender nonfiction, transgender fiction, and children’s books—returns to nonfiction with this meditation on change. Elliot Page praises the book as “a deeply generous and honest gift to the world.”

The Year We Learned to Fly by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López (Jan. 4)

I’m fairly new to being an aunt, and, unsurprisingly, one of the great pleasures of aunthood has been finding and buying books for my little niece and nephew. This children’s book from the marvelous Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López, is about siblings who, trapped inside on a dreary day, use their imaginations to fly. 

This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown by Taylor Harris (Jan. 11)

Harris is another writer whose insightful work I’ve followed for a while, and I’m thrilled that her debut memoir, This Boy We Made, about motherhood, racism, and disability, will be here soon. Nicole Chung says, “My rule to read everything Taylor Harris writes has never failed me.”

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Jan. 11)

The many admirers of Yanagihara’s previous novel, A Little Life, will be delighted about the advent of this new novel, which Michael Cunningham calls “a transcendent, visionary novel of stunning scope and depth.”

Manifesto by Bernardine Evaristo (Jan. 18)

Manifesto is a memoir from the formidable, Booker Prize-winning Evaristo that addresses her childhood as one of eight siblings, experiences with Britain’s first Black women’s theater company, and queer relationships. In The Guardian, Kuba Shand-Baptiste calls the book “a rallying cry.”

Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez (Jan. 18)

Hernandez is a Maya Ch’orti’ and Zapotec environmental scientist, and in Fresh Banana Leaves she discusses and contextualizes Indigenous environmental knowledge and land stewardship practices, alternatives to the ongoing eco-colonialist destruction of this earth, our only home.

You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates, & Genevieve West (Jan. 18)

This is the first comprehensive collection of the titanic Hurston’s essays, criticism, and articles—at last and hallelujah!

Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James (Jan. 18)

James, a founding editor of Shondaland.com and a former prep school admissions officer, has written a memoir of her experience as a Black student at a mostly white prep school. R. Eric Thomas calls Admissions “a crucial account for our moment—asking and answering the question of how power is held, shifted, and grasped after by even the youngest in our society.”

For Laika: The Dog Who Learned the Names of the Stars by Kai Cheng Thom, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching (Jan. 18)

Thom’s advice column in Xtra, “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse,” is rich in grace and wisdom, and now she has a children’s book, For Laika, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching. The picture book is about an orphaned stray dog who ends up traveling toward the stars. 

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (Jan. 18)

When I read Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, I was on a plane ride, sitting in a middle seat, and I had no tissues in my handbag. I remember all this because the book moved me so profoundly that, stuck in that middle seat, lacking tissues, I couldn’t stop crying. Her new novel is about an ICU doctor, and Sigrid Nunez says it’s “incisive yet tender, written with elegant style and delicious verve.”

Violeta by Isabel Allende (Jan. 25)

The exhilarating Allende has written a historical saga in epistolary form, and it takes place during the upheaval of the First World War, the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression. 

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (Jan. 25)

I fervently love Perry’s writing, and if you’ve had the luck of reading her brilliant work, you probably do, too. If anyone can help us better understand the soul of this heartbreaking nation, it’s Perry, and I can’t wait to read South to America. 

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Feb. 1)

Fu’s fiction is mesmerizing, and her new book is a collection of fantastical tales featuring sea monsters and haunted dolls. Lucy Tan says “each story is spectacularly smart, hybrid in genre, and bold with intention.”

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker (Feb. 8)

Novelist and poet Ojeda’s Jawbone takes place at an elite Catholic high school, and incorporates a secret society, a hostage situation, and dangerous rituals. According to Andrés Barba, Ojeda “has at her disposal the most enviable combination I can imagine, and she has it in spades: a lucid mind, an exacting language, and a wild heart.”

Reclaim the Stars: 17 Tales Across Realms & Space, edited by Zoraida Córdova (Feb. 15)

An anthology of otherworldly, speculative, and ghost-filled stories from Latine writers including Lilliam Rivera, Claribel A. Ortega, Daniel José Older, and David Bowles.

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry (Feb. 22)

A monk and his twin travel across Mongolia to try to find the reincarnation of a great lama in this new book from the novelist, playwright, and poet Barry. 

The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta (Mar. 1)

I first came across Huerta’s writing in 2009, and have since eagerly anticipated her debut book. The Lost Dreamer is a fantasy inspired by Mesoamerica, and is about seers resisting an ancient patriarchal state. 

The Last Suspicious Holdout by Ladee Hubbard (Mar. 8)

Here is what Toni Morrison said about Hubbard’s previous book, The Talented Ribkins: “for sheer reading pleasure Hubbard’s original and wildly inventive novel is in a class by itself.” I mean, damn. Hubbard is now back with a story collection centered on a Black community in a southern suburb. 

Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha LaPointe (Mar. 8)

“Red Paint is a miraculous book,” says Elissa Washuta, and Melissa Febos calls it “an ode to healing and to healers, told by someone who intimately knows both.” This autobiography by LaPointe, a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, incorporates punk rock aesthetics, spiritual practices, and a search for home.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Mar. 15)

Robert P. Jones says that this debut, a mythic love story about outsiders who meet in a Trinidadian cemetery, “more than sings, more than beams,” “the kind of story that makes you want to spread your arms open wide, embrace the sky, and take flight in your own little way.”

A Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande (Mar. 15)

In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, a Mexican healer named Ximena Salomé finds passion with an Irish immigrant, John Riley, who is fighting on the American side of the conflict. A story of dangerous attraction from the splendid Grande. 

Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde (Mar. 15)

Vagabonds! takes place in Lagos, among people and spirits whose existence is outlawed. “A feast of a book, a marvelous ode to spirits and outsiders that is irreverent (and painfully funny) while being serious enough to drill a hole in one’s chest. There is nothing in the world like this book,” says Lesley Nneka Arimah. 

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou (Mar. 22)

Chou’s campus satire about the misadventures of an anxious Taiwanese American PhD student has been praised by Raven Leilani for addressing “the private absurdities the soul must endure to get free, from tokenism, the quiet exploitation of well-meaning institutions, and the bondage that is self-imposed.” Alexander Chee says, “I often held my breath until I laughed and I wouldn’t dare compare it or Chou to anyone writing now.”

The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad (Apr. 5)

A father calls his son to Lahore to cover up the violent death of a girl, but the son finds he can’t obey his orders. “Ahmad has managed to meld fast-paced, intelligent noir with a devastating portrait of the true costs of ambition and desire,” says Maaza Mengiste. 

Probably Ruby by Lisa Bird-Wilson (Apr. 5)

A Métis woman adopted by white parents goes in search of her history and birth family. “Probably Ruby reminds us that our stories are acts of survival,” says Kelli Jo Ford, and that “grief, too, can be a gift.” 

Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson (Apr. 5)

Vivian, a lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients in a psychiatric hospital, starts unraveling after a family reunion. The novel is “violently funny,” according to Myriam Gurba, and Deesha Philyaw says it’s a “raw, brilliant, and unforgettable” debut from a Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga (Apr. 5)

Winner of the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English takes place between an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit. They meet at a Cairo café and fall in love, and then violence irrupts into their romance. 

Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang (Apr. 5)

A Chinese girl named Daiyu is kidnapped and smuggled across the ocean to the American West of the 1880s. Anti-Chinese hatred is sweeping the country, and she has to learn how to survive. 

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn (Apr. 12)

A young woman named Marina Salles wakes up dead, transformed into an aswang, a creature of myth out of her Filipina grandmother’s old stories. This cast-off woman can now access the hearts and memories of the people she’s known, in a debut that, according to Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, is “fueled by a wild, jagged energy and an exuberant mixing of cultures and a narrator whose frank, poignant voice will keep echoing in your head.”

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Apr. 12)

Take My Hand is the third novel from the New York Times-bestselling Perkins-Valdez, and it begins in Montgomery, Alabama in 1973 with a nurse who works at a family-planning clinic. Celeste Ng says the book “is an unforgettable exploration of responsibility and redemption, the dangers of good intentions, and the folly of believing anyone can decide what’s best for another’s life.”

Forbidden City by Vanessa Hua (Apr. 19)

I’ve waited impatiently for this novel since hearing Hua read from it more than a decade ago. A village girl named Mei who becomes Mao Zedong’s confidante and lover finds herself playing the role of a Cultural Revolution hero. “How to negotiate the maze of the Forbidden City? How to escape? An intriguing and suspenseful story,” says Maxine Hong Kingston.

Happy for You by Claire Stanford (Apr. 19)

A biracial philosophy student reluctantly takes a job at an internet company in Silicon Valley. I’ve been curious about this book for years, and Rachel Khong praises it as “the optimal novel for the strange times we find ourselves in … droll, incisive, and moving.”

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith (Apr. 19)

A history of Black women’s music as the foundational story of American pop, starting with Phillis Wheatley and continuing through Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, and other musical luminaries. 

By the Book: A Meant to Be Novel by Jasmine Guillory (May 3)

Guillory, whose books are unfailingly a delight, has reimagined a tale as old as time, in this case with a novel about an overworked junior employee in publishing who travels to the house of a prominent, jaded writer—a beastly writer, one might say—to convince him to deliver his long-delayed manuscript. Difficulties ensue, then comes an unexpected love.

Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej (May 3)

A queer woman writer meets an older man, a loud, domineering choreographer, at an artists’ retreat in Maine and has sex with him. She keeps seeing him, and her desire intensifies, perhaps to excess. A debut exploring questions of agency, lust, power, selfhood, and art. (Alyssa Songsiridej is the current managing editor for Electric Literature.)

The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara (May 3)

This is another novel I’ve awaited a long time, and it is indelible, a brilliant epic about a Dalit immigrant who becomes terribly, unimaginably powerful, and about what happens to his child. The Immortal King Rao is something new, and it astonished me.

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth (May 10)

In Bitter Orange Tree, Man Booker International Prize–winning author Alharthi alternates between the life of Zuhour, an Omani student at a British university, and Bint Amir, the woman Zuhour has thought of as her grandmother, and who has recently died. James Wood says Alharthi has “constructed her own novelistic form.”

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes (May 10)

Essential Labor is a manifesto and reflection on the emergency conditions of caregiving in America, an emergency whose magnitude and importance should be, but isn’t yet, plain to every person in this country. Garbes, author of the excellent Like a Mother, interrogates and reports on what mothering is and what it could be.

A Down Home Meal For These Difficult Times by Meron Hadero (May 10)

This debut story collection about immigrants and refugees includes stories that have received a Caine Prize for African Writing and appeared in Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, and Zyzzyva. 

Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester (May 10)

Verónica, a high school student with hip dysplasia, auditions to work at the Mermaid Cove, a kitschy attraction where mermaids perform in giant tanks. Her plans change when she learns what her parents have been hiding from her about her body. Sylvester has deservedly received an International Latino Book Award for her previous work. 

Neruda on the Park by Cleyvis Natera (May 17)

Natera’s debut follows a Dominican family in New York City contending with the gentrification encroaching on their neighborhood of twenty years. Angie Cruz says, “Neruda on the Park is the book we need and the reason I read.” 

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley (May 24)

From a previous Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, a first novel about a Black woman who stumbles into a scandal in the Oakland police department. According to Ayana Mathis, the book is “fierce and devastating, rendered with electrifying urgency by this colossal young talent.”

The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee (May 24)

For fifty years, Dr. Kwak, an obstetrician and Korean immigrant, has worked at a hospital in a small Minnesota town. One day, a letter arrives that upends his entire life. From the trailblazing author of Finding My Voice and Saving Goodbye, among other books.

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen (June 7)

A pair of old friends, both Asian American women, turn a counterfeit luxury handbag scheme into a spectacularly successful global business, a success threatened when one of the two women vanishes. Longstanding friendship, fake luxury, and elaborate theft, in a novel Claire Messud calls “sly and thoroughly compelling,” and from a writer whose previous novels have been utterly captivating—yes, please. 

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (June 7)

A novel with vast reach, spanning five generations of a family living in the American West, from the acclaimed Fajardo-Anstine. Emma Straub says, “this indelible novel shines its big light on the Lopez family so brightly that I could draw a map of their breath.”

Dele Weds Destiny by Tomi Obaro (June 28)

Three formerly tight-knit college friends reunite in Lagos for an important wedding. In the intervening years, there have been ruptures, distances, and other significant changes, and the days before the wedding build to a crisis. “The bonds between women—as friends, and across the generations—are the jewels that make this story shine,” says Tayari Jones. I would like to read this immediately.

The Leaving by Jumi Bello (July 12)

Having read an early excerpt of The Leaving, I found Bello’s writing to be lyrical and potent, a feat. In this novel about a legacy of trauma and mental illness, a woman records messages for her unborn child. 

Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves, edited by Nicole Chung & Matt Ortile (July 12)

Chung’s writing and editing are a great gift to us all, and in Body Language she teams up with the also wonderful Matt Ortile to edit an anthology about embodiment, race, desire, illness, and more, with essays from some of the most exciting writers publishing nowadays.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (July 12)

Of the books mentioned here, The Man Who Could Move Clouds is the only one I’ve already had the great luck of reading twice. This is a virtuosic, groundbreaking memoir of Rojas Contreras’ tremendous family history of curanderos, ghosts, powerful women, and healing abilities, and it has shifted my understanding of perception and loss. It is also often wildly hilarious.

Crying in the Bathroom by Erika L. Sánchez (July 12)

From the bestselling writer of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, a memoir of growing up as the daughter of immigrants in Chicago, and about everything from a childhood as a pariah to white feminism to loving comedy.

How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo (July 26)

The author of the magnificent America Is Not the Heart has written an exploration of the ethics and politics, especially the racial politics, of our reading cultures. I want to know everything Castillo has to say about this, and her wide-ranging book includes deep reads of anime, Peter Handke, and the art of the mixtape. 

Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation by Nuar Alsadir (Aug. 2)

Subtitled as a book of laughter and resuscitation, this associative book has at its center the author’s relationship with her daughters, in a debut described by the publisher as an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings (Aug. 9)

The Women Could Fly is a dystopian novel in which women, especially Black women, can be tried for witchcraft and must either marry by the age of 30 or sign up to be officially monitored. A book with echoes of Octavia Butler and Shirley Jackson.

Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong (Sep. 6)

A memoir from the phenomenal Wong, a disabled activist and director of the online community Disability Visibility Project. The book will be a collage of essays, conversations, graphics, and commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists.

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell (Sep. 6)

During her childhood, Cassandra Williams’ little brother disappears in an accident, and as she grows older she starts seeing her brother in her everyday life. I’ll jump to read anything Serpell writes, and all the more so with a novel about grief and memory and longing.

On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Sep. 6)

I’ve loved everything I’ve read of Sexton’s intricately nuanced, large-hearted work, and this National Book Award-nominated, NAACP Image Award-winning writer is back with her third book, this time a retelling of Fiddler on the Roof. Having had the chance to see part of it in advance, I’m deeply excited to read the rest of it.

Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker (Oct. 4)

Baker has been named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch “Superstar” because of her extraordinarily generous work “championing diversity in publishing.” She has also edited Everyday People: The Color of Life, a short story anthology, hosts the podcast Minorities in Publishing, and edits for Amistad Books. In August, she will publish a debut novel that takes place set in an alternate version of Queens, where the fate of juvenile offenders is decided by their victims and survivors.

8 Novels About Surviving in the Wilderness

Posted on by Jo Lou

Though I am not a horse woman or cow person, I recently found myself writing an American Western. Pity the Beast started innocently enough—as a short story unfolding on a ranch in the northern U.S. Rockies with people in cowboy hats and boots, horses and cows. Westerns are fun to write, and I was hooked, ignorant though I was. As the short story moseyed toward novel length, and as the characters packed a mule train and saddled up and out into a huge imagined mountain range on horseback, I started reading books about survival journeys through a variety of harsh and wild places. Many were American Westerns too, some very new.

These books were, of course, useful to me in thinking more deeply about landscape, the cold-hot-hungry-thirsty smallness-of-self realizations that actual wilderness imposes. I knew some of this already. I’ve lived in very wild places for most of my adult life. I walk alone in remote desert canyons every day now, mountain lions certainly-sometimes looking on from cliffs, bears in Alaska before that when cell phones weren’t a thing. But the excellent fictions I’ve listed here were even more helpful to me in how they explored internal wildernesses, mappings of psychic and spiritual paths from Lostness to (some kind of) physical, moral or existential Foundness. 

You’ll notice that many of these books, like mine, center around orphans, widows and widowers, the abandoned, the dazed, the shunned, the outcast, and lots of women folk. The physical and moral stakes are high in all. As in all great journey literature of the past (think The Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings), the travelers in these books must all navigate landscapes and mindscape through confusion, despair, rage mixed with love, elation and terror in order to live.

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

If you don’t know Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, you should find this classic. Tayo is a WWII vet who returns to his New Mexico pueblo, ruined by modern existence and war. Across a devastated desert landscape, Tayo’s psychic journey weaves over mesas, into canyons and caves and through uranium dumps. Via myths, poems and witches’ songs, the book asks how did Eden die? And how can we live on if or when we see the truth?

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

In the Pulitzer finalist In the Distance, a young Swedish immigrant arrives on the American West coast alone and in search of his brother lost in transit. In a meandering path across the west on horseback, on foot, sleeping under rocks, Håkan ricochets through a labyrinthine landscape peopled by the bizarre and audacious, quick-on-their-feet con-men (and women) all striving for their daily bread and more by any means necessary, perhaps the most enduring of American credos. I like to think Diaz’s characters could be the great grandparents of the characters in my novel. 

Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins

In the Story Prize winner Battleborn, Claire Vaye Watkins’ modern-day Nevadans (I am one of them these days) are the true inheritors of the Old Wild West. In the short stories they populate, her characters are adapted to the harsh landscape. They are misfits, Manson followers, and missing persons. They inhabit brothels, dig desert debris of auto accidents, are quasi-prisoners in desert hideouts, seek out sparkling high rise casinos in Vegas where bad things happen. Watkins writes controlled chaos, dread and hope with the same virtuoso lines, wit and boldest of all feminist vantages.

Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

In Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx can achieve more in three pages than other writers can do in a book. Beware. These stories are such impressive feats, they can prevent one from putting pen to paper. Proulx loves windy, hot, frigid Wyoming, portrays the West and its stoic inhabitants lovingly in her razor sharp prose. Here’s part of her love, though: she draws the ugliness too, the stupidity, blindness, roughness, the down-and-out stench of cow hands, the wink and cheap perfume of barmaids with the very same immaculate slicing edge. 

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Train Dreams follows the life of an orphan (turned almost-murderer, turned childless widower) across America in the 20th century post-Wild West. He wonders if he is cursed as he lives hand-to-mouth, wandering the western states his whole hardscrabbled lifetime as a railroad worker, a bridge builder. The novella captures American history through one man’s typical and (mostly) non-self-pitying experience. Johnson’s elegant prose is worth the read, while the content makes one scratch her head about the American Dream.

Outlawed by Anna North

Outlawed is a genre-busting, gender-busting, Wild West myth-busting story, wherein the famed Hole-in-the-Wall Gang of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming are all actually a bunch of barren women. They’ve been “outlawed” by their communities and families back home for the sin of being childless. They seek a Utopian home of diversity and acceptance. They will gunfight if they must. They seek science over myth as North turns the Western on its head, as well as the telling of history itself.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

In The Night Watchman, the families on the Turtle Mountain Cherokee Reservation of North Dakota attempt to hold on to their lands, homes, community and culture as Congress seeks to nullify their treaty, terminating their band. Their journey is to Washington and back. Based on actual legislative and activist events, the characters must maneuver through a wilderness of hostile federal bureaucracies, unfair working conditions, poverty and bigotry. It’s a David and Goliath fight, guided by the wisdom of traditional myths, helpful magical beings, hard work, boxing fundraisers, babies, friendship and deep faith in themselves. 

The Bear by Adam Krivac

I loved The Bear for its planetary scale and fairy tale vibe. I thought of a mythic, feminist version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road—a last man standing story, but the last man is a girl. 

A Turkish American Novel About A Melancholic Young Woman in Istanbul

Posted on by Jo Lou

Growing up, once a year my anneanne (maternal grandmother) would visit my family in our suburban home in Ohio. Before returning to Istanbul, she never failed to stock our fridge with sigara börek, a puff pastry filled with cheese and rolled into the shape of a fat cigarette, as its name suggests. For months after, we cherished those treats made with love, savoring each crunch. The longer we could make them last, the longer we could hold onto a culture we struggled so hard to maintain in the Midwest. 

Fellow Turkish American Mina Seçkin captures this third culture sentiment in her captivating debut novel, The Four Humors. Within the first few pages, I flashed back to my own summers spent in Istanbul. Once again, I was 18 years old sipping on black tea while taking the ferry across the Boğaz to go shopping for towels at the bazaar with my anneanne. For the first time, I felt seen in a piece of literature. 

The Four Humors transports you into Sibel’s summer full of simit, cigarettes and secrets. A year after her father’s sudden death, Turkish American Sibel comes to Istanbul with the intention of visiting her father’s grave and caring for her babaanne (paternal grandmother) who has Parkinson’s. However, burdened with a chronic headache, she avoids grieving her father’s death by instead fixating on the Hippocratic theory of humorism and watching soap operas with her grandmother. 

When her grandmother reveals a secret about her father, Sibel dives headfirst down the rabbit hole of her family’s past. Coated in endearing wit, Sibel takes us on her journey of catharsis as she begins to process her father’s death with the help of the rich oral storytelling of the women in her family. 

On a chilly Sunday morning, I met Seçkin for Turkish breakfast at Antique Garage in Soho. Over sucuklu yumurta (eggs with spicy sausage), black olives, sour cherry jam and, importantly, thick sesame bread, we spoke about the unique Turkish identity, crafting authentic immigrant narratives and our grandmother’s remedies we just can’t seem to shake off.

Amy Omar: At what age did you first start writing? What did you write about? Were you always influenced by your family’s history and stories? 

Mina Seçkin: I started writing in high school in an incredibly supportive poetry class. My early poetry mostly revolved around the female body, sexuality, and consumption. It wasn’t very narrative, but there was a lot of body and a lot of eating, two backbones of The Four Humors. But I never addressed a cultural and ethnic identity in these poems.

When I started undergrad at Columbia, I took a fiction workshop for the first time, but even then, I was still in this exploratory process where I began writing narrative fiction, but focused mostly on themes surrounding alienated, gently manic white American women with names like Annabelle and Macy. I was introduced to many incredible short story writers like Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, George Saunders and Denis Johnson. The narrative voice in these was so zany, fun, and entirely human in their exposition of the strange, but the characters were far and away from my experiences growing up and those of my friends, many of whom are also kids of immigrants.

I had trouble finding that voice in novels that were about the immigrant experience or stories about people of color. It was like white authors were allowed to employ this zany voice, but other groups didn’t have that liberty. Their stories were expected to revolve around hardship and trauma. I was also wary of writing a story where, by emphasizing the otherness of the character, I would further other, exotify, and alienate my characters.

Around my junior year of college, I started writing a story about a Turkish American girl trying to lose her virginity, and I knew, as I began writing, that I could tell this story without making such a big deal about the ethnic identity of the narrator. I did receive pushback—comments like, there’s too much going on here with ethnicity and culture on top of this plot and complicated character—but I kept going. I began writing about Turkish American characters then and haven’t looked back since. I don’t know if I ever will, to be honest. 

AO: I know you started writing The Four Humors in 2014 on a trip visiting your grandmother in Istanbul. What was the initial spark and how has the story evolved since then? 

MS: This novel started as a short story. I wanted to tell the story of a girl and her grandmother, specifically focusing on how the older generation, especially grandmothers, insist on taking care of the younger generation—even if they have life-threatening illnesses. During the summer of 2014, I was staying with my grandmother and my great grandmother, who was 96 and had Alzheimer’s and dementia. It was the three of us staying in my grandmother’s apartment in Istanbul and my grandmother was not only caring for her mother but also for me; I had a chronic headache all summer that proceeded to last a year and my grandmother was more worried than I was. 

AO: Why was it important for you to focus on the oral history of your female characters, rather than male characters? 

MS: It’s not about the men. 

For a long time, and even now, women in Turkey and the wider Middle East were not customarily able to tell these stories because they weren’t given a platform that allowed preservation. Many of these women were not literate and whenever they did tell their stories, they were rarely documented or preserved. The reality is that history has always been written by men, so many of these female stories get buried within families and never get published.

It was like white authors were allowed to employ this zany voice, but other groups didn’t have that liberty. Their stories were expected to revolve around hardship and trauma.

The oral tradition is so prevalent in Turkey. I can’t even count the number of times the elders in my family have sat me down and told me dramatic stories of their past. This is why I needed the narrative frame in The Four Humors to be the grandmother and Refika sitting down and telling their stories directly to Sibel.  

I knew I could have written a much easier book by not going into the past, but I felt I had to; I had a responsibility to give these women the chance to tell their stories. An easy story is also not interesting to me, and it would not have suited a setting as complicated as Turkey. At one point, I even considered writing the novel entirely in the past and from the point of view of the grandmothers, but ultimately, I wanted the novel’s emphasis to be about how receiving a family story can change you, and can make you, in the youngest generation, choose to live differently. 

AO: You do a beautiful job of interweaving bilingualism into the novel, diving into the cultural meaning behind various phrases as a mechanism to show the presumably non-Turkish reader the cultural relevance each phrase holds. What role did bilingualism play in your development as a writer? Did your ability to speak in two tongues impact your English writing style? 

MS: I’m obsessed with this topic because as soon as I became aware of the power of language, I realized how much people would make fun of my family’s English—including my own. I began to notice how my father, who can’t really speak grammatically correct phrases, has his own way of expressing himself in English. By not knowing the correct grammar or cliché phrases, he instead reaches for things with a different sentiment and tries to get to the root of the original communication. He’ll use a different word that conveys the sensory experience with even more precision and raw feeling. He ends up a poet! I’m really grateful for this—it’s always made me see the power and the fun in breaking the rules of language.

In high school, I read Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, a novel about exactly this topic. I think Nabokov didn’t write in his native tongue and that’s why he uses surprising words that a native speaker wouldn’t necessarily use. 

AO: What’s amazing is that modern Turkish is not inherently “Turkish”; it’s an amalgamation of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, French, etc. 

MS: Exactly! I’m really against the idea that language isn’t meant to change or that there is one way of expressing yourself in a language.

AO: Going into your novel, I knew very little about humorism. However, growing up in a Turkish household, I could especially relate to the bits of eating yogurt while on your period and the garlic concoction grandmother makes for Sibel’s headaches. In contemporary times when there is so much science around healing, why do you think these non-medical practices still persist? Why are they so comforting? 

MS: When I first started reading about the four humors, I saw how they are still alive and well today, but in two different ways. One is the potions our grandmothers still make. The other is the more notorious wellness industrial complex, which takes the same narrative crafted by our grandmothers and packages turmeric for $80. Fundamentally both methods are not at odds with the other—the meaning of wellness has just become sullied. 

The reality is that history has always been written by men, so many of these female stories get buried within families and never get published.

Wellness is actually about taking comfort in something, not about becoming your best self. It’s about whatever taking care of yourself looks like for you and finding comfort and joy in that routine, not perfection. For Turks and so many others, it’s about trusting your grandmother’s remedies, regardless of the lack of scientific data. I’m still convinced that I feel sick after going outside with my hair wet, so yeah, I often make sure my hair’s dry before leaving the house.

AO: There are several parts of the novel where Sibel, a Turk raised in America, is subject to a certain level of disconnect to Turkey and her relatives there.  Sibel, like you and I, can be categorized as “third culture kids” not necessarily American nor Turkish. Could you speak to how this concept affected your identity as both an American and a Turk? 

MS: I feel like when you’re a kid of immigrants, you have this second coming of age and that’s when you start reckoning with where your family comes from and how you fit into that world. I always think about the privilege of having American citizenship and being able to just go to Istanbul for vacation, but also feeling the effects of what is happening in Turkey because your whole family is there and is living under sometimes conditions that are difficult in various ways. 

A few years ago, I was in Istanbul for the summer and my immediate family was about to return to New York a month earlier than me. I was initially excited to be on my own, but then I had this moment when I was in a cab with my sister and the driver started questioning us about our accents and where we were from. I was so overwhelmed—about my stay, about my relationship to the country, I started crying in the cab. What am I doing here? I remember asking my sister, why do I love this place so much when we’re not really from here?

One of the reasons I set my book in 2014 was because that was the first summer I was in Turkey going places by myself via public transportation. During earlier trips, I would be in a car with my family and recognize everything around me, but I didn’t have to use my own map and compass. That was the first summer I began to understand the city on my own terms.  

A few years later I was in a translation workshop, and I stumbled across this writer Leyla Erbil in the library. She was one of the founding members of the socialist group, Workers Party of Turkey, and her novel, A Strange Woman, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, but few family members and friends knew of her (they were not engaged with literature, to be fair). I was so struck by the voice of the protagonist who speaks her mind and who wants to do good, but also wants to talk about sex and is trying to fight her parents to let her do what she wants. Why weren’t more people talking about this woman?!

I’ve always been grappling with the fact that so much art and intellectual discourse is actively buried in Turkey, especially if that art is political or grazes against any taboo. And there are deep taboos in Turkey’s history, especially as it relates to how minorities within Turkey have been stripped of their rights and their lives. Over the years, my understanding of Turkey became different from my family’s—at least, I wasn’t as wary to engage with the country’s history critically because, in a sense, I had the freedom to. I also questioned whether I had the right. And I understood that within this, my being Turkish went hand-in-hand with my being American. That was the second coming of age for me.

AO: I find that Turkey is still a mystery to Americans. Are Turks European or Middle Eastern; religious or secular? Why do you think this is still the case? 

MS: It’s funny—a few days ago, I looked at how readers had digitally “shelved” The Four Humors on Goodreads and I was both shocked and not at all surprised; the various shelves perfectly encapsulated the Turk’s ongoing racial identity quandary. It was shelved most as “Middle Eastern.” It was also shelved as “Eastern Euro,” “Asian lit,” and “Western and Central Asian.” Then there was both “BIPOC” and “non-American white fiction.” I say this as an example of how impossible it is to answer this question without diving into a long essay on identity, Middle Eastern history, and Western power—an essay I’ve been attempting to write for quite some time. For now, I’ll say that I do believe that the Turk has always been Middle Eastern, or, to be more specific, Western Asian, and the desire to be seen as European—which not every Turk has had—has only ever been an aspirational glimmer. 

I’ve always been grappling with the fact that so much art and intellectual discourse is actively buried in Turkey, especially if that art is political or grazes against any taboo.

But for now, a little more about deluded Western aspirations and how they relate to assimilation, there’s this dish called manti, tiny meat filled pieces of dough served with a garlic yogurt sauce. Growing up, whenever my parents would describe manti to non-Turks in America, they would compare it to an Italian dish of ravioli or tortellini. I’d heard many other Turks in America describe it this same way, too. In reality, manti is a tiny dumpling—and the dish came from Central Asia. The meat is spiced. It tastes nothing like Italian pasta, and a lot more like East Asian dumplings. But Turkish Americans would insist on identifying it with a Western dish, perhaps aspirationally, but also perhaps because they thought that white Americans would like the dish more if it seemed Western. Many immigrants do this—I feel it’s Assimilation 101 to attempt to draw parallels with the racial group in power and not with the groups that are also new to the country and standing on undefined, shaky ground. 

Anyways, it’s my dream to host a “dumplings of the world” dinner party and make manti! 

AO: The jacket of the novel was designed by Na Kim and illustrated by Ekin Su Koç. Can you elaborate on the significance of the cover and how you chose this design? 

MS: Ekin Su Koç is a Turkish artist based in Germany. About six years ago, I randomly came across her artwork online and fell in love. I felt like her art visualized everything I was interested in writing about. Her style is very collage oriented and features maps, women of all ages and generations, body parts, and geography in this way that summons history. Her themes summoned everything in The Four Humors. I told Catapult about her work, and Na Kim, who designed the cover of The Four Humors, featured a piece of Ekin’s. I couldn’t be happier with the result. 

AO: Why do you feel like this book is important to share in 2021? 

There are still not enough Middle Eastern stories in America and the region remains vastly misunderstood, especially from a female perspective.

MS: In jest, my mom once said to me, “Middle Eastern girls don’t get to be depressed.” I wanted to write toward what is considered ugly in both body and mind, an ugliness that my narrator manifests as an American kid of immigrants spending the summer in her parents’ country, where expectations are both different and familiar. Melancholy, otherwise known as black bile, has been around for centuries: it’s mood disturbance, it’s depression, it’s something we all grapple with—either often, or at certain times in our lives. I wanted to represent this mental state as it would affect a child of immigrants, a woman, a person ethnically from the Middle East but American, too.

There are still not enough Middle Eastern stories in America and the region remains vastly misunderstood, especially from a female perspective. And I wanted to be honest and realistic—I did not want to create an entirely “good” character. I was very intentional about crafting a protagonist who was a young woman who is “unlikeable.” In many ways, Sibel is a disaffected millennial, who isn’t doing what she is supposed to be doing throughout the novel. She isn’t caring for her grandmother. She’s outspoken and also entirely in her own head. She’s a secret smoker. She doesn’t care for the shame that is typically associated with the female body. It’s still not common to see these sorts of female characters who are Middle Eastern and I hope to read many, many more.

The Thin Line Between a Drill and an Emergency

Posted on by Alex Juarez

Lockdown by Mark Jacquemain

to Caity P.

When it happens we’re in drama class, still caring about stuff that doesn’t matter. Like Final Project. It’s nearly the end of semester, so we’re in that stretch that’s all about Final Project. Which is why Yasmin wants to get right to it. Our group is miming an erupting volcano, and she thinks that gives us so much to work with. All week she’s been saying: “Guys, come on, we have so much to work with.” Yasmin’s like that, grade-crazy, and expects it to come out like Shakespeare or whatever. So she’s all frantic cause it’s due in a week and we don’t have much done, other than some lava dances and some screaming and freaking out. And those parts are really lame. She’s started calling it an actual natural disaster.

We don’t care like she does, but “getting right to it” means skipping Miss Janetti’s warm-ups, so we have Yasmin’s back. Paige tells Miss Janetti, “Seriously, we’re so far behind.” Jacqueline says, “Please, Miss Janetti, please!” Because Miss Janetti’s warm-ups are sadistic. Every class she has us do burpees and squats like it’s gym class. No one complains anymore cause if we do she’ll just do the whole warm-up herself, right in there in front of us, in double time—which is amazing, this round lady with her pixie cut just crushing it—and then make us do warm-ups again, while chirping us for being slackers.

But sometimes, if we’ve been good or we’re under the gun or whatever, she lets us not warm up. So now we get down on our knees and grab Miss Janetti’s flappy hippie pants, and beg her, being silly in a way we couldn’t with other teachers. And she laughs—she has one of those bouncy, silent laughs that turns into wheezes when it slows down—but then says, “No, come on, girls, we’re warming up.”

And Paige says, “Oh, fuck.”

The thing is, a war’s been brewing about warm-ups between Paige and Miss Janetti since Powerball. We used to do Powerball for warm-ups when Mr. Lesnick from Guidance subbed for Miss Janetti, cause the boys love Powerball and he always lets them do whatever they want. The boys were joyful about it. Scrambling around all sweat-shiny and b.o.-smelling, taking these huge run-ups and pelting us. Sam Couvrette and Jake Grey made grenade sounds; that kid Ryota gathered the balls for them like a beagle. But last time Jordan Kloostra smoked Cheyenne in the face (they were wheeling back then), and they sort of wrestled, and Cheyenne sprained her ankle. All the parents got a letter; and after that Paige insisted her mom was going to write her a note excusing her from warm-ups. Except the note never materialized, and that was the last time Mr. Lesnick subbed, and Miss Janetti never does Powerball. 

So she keeps making Paige warm up. 

“Oh, fuck,” Paige says and Miss Janetti says, “What did I hear?” 

Paige grumbles out another: “Fuck.” 

“Paige,” Miss Janetti says. 

“You asked what you heard,” says Paige. “You heard fuck.”

“PAIGE!”

Yasmin says, “But, Miss Janetti, we actually are behind.” 

“And whose fault is that?” says Miss Janetti.

“Not ours,” says Yasmin.

“Someone hasn’t been here,” Paige says, “for like ever.” 

“Is she even still in our group?” says Jacqueline.

We mean Cheyenne. She is in our group, but we aren’t speaking to Cheyenne, because of what she did to Jacqueline. 

What happened was this. A couple weeks ago Jacqueline started posting how she was “super low” and that things felt, like, dark. We were worried about her, obviously, told her we got it and we loved her and we were there for her. And that was it for a couple days. Then she wrote that she took a bunch of pills. And we were like, Oh, shit. Whoa. Most of us. We messaged her, and called her, and even called her landline, and she told us the pills didn’t work. 

We didn’t stop and think, Wait, was she bullshitting?

Not most of us, anyway. But Cheyenne did. She didn’t come right out and call her on it. The first couple things she put up were mostly funny—You must still be around cause you just liked this—and it seemed she just meant to cheer Jacqueline up. Except then she wrote that Jacqueline had been posting about offing herself for years, since before the rest of us knew her. 

Jacqueline and Cheyenne have this history. They’ve been pals since Grade One or something. And when they got in with the rest of us it was like a package deal. But Paige, who’s a total Mama Chicken, she took to Jacqueline—cause Jacqueline’s got this Baby Bird thing going—but not to Cheyenne. So it was probably just a matter of time. 

And then Cheyenne wrote to Jacqueline, You don’t even have anything to be sad about. 

Which was kind of the last strawberry. Yasmin said Cheyenne was bullying Jacqueline. Paige asked her what her fucking issue was. Cheyenne wrote back that we were all making it way worse and Paige wrote, WE? 

So we’ve basically been giving her the shoulder since then, and she’s been ditching a lot, and when it comes to Final Project she’s been totally M.I.A. The worst part, though, the part that’s just not fair—like, karmically—is that when Cheyenne does show up for class, she doesn’t even have to do warm-ups, cause of her sprained ankle. She’s allowed to just chill on her phone. And seeing her texting or whatever while the rest of us hustle and grind really makes you realize how fully cruel the world is. Or, when Miss Janetti told her no phones, and Cheyenne just stuck her phone in the rip in her jeans and had a nice lil’ chit-chat with Sara Zilinski (who’s got some auto-immune deal and shouldn’t sweat)—a chat about the ass-selfie Sara Zilinski got from some boy she met in Niagara Falls or whether Mr. Lesnick’ll be fired, or whatever—while we’re literally cardiac arresting over here. 

Then again, none of us is going to push it much further than Paige already has, cause we don’t want to be on Miss Janetti’s shit list. She has a crazy side. After her boyfriend dumped her, back in October, she turned up to school all weird-eyed in stained jeans that should have got her dress-coded, and made a gun with her hand, and picked-off all the boys in class along with her student teacher Mr. Van Schubert, who we called “Mr. Handsome.”

So, unfair or not, we know it’s over when Miss Janetti brings out her icy voice and says, “Girls, we’re warming up.”

Paige mutters one more “fuck” but only loud enough for us to hear. 

And we warm up.

Cheyenne shows up while we’re doing our burpees. She limps in, a bit later than usual, and sits on the volcano we’d made out of blocks, at the back of the stage. She hovers there like she wants to be sure we know she’s finally ready to get to Final Project; except then she seems to have second thoughts and retreats to the door, just as we’re finishing up. 

Paige breaks off early (like she always does) and heads for the volcano herself, her t-shirt sweat-pitted, her furry chin glistening—but then Cheyenne calls to her, with this dumb look on her face like she’s ready to grovel. And Paige goes over to the door; and they get into it. 

Cheyenne says, all sugary, “I just meant she shouldn’t make shit like that up—you know, just for attention. Cause some people really are in, like, crisis and really do need help.”

And we could see it: that Jacqueline might have done it for the attention. She’s a pretty insecure person. She has body image issues, definitely. She’s been dress-coded for really small tube tops and cut-offs cut to the back pockets and she always jokes about how fat she is. And she does, like, crave attention. But you can also tell Jacqueline really thinks she is fat. But she isn’t. 

“Okay,” says Paige, “but so why do you think she wants attention? Maybe cause she’s messed-up and sad?”

That’s when Jacqueline hears them and realizes they’re talking about her. She’s halfway to the volcano and stops and stares at them, and even though she’s already red from the burpees, she gets even redder, sort of glows, like she’s pleased. And we wonder about this, but before we can wonder very long, her face changes—gets all sort of crazed—and she gives Cheyenne this die-stare, and yells, “What do you know?” and marches out into the hall.

Paige looks at Cheyenne and says, “Happy?”

Cheyenne hisses, “What?” like she doesn’t get it. But then, even with her bad ankle, she goes out after Jacqueline. 

Miss Janetti asks Paige what’s going on, and Paige, in a kind of I-told-you-so tone, tells her Cheyenne just bailed on class. Then she sits with Yasmin, and says, “Quit breathing so loud.”

When Jacqueline gets back, just her, Yasmin tries to get us going. She’s always choreographing us, boom boom boom. (She’s a Highland dancer.) But all Paige wants to do is complain about Cheyenne. And Jacqueline shows us this super unflattering pic of Cheyenne limping after her in the tech hall, and then posts it with a caption that says, “Thanks a lot, FOUR BY FOUR” (meaning Cheyenne’s wide thighs), and Paige says, “I’m so sick of that bitch.”

It’s not totally Cheyenne’s fault. Her parents have split and her stepdad’s this creep. He’s super short with a buzz cut, and loves hunting, has these guns. One time we were in Cheyenne’s basement and he came downstairs and he was literally carrying a bunch of guns. We were like, “Oh my God, this is where we get shot.” 

Plus she has OCD. She’s actually on medication for OCD. 

But we don’t disagree with Paige. We’re sick of her too.  

This is when it happens. 

A recording of the secretary Mrs. Martell’s voice over the PA: 

EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, INITIATE LOCKDOWN

We know the chant, there’s already been three lockdown drills this semester. It’s been the big thing this year, what with all the stuff that’s happened at other schools: preparation. 

So it’s not like there’s even that second of like uh-oh. Like maybe this one’s real. We’re just annoyed. There’s groans and stuff. We don’t even stand up until Miss Janetti starts barking at us, “Okay, okay, you know the drill. Into the costume room.” And that says it all. Drill. And she’s just so calm and so on-it that it’s pretty clear she knew this was coming. The monthly tune-up or whatever. 

“Let’s go, people,” says Miss Janetti, and, “Slow it down, boys,” cause they’re all giddy about it, giddy at the break in having to do work. Like puppies. They’re jumping over blocks, and laughing behind curtains, and trying to spook us with shouts of “Oh, God, they’re coming!” Until Miss Janetti corrals them and we’re finally all squeezed in the costume room together. 

It is a bit eerie in here, once we’ve quieted down, just real still for a second in the dark, every face lit by a phone. But the quiet makes us giggly. The closeness, the smells—dried glue and dust. Pirate cloaks and ballroom dresses tickle our necks. There’s no window, so—except for our phones—the dark’s real intense, and we feel claustrophobic. But it’s funny. 

Someone makes a farting sound and the boys laugh. 

Paige says, “Ugh, is that someone’s feet?”

Miss Janetti whistles at us to shut up four or five times, and finally we do. And then the only sound is Mrs. Martell’s voice: EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, INITIATE LOCKDOWN.

Three minutes in, we’re already bored. Ten minutes and we’re back to annoyed. There’s too many of us in here to even sit down. The whole class, plus Miss Janetti, plus a Grade Twelve who’d been hanging his paintings in the hall outside the theatre for Art Night. 

Except…where’s Cheyenne? Is she in here? 

We’re not sure. 

Jacqueline whispers, “Cheyenne?”

But there’s no answer.

Fifteen minutes and we’re pissed. This is the kind of thing they do to us. They make us ask to go to the bathroom. They give us assignments they gave us last year and even when we say so they tell us we have to do them again. They don’t care if we don’t have a lunch or money for one. If we’re done our work or say we’ll do it later, they still say no phones. 

Twenty minutes and some of us are trying on hats from the hat bin. A joke goes around that we’ll all die of carbon dioxide poisoning (if that’s even a thing) or Jordan Kloostra’s b.o. And it’s not just feet and farts and b.o., now, but breath. Everyone’s breath on everyone else. And our legs are tired, our backs itchy. Our mouths start to go dry, and we’re all thinking it’s gone on a little long for a drill. We’re wondering: what’s going on out there? 

A text from Destiny, who’s in Math on the second floor: Why is it taking so long? From Kennedy, who’s also upstairs, in Spanish: Hear anything? 

So it’s almost a relief when Destiny texts back that she heard someone attempted suicide in one of the portables. 

Who?

?

Some kid tried to kill himself. Portable 7.

Who was it?

Heard it might be Chris Sneyd.

I hate that guy.

A relief, even though we feel bad about it. 

But the lockdown chant keeps going.

And a few minutes later Sara Wu (who we call Wu) gets a text that says there’s a gun on the property. Or at least a knife. Then we all see this, except Jake Grey and Ryota, who are at the back of the costume room near the swords, staring at some game on their phones, and laughing. Miss Janetti shushes them.

We text Destiny: Hear anything about a weapon?

Josh says air rifle.

Some of us know an air rifle’s different from a real rifle and tell the ones who don’t. And this is a relief too. It’s just an air rifle. It’s just a suicide.

Then a text circulates claiming that the cops are here.

Yasmin shows it to Paige. Paige shows it to Jacqueline. 

“But…why?”

“Cause of the gun.”

“I thought it was a suicide.”

“Suicide attempt.”

“They’d come for that, too.”

“Would they?”

A text saying there’s cops in the football field. Another claiming they’re by the portables. Another insisting they’re in SWAT gear. 

“Which is it?”

“What’s SWAT?”

“That can’t be right.”

The Grade Twelve says, “Quiet.”

Jacqueline says, “Shit, for real, guys, anyone seen Cheyenne?” 

And now we’re sure we haven’t. We whisper her name again, and again no response.

“Cheyenne’s fine,” Miss Janetti insists, “everything’s fine.”

So we’re not worried, not really. We trust Miss Janetti, from those scenes she makes us do that sort of pull out our feelings. Paige did a scene about her dead labradoodle, Angel. In Sam Couvrette’s, he pretended he was back at his old school in Windsor, where his dad lives. Plus sometimes Miss Janetti has us lie on the stage and imagine a violet light coursing through our bodies, healing us, making us beautiful and powerful, which gets us so relaxed we almost fall asleep, but not quite. 

So if she says everything’s fine, it must be.

Except the chant goes on. EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY… 

And Miss Janetti’s cool doesn’t last. Her face in the light of her phone looks squeezed. Jake Grey laughs and she hisses at him: “Jesus, shut up, Jake!”

Then Paige leans close and shows us texts: 

A woman cop yelled ANOTHER ONE IS RUNNING BACK IN THE BUILDING. 

Not a lie.

My friend heard it.

“Shit,” says Yasmin. 

“What’s it mean?” says Paige.

And then all of us are thinking maybe it isn’t just a suicide attempt. 

Maybe it’s more than that. 

“What’s it mean?”

“I don’t know.” 

Jacqueline says, “Seriously, guys, where’s Cheyenne?” 

This time we don’t just whisper Cheyenne’s name but sort of bark it, and still she doesn’t answer. And when she doesn’t answer we imagine her out there, alone. 

Maybe knowing more than we do, or less. 

“What’s it mean?” Paige asks again.

Yasmin says, “Is someone actually out there?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” says Jacqueline.  

The Grade Twelve cries, “Shut UP!” 

Miss Janetti muscles into the middle of us, knocking Jordan Kloostra into the Grease rack. “All right, everyone, we’re going to try to keep quiet,” she says, in her violet-light-voice. And we do quiet down. For a minute there’s just the chant and the hard-to-breathe air and our phones. 

Then Yasmin whispers, “Uh, guys?”

“It says shooters,” we whisper. 

“There’s no shooters,” says Miss Janetti. “We don’t know that.”

But everything we’re reading says: Five shooters.

“No,” Miss Janetti says, staring at her own phone, “no.” 

“Guys, guys,” cries Jacqueline, “Cheyenne isn’t texting me back!”

“Jesus, I can’t get through to my mom,” says Paige.

“No phone calls right now, Paige.”

“Shit, guys, we’re on the news.”

Around the costume room ripples a screen-shot from some news site: cops in SWAT gear walking by what looks like the smoking area near the portables.

“God,” says Yasmin. 

Instead of making it sort of cool, this just makes it real. And now we’re wondering how sturdy the costume room door is. And thinking about our moms and dads, our big sisters and little brothers. Thinking about everyone out there. 

Destiny & Kennedy. 

Mr. Lesnick, in Guidance. 

Cheyenne.  

Thinking about crashing out of here, running out the side doors.

“Oh my God,” Jacqueline says, but she doesn’t say why. 

Soon we all read it: Shots in the guidance office. And again we think of Mr. Lesnick—how he always wears shorts, even in winter. How he jams his thumb between our shoulder blades on our way out of class and says, “Stand up straight!” And his stupid licence plate: L. Nick.

Then, from Kennedy: Someone says a math teacher was shot.

“Oh my God,” Jacqueline says again. “Oh my God,” says Yasmin. Paige flaps her hands in a panic. Jacqueline says, “Guys…Cheyenne…where is she?”

Maybe cowering in a stairwell.

Maybe hiding in a bathroom stall with her feet pulled up onto the toilet.  

We imagine it. We imagine it. 

That’s when the chant stops. The silence is horrible. This horrible not-silence.

“Is it over?” says Jake Grey.

“SHUT UP!” says the Grade Twelve.

“It’s not over,” says Miss Janetti. “It’s on a loop. It must have stopped on its own.”

“Unless someone stopped it,” says Yasmin. 

“Like who?” says Paige. 

“I thought it was a suicide,” says Jacqueline.

Without the chant, we can hear things. Noises through the vents, bodies shoved against the costume racks. We listen for someone coming. 

And there are other sounds muffled by the door. Faint poppings, scattery footsteps.

Sara Zilinski says, “Do you hear that? Do you hear that?”

“Oh, God…Jesus,” wails Jacqueline. 

And we feel something now that we hadn’t quite, not fully. Not until now. Not wanting to, in front of everyone. Not wanting, desperately, at the corners of our minds, to go there. 

We’re scared. 

So scared. 

All of us, together, so scared. 

But together doesn’t matter now. You can only be scared alone. 

Jacqueline’s scared.

Paige is scared.

Yasmin’s scared.

I am.

This can’t really be happening.

Isn’t happening. 

It’s a drill. A suicide. A prank. A false alarm. 

Can’t be. 

I am. 

Isn’t. 

Is.

“Let me out of here,” says Paige, in a terrible voice, a baby bird voice, like maybe not sure she wants it.

Sara Zilinski screams, “Let us out!”

“Just quiet!” barks Miss Janetti, all her cool gone. “QUIET!”

Other sounds: wild thrown voices, slapping steps approaching fast, a crazy rattle like someone’s working the theatre door.

“NOW, NOW!” cries Sara Zilinski, meaning we don’t know what. 

Jake Grey whines, “When’s it going to be over?” 

Paige gives up on the door and staggers to the back of the costume room, trips over the hat bin, sinks right down into it. 

The chant starts up, ten times louder, it seems. 

EMERGENCY…EMERGENCY…

Jake Grey whines again, his voice rising over it, “When’s it going to be OVER?” 

From the hat bin, Paige shrieks at him, “FUCKING SHUT UP!”

She looks insane. She wriggles to climb out of the hat bin, face flushed like after the most sadistic warm-up ever. She gets to her feet finally and shushes us all like a freak. “Shush, shhhhh, shush-shush-shush, shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” 

We all shift to one side of the room, away from her. 

“What?” she hisses. “What? What what?”

And then, so quiet it’s almost a mime: “ARE YOU FILMING ME?”

Cause we were. 

The chant stops again. We listen, like holding our breaths. It’s one of those times when you’re fully, truly, you know, there. Like wide awake. Ready to break out into who knows what. To shove each other against the door like shields.

The principal, Mr. Hardwick, speaks into the P.A. “The lockdown is finished,” he says, “and since it’s almost final bell, we’re going to cancel last period.” 

And we know it’s over, it’s over this time for real. 

Still no one moves. 

Then we’re laughing, but only sort of laughing, and shoving hard against each other to get out. 

“Be safe,” Miss Janetti says as we pass into the cool air of the theatre, “be safe.” 

We burst into the hall, all of us as one. The school pouring out around us, gathering in groups, sharing theories. Later we find out that that kid Chris Sneyd did have a gun—a real gun, not an air rifle—in his locker. And when he was caught with it, by Mr. Hardwick or whoever, he took it to an empty portable and locked himself inside. No one could agree on whether he tried to kill himself in there (or at least threatened to); and no one knew where the idea of five shooters came from. Cause a kid with a gun locked in a portable was plenty enough. 

Right after it happens we know none of this. But we don’t care. At least for now, at least for a little while, we’re not thinking about things that don’t matter. Only things that do.

We were stuck in the costume room so long we totally missed Fifth Period and the home bell’s gone and some of us run to get our buses, which’ll take us home. We go looking for friends, call our parents. Jacqueline sobs, or pretends to sob. Paige demands that she stop. Yasmin walks off, to nowhere really, wondering what it would have been like. Imagining it. And then—at last!—here’s Cheyenne—okay, alive—and we feel not just guilty but gross about what we did, especially when she acts like everything’s good between us, everything just as it used to be, and hugs us and hugs Jacqueline, and they really do sob. 

This is how it is. 

Later, near Guidance, we bump into Owen Mawbey, and ask how he’s doing. We don’t know Owen Mawbey that well, we’ve never really given much thought to him being happy or sad or anything. But we stop when we see him standing there by the water fountain cause he looks sort of dazed, and say, “Hey, Owen, you okay?”

He looks up like he doesn’t recognize us and then shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’m okay, I’m good. But that was crazy. I heard one of them had a Glock.”