Improvisational Parenting in Rural Oklahoma

Posted on by Alex Juarez

“Shells I” by Savannah Johnston

Tommy wasn’t ready to go home. It had been six days since Donna and the baby were discharged from the hospital, and the house seemed to close up around them. For nearly a week, he woke with the sun and told Donna, doped up and perpetually naked, that he was going to look for a job. He didn’t tell her that there were no jobs, or that he spent the past four days with his uncles at The Office, a roadhouse off SH-54.

Now, a little drunk and dizzy from the heat, Tommy hooked a left at the creek and headed north to Dead Woman’s Curve. The narrow strip of road weaved dangerously around the hills, earning Dead Woman’s Curve the secondary title of Dead Indian Curve, but Tommy could field the bends with his eyes closed. He’d spent a good number of years drag racing up and down the two-mile stretch; back then he had a ’71 Camaro, but he lost it to some townie from El Reno. 

The truck rumbled over the bridge, and the asphalt turned to gravel. Tommy pulled off into the ditch and popped the glove box, rummaging around for the tin of pot he kept there. There wasn’t much left, but he rolled a pinner anyway, throwing open the door and starting down the dirt path to the creek. It was June, and the Oklahoma sun bore down on him with increasing intensity. His dark hair, tied back in a loose braid, burned against his scalp. 

Busted cement littered the creek bed, rebar twisting out at odd angles, leftovers from when the county decided to widen the bridge. Red silt washed around the blocks, staining their sides the color of rust. Tommy used them like stepping stones, using the rebar to hoist himself across. He settled himself on the largest slab that dug into the creek’s middle at the slightest incline, took out the pinner, and struck a match. He lit the joint and took a few drags. Thick plumes of smoke descended from his nostrils as he coughed. 

The creek was bordered by a dense tree line, thick with leaves and creeping ivy. The locusts thrummed, their song echoing off the underside of the bridge. A flock of barn swallows had made their mud nests all along the bridge’s lip, and the mother birds dove low before returning to their nests. 

He dragged on the joint and watched the birds. After watching the swallows for a while, he reasoned it wouldn’t be too hard to build a house out of mud. The Pueblos built whole cities from adobe, carving their plots out of the hillside. His own people, the Pawnee, had been here long before the roads and oil rigs, but they were all long gone, pushed northeast past the city. Donna’s family was Cheyenne, and he knew she’d never leave Caddo County, even though they were holed up in a two-room throwback to Dust Bowl deserters on an acre of dry, red clay. They were getting by on food stamps and the charity of Donna’s parents, who owned the land and the house and who kept the electricity running. When Donna got pregnant, his uncles told him to bail, to grab his shit and run, but he didn’t. He stayed. 

When Donna got pregnant, his uncles told him to bail, to grab his shit and run, but he didn’t. He stayed. 

He stubbed out the joint on the slab and sat up, catching the scent of a dead animal on the wind. Ignoring it, he closed his eyes, but the smell worsened until he found himself eying the banks for its source. Upstream, moving slowly with the rippling current, was the largest turtle Tommy had ever seen. The stench blew off its shell and, from a distance, he guessed it was nearly as wide as his arms were long. Its carapace was dark green and faceted like a prehistoric, geodesic dome. As it drew closer, Tommy scooted to the slab’s edge and waited for the turtle’s carcass to drift close enough to touch. He wanted to examine his unusual find. When it was within arm’s reach, he rocked forward on his heels and tried to get a grip on the shell’s edge. It was heavier than expected and when he pulled it from the water, what could only be the turtle’s remains poured from the shell as if from a sieve. Bits of rotten flesh splashed into the water. Tommy’s stomach heaved; his first instinct was to shove the thing into the water and let it continue on its way. But on the other hand, he wanted it. 

“Damn near big enough for a man in there,” he muttered between his teeth as he held his breath and, tightening his grip on the shell, shook the last of the turtle into the creek. 

Once emptied, he lifted it toward the sun and peered through it. The interior of the shell was flecked with waterlogged meat, and the underside shined with scum. Appraising the path to the truck, he knew he’d have to wade the creek if he wanted to take it home. 

By the time he pulled into the drive, he reeked of sweat and decay. He unloaded the shell from the truck and propped it against the house. Leaving it there, he almost skipped to the house, he was so excited. The lights were off when he went inside, and the air was stale. There was an uncapped ketchup bottle on the kitchen floor. Donna’s pain pills were on the stove, and Tommy saw that she only had a handful left. The prescription was for thirty, and her mom had filled it for her the day after her caesarean section. He unscrewed the cap and reached for one of the round, blue pills. His fingers left greasy smudges on the inside of the amber bottle, and when he popped the pill into his mouth, it tasted faintly of creek water. 

A soft whine came from the bedroom. He stepped across the linoleum and stopped just short of the door. Catching himself in the hall mirror, he laughed. His hair was tangled and wild, his arms and chest smeared with dirt and sweat. He clucked his tongue and quietly pushed open the bedroom door. 

“Donna?” He whispered. “Psst, Don?” 

Donna lay naked on the bed, her eyes hazy with medication and the baby nestled against her thigh. Her skin was bright against the jaundiced baby’s skin. She turned down her face, glimpsing her wound, and tears ran down her face. For the first time since the operation, he looked at her abdomen; he noted the intricacies of the purple and yellow bruises that blossomed from her middle onto her wide hips like a child’s watercolor. The surgeon told him that they used 200 staples to close her up. Tommy had thought her pregnant belly was beautiful, the way it swelled outwards from her long frame and how she could balance a bowl of popcorn on its crest when they watched late-night broadcasts of Dynasty. He stood in the doorway a moment before moving to sit on the bed’s edge. 

“Hey,” she whimpered. The baby kicked in its sleep. “Hey,” he said. He ran his gaze up and down her body and recalled the names he gave the freckles on her thighs— names like Emmett and Petunia, but he couldn’t remember which was which. “You alright?” 

“It hurts so much, Tommy,” she said. “I didn’t think it could hurt this much.” 

“You need me to get your pills?” Tommy asked hesitantly.

“I already took some, and it still hurts,” she said. A sob escaped her throat. “And it’s ugly.” 

“The baby?” 

“No, this.” She waved her hand angrily at her stomach. She covered her face with her hand. “This isn’t what it was supposed to be like.” 

He caught himself mapping her stretch marks with his forefinger. Withdrawing his hand, he searched for something beautiful about the jagged gash that ran from navel to pubic bone. His mouth began to water, and his esophagus tightened. He looked away. “Come on, Don, I gotta surprise for you,” Tommy offered. She uncovered one eye and sniffled. 

“Really?” There was a pause. “What’s that smell?”

“Not really part of your surprise, but more of a necessary evil,” Tommy said. He stood up and offered her his hands.

She shook her head. “You stink, Tommy, you should shower before you do anything else,” she said.

“Come on, it’s really neat, it’ll only take a sec,” he said. He got up and motioned for her to follow. 

“Look at me.” She stayed prone on the bed. “Whatever it is, you’re gonna have to show me from here.”

“It’s outside,” he said. “I think you’ll get a real kick out of it.” 

She curled an arm protectively around the baby. Her dilated eyes narrowed. 

“How’d your job hunt go?” She asked. 

“Same as it has for the past year,” he said. “Now come outside, I brought you something.” 

“Are you even trying, Tommy?” She began to cry again.

“You know, there was a time when a man would bring something home for his wife and she wouldn’t give’im any shit, hell, she’d be happy,” he said. He paced the bedroom, suddenly angry. 

“This isn’t that kind of time.” 

“Damn right, it’s not. Instead, I got you bitching at me, sitting there like a gutted fish.” His voice rose, and the baby stirred next to her. She sobbed. 

The pill began to kick in, and the air around him went fuzzy. His body felt tired, and guilt washed over him with the pill’s warmth. It occurred to him that Donna must feel this way, too. He turned and left her and the baby there. 

Outside, flies had made a home in the shell. He took off his shirt and used it to swat away the flies. Even without his shirt, he could still smell himself, so he stripped down to his underwear. There wasn’t a neighbor for miles, and if someone made it their business to drive all the way out here, then that was their own fault. He laid his shirt, pants, and socks on the hood of the truck, looping his boot laces over the ram’s head hood ornament. The burnt summer grass crunched beneath the soles of his feet. He bent low and examined the shell closely, tracing its contours with open palms. He fingered the thin bones that held the top to the bottom and, hooking one foot with the bottom half, he tugged upwards. The bones cracked loudly. 

His toes slipped on the slimy interior, and his foot slid into the shell. The protruding vertebrae scraped against his heel. Wiggling his foot free, he tried again and managed to crack the halves at their bridge. He laid the two pieces side by side. 

“You musta been one old son of a bitch, huh?” he said.

The wind rocked the shell’s top. It was about half the size of those turtle-shaped kiddie pools and twice as deep. Tommy stepped inside it carefully and crouched down, bringing his knees to his chest. 

“Imagine living your entire life,” he said, “then you die, and some dick desecrates your body.” Something squelched between his toes, and he stood up. 

He dragged the top half to the water spigot and turned it on full blast. The water pressure worked at the remaining bits of flesh as he scrubbed at them with his bare hands. Waterlogged and rotten, it was like scraping Jell-O out of a bowl. It wasn’t difficult work, and once he washed away the meat and its accompanying slime, the shell’s interior was actually smooth and gold, like tiger’s-eye. The bottom was a different story: Strings of muscle and sinew clung tight to the bone. He scraped at it until the tips of his fingers were raw. Satisfied that the shell was as clean as he could manage, he set them back up against the house. The sun had already gone down, and though he ducked his head under the spigot’s stream, he didn’t mind the smell. It had grown on him in the evening hours. 

He leaned against the truck’s grill and examined his work. The shell didn’t resemble itself like that, dismembered and laid up. Tommy tried to count the rings, the years this cavern had seen. When he was a kid, his uncles told him you could guess a turtle’s age by counting its rings, or maybe that was trees, but he tried, and anyway, his turtle’s shell was covered in blunted domes, and the rings were indistinguishable from the knobby bumps that rose out of each dome.

“You’re a right dinosaur,” he said. “Been round longer than any of us.” 

As far as he could tell, there’d been no movement in the house after Donna stopped crying. Inside, things were as they had been: The ketchup was on the floor, the pills on the counter. Tommy counted them: three less than before. He saw the breast pump in the sink, leaking the last of its bounty into the drain. He put the ketchup in the refrigerator and took out a beer. The door clicked as he shut it. It was an older model, one that locked from the outside. He took a drink of his beer. A few years back, he’d seen a story on the news about a little boy who went missing a few counties over. Someone found him six months later in a junk pile a quarter mile from his house, dead inside an old fridge. 

He downed the beer and went to the bedroom. Donna lay curled in a ball at the far corner of the bed, her face burrowed against the wall. She slept under a short afghan, her bare toes on pointe. Beneath the blanket, he could see she hadn’t dressed. Her arms circled her stapled stomach. 

You already know it’s no use crying around here, huh

The crib was quiet at the bedside. Before the baby was born, Donna’s friends went on and on about how little sleep they’d get, but he hadn’t heard the baby cry since the hospital. Gently, Tommy reached into the crib and picked the baby up. Its head fit easily in his palm, and its feet barely touched the crook of his elbow. At the hospital, Tommy had held the baby at arm’s length, but in the bedroom, he held it close like he’d seen Donna do when she breastfed. The baby was dark, but had a shock of fine, dark hair on its crown, a few strands of white at its nape. The doctor said the white would grow out. The baby jerked in its sleep, smacking its waxy lips. 

“You already know it’s no use crying around here, huh?” Tommy whispered. 

He lay down with the baby on his chest. He could feel its hot breath. Suddenly he swooned for the baby, his baby, and thought about reaching out to Donna, waking her, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. Her body was familiar, but she was as unrecognizable as his shell. As he began to fall asleep, he moved the baby beside him and draped his arm around its tiny form. 

He woke in the middle of the night to what he was sure was the sound of steam coming off Donna’s piss. From a sound sleep he heard it: The pressurized stream against the porcelain bowl, the slow hiss that made him open his eyes in the dark, wide awake. The walls thinned, and he heard her padding down the hall to the kitchen—she ran her hand along the wall, her fingernails dragging along uncovered drywall—the pill bottle rattled, the faucet ran. When Donna crawled back into bed, she tried to curl herself around him. He pulled the baby closer and scooted away from her, pretending to be asleep. 

When the sun started its ascent, he woke again. Mud had flaked off his back and legs in the night, and it itched. He was aware of the raw odor that came off him in waves. Beside him, the baby yawned and slept on. Its chest rose and fell ever so slightly with each shallow breath. He clutched the baby and got up. Donna, deep in a codone slumber, he imagined, slept on. He hadn’t diapered the baby before he fell asleep, and the baby had wet the bed. 

Taking the baby to the kitchen, he wet a washcloth and wiped it down. The baby’s limbs were loose, and he raised each hand twice before letting it fall. It hardly stirred as he put on its diaper. Tommy grabbed a sheet from the closet and swaddled the baby. 

“You’re safe with me,” he said. 

Taking the baby in his arms, he ducked outside. The storm door’s screen popped out of its aluminum frame as it swung shut, but he ignored it. He smiled when he saw his shell, dry and free of the mess that had been at its center the day before. 

“This is for you, little one,” Tommy said. He set the swaddled bundle in dewy grass, within sight of the shell. “Your own little shell to keep you safe. Just a few more touches and it’s yours.” 

Sitting on his knees, he took the top half of the shell in his arms and ran his fingers over its surface. Cleaned of algae and creek scum, the top was still dark green, brown veins circling each ridge. He replaced it and stood, wiping his hands on his underwear. Mud and yellowed sweat streaked the band. He hopped from one foot to the other in an effort to take them off, but he slipped, and his bare ass hit the ground with a slap. Without getting up, he glanced at the baby. Its eyes were fixed straight up at the sky. 

Your own little shell to keep you safe. Just a few more touches and it’s yours.

He pushed himself up, not bothering to brush off the dirt, and retrieved a hammer and nail from the toolbox in his truck. He returned to the top half of the shell and made a mental x on the thickest section of the bridge that held the shell together. Holding the nail steady, he brought the hammer down and felt the bone give a little. He brought the hammer down again and again, the third swing falling foul and busting open his knuckle. Not thinking, he wiped the back of his bloody hand across his face, tasting blood, sweat, and dirt. He could feel his heartbeat in the nerves of his hand as he pushed the nail through. He repeated the process with the bottom half, rocking back and forth on his heels. 

“One more thing,” he said. The baby was still awake, and Tommy was surprised by how blue its eyes still were. The doctor said the baby would grow out of that, too. 

He rolled the shell onto its top and lifted the bottom half to it. The two holes lined up, almost perfectly. He rummaged through his toolbox until he found some baling wire; he snatched it and quickly broke off a good-sized piece. He was beginning to feel the same excitement he felt when he found the shell. Giddy, he worked fast at winding the wire through the holes, tightening his loops. He bent the twisted end around the outside of the shell: He didn’t want the sharp points on the inside. 

Reunited, the shell had large gaps where its former tenant had extended its limbs. Tommy tested his hinge: The bottom half of the shell swung open and closed. 

“See? I’m good for something, huh?” Tommy picked up the baby, holding it over the reconstructed shell. Holding the baby with one hand, he stroked the shell’s underbelly. The sky already shimmered with heat, and Tommy welcomed the warm morning wind that washed over them. The baby’s fists fought against its cotton wrap; it was the most he’d ever seen the baby do, and it delighted him. 

“Tommy?” 

Donna sounded as if she were at the end of a tunnel. She called for him again, but he didn’t want to answer.

“Shh,” he said. He rocked the baby gently. “It’s alright.”

He lifted the shell’s lid and delicately lowered the baby into it. He made sure the baby rested to the side of the bony spine and that the sheet was tucked tight around its head. He touched the baby’s lips. 

“Tommy?” He heard her footsteps in the hall. “Do you have the baby?” 

The baby trained both blue eyes on him and stuck its tongue out. 

I’m Not Here, But I’m Not There Either

Posted on by Alex Juarez

The Indian Government decriminalized queer sex a little over two years ago. The law— section 377 of the Indian Penal code, a remnant of imperial rule—defined “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” as punishable. The loose language of the code left it open to interpretation, and therefore open to misuse. Now, though the law has been repealed, queerness is still considered abnormal. My family members call it “unnatural.” There exist no human rights for the queer community, and as a whole my country is unable to accept queerness. Consequently, even though I have accepted my own sexual and gender fluidity theoretically, I continue to promise my mother that I will marry a man. I propel heteronormative patriarchy and push its violent agenda forward because I am afraid. 

Nigeria is another such country where queerness is criminalized, rejected and feared. Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji, published in 2020, battles with transphobia and queerphobia in the Nigerian community. Emezi’s genderqueer protagonist, Vivek Nnemdi Oji, dies on the very first page and inhabits the afterlife, speaking to the reader from the beyond, but even as he lives, he is not part of the center, the “real,” the concrete. Vivek existed in liminal spaces even before his death, having never fully been part of the living world. He is used to being marginal. 

When Vivek is 11, he is sent to an all-boys military school where he is frequently assaulted, both physically and sexually. He starts diving into fugue states in which he “would become very, very still, just stop moving while the world continued around [him].” As Vivek grows up and goes to college, a lack of community, love, and empathy drives Vivek into depression. The first time I read the book, self-isolating during the pandemic, I believed Vivek’s suffering resulted from his queerness. I questioned Emezi’s representation of genderqueer identity as a sickness because I considered Vivek’s fugues a consequence of his genderfluidity, in addition to the physical and mental abuse he suffers at the hands of the seniors at the all-boys boarding school. But as I delved deeper into queer theory and Emezi’s writing and reread the book, I understood that Vivek’s fugues are not a representation nor a symptom of his genderqueerness. Rather, they represent a safe space for him, a manifestation of his spirituality. The violence perpetrated against him is a symptom of the diseased society that surrounds him;  it’s not connected with his queerness. His fugue states are a medium of communication between Vivek and his grandmother, Ahunna. Vivek is Ahunna reincarnate. Ahunna dies the day Vivek is born with a “dark brown patch shaped like a limp starfish” on his foot, just like the one on Ahunna’s foot, making Vivek two spirited—both a man and a woman. 

The first time I read the book, self-isolating during the pandemic, I believed Vivek’s suffering resulted from his queerness.

When Vivek declares to his cousin and male lover, Osita, “I am homeless,” we are inclined to think that homelessness is the price of queerness in societies like mine and Vivek’s, and that the ultimate goal of queerness (read queerness as the umbrella term for all forms of divergent existence based especially on sexuality and gender) is to fight its way to the dominant center. Whereas “[q]ueerness is an ideality” as José Esteban Muñoz writes in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer-Futurity and like all idealities, queerness is yet to be fully achieved, will always be yet-to-be-fully-achieved and hence eternally homeless. “We may never touch queerness,” Muñoz writes, “but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” Emezi teaches us that that “horizon imbued with potentiality” is not the margin of society, not a mirage at the end of the world. It already exists in the in-between. Vivek’s homelessness is a metaphor for his lack of a spiritual home. But it’s the liminal spaces he occupies—gender fluidity, his fugues, stolen moments with his friends and lover, and the spirit world writ large—that allow him to live a full life and actualize his queerness. 

Vivek’s chosen community consists of children of Nigerwives—foreigners who had married Nigerian men. Vivek’s chosen family protects and loves him passionately. The safe space “the girls”—Juju, Elizabeth, Olunne, and Somto—provide for Vivek allows him to more fully develop his gender expression. Vivek begins wearing dresses and eyeliner; he also paints his toenails and lips red. He asks his friends to call him Nnemdi, the name Ahunna had wanted to give to her granddaughter. Vivek often goes to the local market as Nnemdi, until one day a riot breaks out and the whole market is burnt down. 

I instantly fell in love with the fluid, the most beautyful Vivek. Vivek’s matted tangles falling below his shoulder blades, sometimes knotted in a bun atop his head, his loose curls of hair—a cause of concern for his family—continue to entice and haunt me. Vivek’s beauty fills me with desire, just like it does Osita. The moments that Osita and Vivek spend together are ephemeral, but they occupy a lifetime. Each time I read Osita’s words, “I died at [Vivek’s] mouth,” I die too, and I understand that as much as I love Vivek, it’s my curse to be Osita—a person afraid of being himself, a person who gives up on love and happiness in order to be accepted by the heteronormative dominant society. 

When Osita hates himself and his own queerness, Vivek holds Osita, releases him from his agony, gives him pleasure, and calms him. The “abnormal” love between the two breaks me even as it heals me; it confuses me, confounds me, mirrors my tiny existence, but also expands it beyond the scope of this universe. That Vivek can speak to me from the spirit world, that he has become a spirit and is now light and free, untethered to this realm of humans, proves to me that liminal spaces are more real than any concrete reality. 

The moments that Osita and Vivek spend together are ephemeral, but they occupy a lifetime.

But then I descend into my own reality, and I hear my dad say that Vijay, my best friend who is a gay man, will become normal, that I should marry Vijay, that we can beat it out of him, as if “it” is a demon that lives inside Vijay, very much like the demon Vivek’s aunty—Osita’s mother—tries to beat out of him. I don’t think my father actually means any sort of harm; Vijay and I often laugh at my father’s homophobia because beating kids is an often-joked-about phenomenon in north Indian households. But a larger truth lurks behind these statements: heteronormativity is the way.

Heteronormativity functions on a timeline where an individual must achieve milestones set by the society: get a degree, find a job, get married and then have kids. Perpetuate the cycle. Editors David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz of What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now? argue that queer politics is also falling prey to a standard of normativity, creating a phenomenon which has been labeled by Lisa Duggan, a professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, as homonormativity. Eng et al describe homonormativity as the political pursuit of gay marriage in the Western society “while rhetorically remapping and recoding freedom and liberation in narrow terms of privacy, domesticity, and the unfettered ability to consume in the ‘free’ market.” Any form of normativity “collaborates with a mainstreamed nationalist politics of identity, entitlement, inclusion, and personal responsibility” and overlooks “capitalist exploitation and domination, state violence and expansion, and religious fundamentalisms and hate.” And homonormativity is no different in its pursuit of a place within the dominant construct. 

I want to relate with Vivek; I want to search and desire a true home.

The day section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was decriminalized, I WhatsApp-called Vijay and congratulated him. I still thought the victory to be more important, more relevant to him. I still thought I was more straight than queer. While books were my safe space, the predominantly white literary world seemed to be rejecting me, and now there was another world that I was trying to get into but thought I didn’t really belong in. Being Indian, my fears were dual—I feared would never be able to experience the sweet fruits of homonormativity, and I feared that only homosexuality is queer. I thought that everyone else, including me, was just pretending. If I could be attracted to men at all, then I was not queer; if I had not slept with women, femmes, dykes, gender-nonconformists, then I was not really queer. Now I realize that I was in search of not queerness but queer domesticity. Much like the Western liberal politics lamented by Eng et al, I had limited my queerness to a form of domesticity that mirrored heteronormative ideals of marriage and rearing a family. 

In the equation set by normative ideals, home is mistaken as domesticity. Riots and political unrest in Nigeria of the late 90s form the backdrop for the present day story of Vivek Oji. The reader and the characters assume that the cause of Vivek’s death is a hate crime, an inevitable end brought about by not having a place in the society. But Vivek dies of more liminal causes: unacceptance from his family, and Osita’s fear of Vivek’s two-spiritedness. The lack of such love causes the loss of a spiritual home. Emezi writes in their debut memoir Dear Senthuran, “I’ve been thinking about these earthly homes less as homes and more as places of origin for our embodied forms.” The chapter titled “Home|Dear Jahra ” describes Emezi’s struggle to find their way back to their deity mother, Ala, the Earth goddess, who takes the form of a snake. Vivek’s journey is similar to Emezi’s—a move away from “earthly homes,” and towards spiritual ones. Vivek never wants any form of domesticity. Rather he wants and finds home in his love for Osita, in his own corporeal existence as Nnemdi, in his best friend Juju and finally in the spirit world. 

I want to relate with Vivek; I want to search and desire a true home. But instead I relate with Juju and Osita.They echo my fears. Juju is “scared that [either her girlfriend or she] would wake up someday and decide [the other] was tired of being with a girl.” On the other hand, Osita pines for normativity; hopes his love for Vivek proves to be an anomaly. He hides the relationship from everyone, even after his lover dies in his arms. He locks his queerness inside of himself. 

Despite their fears, Juju and Osita love in the most queer ways possible. After Vivek’s death, in order to relieve each other of their grief, Juju and Osita have sex; arguably this act is not queer, as it’s strictly between a man and a woman, but it is an act of manifestation, an exercise to bring Vivek into existence. Vivek watches them from beyond, and achieves the peak of his happiness: 

[T]hey were so beautiful together. I put my hands on the small of her back and on the stretch of his chest. I kissed the sweat of her neck and his stomach.

They were keeping me alive in the sweetest way they knew how. 

The homage Osita and Juju pay Vivek shows that queer time is magical. It doesn’t need to function linearly. Non-linear time and liminal spaces are often seen as purgatories, transitory spaces of suffering through which one must pass to reach the final destination but queerness finds safety in transition, in purgatory. The dominant construct assumes that everyone desires to be the center, but queerness expands into spaces where no center is needed. Emezi says in an interview with Electric Literature that Osita lives “very much in this world with all its limitations,” and that is a character flaw that proves to be fatal for his lover. Vivek lives a much fuller life in a world that expands beyond the corporeal. Vivek, in his true spiritual and corporeal self, embodies the ideality that Muñoz says we might never achieve, but even he achieves it after his death. In a mortal life, I may not be able to achieve the peak happiness that Vivek finally achieves, but I also do not want to make the same mistakes as Osita’s. I am searching for something between domesticity and queer ideality. Meanwhile I read writers like Emezi and through their stories, I live multiple lifetimes and idealities. For even as Emezi’s words highlight the loss of queer domesticity from my life, a loss that burns bright, they also give me hope that my queerness will inhabit liminal spaces of my own making. 

Seeing My Filipino Immigrant Self in Ellison’s “Invisible Man”

Posted on by Social Media Editor

As a Filipino American immigrant, I’ve been aware of my invisibility from the time I set foot in the United States. I perceived it when coworkers looked past me, when store clerks and waiters talked to my white companions instead of me, and when editors and literary agents told me Filipino stories were unsellable. 

Assertiveness became my armor, and adaptability, my best weapon. When people ignored me, I redoubled my efforts to be heard and seen. At work, I didn’t wait around to be noticed, but presented my ideas proactively. In hotels and restaurants, I spoke directly to people who were not inclined to wait on me. As a novelist, I set aside my unmarketable Filipino stories and “adapted” by publishing romance books about white characters. 

I thought I only needed to work harder to gain visibility. It took Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to pierce my armor and dismantle my weapon. In the novel’s opening paragraph, Ellison’s nameless Black hero says: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” This line alone brought tears to my eyes. Ellison tells it like it is, and it hurt.

I was moved to read Invisible Man after George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police in May 2020. I read books by Black authors to help me understand their experience better. Ellison’s novel depicts one African American’s struggles against racial injustice in post-World War II America. It’s about the journey of the titular Invisible Man from the South to New York City, and his encounters with racism along the way.

Since I’m not Black, I didn’t expect Ellison to speak to me with the force of a spiritual awakening. The experience of Filipino Americans is inherently different from that of Blacks or other people of color. The United States colonized the Philippines in 1898 as an offshoot of the Spanish-American War. The first wave of Filipino immigrants arrived in this country between 1906 and 1935, back when the United States ruled the Philippines as a colony. Filipino immigrants worked in sugar and pineapple plantations in Hawaii, as well as in California farms. 

Since I’m not Black, I didn’t expect Ellison to speak to me with the force of a spiritual awakening.

Filipinos came with a unique status as U.S. nationals, but their legal standing didn’t protect them from racial discrimination and injustice. Businesses banned them with warnings such as this: “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.” For five days in January 1930, white mobs terrorized and assaulted Filipinos in Watsonville, California. Fermin Tobera, a Filipino immigrant, was killed in the riots. His murder remains unsolved today.

My people have endured racism for sure, but unlike African Americans, we can’t claim to suffer from the effects of 246 years of institutionalized slavery. In reading Ellison’s novel, I was looking for enlightenment about Blacks, which I got and then some. He gave me the gift of existential reckoning.

I was amazed at how eloquently Ellison spoke to my immigrant experience almost seven decades after his book’s publication. Invisible Man toppled my misbegotten notion that I can make myself visible in spite of this country’s systemic racism through hard work alone. Worse, my unrelenting “adaptability” unwittingly worsened my invisibility over the years. I just didn’t realize it until now.

In Ellison’s book, the hero tries to be adaptable too. He follows the conventional path to middle-class success by pursuing higher education. He manages to get a scholarship to a state college for Blacks after winning a bizarre, blindfolded boxing match in front of his town’s leading white citizens, but gets expelled for exposing one of the college’s founders to the harshness of Black life. After moving to Harlem, he gets a job as a spokesman for an organization called The Brotherhood through the strength of his oration, except that the leadership eventually tells him that his job is not to think, but to do and say as the Brotherhood dictates. The protagonist realizes the Brotherhood only cares about power, not justice.

Invisible Man toppled my misbegotten notion that I can make myself visible in spite of this country’s systemic racism through hard work alone.

Just like Ellison’s protagonist, I took the traditional path offered by higher education to enter a space of visibility. It opened doors for me and gave me a professional identity as a journalist, and later on, as a marketing writer. I didn’t have to engage in a “battle royal” boxing match, but I won a spot in a competitive minority internship program as a graduate student. The internship led to a news writing job, which in turn led to other writing jobs in corporate America. I felt lucky to secure well-paid positions in companies where I was one of the few people of color and often the sole Filipino American. If visibility is like stepping into the spotlight on a stage, then I was in the wings catching the glare of the light. 

I was comfortable in my place, until I started writing fiction. All of my novels focused on Filipino and Filipino American characters. For eighteen years, I wrote and submitted doggedly. I even managed to sign with two literary agents, first Black and then white. Both tried but failed to sell my manuscripts. The verdict: my novels were not viable because of the subject matter (Philippines, Filipino Americans) and the genre (literary fiction, historical fiction). It’s a fatal combination.

In 2013, my desperation led me to a eureka moment. What if I write a “sellable” novel? What if I write about white characters in a commercial genre? Without knowing what everyone knows today—that 76 percent of mainstream publishing gatekeepers are white—common sense told me that white equals publishing viability. I decided to write a white romance novel. 

For four months, I wrote the book with the intensity of a woman climbing Mount Everest as the final act of her life. The result was a short novel about a blue-collar boxer, a beautiful doctor, and their knockout romance. Not an iota of my Filipino background leaked into my novel. I used a pen name in my unagented submissions.

I touted my experience as a reinvention of my writing career, and advised other writers to be similarly ‘adaptable.’

Within five months, a publisher acquired my novel. Twelve months after acquisition, In His Corner was published under my pen name Vina Arno. It brought me neither riches nor renown, but it gave me a bona fide publishing breakthrough. My old assumption that working hard and blending in will make me visible seemed spot-on.  In an article I wrote for Forbes, I touted my experience as a reinvention of my writing career, and advised other writers to be similarly “adaptable.” 

Publication boosted my morale, enough to make me pick up one of my unsellable Filipino manuscripts and give it another try. In 2018, I attended the San Francisco Writers Conference and mustered the courage to pitch my historical novel, My MacArthur to a publisher. The book is about Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s scandalous interracial love affair with Isabel Rosario Cooper, a Filipino actress, in the 1930s.

Two months after my pitch, Sand Hill Review Press (SHRP) acquired my novel. At the same time, my second white romance book was acquired by another publisher. I’m certain SHRP didn’t acquire My MacArthur because of my obscure romance novel, but it probably lent me credibility that made me more viable than unpublished writers.

That year, two of my novels were published, one after the other. Only one carried my real name and depicted a Filipino protagonist. But together they kept me in the wings of visibility. I was finally getting published.

It took Ellison’s book to open my eyes that my romance novels did not make me visible. On the contrary, they worsened my invisibility. I sacrificed my truth just to be seen, even though my first romance book barely sold enough copies to keep it available today, while the second book flopped outright so the publisher withdrew it from the market two years after publication. Both books represented a missed opportunity to tell meaningful stories that could help shape a Filipino American narrative I could identify with. Like Ellison’s protagonist, I acquired a new name but I remained nameless. I bought into the commercial “ideology” of publishing at the expense of my identity as a Filipino American. The real value of my romance novels lies in keeping my hope alive, so I may persist in writing Filipino stories.  

If only I had read Ellison years before, I could have avoided contributing to my own problem. But in food as in literature, you are what you consume. Growing up in the Philippines, my American-style education fed me white literature. Books written by African Americans and people of color were simply outside of my literary exposure. 

The Filipino educational system is a product of U.S. colonialism. American soldiers opened schools in the Philippines as soon as they took over from the Spaniards in 1898. For more than 300 years, the Spaniards withheld the proper teaching of Spanish language to keep Filipinos ignorant, and therefore, subservient. The Americans did exactly the opposite. Teaching Filipinos their language helped them win Filipino acceptance and made Filipinos abide more willingly. Given their motive in teaching Filipinos, the educational system they molded promoted only the dominant American culture.

It’s no wonder that my own education taught me only about white Americans. Invisible Man was published in 1952 to great acclaim, and won the National Book Award in 1953, but I never heard of Ellison while I lived in the Philippines. My required readings as a student in Manila included J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. 

I bought into the commercial ‘ideology’ of publishing at the expense of my identity as a Filipino American.

If only my so-called “American” education  covered the depth and breadth of American culture—and included literature written by Blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other people of color—it might have prepared me better for my struggles as an immigrant in America.

At the end of Invisible Man, the hero falls through a manhole and into a coal cellar while fleeing from a race riot. It saves him from the violence aboveground, but it also traps him in the darkness below. He chooses to stay underground as a form of hibernation. “I’m invisible, not blind,” he declares. “No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.”

But the Invisible Man isn’t hibernating for long. “I’m shaking off the old skin,” he adds. “I’m coming out, no less invisible without it but coming out nevertheless.”

Thanks to Ellison’s novel, I’m also shaking off my old skin of naiveté in the guise of adaptability. Self-awareness is my new armor, perseverance, my preferred weapon. I’m no more visible than before, but at least, I know better than to write another white romance novel. 

The Real Reason Anna Qu Wants You to Pay Attention to Praise

Posted on by Alex Juarez

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 Made in China author Anna Qu, who will be leading a year-long Online Memoir Generator for writers of color at Catapult—to apply, please submit a chapter from your memoir-in-progress (up to 25 pages), or your strongest writing sample, with a short proposed project description attached. Qu talked with us about finding community, taking risks, and establishing trust with yourself.

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

A community of fellow writers that continue to show up, support, and celebrate each other’s trials and success.

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

That my work was unbelievable and felt made up.

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

JoAnn Beard once told me if a story isn’t working, start over or write something new. That felt brutal and profound at the time, but now, especially after I started teaching, that perspective feels necessary and true.

Does everyone “have a novel in them”?

Sure, if they want to have a novel in them.  

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

No. Maybe a hostage situation? Sounds like a writing prompt!

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

Praise is an opportunity to assess the feedback you are receiving from fellow writers. From their praise, you can tell if your story resonated. Do they get it?  Are they able to help you get your points across more fully? Praise is as much an opportunity to establish trust and mutual understanding as it is to encourage. If the writer agrees with the positive feedback, then they should look at the criticism. In my classes, we don’t criticize so much as raise questions, connect themes, strategize plot possibilities, etc. 

Praise is as much an opportunity to establish trust and mutual understanding as it is to encourage.

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

Yes and no. Get the content down any way you can. A few drafts later, after you shape the structure, characters, and the reader’s experience, you can begin to think about publication. It’s important to remember that while we write alone, publication is when our work joins a much larger community. Once you move into the editing process, it’s smart to do research on lit journals, magazines, blogs, and understand the conversation your work will be joining. Publication is the last step in the overall process and one that does a great deal to energize and validate emerging writers. 

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

  • Kill your darlings: Still useful in the context of focusing a large project, but there are no true do’s and don’ts in writing.
  • Show don’t tell: Show and tell are not mutually exclusive. Show is especially effective in writing compelling scenes, especially if we’re working with emotional arcs.
  • Write what you know: Yes, especially when it comes to identity, race, gender, disability, etc. And if you are writing about characters or situations that’s not familiar, make sure you find/pay a sensitivity reader.
  • Character is plot: This is true for my writing, but I wouldn’t say it’s true for all writers.

All these maxims derive from craft tools developed for the workshop model, and as we grow and evolve as writers so should the model. These maxims are a guide, not a rule. Once you have foundational understanding, trust yourself and take some risks. Figure out what does and doesn’t work for you as a writer.

Once you have foundational understanding, trust yourself and take some risks.

What’s the best hobby for writers?

Physically, the best hobbies are walking, hiking, or traveling. I also like to paint, and I always encourage my students to interact with other mediums of art and creation. Writing nonfiction can be intense emotionally and physically, and it’s good self-care practice to play with other art forms that can stimulate the same part of the brain.

What’s the best workshop snack?

Cake!

I Love to Hate My Gilmore Girls Obsession

Posted on by Alex Juarez

There is No Chocolate Ice Cream in Stars Hollow or On Getting Help for My Obsession with Gilmore

I think of Lorelai’s love / of food and coffee and how whte
privilege is always finished bowl and feasting/ consuming
even the carton/never belly-room enough for 
consequences/ I love all the ways I’m forced to bask in wht 
bodies embracing/expected to cream from 2-ply paper lips 
pressing together/ a nest of hair knotting 
like dingy shoelaces/how she never thinks of her fifty flavor 
choices—a multitude of men pining for her seen and centered 
ass/ when you’re a straight whte woman, the love triangle is 
your sweet inheritance/hand-spun in caucasian confection/ 
everyone wants to dip their tongue into her/ pop rox their 
taste buds on anglo fizz ecstasy/ a fro-yo 
of vanilla brain freeze/ 

while us queer Black women sit patient for our four 
lines, 50 dollars, and a Sag credit/ waiting for sexual 
tension to build between her and diner 
boy/ meanwhile, I would have fcked him and her 
and fled/cause I never know what’s good for me 
and even when I do, I leave/was never taught 
how to stay frozen/cone-gripped and candy-hearted/ 
but you, you learned/bcuz u are everywhere/ snow 
white showed you a woman is only desirable 
when she is immovable and waiting/ to be carved
into. while us brown girls never stick around 
long enough for you to lick the edges /we know 
we’ll melt if we stay still.



For God So Loved the WAP

Broken Sestina for Cardi B’s WAP ft. Megan Thee Stallion
 
And what is a woman but a cavernous pussy 
collapsing after men made her a dam? 
Rushing water above fractured oak, afraid 
to land over the cliff and drop down finger-first. 
scared the quake will leave us splintered. 

What does it mean to push past the splintering 
to reclaim the running water of pussy? 
To say amen to the faucet spilling coins— 
all the pennies you saved to toss and forget. 
Now, she has reached a reservoir of fingers 
gliding out and in. What is a woman unafraid? 

She is a brook, a stream, a whole damn 
ocean. And what becomes of the splintered wood? She builds 
a home in the depth of the stroke—unafraid a home in the 
mess of her gushing geyser. And what is a pussy but a boiling 
spring? Hot eruption of minerals and salt-brine, spouting off 
heat to melt the coldest coin. Damn 

What is a woman but a stream of fingers 
waiting to run off. To spill sediment salt 
from fuck boys, who thought of us a damn 
store-bought container, fish tank pussy 
to hold his school of splintering trout. 

When we say go deeper, we mean to dive unafraid to 
the bottom an open mouth bass, to swallow the salty 
seaweed. To run rough tongues over our bleeding pussy 
stones. To drink and be full. Now, unsplintering 
full-bellied and gaping, our floodwater fingers 
rush alive and unafraid. Watch the dam 

she will build from its splinters. 
The grit and stone she will cleanse with salt. 
Watch her wet and waiting, for pussy 
pleasured oak. Spark a live-fire— 
swear this fountain wasn’t home.
Swear the water. 
Swear it fire. Swear it home.

7 Indian Women Writers You Should Be Reading

Posted on by Jo Lou

I don’t want to read about mangoes. Their freshness, their sweetness, their broadleaf trees with laden boughs. I don’t want to read about their pickled tartness, or how their ripening smell signals approaching summertime. In fact, I don’t want to read about the Indian summer either, unless what I’m reading conveys how truly crushing its heat is. In essence, I don’t want to read India as written for its diaspora—the longing for an imagined homeland—or India written for a colonial imaginary, which, in my experience, often shows up on the page as the same kind of longing.

There was a time, though, when I lived for this stuff—and that’s also when I lived in the UK. Back then, I wanted to gorge on literary mangoes, on loss, on a simmering outrage at appropriation that was so perfectly caste-blind that it always already exonerated me. This was also, unsurprisingly, the sort of writing that was easier to find, the kind that made—and still makes—a variety of international bestseller lists. 

But then, I moved to India; I lived, worked, dated, dreamed, sweated in India. And I knew I needed something else. I needed books that were sharp and true and felt, but most of all, that were less interested in the subaltern speaking back to empire than they were in writing without reference and deference to empire at all.

Here are seven women authors whose work is not nearly as widely read as it should be, but who write India as it feels: shorn of nostalgia, mythologized pasts, poverty porn, and for the most part, mangoes. 

Tara Lane by Shama Futehally

Shama Futehally 

My mum lent me her copy of Tara Lane when I was at the peak of my frustration with South Asian fiction, and it was exactly what I needed. Shama Futehally’s debut novel—but by no means her first significant literary work—is a true treasure; a coming of age story set within an old affluent Muslim family whose world is beginning to fracture. As the narrator Tahera—or Tara (who shares a name with the small Bombay lane where their family home sits)—reflects: “When our house of cards collapsed, it would fall on all sides, in a single totter.”

Futehally’s graceful, precise prose navigates family dynamics, labor strikes, and Tara’s interior world with equally deft poise. In a long tradition of literature that elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary—Carol Shields, Anne Tyler, Rachel Cusk—Shama Futehally and Tara Lane deserve lasting pride of place.

Meena Kandasamy 

I’m definitely trolling myself by including Women’s Prize-shortlisted poet, author and translator Meena Kandasamy on this list, but I came to her work so late that I want to rectify a similar potential loss on everyone’s bookshelves. Her 2017 novel When I Hit You; Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife is a gripping story of a young woman living with her abusive Marxist husband.

As someone who has wasted too much time in thrall to socialist men, I loved this exploration of gender, idealism, and the seductive draw of politically engaged men. For example: “To fight the evils of capitalism, we required the staunchest warriors. He was one, and he could make one out of me.” Hard relate. Above all, though, Kandasamy’s novel is a story of one writer’s struggle to create work within and against incredibly oppressive odds. As her narrator says, “The number one lesson I have learned as a writer: Don’t let people remove you from your own story.” Kandsamy—in her poems, books, and even her tweets—never does.

Aditi Patil

My friend who loaned me her copy of Patriarchy and the Pangolin: A Field Guide to Indian Men and Other Species described it as “perfectly capturing millennial Indian women’s climate angst”—something we both share, but rarely see so well represented. Conservationist Aditi Patil’s debut 2020 book is part-memoir, part-field research; the story of two women making their way through Gujarat’s farms, fields, forests, and bureaucracy. Here they’re faced with every species of intractable Indian man as they seek to uncover stones usually left behind by data: women farmers, nonhuman life, indigenous peoples.

Describing herself as “the poor woman’s David Attenborough,” Patil’s book sparkles with a delightfully Indian humor. Roadside cows ‘”wonder… what failed questionnaire sheets taste like” and more than one potential conflict is diffused because “The moment passed, like all the millions of moments that have historically passed when men haven’t noticed what women said.” In Patil’s own words, Patriarchy and the Pangolin is a book “about what it means to be alive in India. And to be alive to India.” And it is just that.

Sharanya Manivannan 

“Some days you sparkle like a teenage vampire. Some days you feel as though you’ve walked through the remains of an exploded dhrishti pusanika, which is to say, fucked.”

Unlike the other writers on this list, poet and author Sharanya Manivannan—who grew up between Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and South India—leans deeply into cultural and spiritual specificity, and invites her readers to follow. She’s the author of two poetry books, a collection of short stories, a novel, and most recently, a graphic novel about mermaids that she illustrated herself(!). Across genre, all of Manivannan’s work glows with a luminous depth and a thorough relishing of language at every turn. This includes my favorite, The High Priestess Never Marries, a collection of short stories about women living on their own terms that shines long after the last page.

Manjima Bhattacharjya 

Can feminism and fashion be allies? This is one of the many questions Manjima Bhattacharjya (one of the best feminists I know) explores in her intrepidly reported book Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry. From going backstage at India’s most prestigious fashion event (thanks to meeting two models outside the hotel toilets—what Bhattacharjya describes as “the most significant day in my Ph.D. life”) to interviewing countless working women from a wide variety of backgrounds, this debut book uncovers the lives of women in fashion as existing, consistently, “between spectacle and surveillance.”

Spanning body politics, labor protests and feminist ideas of “objectification,” Mannequin leads us through an unflinching analysis of how neoliberalism has deeply shaped India; an economic system in which models serve as the very embodiment of globalization. Except the thing about globalization is that not everyone can participate in it —including, often, the women themselves. 

Nisha Susan 

Co-founder of the award-winning feminist website The Ladies Finger, Nisha Susan is a writer who I first encountered as an editor. She was the first person who showed me how to make writing that endures, and most importantly, what an editor can do for a writer. When I went on to become an editor myself, it was her smart, guiding hand I tried to channel. All this to say that I was entirely primed to love her debut short story collection The Women Who Forgot To Invent Facebook and Other Stories—and it did not disappoint.

Susan writes millennial India the way it feels for many of us: funny, painful, violent, absurd, and in turns bound together and fractured by digital technology. This sharp, witty collection also manages to feature pretty much every variety of Indian fuckboy I’ve ever encountered, which, given their expansive range, is no small feat. 

Priya-Alika Elias

Speaking of desi fuckboys, my favorite chronicler of their insufferable ways is Priya-Alika Elias (see: “DJs are the root canals of people”), the author of Besharam: Of Love and Other Bad Behaviors. A collection of funny, fierce, heartbreaking essays, Besharam (the Hindi word for “shameless”) ranges in topic from internet culture to “aunties” to the problem with telling your friends to just “dump him.” In it, Elias writes:

“How can I describe the specific wound left on online dating sites by white women who say ‘only white men’ or that left by white men who say ‘you’re attractive for a (X ethnicity)?… We know what happens to a wound when it festers.”

Spanning the author’s life in the U.S. and India, Besharam is a memoir that’s really a survival guide for South Asian women the world over. As an essay titled “Body” reads:

“I was a brown girl in a wasteland of blinding whiteness and it never occurred to me that I was worthy of being cherished and loved.”

At every turn in her debut book, Elias takes our faces between her hands and tells us we are worthy, worthy, worthy. 

No Straight Thing Was Ever Made

Urvashi Bahuguna

Poet and essayist Urvashi Bahuguna is the voice in Indian writing I feel I’ve always been looking for: graceful, sharp, and most importantly, rooted in India without insisting on cultural identity at every turn. The young author of an exquisite debut poetry collection Terrarium (whose launch I attended at an indie bookstore in Goa, the Indian state where I live and where Bahuguna is originally from), it’s her 2021 book No Straight Thing Was Ever Made: Essays on Mental Health that announces Bahuguna as a literary force to be reckoned with. In it, she writes:

“We knew respectability was no antiquated need for most people around us, and that stigma and judgment were a stone’s throw from where any of us stood.”

Simultaneously soft and crystalline sharp, Bahuguna’s essays range in scope from family to fear to writing to birds— the attempts of a young woman to trace the patterns of her mind and her life, all the while remaining firmly rooted where she stands.

What Happens When Our Mostly White MFA Classrooms Fail Us

Posted on by Alex Juarez

Dear Reader,

Hi! 

With this note, I’m inviting all of you, our generous, thoughtful Electric Literature readers, to come with me on a small monthly sojourn. Starting today, I’ll be sending a monthly “from the editor’s desk” letter. The general purview is quite broad; topics will include anything from my pop-culture musings to my take on the latest discourse sweeping literary Twitter, to a recent book I’m loving, or illuminating the behind-the-scenes of our editorial thinking at EL. I’m excited to share this with you. 

Just in case anyone is unaware, my name is Denne Michele Norris, and I’m the third Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature, and the first Black, openly transgender woman to lead a major U.S. literary publication. I’m thrilled to be here, thrilled to contribute my vision to this amazing, boundary-breaking journal.

I am as much an editor as I am a writer—I think this job cements it—and that I am passionate about this duality.

I’m coming up on a decade post-MFA, and this entirely made-up benchmark has been, as the kids might say, living rent-free in my head. I keep asking myself: am I where I wanted to be—where I thought I might be—as a writer and person? After a decade of part-time and volunteer editorial work, I have my first full-time job in the literary sphere, a goal I’d set for myself (in rather vague terms) when I made the decision to make a serious attempt at “being a writer.” So that’s a yes, right? I also thought I’d have published two books by now, because in my youth it seemed so easy to sit down and just write a novel. So that must make it a no? The answer is complicated, one of those “both/and” situations my therapist is so fond of mentioning. What’s become clear, though, is that I am as much an editor as I am a writer—I think this job cements it—and that I am passionate about this duality. 

But the reason I bring this up is far greater than those reflections. Last week, I noticed a few tweets reviving the ever-popular MFA discourse. The tweet that set this round off recounted a first-semester male student in a prestigious MFA program describing a female second year’s story as “competent.” I felt the dismissiveness of this comment in my bones, and what emerged was a long-hidden memory from my own MFA.

During my first workshop at Sarah Lawrence, on one of my stories (later published by Awst Press and nominated for a Pushcart), a classmate—a young white woman—advised me to let the reader know upfront that my characters were Black. The story in question was about 20 pages long, and the first time I mentioned race was around page 10. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought I’d needed to, but I sat silent, ferociously scribbling my notes while my classmates talked around me. The story didn’t center race as a plot point, so it seemed strange to me that she had assumed the characters were white. But the critique was widely supported, both by my (white) professor, and the other students in the class—though afterward, the lone additional Black student approached me and advised me to ignore this criticism. She literally waved it away, as though it was nothing more than a nuisance.

Over the next few days, my white classmate’s critique continued to bother me. I began to understand it. My characters had Eurocentric names. Race didn’t play a part in the plot. I hadn’t mentioned hip-hop, or soul food, or any other easy—and often lazy—signifier of Blackness. I saw how a white reader might assume they were reading about white characters and then be jarred by the rather innocuous revelation that the family at the center of the story was a Black family living in a mostly white small town. I had not, by the way, intended this to be any kind of dramatic revelation. I had simply written a moment when a Black character acknowledged shared Black experience to another Black character. 

What continued to baffle me about this moment was that I was sitting right there in the same classroom, at the same table, with my brown skin and kinky, dread-locked hair. Was I invisible? Was it—upon seeing me, indeed knowing me personally—so inconceivable that I might assume the centrality of people who looked like me in the context of my own writing, if not the larger world?

I had simply written a moment when a Black character acknowledged shared Black experience to another Black character.

That critique sent me into a spiral about how, and if, as a fiction writer, I should even attempt to write Black and queer characters. My takeaway from that workshop was that unless the plot was actively dependent on their Blackness or queerness, there was no value—only confusion and complication—in deviating from the white, cis-het norm. I turned to faculty and fellow students to find the most articulate ways of asking for guidance around this conundrum, one which no one else in my cohort appeared to be facing. I wondered: how could I incorporate my identity into the art I was desperate to create in a way that added value—rather than detracted from it? Were the nuances of the person I was merely potential plot devices, devoid of their own inherent value?

I’m grateful for two of my classmates, Nicole Dennis-Benn and Ursula Villarreal-Moura, both just a few years wiser than I, who pushed me to write characters who were undeniably non-white and non-straight. They read my writing assuming my characters were “raced,”—though I hadn’t intentionally “raced” them—because of the worldview they brought to my work. In their eyes, I found my freedom on the page. Ursula even referred me to VONA, a writers workshop and vast community that exists solely for writers of color. I took a summer workshop there, and came away understanding the value of my own visibility. 

How could I incorporate my identity into the art I was desperate to create in a way that added value—rather than detracted from it?

I think of visibility now, as a Black woman of the trans experience, who occupies a role of some influence in her chosen industry. We tell young writers to look at the masthead of the publications where they might consider sending their work. Look at who the editors are, we say. Are there any visible POC? Queer folks? We give them this advice because we want them to have the opportunity to be read, evaluated, and published, by people who will see them as central—at the very least within the context of their own work—as opposed to marginal. Literature is an exercise in imagination, and it’s in that imagination that we get to lay the groundwork for the future that we want. And I want a future where no writer ever has to look at their skin color, or who they love, or the country they come from, and wonder if there is value in writing themselves onto the page. I am the Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature, and I’m here to tell you that we are not sitting silent in the classroom any longer.  

Warmly,

Denne Michele
Editor-in-Chief, Electric Literature

The Coolest Literary Tattoos on the Internet

Posted on by Social Media Editor

Books and tattoos have one major thing in common: ink. Maybe that’s why book-lovers like getting literary tattoos so much. A few weeks ago, I asked our social media followers to send us their literary tattoos. I expected ten, maybe twenty responses. Instead, we got over 250. 250! Our feed was all skin and ink for days. There were so many great tattoos that it was hard to narrow it down for this piece, but ultimately these tattoos stood out in particular against a sea of (over 250) other pieces.

Below, you’ll find some of our favorite pieces, along with the artist’s information and further information about the tattoos from contributors. If you want to take a look at all of the other amazing tattoos (there are so many), check out the original thread here.

Langston Hughes

“My son is named Langston, after the poet. So, I got a tattoo with ‘Dreams’ by Langston Hughes. I’m all about making sure whatever his dreams are come true. (He’s 3 so we aren’t quite sure what those dreams are yet, but I’m sure one day he’ll tell us).” —@ericsmithrocks

Artist: Nick the Tailor at Crown and Feather Tattoo Philadelphia, PA

Avid Reader Press

“I always wanted a book tattoo but never wanted to commit to one book—I love ‘em all! This design was off of a tote bag I received from Avid Reader Press when they first opened their imprint. I thought it would look dope as a set.” —@BiblioReckah

Artist: Devin Volpe at Human Condition Arts and Tattoo in Pembroke, NH

Phillis Wheatley

“This beautiful stick-and-poke is an interpretation of Phillis Wheatley‘s iconic lithograph. She was a true genius in every sense of the word, as well the first Black poet to be published in North America. This tattoo reminds me that I am possible because of her keen mind and enduring heart.” —@NatashaOladokun

Artist: Becs Iturralde (they/them) at My Place Tattoo, Chicago IL

Wayside School written by Louis Sachar and illustrated by Adam McCauley

“My brothers and I all read the Wayside School series in the fourth grade, and I’ve been telling them for decades that I was going to get a potato tattoo on my ankle like Calvin does in one of the books. It’s a little more elaborate than Calvin’s, but my potato plant has three potatoes, one for each of us siblings.” —@JanineZeeCheng

Artist: Nevada Buckley at Firefly Tattoo Collective in Noblesville, IN

“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe, illustrated by W. Heath Robinson

“The artwork is from a collection of Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry illustrated by W. Heath Robinson. This piece was created for ‘Annabel Lee’, which was one of my favourite poems to read when I was younger.” —@savetheblooms

Artist: Kloey Miller at The Edge Tattoo Studio in Solana Beach, CA

Angels in America by Tony Kushner & Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Angels in America tattoo: 

“My heart stopped when I was 20, leaving me dead for six minutes. The appearance of the angel to Prior Walter in Angels In America has always resonated to me as someone who should have died but didn’t, and my subsequent struggle to find meaning in that.”

Artist: Benjamin Clarke at Mischief Tattoo in NYC. 

Wolf Hall tattoo: 

“It’s the first line from Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy (hence the Tudor emblem). I began the series at the start of the pandemic, and sinking into a character’s mind so fully, so vividly, kept me from coming to pieces during the nightmare of 2020. It was an achingly human thing to lose myself in a time so distant but so like our own, with its plagues, tragedies, loves, rivalries and resonant, tenacious hearts.”

Artist: Nini at Fleur Noire Tattoo in Brooklyn, NY 

—@memilies

Love and Rockets by Jaime Hernandez

“I started reading Love and Rockets in the ’90s—it’s one of the few series where the characters actually age in real time and I always related to Maggie, especially to her insecurities (not to mention that I think she was the first bisexual character I ever saw in fiction!) I liked this panel in particular because it reminded me of Roy Lichtenstein and I felt like it was kind of reclaiming that image for comic books.” —@wordnerdy

Artist: Zeus Ortiz at Dogstar Tattoo Company in Durham, NC

Bread & Jam for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban

“I have the bread and jam from the endpapers of Bread & Jam for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban. My daughter Josie has Frances. Why? Because the book is hilarious, suspenseful, warmhearted, and it contains the greatest lunch in all of children’s literature. When Josie was 16 we saw an exhibit about the Hobans’ work at the Beinecke Rare Book Library and Josie started asking if we could get matching Frances tattoos when she turned 18. I figured she’d stop asking by then. But nope. Josie found the lovely artist, Ocean Gao.” —@MarjorieIngall

Artist: Ocean Gao (they/them) in Brooklyn

Monogram

“It’s a monogram of the letters A-Z and numbers 0-9. Barring some special characters, every book I’ve ever read is in that tattoo and that’s why it means so much to me.” —@ewwwheather

Artist: Scott LaMadline at Love and Hate Tattoo in Phoenix, Arizona (Scott is no longer with that particular tattoo parlor, he now works at Libertalia Tattoo in Grand Rapids, MI).

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

“We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is one my favourite books and I’ve always identified with the character of Merricat a bit too much, so it was only fair that I permanently imprint her into my skin to keep with me forever.” —@merricalico

Studio: Tenzin Tattoos

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

“The tattoo is from the Beatrix Potter book The Tailor of Gloucester. My mom was an artist  who drew the original sketch and the tattoo is meant to honor her and her artwork and my grandmother, who inspired my love of reading.” —@ClaireRoehl

Artist: Danielle Parmelee at Lucid Studio in Chapel Hill, NC

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

“This was my first tattoo; at the time I was very young and felt helpless and hopeless about the rest of my life looming ahead of me. The line of dialogue this comes from is in The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith when Carol says to Therese, “You’re about as weak as this match…But given the right conditions you could burn a house down, couldn’t you?” I got it to remind myself that even if I felt helpless, I wasn’t.” —@ghost_dyke

Artist: Zane at LoveHate Tattoo in Rochester, NY

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

“My tattoo a tribute to The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. I incorporated the mistletoe and hawthorn that are part of key moments in the books, and used a “flame-colored” dahlia to represent the Sign of Fire from the books, along with the inscription from that sign: Liht Mec Heht Gewyrcan.” —@shadowkatie

Artist: Pony at The Honorable Society in West Hollywood.

How Do We Make a Life With Art at the Center?

Posted on by Jo Lou

In Shruti Swamy’s lyrical debut novel, The Archer—a coming of age narrative set in 1960s and 1970s Bombay—Vidya’s formative years are upended when her mother disappears. However, once Vidya discovers the classical dance form Kathak, it becomes her life’s focus, an obsession that lasts even after she leaves for college and falls in love. In The Archer, Vidya grapples with universal questions—can one be devoted to both art and family? Can one transcend a flawed family legacy?

Author Shruti Swamy is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, the winner of two O. Henry awards, and the recipient of numerous residencies and grants. Her debut short story collection, A House Is a Body, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.

Swamy and I spoke recently by phone and discussed writing about motherhood, publishing during the pandemic, and Swamy’s lifelong love of libraries. This conversation has been edited and condensed. 

Deirdre Sugiuchi: In The Archer, Vidya becomes obsessed with Kathak, a dance form that had a rebirth in post-colonial India. How did you become interested in Kathak? What made you focus on this time period? The world you built feels seamless. How did you conduct research? 

Shruti Swamy: I was born and raised in America. My parents both grew up in Bombay in the 1960s and ’70s, and they left at the end of the ’70s for America. The time and place have been fomenting in my imagination since I was born. 

I watched Hindi movies that were set in Bombay and made in the ’60s and ’70s—there were real city streets in the background. I heard stories from my parents, from my relatives. I visited Bombay, Mumbai now. It’s really different from the time I was writing about but it felt mythical and beautiful and romantic and familiar in a way that I wanted to keep exploring. 

My mom is a classically trained Kathak dancer. She stopped performing by the time that I entered the age of memory. I’ve never really seen her dance. But there was always that kind of ambient in my household, beautiful pictures of my mother performing, books, and Indian classical music around the house.  My dad is an Indian classical musician, trained in both North Indian and South Indian music. He plays the Bansuri, which is a bamboo flute, and he also sings. I grew up in, in retrospect, a beautiful, very rich environment of classical music and dance.

I find Kathak thrilling because, while there are narrative aspects to the dance, there’s also parts that are completely non-narrative, focused on the really rhythmic, intense, precise footwork and really fast, sharp, beautiful turns that felt kind of modernist, pre-narrative, pre-language. As a writer who’s always grappling with language and narrative, it was thrilling to be able to be in another art form that could transcend those limitations. 

DS: The legend of Eklavya (a master archer who cuts off his own thumb to please his Guru Drona) is central to The Archer. Did you grow up hearing that story? 

SS: There are these comic books called Amar Chitra Katha— my dad would stock up on them when we went to India—that depict these stories from Hindu mythology and Indian history. Some are plainly didactic stories, like Dharma trumps all. But even within that, there’s so much complexity, moral ambiguity.

Eklavya was always a story that I grappled with. I couldn’t understand how if you were a teacher, if you were a guru, that you would not respect your student. Many of the Hindu myths that have been troubling to me, I’ve had long conversations about with my mom, who is a feminist. She’s offered me a different reading on them. I got the ability to look at different angles of the story in part through those conversations.

DS: One of the themes you address is being a woman and a mother in a world which is rapidly changing. 

SS: The beginnings of this book came from these stories I was hearing about my family and just imagining that world, but as I went deeper in, I realized what was sustaining my interest in the story was that it was a way of looking at questions that were pertinent to my own life, though the pressures on Vidya are different than the pressures on me. 

How to lead a good life and have art at the center of your life? These are questions that I was grappling with as I was writing the book and still am.

Vidya’s very passionate about dance, but she’s not quite sure of how to make a life of art and what that looks like. Not even just in a way that’s fulfilling societal expectations of herself, but how to be a person in the world and make a life of art? How to be a woman in the world? How to lead a good life and have art at the center of your life? These are questions that I was grappling with as I was writing the book and still am, as I think about what our obligations are to each other. To me, that’s really what this book is about, and it explores it in a really specific time and place, and specific cultural expectations and demands, but also it feels, in some ways, close to my experiences in this other time and place.

DS: Vidya’s mother suffers from postpartum depression. There aren’t many depictions of postpartum depression in literature. What inspired you to write about postpartum depression?

SS: Early on when I was writing, I read a really sad New York Times article about a mother who committed suicide by jumping off the top of her building with her child in her arms. Studies show that you’re more likely to experience postpartum depression if you don’t have any child care, if you’re the only parent taking care of a newborn, and you don’t feel like you have a lot of emotional or physical labor support, that that really predisposes you to experience postpartum depression. I think of (postpartum depression) as a societal failure rather than an individual problem. It seems to me, if you were taking care of a child, a newborn baby, and you’ve just given birth, it’s very easy to imagine how somebody could quickly lose all sense of self and perspective and maybe even joy.

There’s other things going on with Vidya’s mother. This whole book, in some ways, is an acknowledgement about the complexity of motherhood and the things that are harder to talk about. This is also a book about a child who has been profoundly failed by both her parents and how that impacts her. I was thinking about it more broadly as what it means to be a mother and what it means to fail as a mother.

DS: I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and early on recognized how the caste structure of India and the deep South are similar. Can you discuss writing about caste and class structure?

I think of postpartum depression as a societal failure rather than an individual problem.

SS: Yeah, it was totally terrifying, but I wanted to tell the truth as I have observed and read about and researched. I also have to acknowledge that I’m American, and I wanted to be sensitive to my position.

I’ve had conversations with people where they’ve been like, “Oh, I didn’t know somebody could be poor and Brahmin,” about Vidya. At the beginning of the book, Vidya’s family is pretty much on the brink of poverty but she is in a position of privilege because she’s Brahmin, and that is something that is invisible to her.

There’s some characters I wanted to pay attention to, but I didn’t want to write outside of my experience. I didn’t want to purport to tell anybody else’s story, but I wanted to make sure that those characters were humans and that I, as the writer, looked at them and saw that those were human people doing these acts of labor.

DS: With the opening, you use language to convey a distance between Vidya and her mother. What were your decisions coming into that? 

SS: One of the things that this book is about is how even before you form memories your parents kind of create this little protective structure around you, that you can build a self into, which, in a healthy situation, they take the structure away and then there’s the self, shining there that has been able to just grow in this way, protected. So much of what I feel like a parent does is just looking at that child and saying, “I see you, I still see you.”

If you don’t have that, how do you make a self? Vidya does it through dance.

That she/I switch is really important to me. I was trying to explore where you come into a sense of self. If we’ve been lucky, we come into it gradually, because we’ve had our parents, our caregivers, giving us this story of ourselves. But if you come into it yourself, you come into it all weird, almost violently. Maybe it’s scary, or exhilarating.

DS: I used to be a librarian. I heard on this podcast (with Daniel Handler) that you were once described on a news segment as a “library user” and you loved that, that being a library user was the first way you viewed yourself. Can you talk about libraries?

The library is the aspect of American society that brings me the most hope and the most feeling of real patriotism.

SS: How much time do you have? I could spend hours talking about how much I love libraries. 

I was actually just thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic when I was like, “What did I do?” They’d sent an email in March 2020 saying, “The libraries are closing for two weeks.”

I literally ran to the library.

DS: Me too!

SS: I was just supermarket spreeing, grabbing books off the shelves… And then they closed and you couldn’t even return books, which was so wild. I was just living with these random books that I had panic-checked out for eight months or a year or something.

Now I have a horrible sense of what my life would be like without a functioning library system. This is the longest that I’d ever gone without having access to a library. If I bought all the books that I read, I would not have any money for anything else. I’m a voracious reader. 

The library is the aspect of American society that brings me the most hope and the most feeling of real patriotism. My parents didn’t grow up with public library systems. They didn’t have those in India. I think they had lending libraries. My mom always talks about crouching down to read, frantically reading for a little while, a book in this lending library, but she couldn’t take the books home with her. When my parents got to America, they were both avid library users. Some of my earliest memories are at the library. 

It’s beautiful to me that a governmental institution exists to say that, “Books matter, art matters. That everybody should have access.” If somebody wants to learn how to play the guitar, they should be able to teach themselves for free. If somebody wants to read James Baldwin, or work on their resume, or read a poem, or whatever, we agree this is a public good and that this information and knowledge and pleasure should be accessible to all of us.

It’s so precious to me, and I can’t even, sometimes, believe libraries still exist. Just. I can’t. Words fail me.

9 Diverse Novels Starring Bisexual+ Main Characters

Posted on by Jo Lou

Within the confines of a few hundred pages, it can be difficult for a character to be read as bisexual unless explicitly mentioned. Too often, if a character is dating someone of the same sex they are seen as gay, and if not, they are assumed to be straight. These quick judgments further the erasure and harassment bi+ people face on an everyday basis.

In recent years, a growing number of books have openly celebrated the complexities of bi identities. This is in part because of an increasingly queer population and more frequent spaces for LGBTQ writers, but also because bisexuality is finally becoming visible. (GLAAD estimates that over half of all LGBTQ people and up to a third of all people under 35 identify as bisexual, pansexual, queer.) 

While young adult, new adult, and genre books have embraced queer characters with open arms, literary books geared towards adults featuring bisexuality can slip through the cracks. The following novels discuss fluidity, love, and connection from the Gold Rush era to present-day New Zealand.

Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett

A stolen newspaper begins a lifelong love of journalism for Ivoe Williams, the Black Muslim main character of Barnett’s debut novel. Ivoe wants to change the world with her writing, and so she becomes the first member of her family to go to college. In college, she falls in love with a man, but the relationship falters when he grows jealous of Ivoe’s connection with her journalism professor, a woman named Ona. Together, Ivoe and Ona flee the Jim Crow South and found the first female-run Black newspaper. Set against the tensions of Jim Crow and the Red Summer, this novel explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

She of the Mountains

She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya

This illustrated novel follows the intersecting storylines of a young man in 1990s Canada exploring his sexuality, and the stories of Hindu gods. As the main character comes of age and tries to understand his gender and sexuality, he is rebuffed by both the straight and gay communities, especially as he begins a relationship with a woman who calls herself She. She of the Mountain is an experimental and nuanced fable about the complexities of identity.

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

Ava is working as an English teacher in Hong Kong when she meets Julian, an English banker from a posh background. She falls in with Julian and his elitist friends, and soon begins an undefined relationship with him that culminates in Ava moving into his spare bedroom. When Julian has to return to London for several months on business, Ava stays in his apartment, but falls in love with a lawyer named Edith. As Ava’s relationship with Edith deepens, she must decide if she’s going to stay with the dynamic, exciting Edith, or return to the quiet comfort of Julian. 

My Education by Susan Choi

My Education by Susan Choi

When Regina Gottlieb first arrives at grad school, she already knows the rumors about a handsome professor on campus, Nicholas Brodeu. He’s known for sleeping with his students. Curious, Regina enrolls in one of his classes, and when she’s offered a TA position, she’s suddenly immersed in the lives of Nicholas and his pregnant wife, Martha. Although it was Nicholas who first caught her eye, Regina becomes obsessed with Martha from the moment she sees her, and begins an affair that turns both women’s lives upside-down. This steamy campus novel offers readers an education on sexuality and power. 

Big Familia by Tomas Moniz

After a regular at Juan Gutiérrez’s favorite bar dies, it’s his final straw in a stressful year. His college-bound daughter has been increasingly defiant, his boyfriend, Jared, craves more commitment, and the bar is closing. That’s all without mentioning gentrification, the challenges of navigating his sexuality post-divorce, and his relationship with his incarcerated father. A unique tale of late-bloomer queerness, single-parenthood, and latine identity, Big Familia cherishes the families we are born with and the ones we find.

Attraction by Ruby Porter

Three women road trip across New Zealand’s North Island for a beach vacation. The narrator is not-quite-dating, not-quite-not-dating Ilana, however, she worries that Ilana is harboring a crush on their third guest, Ashi. As the three women navigate their unique dynamic, the narrator also grapples with her recent break up with an abusive ex-boyfriend. Porter paints a complete picture of not only female friendship and sexuality, but also of modern New Zealander culture and post-colonial guilt.

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Rachel is a mid-20s, Jewish, bisexual woman who hates her job in the talent industry. The highlight of her day is sneaking away at lunch for a small cup of frozen yogurt, the only “cheat” in her rigid diet. But after her therapist advises she cuts off contact with her mother, and the cute Orthodox woman working the froyo counter asks her to dinner, her life gets flipped upside down. Full of second-hand embarrassment, steamy sex, and golems, Milk Fed is dedicated to sapphics who love the TikTok audio, “Mommy? Sorry, Mommy?”

Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

When Mina is stopped at the George Washington Bridge by the police, she can’t convince them she wasn’t actually going to jump. Her husband, Oscar, decides that it’s best for them to leave New York behind for his hometown of London. Across the Atlantic, Mina decides that diving into her background in Classics might uncover a new answer for her mental health. But even mythology can’t solve her growing distance from her husband and her intensifying friendship with his childhood friend, Phoebe.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

Lucy and Sam are Chinese American siblings living at the end of the California Gold Rush. After the death of their father, they must carry his body until they can find a burial spot. But at twelve and eleven, they also need to survive in a hostile landscape not built for working-class children of color. Zhang masterfully retraces their upbringing, while honoring their heritage and Sam’s queerness and androgyny.