Page 62 – Electric Literature

I Make Art But My Brother Makes Me an Artist

Posted on February 24, 2025August 12, 2025 by Preety Sidhu

An excerpt from What You Make of Me by Sophie Madeline Dess

In two weeks they’ll be killing my brother and so I’m writing. I shouldn’t be. My brother would agree with me. Writing is not my art.

I am a painter, though I don’t expect you to have heard of me. If you saw me at a café you would not know me. You’d have no questions for me. Soft pop would be thumping and you’d be into it, and I’d only be another person sitting there plain‑faced with blueberry eyes, my hair dyed some variation of oat or vanilla, shirt and pants bleeding together in one wheaty monochrome.

If I were to look at you as you stood there ordering, I’d wonder all the questions one asks when faced with a stranger, like who you sleep with, and how, and what you think of before bed, and what it would be like to press my nose into your scalp. But neither of us is at the café. I am here working, writing. My first solo show is coming up at a small gallery called Withheld. The Withheld people recently called me to say they were going to send their assistant up to my apartment to look at all my work, so that she might write some flap copy. Fine. But then I heard that this flap copy was supposed to describe exactly what my paintings “do” and what they “mean.” These explanations were to be printed on a single sheet of paper. This sheet of paper—trifolded—would be called the “catalog.” And this little catalog would be printed a hundred times over and would sit stacked on a plastic tray at the front of the gallery, available to gallery‑goers upon entry or exit.

For days they’ve been sending her to my door, the assistant. For days she’s been knocking at noon and for days I have denied her entry. (Under any other circumstances I’d have allowed her in. She is chatty and structurally perfect. Her face in particular, because of its modernity and slight resemblance to a kitchen, has an industrial beauty. Vast cheeks. Boxy nose.) If she came in now she’d see me naked, perched here on my small metal stool. I’ve just opened the window. A gently polluted breeze is sifting off the sidewalk and I’m spreading my legs, letting the air come up cool through my crotch and hot out my mouth. I make it work like an organ sweep, a little urban exorcism. The only stimulants in this whole space are my paintings, placed like mistakes along my wall.

All the paintings are of my brother. You would not recognize him in them. In real life my brother has a straight line down his nose, caramel hair that waves upward, and eyes that are a very difficult blue like there’s black beneath them. But in the paintings you won’t find him like this. I’ve given him new shapes. You might mistake his cheek for an elephant tusk. His mouth for a small vat of blood. His nose the cracked edge of a tile.

What I mean to say is, Withheld will not be trifolding me and my dying brother into that little catalog. I’ll do it myself. All this time I’ve been sitting up here feeling dramatic, feeling nothing, thinking: That lucky boy gets to drop off and I’m stuck here clinging. Now, however, I’m starting to feel the holy series of convictions one must always feel when setting out on something new: This is the best idea I’ve ever had; this is the only idea I’ve ever had; this is the only idea anyone has ever had. I’m aware these convictions sound less exciting when written. That’s always the way with language, an insufficient medium. I try not to use or consume it. It’s not that I haven’t read, it’s that I’m an adolescent reader. I read too selfishly. I pick up books trying to figure out more about myself—as my brother, Demetri, has advised. The issue is that the reading turns me into other people whom I soon after abandon. And this reminds me that for the most part the self is only something that continually takes up, plays with, and then abandons other selves. I don’t need to be reminded of this. And, anyway, words should be spoken, not written. Like how they used to do it—a return to the glory days of oral! As I am now understanding, the worst thing about writing is that it takes time. Therefore writers must believe in old‑fashioned things like focus. I have no faith in this. My faith is in the image, in instantaneity, in the ability to see and say it all at once.

In a sense Demetri’s faith was also in the image. He worked in documentaries. His most recent piece, unfortunately, is a film (or documentary, even though it contains no official documents, it only wants to constitute a document in itself, which I refuse to concede that it does), a film about us, mostly about me, but not too much on this because it embarrasses me, and I will only say that when I found out he made it, at first I really thought: good. That’s fine. At least it’s off his chest. In fact I was surprised he got it done. Because often my brother was the victim (Is the victim? What’s the tense for the dying?) of what he only semi‑ironically called his spiritual quests. The specifics of these quests are irrelevant, just know he was one of those people whose life centered around moral questions like am I wrong, did I do wrong, how can I amend?

Demetri would sit naked in the East Tenth Street bathhouses and think about these questions. He’d sweat them out. He’d run to the bodega for a bag of Smartfood and a tub of mouthwash and come back empty‑handed, the questions having distracted him. He believed that the only way to get at them was to privately and deliberately dedicate his life to them. His making the film—the documentary—was a way to come to some answers. Still, I found out he made it and thought: No one will care. No one will watch it. I forgave him. I went to his sickbed, looked into his sunken, radiating face and I said: “This is pretty good revenge for my having oppressed you, Demetri. And so I forgive you.” But it’s true I’m having a bit of trouble forgiving myself.

Nati and I were on the phone recently, and with her typical coldness she said I was the one who killed Demetri. “You’re the reason he’ll die.” Not that you care about her yet, but I’d like you to know that that’s the kind of person we’re dealing with. Alas.

They’ll really kill him now (though they like to say they’re letting him go, releasing him—which is to say, restricting him from air and feed). It’s happening in two weeks at 3:00 p.m. By some accounts—those of certain doctors or philosophers—he is already dead. He has what is called a depressed consciousness. A tumor is sitting squat on his meninges. And now his brain stem has turned inward, become a stubborn child with its arms crossed, refusing to liaison properly between the spinal cord and cerebrum.

Still, as he dies his pride only seems to grow. I go to his little sickroom to visit him. He’s arranged it so that the Replacements and Pharoah Sanders are playing through his speakers on rotation. He is lying in bed, silent. His face stares up at nothing and is dry, glowing. His smile—which I’m always reminded is not actually a smile, only an involuntary twitch of the zygomaticus minor—has been suggesting all these very bad jokes which are all really true. I wish I could think of one now. I’ll have my own when I die. I know this because the nurse told me, with her scrub authority, that death is always attended by bad jokes and basic truths, unlike life where everyone’s hilarious and lying all the time. She was serious.

I know this because the nurse told me, with her scrub authority, that death is always attended by bad jokes and basic truths, unlike life where everyone’s hilarious and lying all the time.

Anyway, he is there, and soon the doctors will enter his room, and they will call me, and I will stay here, writing.

One last thought about writing. I’m thinking: If I were to tell you I was painting your portrait so that I’d capture everything you are and everything you’ve ever been—just by looking at you for hours at a time—you would be excited, you would be eager to see where I took it. But if I were to tell you I was writing the story of your life, using hard facts and descriptions, you might feel trapped. You might feel a more literal transcription of your life would have nothing to do with what is real to you. It would not capture the unknowable bits of you (the way a painting could). That’s all I mean, that writing—with all its specifics—has a harder time with the real. This consistent loss of faith in reality becomes (for me) a problem that extends beyond language. For instance, my suspicion of my own life is deepest when I think I might be feeling something “real,” like when I think I might be in love, or when I think I’ve at last succeeded, or even when I think I might’ve failed but in a rich way—any time when I know some deep sense of meaning should be tunneling into the soul somewhere, but is not. I lose faith. Anyway . . .

Demetri’s film about us: I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to. I didn’t ask him for details about it. I didn’t ask if there were close‑ups of my eyes or my teeth. If everyone was going to see the way they’re gnarled into my gums and come out in this stacked and slanted kind of way. I didn’t ask for a plot summary (of my own life!) or for structural details. I can guess at the outline. Demetri will start when we are children.

He was obsessed with youth, and with posterity. In fact before he really began dying he convinced me to donate a painting of mine to our high school. This was after I started making a bit of money. I’d sold a couple pieces at auction. I’d been written about and reviewed (I’d been called a “force” but it was still “unclear” if I was worth being reckoned with; I’d been called “powerful” but they didn’t know if the watercolor of me being railed from behind was “liberative” for women or if it only “reaffirmed submission”). A donation at that point, three years ago, would be a small asset for the school district. “Donate them an old one, a good one,” Demetri instructed me. He was so insistent, I came to understand, because he wanted the chance to go speak to the school—in Longhead, Long Island, a tiny town you don’t know and don’t want to—he wanted to go back there and lecture. By then that was what he did for me. He’d come up with things to say about my work, to flick it spinning into the world and give it direction. We wouldn’t consult about what he wrote. He wouldn’t ask me if he got my work “right” and I wouldn’t ask him to be sure to include this or that. We never discussed whether his written copy or my actual art was what got me into certain shows, galleries, homes.

The school was happy to have him visit. They were excited about his return. There’s even a recording of the talk he gave. I often find myself pulling up the video and watching him. The way he stands recklessly tall at the little podium. I watch his face twitch around before the young crowd settles. He does not know what to say to teenagers. He’s prepared a speech, but at the last moment he has scrapped it. Now he stands there and clears his throat until it sores. He tells the room full of pubescents that in order to calm down he’s going to imagine them naked. He blushes and rapidly takes this back. And then says it again. He asks how many of them have any grandparents left. He says he is there to discuss a trip to the Virgin Islands and then asks how many people have been to an island or know of a virgin. He cannot settle down.

“Ava and I were taken to a Virgin Island, once. It was our first flight,” he finally begins. “I was nine. Ava was eight. On the plane we were sitting twenty rows away from our father. Because we were loud, in the way that tragedies can make you really rambunctious.” He coughs. “On the plane”—he tilts forward, toward the mic—“I grew bored. I began taking hold of little threads of Ava’s hair and gnashing them between my teeth,” he tells them. “When she felt the tug she turned, saw a chunk of her hair in my mouth, my eyes wide. We both burst out. Ava had a way of shrieking when she laughed, she kind of threw her head back and bore all her teeth. Back then her canines were just coming in, breaking out through the pulp, which made her look ferocious. So we really just sat there and shrieked, smacked each other, leapt up in our seats.” He explains to the children that I fell in love on this trip. “When the flight attendant came to quiet us, Ava told him she thought he was beautiful, and that he had beautiful eyes. She thought it was good form to let a person know.” Here Demetri stalls. The light thins his body and for a moment he stands there shrinking.

In his speech Demetri skips over much of the vacation. He picks things up at the end. But the trip itself was an eternity.

We landed on the island and were shepherded into a van that would immediately take us to the hotel, as if to look or go elsewhere were criminal. In the van Demetri and my father sat across from me, arm to arm. The van went over a bump; everyone was for a moment lifted out of their seats, except for our father, who did not lift. I watched his profile—his nose a blade slicing through the blur of trees. Our father reminded us where we were and asked if we remembered anything about colonialism. Demetri did.

At the hotel our father spoke with the suited and sweating men behind the desk. Demetri and I left him. We stood out on the lobby’s balcony and looked into the ocean. We’d been promised clear ocean water, but all we saw was black, with bursts of bright navy far out where the sun hit. “You’re mad,” Demetri said to me, “because the water’s not see-through, and because you were in love with the flight attendant, and he didn’t love you back.”

I considered this. “You’re mad,” I said. “About?”

“Excretions.” We’d heard the term on the plane, from two vagina doctors on holiday.

Demetri turned to me: “You are largely vaginal.”

“You are a vagina.”

We heard a woman come out onto the balcony and stand behind us. She asked if we were admiring the view.

“No,” Demetri said. He looked at me—we conspired not to turn toward her. “I wouldn’t say that we’re admiring the view.”

The woman laughed. She seemed impressed with her own laughter, with her very ability to laugh, especially with children. “Not admiring the view? What are you doing then?”

Demetri considered this. “Observing it,” he said. “That’s hilarious,” the woman said. When I turned toward her, she smiled. Her teeth were pulled tight together, so bright that they seemed to make noise. She edged toward us.

“Are you two here alone? No parents?” she asked. We felt her smile continue behind our backs. I began to answer, but Demetri spoke first.

“Just our father is here,” he said. I didn’t think he was going to say it. “Because our mother is in the ocean. She ran in last year.”

The woman was not sure now. We waited for her. She looked at me. We’d seen this look before, from all the town mothers. The pity and distaste whenever Demetri and I were frank about death—their concern over whether or not to believe us, their wondering if we had not inherited the melodrama, or if indifference was its alternative form. The woman paused. “Honey”—she looked down toward me—“is that true?”

I looked at Demetri, who kept himself busy by pretending to notice something in the trees.

“No,” I said. I tried to take up Demetri’s method: “Our mother did not run. She walked into it very slowly.” This was true. Our mother was an actress. She had started off in Shakespeare and ended up in commercials. On the night of her death she took the tripod out onto the porch and recorded herself walking into the Sound—a recording that Demetri did not watch but that he often watched me watch, until it was taken from me. Anyway, this trip was our time to recalibrate, as we heard it described. It was our reintroduction to the water. It was important to start where the water was clear, where you could see all the way through to the bottom—except that we could not.

On the porch Demetri and I had the sudden urge to get rid of this woman. “Ava,” he shouted, and pointed toward a nearby branch. A thick green fluid was developing at the end of a leaf. I didn’t know what he was going to say but I primed myself for action. Before we could perform, our father stepped outside. A room key in his breast pocket.

“Okay,” he said to us.

The woman smiled and took a step back. “Sorry,” our father said.

Since she possessed an extreme, conventional beauty I watched to see how he looked at her but there was nothing in his face.

She suggested he really need not apologize and stepped toward him, offering him her hand. “Édith,” she said, “I’m the resident artist here. I paint portraits of families on the beach, usually at sunrise and sunset, if you are ever interested.” She pointed out a small bungalow to the right of the greeting center. “That’s my studio. If you three would like a quick tour . . .” She looked at Demetri and me. It was clear that she expected our excitement. We stayed quiet. She looked again at our father.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I echoed. Demetri reached out and hooked his arms around our father’s legs. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, echoing us.

Édith smiled halfway, like she’d made a mistake that eluded her.

Demetri and I left our father, who took our bags. Alone, we made our way to the pool: it was unguarded, empty. We stripped to our underwear and got in. Demetri was desperate to conduct the laugh test. “It’s because,” he told me, bobbing, “when you laugh your muscles relax and you breathe out really hard and you can’t swim anymore.” He was clumsy in the water. His wet hair in a jagged rim around his head like an inverted crown. “And so you drown and die,” he explained.

“So test it,” I said.

He dunked his head into the water and then sprang up high, his eyes crossed, and shouted, “FUCK your DICK.” He yelled it as he leapt, his arms straight by his sides. “ANAL.”

I nearly burst. I bared my teeth and kicked out into the water, springing away. I managed to scream his name. I was still laughing as I sank. Demetri watched as water began to funnel through my mouth. I thrust my neck back for air and looked at the sky, a bruised, mean blue with small scraps of cloud. I called his name again. He didn’t come for me, but I didn’t drown. Soon we collected ourselves. We climbed out and sat on the ledge with our legs still in the water. For a number of minutes we stayed silent.

He didn’t come for me, but I didn’t drown.

“Do my eyes look like yours right now?” I asked, turning to him. His eyes were wide open.

“I don’t know, how do mine look?”

“Blue,” I said, “but with sun stuck in the blue.” I looked closer into his color. “A sticky blue.”

He put his head closer to mine—focusing on my left eye, then my right. “No, I don’t think so.”

I told him his breath smelled like clay—which it did, and which it does still. Even now his sickroom has the stench of sediment.

Soon we heard footsteps behind us, and when we turned we recognized Édith—she had taken off her hat. I remember her auburn hair matched her reddish eyes exactly, but only because I felt Demetri notice this beside me. He had stopped breathing.

“Are you two hollering?” Édith asked us, her hands laced together and pressed against her stomach.

“You paint portraits,” I said to her, standing up. Demetri followed. “So do I.”

Édith smiled with the same sympathy as before. We wanted to tell her not to. “I do, yes. And that’s very nice,” Édith said, nodding and smiling anyway. “It’s always good to paint. To have a variety of hobbies, especially at such a young age.” She nodded and nodded. Even back then I must’ve thought some variation of, This person only drinks wine.

Demetri and I stood together, looking very portraitable, we must’ve thought. We waited for Édith’s offer to paint us right then. Instead she stood in silence. My hair was wet. I felt it sticking to my neck, in plaits over my shoulders. I knew my stomach was out, hard and bloated. I felt my legs glued together. I waited for Édith. Édith said nothing.

“You have a good dress on,” I said to her.

Édith looked down at her dress. It was white linen, with a tan belt tight around her ribs. “Thank you.” She smiled.

Together Demetri and I waited, again, for our invitation to be painted. But Édith only stared, as if requesting that we go on speaking. Just when I had come up with something, Demetri bolted—for such a small body his wet feet slapped heavy against the cement. I waited a minute to try to let Édith talk to me some more. She failed. I ran back to the bungalow.

Demetri had not yet gone in. He was there standing by the door, his finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said. “He’s sleeping.” He meant our father. “He’s going to sleep all day.”

We sat on the ground outside the door. The stone’s grain sharpened into my ankles. Demetri let insects crawl onto his finger, then shepherded them onto his palm—ants, small spiders. “COLONIZE ME,” he yelled at them.

The sun was still high. It had taken on a sourness. Demetri kept spitting. Sitting there doing nothing we began to sweat.

“Okay,” I said, standing.

“We need hard hats,” Demetri said as we marched down to the beach, making our way by what Demetri thought an adult might call a charmingly ramshackle footpath. “We can melt these rocks.”

I told him we needed to go missing.

“That would be relaxing.” He asked me if I had known our father would be sleeping the whole time.

I said no. Our father slept all day at home, too, but we thought it was because our house was dark, exhausting. The island, however, was not. As we walked, I felt my face burning. I scratched my skin like this would scrape off the heat. We continued in silence until the branches cleared and the first hint of water was visible. We heard lapping before we saw the waves, at which point I screamed Demetri’s name and raced toward the shore, running all the way to the edge. There, I looked out. The water at last was clear and bright, pulled tight under the sun. I turned to find Demetri, who had stopped between the bushes and the shoreline, and waved at him to come. He didn’t move. I called him over twice more and assured him you could see all the way down through the water, into the sand. When he still didn’t come, I turned back toward him.

We stood watching the waves. I started telling Demetri how it smelled like salt and moss and water, and he told me I was wrong and that those were just objects and not scents, which were different categories of thought, even though he knew objects could have scents, but back then he was stuck in the habit of trying to give order to things because he thought it might give him power, and thought without power was useless. And just as he was asking me to describe the scent of salt—just to see if I could—we caught sight of Édith. She was standing farther down the beach, with her dress bellying out behind her, painting a family posed before the sunset.

I turned to Demetri and braced myself. “Do you think I’m beautiful?” I asked him.

He pretended not to hear me. “Where?”

“Do you think that I am beautiful?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

I told him never mind. We looked again toward the water.

“No,” he answered. “Okay.”

“When you laugh, maybe,” he said. So I laughed.

“No, not then, either.” I laughed harder. “Sorry,” he said.

I looked down the beach, toward Édith.

This is where, in his speech, Demetri picks it up: “Ava thought it was good form not just to tell a person they were beautiful but to do something about it. And so on our second morning on the island, before the sun was even up, I pretended to be sleeping when I heard her leave our room. She was gone for maybe an hour or two. When she came back I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to know. But soon she was standing over me and letting liquid drip off her body and onto my arm. She whispered my name.” He whispers his own name into the mic. “So this is it, I lay there thinking. Ava and I were always waiting for ‘the bad thing,’ the bad thing that would end all other bad things, and I thought, This is going to be the bad thing. Ava whispered to me she was going to turn on the lamp. She did. I looked at her. In the lamplight I thought someone had torn her open. She was covered in blues and pinks and reds. It looked like one giant organ had exploded—like she was turned inside out, dying.” Here Demetri pauses for dramatic effect, and then:

“‘I ruined them,’ Ava explained to me there in our room.

“‘Your clothes?’ I asked her.

“She didn’t answer.

“‘What did you ruin?’”

Demetri tells his audience that I had entered Édith’s studio by the window and had not only ruined her paintings but left her with one of my own, a portrait of a man whom no one else would recognize, but who Demetri and I knew as the flight attendant, painted in my clumsy green strokes overlaid with a loose, watery white, whose sheeny effect was ruined when the paints mixed, as I did not give the green its time to dry.

Back then the trouble we got into was constant, and as such irrelevant to us, and so when we were kicked out of the hotel—off the island, effectively—the only thing that mattered was that the hotel manager, after informing us of our forced departure, did not suggest that I throw out my work. He looked me in the eye as he returned it to me. “And I assume you want this back,” he had said. I nodded yes and took it from him. Again he looked at me with a sense of solemnity, as if we had agreed on something and that that something was to do with the rest of my life. I carried the portrait with me through the airport. It was something sacred and dangerous—I would not let it go. It was too large to take onto the plane. They were going to make us check it. Our father wanted to throw it out. I refused. “Leave it here,” he warned me. I didn’t listen. He walked away from us after yelling obscenities at the airport floor. That was the only moment of brief rupture (and it wasn’t necessarily between us, but within him). Otherwise he frightened everyone by staying extraordinarily calm.

“This is the portrait we’ll be donating,” Demetri tells the auditorium. From the audience there is a chorus of ohs. “And the point is”—he finds refuge in this phrase—“the point is Ava had told Édith that she, Ava, was also a painter. And Édith had said it was always good to have a hobby. But! When someone calls what is necessary for you a hobby—as if it is a trivial reprieve, you know, a rest, a break from an arduous life and not the arduous life itself—they are trying to control you. Remember that worse than an inability to fulfill a desire is to have no real desire at all. There are people like this in the world. They will confuse you. They will want to control you. Refuse to be controlled.”

I groan every time. You righteous fuck, I want to say to him. These kids are already refusing control. The nature of the child is refusal. Although, maybe, who knows. Maybe they are at the age when the mind gets co‑opted. They are in that season of damage when curiosity gets frosted over by the cool of disinterest. If that’s the case, Demetri’s body here is convincing. It is enough to keep them present. His right hand is on the podium, his left arm is up in the air, fingers stretched wide. He leans from side to side in a rare shamanic death dance. His hair’s thinning. The tumor was formed by then and it makes him giddy, and the students like his energy. He’s having fun. He’s riding out the perimeter of existence.

I wonder if the young audience could tell he was dying. I’d say that maybe after Demetri stepped down from the podium, they ceased to think of him at all—that he came and spoke and was forgotten—but this would be impossible. You had to think things about him, even if only out of combativeness, because you knew he was standing there impressed by you in some way. His impressions of others were varied and inaccurate, and immovable once formed. Sometimes you could see yourself crystallizing on his face. I bet at least a few of the students thought: This random man who smacks of decay is going to remember me. He better take this vision of me with him down to death, so at least when I arrive, a part of me is there already.

To give others the impression that they are unforgettable—that is grace. Sometimes my brother had it.

9 Books That Take You Inside the Entertainment Industry

Posted on February 24, 2025January 16, 2025 by Intern Electric Lit

There’s a reason we all dream about the movies.

Filmmakers, actors, singers, models, and screenwriters are in the business of making reality seem a bit more polished, a bit more cinematic and beautiful, than it really is. The fact that, behind the scenes, they’re just as flawed as the rest of us (if not more so! The artistic temperament is a very real thing) makes any story about how the sausage gets made into something that’s, at the very least, distracting.

At their best, backstage tales illuminate both artists and audience, explaining how work comes together and what about that work and the people who made it keeps us transfixed.

One of my goals for my new novel, The Talent, was to have readers feel as if they were really there as awards season runs on. In my professional life, I cover Hollywood, including the Oscar race, as a journalist; this fictional awards pageant draws on what I’ve witnessed in my line of work, but is fueled, too, by the passion and drama that accompanies show people wherever they go. These books do a similar thing — shedding light on what kind of temperament it takes to make art, and what pressures artists face as they try to express something genuine.

Daddy by Emma Cline

Cline’s short story collection ranges widely in subject matter, while keeping, throughout, her cool-to-the-touch approach to human relations and her tendency to center somewhat off-kilter female characters. But it’s “The Nanny” that lands like a bomb right in the middle of the book. The story features a woman enduring a tabloid scandal, one who’d been employed as a babysitter for the family of a famous actor who finds herself enmeshed in his marriage during a long film shoot, and then must live in the aftermath. This author tends to write characters who drift through life; adding the tractor beam-like charisma of a celebrity into the mix is an ingenious destabilizing element.

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

As the editor who made Vanity Fair into a veritable bible of politics and movie stars, Tina Brown ran culture in the 1980s and 1990s. And her retrospective diary about the business of liaising with celebrities of all stripes is as delicious a reading experience as one could hope for. Her dishy recollections about her ongoing flirtation with Warren Beatty — with her motive being to get him to agree to sit for a cover story, and with his intriguingly unknowable — is, alone, worth the price.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

This forthcoming novel takes the art and alchemy of acting seriously. Kitamura’s protagonist, an actress rehearsing for a demanding role in a play, finds herself drawn into what seems like a fantasy version of her own life, one that demands she start performing in her off hours as well. What does it mean to live theatrically, and what lines must an artist draw between her work and her life? Kitamura doesn’t find an answer, but the question intrigues.

Monster: Living Off the Big Screen by John Gregory Dunne

With his wife, Joan Didion, Dunne had a lucrative sideline as a screenwriter. But as this nonfiction account of a long attempt to bring one project to completion shows, the money may not have been worth the hassle. In granular detail, Dunne anatomizes the process by which a planned movie about a real-life journalist who died tragically became the fun, sunny Michelle Pfeiffer romantic comedy “Up Close and Personal.” Dunne’s headache makes for readers’ pleasure: This is a dishy, fun analysis of just how many competing pressures screenwriters for big studios face if they try to make anything without a classic Hollywood ending.

Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris

The greatest Hollywood biography of recent years tracks one prolific director through a long and varied career. Mike Nichols rose to prominence as a filmmaker with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate and went on to make Working Girl, Closer, and Charlie Wilson’s War. Intriguingly, he lacked a fundamental signature or style. He was competent and engaged enough to allow his career to go on, and he spent his life wearing a wig and false eyebrows (a side effect from a childhood medical treatment), which left him fundamentally relating to outsider characters, whether they were a young college alum driftless in Southern California or a Staten Island secretary looking for more. Harris marshals a fantastic set of interviewees to make Nichols’s life and work into a narrative that, itself, might make a great film.

The Last Dream by Pedro Almodóvar

Almodóvar is one of the defining directors of world cinema, and his collection of personal writing represents as close as he will come to writing his autobiography. The particular preoccupations and obsessions that run through his work, from the life of his mother to religious faith to passion and sexuality (represented in one instance in a parable-like tale about a vampire in a Catholic monastery), are drawn out here; one story even represents the genesis of the idea for Almodóvar’s great film of piety and revenge, Bad Education.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Tracey is a dance prodigy, a girl whose feet seem to move in perfect rhythm no matter what song is playing. But it’s our narrator, a relatively talentless dancer, who ends up in the heart of the entertainment industry, working as a personal assistant for a pop star named Aimee. (Take a dash of Kylie, a big scoop of Madonna, and maybe some Mariah, mix it all together…) “Swing Time” is shaggy and loose, and perhaps not Smith’s very strongest novel, but its depiction of celebrity vanity — culminating in an act of selfishness cloaked as benevolence during one of Aimee’s trips to West Africa — is written with a sharpened pen.

Inside Out by Demi Moore

Moore’s memoir is likely the most accomplished in a while — thanks in part to New Yorker writer Ariel Levy’s work on the manuscript, but also to Moore’s willingness to dive deep into her work and life and reflect on what it all meant. For much of her career, Moore was treated more as object than as artist (a state of affairs that has happily concluded with the release of The Substance, a film that makes explicit comment on the way our culture chews up actresses). After walking away from the spotlight, Moore found herself the subject of tabloid scrutiny once again during her marriage to and divorce from Ashton Kutcher. Her reflections on the experience, on the trauma and addiction that haunted her early career, and on what movie stardom meant to her make for a moving, haunting read.

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

Gaitskill’s masterpiece toggles between a grim and unhappy present and a glimmering past, as protagonist Alison reflects on her dazzling, avaricious former life as a top model. The fashion world is drawn with stiletto precision as a collection of users, jerks, and worse, with Alison herself queen of the ego monsters. The whole story is told with the bleak moral clarity of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale, with Alison’s redemption coming through her reflection on her friendship with the pure-hearted Veronica, a person who has given her life over to her appreciation of beauty. There can, of course, be no art without an audience, something the disdainful Alison, years after her beauty has faded, realizes too late.

“No Offense” Reveals the Hidden Fees of Being Queer in a Straight World

Posted on February 24, 2025February 11, 2025 by EL Assistant2

On the dedication page of No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, Jackie Domenus writes, “To all the queer and trans folks who have bitten their tongues until they bled: this book is for you.” In this powerful and timely collection, Domenus defends and celebrates identity and love with an unflinching voice. The essays are both urgent and timeless, offering a compelling analysis of queer and trans identity at a time when the LGBTQ+ community is increasingly under attack.

The opening essay, “Tom Boy,” explores the question of where identity comes from and how even when a person has the good fortune of having supportive parents, it is still a continuous and uphill battle to confront and resist the confining societal conventions around gender roles and the oppressive heteronormative views of love and partnership.

No Offense is a layered examination that instills hope by offering a bold, cathartic blend of personal essay and cultural critique laced with biting humor. By examining representations of and reactions to queer and trans people during pivotal moments, such as wedding planning, OBGYN appointments, and the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, Domenus reveals how language has the ability to both harm and empower.

I spoke with Jackie Domenus over email and Zoom about transitions during times of transition and how prioritizing community can be a beacon in unsettling times.

Cassandra Lewis: I love the title, No Offense. Can you tell us what it’s in reference to?

Jackie Domenus: Most of the essays in the book have to do with uncomfortable comments, conversations, or questions I’ve faced that the other person didn’t recognize as microaggressive or homophobic. So the title is a play on the idea of saying “No offense but…” before saying something that is, in fact, offensive.

CL: In the moments of heightened vulnerability that you share throughout the book – going to the gynecologist’s office for the first time, wedding planning with your wife, responding to other people’s reactions to the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, there doesn’t seem to be anything “micro” about these tremendously offensive encounters. What prompted you to write this book?

JD: The funny thing is, those encounters were “micro” to the other person/people involved, and that’s exactly why I wrote the book. A nurse at a gynecologist office being shocked I’ve never had penetrative sex with a man, a seamstress assuming my soon-to-be wife and I are best friends as we’re standing next to each other in our literal wedding dresses, a politician saying “we reap what we sow” after forty-nine Latine LGBTQ+ people are murdered at Pulse—these were just little blips in these folks’ days, things they likely never thought about again. But for me, and for queer and trans people everywhere, these moments are consuming. They’re constant reminders that we’re not treated equally. While there’s obviously an apparent hatred for LGBTQ+ folks exasperated by the current political climate, there’s also this strange assumption that marriage equality magically fixed everything. I wanted to write essays that would call attention to the fact that it’s not fixed, that the “subtle” moments of hatred have not-so-subtle consequences, that there is still so much more work to do.

CL: One of the discoveries that resonated for me was your experience of feeling at home with the term “queer.” You wrote, “I was learning that LGBTQ+ people were a form on a clipboard, like the ones they give you at the doctor’s office, and cis-het people had the pen. They decided which boxes to check off, and you had better accept and fit into your box because if not, they’d be uncomfortable. What seemed to matter most was their comfort, not mine.” Would you talk more about that skewed power dynamic and the role of labels?

There’s this hidden fee at the end of the bill if you’re queer or trans, this notion that everyone feels like you owe them an explanation.

JD: Queer and trans people are the minority, and straight cis people are the majority, right? So, we’ve been conditioned to see “straight,” to see “cis,” as “the norm.” LGBTQ+ folks have always been less represented in the media, especially for kids growing up in the early aughts like me. It used to be even more dangerous for people to be visibly “out.” We’ve also now been declared the enemy by conservative politicians. There’s a power dynamic that has always been there, but that feels more prominent now, where if your sexuality or gender doesn’t fit neatly into a box that a straight cis person can understand, you’re dismissed, you’re an attention-seeking weirdo, or you’re the cause of society’s downfall. In my opinion, that reaction (and really the overall current political attitude toward LGBTQ+ people) is fear-based. People who are deeply unhappy with their own lives and terrified of what they might find if they think critically about their own sexuality or gender, don’t want to see queer and trans people happy or claiming an identity that’s not “traditional.” They’re threatened by it.

CL: Exactly. And now this extreme hostility is heightened on the national stage with another Trump presidency. How does this impact your forthcoming book?

JD: One of the strangest feelings that I have had post-election, that I guess I wasn’t really anticipating, is this very serious feeling of deja vu, or like we’re hitting restart, or whiplash, almost, because a lot of the essays in this book either took place during the first Trump presidency… Think about how much harm it’s causing when we are talking about not allowing a Representative to use the correct bathroom, and watching what it’s like for queer and trans people to literally watch their human rights be up for debate on a political stage.

CL: You wrote, “To be a queer person planning a wedding is to come out a million and one times, at least.” Can you expound more on what it’s like to have to defensively come out so many times especially when it interrupts what is for many others a time of happiness and celebration?

JD: I think of it as an extra fee or a hidden fee that comes with being queer and/or trans. When you pay a bill, you have the actual cost, which is overpriced and annoying—that’s the typical, every day bullshit all people have to deal with, regardless of sexuality or gender. But then there’s this hidden fee at the end of the bill if you’re queer or trans, this notion that everyone feels like you owe them an explanation. So, if you’re planning a wedding as a cis-het couple, you have to stress about money, dress fittings, the guest list, etc. But if you are planning a wedding as two femme presenting women, you have to deal with all of that PLUS coming out as queer over and over again because people will assume you’re just friends. If you are a straight cis guy going clothes shopping, you have to deal with inflated prices, finding the right size pants, waiting in line. But if you are a nonbinary person shopping in the men’s section, who uses the women’s restroom, you have to deal with all of that PLUS people demanding to know whether you were assigned male or female at birth. Unless you are surrounded only by other queer and trans people, it’s nearly impossible to just exist without explanation. So, moments of happiness and celebration always come at a cost, they always have a qualifier.

CL: It seems like part of the disconnect comes from some people not sharing the same experience of what’s at stake. You wrote about a text exchange with someone who didn’t understand, “how his presidency jeopardizes my entire existence.” How can we effectively communicate what’s at stake?

JD: I am still searching for the answer to this. Unfortunately, I think that the current political climate has made people so incredibly divided and hostile that there’s no room for right wing folks to even make an attempt to understand LGBTQ+ people’s fear or pain without mocking it. Trump’s rhetoric over the last eight-plus years has managed to suck the empathy out of people. That text exchange occurred during the 2016 election, and still I have people in my life who claim to love me, but who support politicians who believe I shouldn’t be allowed to have control over my own body or raise kids. What they see as “at stake” is the economy or gas prices and for them, that trumps basic human rights for the people they “love.” I have yet to figure out how to effectively communicate this to a person who has lost all of their empathy. In many cases, I think they’re too far gone. So instead, it feels more important to connect with other marginalized groups, to bridge gaps and come together for common causes. I’d rather build and strengthen community with like-minded individuals who actually care about basic human rights at this point than try to convince someone not to vote for people who want me dead.

CL: As you wrote, it has never been easy to come out as queer. In the foreword, you mention, “the type of queer I was in 2014 when I began writing some of the essays in this book, is not the same queer I am today, in 2024.” Why is it important to acknowledge and examine these key moments of change in a person’s life within specific cultural and historical context even as our identities continue evolving?

JD: For me, it felt crucial to acknowledge this in the foreword because many of the essays in the book are based on instances that occurred when I was still a newly “out,” femme presenting, lesbian woman. The sort of homophobia I experienced then is very different from the kind I experience now, as a more masc presenting and gender nonconforming queer person. I think it’s equally important to examine the sexist microaggressions that occurred as a result of my partner and I both having long hair and “feminine” clothes, as it is to examine the transphobia that occurs now anytime I enter a public restroom. There is no universal queer or trans experience. We may all encounter similar circumstances, but our identities, as well as cultural and historical contexts, are constantly evolving. Acknowledging and analyzing that evolution is crucial to understanding ourselves and garnering understanding from others who are used to seeing things in the binary or in absolutes.

CL: How does this time of turmoil impact you in your current experience of identity, and as a queer writer about to transition into a published author?

JD: In a way, it feels like a really shitty sequel. During Trump’s first presidential campaign, I was newly “out.” I was acclimating to an identity I had repressed for so long and learning how to live authentically as myself, at a time when he was inciting hate for my new-found community. Many of the essays in the book take place during that era. Of course, he ran again in 2020, but this go-round in 2024 feels like the real sequel, not just because it feels more feasible he could win, but because I’m once again in a moment where I’m embracing my authentic self as my identity has continued to evolve. This time, as I settle more comfortably into “they/them,” as I approach my one-year anniversary of top surgery, the right’s fear mongering and hatred have returned ten-fold.

Continuing to live authentically is now the fight.

There were moments during the 2016 election where I broke down and wished I wasn’t me so I wouldn’t have to endure such alienation, so I wouldn’t have to face conflict with “loved ones.” And though I know now that I’m not the problem, that they can’t make me hate myself, I do feel tired. I feel tired and sad that the country has witnessed Trump demonstrate his vitriol over and over again and half of the population still votes for him. For all of these reasons, it feels like a scary, yet completely necessary time to become a queer, published author. It’s dangerous to exist as an LGBTQ+ person right now and it’s dangerous to challenge “the norm,” which is why it’s also vital.

It’s like a T-shirt that the Human Rights Campaign would make, but I keep saying, post-election, our existence at this point is resistance. Literally, right? Just sheerly existing in the world: having a life, having a family, going to work every day, waking up in the morning. Continuing to live authentically is now the fight.

CL: Relating to another layer of transition and how community can be a beacon, I admire how your publisher, ELJ Editions, was able to persevere by quickly finding a new distributor after Small Press Distribution collapsed in 2024, leaving hundreds of independent presses in the lurch. I remember asking you about this at the time and you described how committed they are to their authors and how much you valued the sense of community. How did this experience form your impressions about the changing publishing landscape, our roles as writers, and the importance of prioritizing community?

JD: First of all, Ariana Den Bleyker, the founder and publisher of ELJ Editions, is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever encountered. When SPD shuttered unexpectedly, she made a commitment to the authors she had already signed through 2025 that ELJ would figure it out and that our books would be published. She kept us updated each step of the transition, she was transparent about decisions she was making for the press, she literally went into personal debt to make it work. Obviously, no one should be forced to go into debt to keep a press afloat, but witnessing all of this has really shaped my appreciation for small, independent presses in a publishing landscape where value is often placed solely on “The Big Five.” Small presses are publishing work that is just as worthy and important and beautiful, so it’s been really refreshing to see so many folks rally around them recently.

As writers, I think our role is to contribute to the literary community by writing, but also by supporting one another. Buying each other’s books, sharing posts, donating to small presses—all of these seemingly small gestures ultimately keep the community thriving. I’m really enjoying connecting with folks in the literary community in order to promote No Offense, whether its reviewers, local bookstores, or asking other writers to participate in a reading/event. Working with a small press may not afford you a budget for a publicist or a cross-country book tour, but it allows you to form authentic and genuine connections with folks in the community who are usually more than willing to support however they can.

CL: What are you working on next?

JD: In the rare moments where I’ve been able to focus on generating new material instead of formulating a plan for launching No Offense, I’ve been writing toward the theme of “control.” Control has always been a major facet of my life whether it be pertaining to sexuality and gender, or mental illness, or grief. I’m always chasing control or it’s showing up in unexpected ways, so I want to dig into those moments and impulses and see what I can find buried beneath. My goal is to ultimately hold a magnifying glass to why “we,” as a society, crave control and further explore such implications on LGBTQ+ folks and other marginalized groups. Hopefully it will lend itself to a second essay collection!

7 Books About a Prophecy That Changes Everything

Posted on February 21, 2025January 13, 2025 by Intern Electric Lit

The urge to know the future is inborn, it seems; from infancy, we are comforted by the anticipated. Prophecy, defined simply as prediction, assumes many forms throughout literature. Divination—seeking to foretell what is coming through supernatural means—is core to the Yoruba traditional religion of Ifa, practiced in Nigeria and around the world.

I discovered in the early research for my debut novel, The Edge of Water, that my paternal ancestors were Ifa practitioners, long before their introduction to foreign religions. Cowrie-shell divination introduces each chapter of the book as the all-seeing Yoruba Ifa priestess, Iyanifa, gives the reader a hint of what is to come in the life of Amina and her family in the lead-up to a devastating storm that strikes the city of New Orleans.

Similarly, the following books are all works of fiction in which a life-altering prophecy is featured. The prophetic emerges in several ways—through cultural expectation, divination, dreams, religious influence, and folkloric pronouncement. In some of these books, characters’ engagement with the prophetic provides a sense of comfort, clarity, and communal fulfillment, while in others, confusion and despair are the result.

Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka

In this Nobel Prize-winning play, the king of a Nigerian village has died and tradition decrees that his chief horseman, Elesin Oba, must thereby commit suicide and follow him into the afterworld. Failure to fulfill this is a curse for the village–life will not go well. A white colonial administrator attempts, however, to put a stop to the duty ritual by imprisoning the king’s horseman. What we then encounter is Soyinka’s stunning examination of the volatile and enduring tension between the Yoruba will to preserve a purposeful tenet of their indigenous culture and the audacity of Western colonialism to insist on knowing best. The reader is left reeling by the heartwrenching aftermath of the horseman’s inability to adhere to his spiritual duties.

Efuru by Flora Nwapa

Another classic of African literature, this piercing novel tells the story of newly-married Efuru who is struggling with fertility. With her father, she visits the dibia, the Igbo healer and diviner who mediates between the human and spiritual worlds. In sharp detail, the dibia outlines the sacrificial steps Efuru must take in order to ensure that by the following year’s Owu festival, she would be pregnant. Efuru heeds the dibia’s guidance, and when the Owu festival arrives, her in-laws are delighted, as they detect the scent of pregnancy on her being. Indeed, Efuru soon gives birth. But the joy of the prophecy’s manifestation is short-lived when the dibia–after predicting, without providing details, that there will be an issue with Efuru’s child–dies suddenly, along with his unspoken pronouncements over Efuru’s future and the reassurance his foreknowing had once provided.

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

The theme of childbirth is also present in this moving novel, in which the course of the main character’s, Adunni’s, life is irrevocably altered when she unknowingly partakes in the fulfillment of a curse that had been prophesied to her pregnant sister-wife, Khadija. Khadija’s lover, and the father of her unborn child, Bamidele, reveals to Adunni that in his family, a pregnant woman must be washed seven times in a river, or the woman and her unborn will die during childbirth. On a journey far from their shared home and husband, Adunni must help a laboring Khadija reach the river for a bath before the baby arrives. Adunni’s ability to assist Khadija in fulfilling the ritual has tremendous consequences for her own fragile future. Of note is that in this, as in other instances of a prophetic utterance, the precise source of the folkloric pronouncement is often unarticulated, but simply accepted as the collective what will be.

Fortune’s Daughter by Alice Hoffman

The predictions of tea-leaf divination are at the center of this aching novel about loss and longing. The central characters, Rae and Lila are two women, two mothers, with similar life paths who nonetheless hold a disparate relationship to the tea-leaf fortune-telling that shapes their perspectives. When the paths of Rae and Lila intertwine, both arrive at a knowing whose silence has threatening implications. As readers, we are left grappling with the consequences of knowledge that is revealed and that which is withheld, and the impact of both on the scope of our choices.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

If we are told the exact date of our death, would we live differently–make choices that honor, reject, or align with that foreknowing? A psychic tells four siblings, in their youth–Simon, Klara, Daniel, Varya–the exact day they will die. We then follow each of the four as their lives unfold. The Immortalists deftly probes, in part, how we consciously or subconsciously participate in the fulfillment of the words spoken about us, by examining the varied ways–quietly, despairing, lonely, hopeful–the siblings choose to live, based on the extent of their belief in the prophecy they were given.

A Girl is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

In this poignant novel about the history, layers, and resistance of womanhood, we witness the coming-of-age of Kirabo, the teenage protagonist who until the novel begins had been raised by her grandmother, but now hungers to know her mother, and the origins of her own emerging wildness. In seeking out the counsel of Nsuuta, the village’s prescient witch, Kirabo encounters various shades of the prophetic–a foundational one being that many years before, when Kirabo had been brought to the care of her grandparents as an infant, Nsuuta had predicted that the day would arrive when indeed Kirabo would come to her, in search of her mother. From then on, Nsuuta would be a kind of guiding light and catalyst for Kirabo. And even more compelling than the bits Nsuuta offers about Kirabo’s mother is her outlining of how women have had to shapeshift to survive the patriarchy throughout time; notably, within the novel’s four-part structure, Kirabo follows a path of evolution into her own womanhood that ultimately fulfills Nsutta’s words.

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen

Set in nineteenth-century Sweden, this lush historical novel–about the destructive consequences of settlers’ encroachment on the indigenous Sámi people of the Sápmi region–begins with prophetic dreaming. Reminiscent of a central theme in The Edge of Water, the book opens with the night-before dream of one of its characters, Lars Levi–a Lutheran minister. Attributing it to his family line, his standing as a vessel of God, and his home in the gray Scandinavian tundra, he believes in the power of dreams to foretell. On the morning that prominent reindeer herder and Sámi leader, Biettar Rasti, unexpectedly walks into church during Sunday service and kneels at the altar shaking, Lars Levi recalls an unsettling but forgotten dream from the previous night–perhaps it had been a portent for stubborn Biettar’s unlikely religious awakening. From this very incident–Biettar’s conversion–the families of the two men become inextricably joined in ways that have transformative, damaging consequences for all.

12 Poems and Short Stories by Black Writers to Read For Free Online

Posted on February 21, 2025February 19, 2025 by Intern Electric Lit

Every week, our weekly magazine The Commuter publishes a new work of flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narrative. For Black History Month, we’re looking to the archives for some of our favorite poetry and stories by Black writers, all available to read for free online. From Tara Campbell’s interactive flow chart of systemic injustice to Anya Pearson’s poems critiquing the hypocrisy of well-meaning white people, these works showcase the range and brilliance of Black storytelling.

“Mixed” by jessica Care moore

Excerpted from her poetry collection We Want Our Bodies Back, jessica Care moore taps into mythologies and ancestries in order to embrace her Blackness. Even as others’ attempt to dismiss her due to her mixedness, her pride in her identity is unflinching and inspiring: “I’m from an army of yellow/black princesses… even if the full-blood family don’t claim us.” The language in moore’s poetry is as evocative as it is precise.

“Caesara Pittman, or a Negress of God” by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

In “Caesara Pittman, or a Negress of God,” award-winning writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin effortlessly brings intimacy and heart to the cold, sterile setting of a courtroom. Even in the face of discrimination, titular character Miss Caesara Pittman acts with assurance and self-respect. Pulled from his collection The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, this short story provides an enticing glimpse into the liveliness of Ruffin’s writing.

“Miranda” by Tara Campbell

To express frustration at the repeated patterns of violence in the American justice system, Tara Campbell turned to form. This hybrid poem takes the shape of a dynamic flow chart; readers can interact and see how the underlying structures of racism affect the flow chart’s possible outcomes. As Campbell puts it, “although each individual in a system thinks they’re making their own choices, they’re only seeing a fraction of the whole, and the eventual outcomes won’t change until the underlying structures change.”

“I want to commercialize your pain” and “This is Portland Theatre” by Anya Pearson

Anya Pearson critiques the commercialization of trauma, racism, and the hypocrisy of well-meaning white people in these two poems. Her short lines force the reader to sit with any discomfort they may be experiencing and confront their own biases. “This is their favorite part. // Devouring blackness. // the closest they will come // to entering blackness.// But still safe enough away // to laugh at // to enjoy the spectacle they make // of our misery.”

“No Chocolate Ice Cream in Stars Hollow” and “For God So Loved the WAP” by Khalisa Rae

Pop culture takes center stage in these poems by Khalisa Rae. Through the lens of Gilmore Girls and Cardi B’s WAP, ft. Megan Thee Stallion, she interrogates white privilege, dating as a Black queer woman, and women’s desire: “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?”

“On the album cover for Black Gold by Nina Simone” and “The Sound of Blue” by Akhim Alexis

Brooklyn Caribbean Lit Fest Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean winner Akhim Alexis writes with a delicacy that makes you listen. His poems “On the album cover for Black Gold by Nina Simone” and “The Sound of Blue” sing its readers toward new comforts, bringing us to pay closer attention to the smaller, precious details of the musical world.

“Descent” and “Forty-One” by Ajibola Tolase

In his Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winning debut collection, 2000 Blacks, Ajibola Tolase traces the lineage of migration from Nigeria and interrogates Black coming-of-age in a polarized America. These two poems from the collection stand out for their resplendent imagery. The urgent language invites the reader to be immersed in Tolase’s poetic realm.

“When Fire Owns the Air” by Tochukwu Okafor

“When Fire Owns the Air” begins with rumors swiftly spreading through a town, regarding a relationship between two men—Ikenna Anyanwu and Gbenga Afolabi—that the community strongly disapproves of. But as the prospect of violence inches closer, Tochukwu Okafor meets us with tender renderings of the men’s hopes and dreams. The best flash fiction pieces capture entire lifetimes in just a few scenes; in this deftly written story, Okafor accomplishes exactly that.

“Trebuchet” by Avitus B. Carle

This flash fiction begins with a warning from the narrator’s mother: “the reason why all the broken men live on the outskirts of town is for our protection.” Even so, the narrator goes to her grandpa’s cabin to play spies, which leads to a chilling confrontation. Avitus B. Carle demonstrates her mastery at crafting scenes full of tension in this story, just as she does in her flash collection These Worn Bodies. You’ll be on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

“i must tell you” by Roya Marsh

Savings Time, the second collection by Roya Marsh, turns a resolute eye to Black joy and Black rage in equal parts. Her voice is perhaps at its most unflinching in the masterful “i must tell you,” in which Marsh draws similarities between herself and the late Freddie Gray. She demands for her readers to pay attention to racist atrocities rather than turn a blind eye in achingly honest lines: “i must tell you / how blessed we are / to be hashtagged / while breathing.”

“Baby Brother Shape-Up” and “Boardwalk Ambassadors” by Donna Weaver

Donna Weaver’s poems center tenderness — whether it’s a brother growing out his hair for his sister after she receives a cancer diagnosis or an older woman speculating on the joy of girls below her window on a summer afternoon. They brim with hope as she writes, “They hold hands like kindergartners, / pull each other across sidewalks like they’re going somewhere. / An alley behind Dollar General is more adventurous than the boardwalk. // They would find the oceanfront if they just held onto one another.”

“Redondo Beach, 1979” by Carolyn Ferrell

Shawn, the almost-14-year-old, queer narrator of “Redondo Beach, 1979,” is juggling a lot: divorcing parents, a newly-out father, schoolyard bullies. At the center of this narrative is a battle over hair. Shawn’s father believes it should be styled one way, Shawn’s mother another. It’s a rich, coming of age narrative: “Principal Halimah grabbed your arm on the way out: You only have to believe in yourself, she said. The rest will follow.”

Erin Steele Isn’t Trying to Look Good in Her Memoir

Posted on February 21, 2025January 22, 2025 by EL Assistant2

Erin Steele’s memoir, Sunrise Over Half-Built Houses: Love, Longing and Addiction in Suburbia, chronicles the life of an isolated, self-conscious Canadian teenager growing up in middle-class British Columbia to loving parents who are simultaneously present and absent. As young Erin grapples with finding connection and meaning within the suburban sprawl that eventually gives way to dark forest, we become witness to a young queer woman’s intense seeking.

Grasping for anything that might satiate her need for authentic connection, she turns to a range of complicated relationships, drugs and alcohol to find respite from her own loneliness. From the emotional manipulation of a high school classmate so involved as to necessitate police involvement, to anguished nights of self-harm, to months of disappearance, Sunrise Over Half-Built Houses asks us to sit still, listen and feel.

Within the raw honesty of her story, we become inclined to turn the gaze towards ourselves. How do any of us make meaning from the anguished creature living just below the surface of our myriads of addictions? What is it that drives our desires and needs, particularly when we are not at our best? And how can we navigate the parts of ourselves we would prefer to keep hidden? Erin brings these questions and answers to light, not through any kind of telling, but through showing us exactly how it was for her during those long years when that Pacific Northwest rain fell and fell.

It is the pervasiveness of Erin’s unrelenting search for meaning and, more specifically—a cohesive sense of self—that pulls the reader in and holds us there.

Charlie J. Stephens: Throughout the memoir, the reader is put in the position of not being able to turn away from the narrator’s reality, particularly in regards to risk-seeking behaviors. The narrator takes full responsibility for her decisions that I’m sure were difficult to face personally. The scene involving intense manipulation of a high school classmate is one that stands out. What are some of the ways you navigated those moments in writing and having the work published?

Erin Steele: Not to downplay all the self-reckoning that was required for me to put this book out into the world, but being real was simply more important than wanting to appear a certain way. We know flat characters in fiction, and memoir should be no different. Readers can feel when you’re holding back, so I resisted the temptation to scrub away what could make her (read: me) “look bad.”

Besides, the sex, drugs and music make it an engaging read, but it was always intended to be deeper than that.

Had I not faced and taken responsibility for my decisions, I wouldn’t have the perspective that elevates the book above a salacious recounting. That higher perspective is critical, showing up first in lines and short paragraphs, then growing alongside the narrator to ultimately integrate with her current reality.

It’s why one of the opening epigraphs is: “You’re every age you’ve ever been and ever will be,” author unknown.

I wanted to convey how we can get these flashes of insight, even while barrelling downhill. And although these flashes may not change anything in the present, they do exist and attract more flashes.

CS: Those flashes of insight show up in each chapter, and the narrator’s very urgent need is at the center, whether it is for love, affection, or self medication. It is easy to label this as a memoir of addiction, which of course it is, but you are able to capture the living thing underneath addiction. What are your thoughts on how this connects to capitalism and other issues of Western society?

ES: Similar to the narrator herself, there’s an insatiable quality baked into Western capitalistic society. So while it’s totally human and even necessary to want and to need, there’s a lot of power, psychology and societal conditioning behind why one might “need” a drink or drugs or chips or cheese or a cold beer or a run or a HiiT class.

An example is this: say you feel hungry. You may intellectually understand that lentils with spinach and tomatoes would best nurture your body, but you crave a Big Mac. Then you opt for that Big Mac in large part because it’s way more convenient and you’re exhausted and the dopamine receptors in your brain are obsessed with instant gratification.

There’s a lot of power, psychology and societal conditioning behind why one might ‘need’ a drink or drugs or chips or cheese or a run.

The reader experiences the narrator living out an intensely charged version of this—sacrificing basic needs like food, sleep and even her body in pursuit of what she believes will bring her fulfillment.

Whereas many Eastern schools of thought encourage turning inward, Western capitalistic society has no qualms about dangling basically everything in front of our hungry eyes with promises of satiation.

It’s a perpetual loop, and it is in this loop that the narrator is stuck. The romanticism, bright lights, feel-good drugs, sex and even music—it’s all outside her, and of course represents a firefly of happiness that cannot actually be grasped.

Truthfully, that firefly is within each of us always, but that’s not something we’re conditioned to believe in here in the colonial West, so we have to just fumble towards it on our own. That fumbling is what Sunrise over Half-Built Houses is about.

CS: A central struggle in this book is around connecting to your queerness in an environment where even basic self-acceptance was challenging. Can you speak to your current thoughts about the avenues available to isolated, queer youth in these times we find ourselves inhabiting?

ES: It is astounding to me that although my book takes place at the turn of the century, in some ways it feels as though we’ve gone backwards. That said, as horrifying as bigots on the internet can be, it’s also a place to find community. Pop culture today also embraces queer identity far better than it ever has.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to helping isolated youth, and society needs to shift far closer to inclusion. But these days, technology does allow people to find their people—or at least know they’re out there.

I recently sang Mayonaise by The Smashing Pumpkins (which features prominently in Sunrise over Half-Built Houses) at a karaoke night frequented in large part by late-teen and twenty-something alternative queer kids. After the line: I just want to be me; when I can, I will—which so encapsulates my character’s drive—all the queer kids randomly erupted into cheers and applause. It felt like a full-circle moment. Our people are always out there, always. Sometimes you just have to hold on.

CS: Wow, I would have just been sitting there singing along and openly weeping: I don’t think karaoke nights get better than that! How beautiful to have everything come together in that way. Speaking of music, you’ve mentioned that the Joni Mitchell lyric some turn to Jesus, some turn to heroin was the seed for this memoir. Can you comment on how it conveys the theme of seeking connection and whether you believe this holds up (or not)?

ES: Those lyrics convey what I’ve come to believe is true and what the narrator experiences in Sunrise over Half-Built Houses: we as humans may turn to seemingly drastically different things, but there’s a shared pull toward comfort and connection.

If what you turn to happens to be deemed acceptable or even revered by society, you’re privileged. But if you turn to, say, heroin, you risk being branded as a ‘moral failure.’

If what you turn to happens to be deemed acceptable by society, you’re privileged. But if you turn to, say, heroin, you’re branded as a ‘moral failure.’

What this lyric really says to me, and what I truly believe, is that we understand each other so much better than we’re often willing to accept.

Sometimes I force myself to dig down past my own disdain, and find kinship even with those whom I most disagree with. There is a simplicity in being alive and aware of it; the shared inevitability of death, the great equalizer. We all get scared and that fear manifests in so many messed up ways. In our society, it gets capitalized and politicized, then perpetuated.

I wish we could shake off all the crap that polarizes us, because that’s not the stuff that really matters. I also know that it’s not that simple. I also believe that it can be.

CS: I believe it can be also. Also I’m interested in your critique of the term “moral failure.” It’s so punitive. I read more, and the original term was “moral distress” which has a much more compassionate connotation. It was coined by ethical philosopher Andrew Jameton in 1984 and gets at the anguish caused by knowing the right thing to do, but then there are institutional or societal barriers that get in the way. It acknowledges that our choices are not always completely our own, back to your criticism of capitalism. Relating to that, throughout the memoir, there is an underlying threat of the act of being “othered” whether it is based in queerness, community, or addiction. Can you comment on how you’ve navigated “othering” within this book, as well as personally and politically?

ES: I care deeply about people stuck in cycles of drug addiction and will endlessly advocate for progressive harm-reduction measures as we figure out how to nurture the thing that causes the behaviour of addiction, which is a reaction to pain. However, when we say “addicts,” it’s easy for people to turn their heads and imagine human beings as “others.”

Yet, we all understand comfort and connection, and the absence of it. Although I label Sunrise over Half-Built Houses as a “queer coming-of-age story” and an “addictions memoir,” what it’s really about is inclusion—the antidote to othering.

When we say ‘addicts,’ it’s easy for people to turn their heads and imagine human beings as ‘others.’

I once attended a protest/counter protest with two clear “sides.” Amidst a lot of yelling and dysregulation, I witnessed two people in opposition have a conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were taking turns speaking and really listening to each other.

That’s more of what we need—hearing each other. Then, we inevitably correct the record where it needs correcting (and indeed, it needs a lot of correcting). This is where personal stories have an integral role. Although receptivity is needed, from everyone.

CS: Memoirs provide such an intimate means to witness—and hear—each other. What are some of your favorite memoirs as of late?

ES: Some incredible memoirs I’ve read over the last few years include The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden and Later by Paul Lisicky. All three of these writers take the not-easy route of characterizing versions of themselves with blood and guts, intimately pulling readers into their respective worlds. As a reader, this is a distinction and not soon forgotten. It felt like Yuknavitch, in particular, broke the fourth wall in The Chronology of Water, which felt intimate, delightful and unique—particularly from a memoir.

I also adored It Chooses You by Miranda July and Birds Art Life by Kyo Maclear—both more avant-garde, both profound.

CS: Do you have any new writing projects in the works?

ES: Yes, I’m officially on to my second book project! It’s still early days and materializing slowly, but I can tell you that it’s literary fiction, contemporary, with a subtle touch of magical realism. I’m aiming for this one to not take ten years like Sunrise Over Half-Built Houses!

I’m Terrified of Losing Memories of the People I Love

Posted on February 20, 2025February 26, 2025 by EL Assistant2

The List by Noreen Graf

We’re settling into the hot tub, me with my glass of wine, my 30-year-old daughter with some probiotic drink. She lives in my pool house with her husband whose birthday is today. He’s working late tonight as a server at the Coffee Zone, wearing an “it’s my birthday” sash to get better tips. I let them stay for free as long as they pay electrical, to make them accountable and curb their use of AC. All three of my daughters have moved back home for stints of time to reset and relaunch. This daughter is a struggling writer. These days, moving back in with parents is a thing. Not like in my day. When you left home, either booted out or running free, you stayed gone. Mom booted me. She’s been on my mind since last week when I stumbled upon her lifelong list of things that made her angry.

“Sometimes I worry you have Alzheimer’s,” says my daughter, yanking my brain back into the hot tub.

“Like when?”

“Just sometimes.”

I try to think of what I’ve done. Was it that she saw me playing Solitaire on my phone when she got home from work? How could she know I was at it all day? I haven’t played in years, but today I played while attending Zoom meetings with my audio and video off. I’m a Rehabilitation Counseling professor at a public research university that sits along the border with Mexico. But seriously, two back-to-back faculty meetings and then a department meeting with the dean. It’s grueling. Most times I garden on Zoom, but it was raining this afternoon.

My daughter glides her hands over the water, “It’s probably my anxiety about you getting older and dying.”

“I’m aging at the same rate as everyone on Earth.”

I try to reassure her, but I’m not reassured. A few weeks ago, I told my sister I always feel like I’m ready to cry, and I can’t figure it out. Maybe it’s aging, or professor burnout, or the phenomenon of cyclical live-in children… or my wandering brain. I’m sure my students have wondered about my lucidity during lectures that sometimes stray down adjacent dead-end paths only to do an abrupt about-face with a familiar, “Where was I?”

I assure myself they like these meanderings.

In front of the hot tub, Moby, my Great Dane, circles. Over the past eleven years, I’ve watched Moby’s face morph from a cool gray with a sharp white forehead stripe into an old dog face with racoon rings around his eyes, his stripe blurred by white hairs that cover all but glimpses of his original youth. But this isn’t about Moby.

Last week, my colleagues and I voted out our director. This was a personality thing more than a competence concern. We really didn’t have any power to enforce his removal; it’s the dean’s call but he allowed us the vote to assess faculty discontent. It also sent a message to the director, who resigned, effective immediately. So, for a day, we were unsteered. Paddles resting in a rowboat atop still water. I didn’t say it was calm water. Imagine waiting for a giant sea monster to spring up, mouth open, ready to gulp up the boat, the oars, and the disgruntled professors. Still water. The next day we had an interim director. Quiet chaos ensued, mostly in the form of gossip—and the kinds of meetings that might want to make a professor play video games all day.

I don’t think my mom ever got Alzheimer’s. Nothing to worry about.

In the hot tub, I tell my daughter, “I don’t think my mom ever got Alzheimer’s. Nothing to worry about.” Ultimately, I think parts of her brain slow-rotted a tad. I don’t tell my daughter this. On her deathbed six years ago, Mom got her four daughters confused. Not her four sons though; she recognized them until the very last.

At work, the monster in the still water is that now everyone feels “unsafe.” The result of our mutiny. Unsafe is a trigger word these days, a popular and dramatic overstatement. What we feel is insecure. These are insecure times. Who could be next on the chopping block? What we feel is replaceable (easily). What we feel is unloved.

Also last week, or maybe the week before—I have trouble with time—I was rushing through my home office, having lost my phone again, and I spotted a piece of paper folded in a decorative blue bowl on my very dusty bookshelf. I didn’t remember what the paper was. Why was it there? I stopped to pick it up.

My chemistry professor ex-boyfriend says I’m a cat, even though I’m a dog person, because I’m always getting distracted and changing directions whenever something catches my eye. I’m headed to the car, I start weeding, that sort of thing.

Maybe I should tell my daughter I’m a cat. She’s sipping her probiotics and telling me about critique of her TV script from a screenwriting competition she entered and I can’t keep my head on what she’s saying. I’m proud of her, and her love of writing, of putting words to paper.

Anyway, last week I opened the mysterious paper from the blue bowl and immediately recognized Mom’s handwriting. At the top, a title is written: Anger. It’s underlined because I believe in her day, titles were always underlined. If one of my students underlined the title of their APA-style paper, I would take off points. But maybe Mom was underlining for emphasis.

My daughter is checking her phone to see if the script contest results have been posted. I’m always losing my phone and dear Alexa wants to charge me for the Find My Phone function, apparently I have only two more free calls to locate my phone. My daughter announces she is in the quarterfinals for her queer superhero movie script.

“You go girl!” I tell her, but she’s texting with rapid-fire fingers.

Where was I? Oh right, the day I found the list in the blue bowl, I was chasing the sound of the ringer, because Alexa wasn’t charging yet. I was in a hurry. I can’t recall why. But, with my phone in my back pocket, I slowed to read the first statement on Mom’s Anger list. Unsupervised when with Carol and me killing her. I already knew this part of Mom’s story but was saddened nonetheless.

Before Dad died of leukemia in 2006, Mom spent years writing the family history. They visited Germany so she could write Dad’s ancestral history, and then Ireland to write her own ancestors’ stories. And then came a third book about her more immediate relatives (we’re talking starting in the 1930s here), which included stories about her growing-up years. She titled the book, What’s in your Genes? When mom mailed her spiral-bound books to me and my siblings, it was with an unspoken request to read her pages and pages of family history, adorned with black and white photos of some of the roughest, worn faces on earth (really, I’m related to them?). I certainly wasn’t interested, nor did I see the book’s relevance to my life. And I didn’t have the time for it, as I was trying for two academic publications a year with ever-diminishing enthusiasm.

My relationship with Mom hadn’t been great. Maybe it was being kicked out the night of my graduation from high school and our two-year estrangement after, all because of what boiled down to my rejection of the Catholic church—her life blood. But even after our mending, in her presence, I was frequently seething under my silence. Not silence as in quiet. Silence as in not speaking my mind. The silence that comes just before the scary guy jumps out and makes you shriek, and then he stabs you to death with the Halloween soundtrack getting louder and louder. Maybe I felt unsafe?

Mom died in 2019, just before COVID hit. But a couple of years before her death, when Mom was alone, I filled a wine ritual vacancy. Mom had called her sister nightly to share a glass of wine over the phone. When her sister died, I stepped in. Who else was going to listen to my stories of my three grown girls, dogs, and latest published academic articles and failed fiction? We talked about me for hours some nights. I would frequently clench and cringe at her opinionated responses, but then blather on and on.

I begrudgingly and dutifully (with a glass of wine in hand) read her book. Then one day, as I was reading page 33 of volume three—about Uncle Ed, Aunt Phyllis, Uncle Bern, Aunt Marg, and Aunt Lib who lived at 8136 S Peoria around 1939—and I read the line, “I murdered that beautiful child.”

I read the line again. Who murdered what child?

The shock of that line was like opening a pantry and coming face-to-face with a rat eating the dog food. This is more than a metaphor, it’s a memory. What could I do? I screamed and closed the pantry, so it wouldn’t escape. But closing a door doesn’t make a problem disappear. It gives you time. But you can’t take time because you know you have to deal with the rat. You can’t stand the idea of the rat being in the pantry, so you face it. I called Mom..

“I was reading your family history and…” Really, I can’t remember how I put it to her, but I later came to think, her whole purpose in those years of research and writing about ancestors was so she could write that one line, to tell her abominable secret. Here is an excerpt from page 33.

When I was 4 or 5 years old, Mom, Dad, Uncle Ed’s daughter, Carol, and myself were visiting there. Carol and I were sent to Uncle Ed and Uncle Bern’s bedroom to take a nap. Carol was 2 or 3 years old, and beautiful, like a Dresden doll. I believe she had long, dark curly hair and milky white skin. Instead of napping we were playing. We must have been playing “doctor.” In my mind’s eye, I see myself giving her a teaspoon of medicine. It was in a dark bottle and on top of one of the dressers. Where did the spoon come from? The bottle contained “Oil of Wintergreen.” She died! I don’t remember what happened next. Did she die right there? Did she go to the hospital? Did the police come? Was I questioned?

She only learned what substance killed her cousin when Mom was in her seventies. As a child, she never heard a word about the dead girl. She was never included in a funeral, and no one mentioned the incident again. It was poofed away.

I guess like our director has been poofed away, only he is still there as a faculty member, and I feel terribly sorry for him because I remember when I was poofed away—twenty years ago. Lesson to newbie professors: Do not have a public affair with your dean in the same year you are coming up for promotion and tenure. This was a tragic story, and I won’t bore you with the details. That dean resigned just before a vote of no confidence—there’s that voting against other faculty thing again. Obviously, I wasn’t tenured. Within a year, the dean and I married, only to divorce a year later, and then get new jobs in states far apart. I heard he remarried.

Lately, I keep driving by a sign in the yard of a neighbor a few blocks away from my home. It has just one word. Pray. And it lingers in my head.

The truth is I’m terrified of Alzheimer’s, of losing memories that shape my connections to the people I love. My irreverence lightens the weight of what time may take. But then again, I might just have the opposite of Alzheimer’s because I’ve been getting back memories of my childhood. I can’t recall any right now, but when I get them, I call my oldest sister—who recently tested negative for Alzheimer’s proteins.

Tonight, in this hot tub, the dog still eyeing us, I tell my daughter this genetic factoid and she says, “It doesn’t mean you don’t have it.” I’m annoyed, I would never have said harsh things to my mother, even in her later-day times of confusion.

Aside from Mom’s ancestral volumes, she was a voracious journal writer. A teenage bride—18 was common I guess back in the day (I should talk, my first marriage was at age 19)—Mom kept journaling through having eight babies, starting in 1956, through Dad getting shot as a police officer in the 1968 riots on the south side of Chicago, through the killings of the Kennedys and King, and through our wine phone arguments about the man whose name rhymes with Rump. But I don’t care about those political arguments now. What I care about are the volumes and volumes and volumes of her journals which were burned before read. Poof. They were gone. Like she was.

Mom was best at expressing anger when I was growing up. I didn’t see her sadness, and she was, as I am today, uncomfortable with touch or expressions of affection. When that wall began to crumble as she aged, I couldn’t handle it, because my wall remained intact. I became expert at changing the subject when she approached emotional expression, trying to tell me what good things I had added to her life. I imagine she wrote them down.

When Mom died, her bookshelves were lined with her journals, maybe sixty or seventy. These books were the only place she had been free to fully express her feelings. A few days after her death, my eldest sister randomly picked up one journal and read a page aloud. It was something that Sister 1 interpreted as negative and about her. Okay, it probably was negative, and about her. Sister 1 decided she didn’t want anyone in the family reading things she told Mom in confidence. “Okay,” I said, “you read first and redact anything about you that you don’t want anyone to see with a black sharpie.” So, then some other sibling, I don’t remember which, said something like, “But then (Sister 1) might read something about me I don’t want anyone to see.”

All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. See, I told you, things are coming back from my childhood.

We all live the human tragedy. Every human.

As a grieving family, we decided Baby Brother 4, somewhere in his late forties, should take the journals and keep them safe and in a year, we could revisit this hot topic. I was hoping Sister 1, and everyone else would get to a place they just didn’t care who knew what about whom. We all live the human tragedy. Every human. They are the same tragedies, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Old as the bible. See, I already know Sister 1’s husband is the scum of the earth, Brother 1’s second wife did a lap dance on some stranger at their wedding reception, and Sister 4 stole Brother 3’s girlfriend. We think Sister 3 set a fire. The thing is we all know, through our very efficient grapevine, most of the stuff we pretend not to know. And lots of stuff even Mom didn’t know. I think.

Sitting in the steamy water behind my house, the dog now stomping around in my tropicals, my daughter is agonizing about calling the doctor because it makes her anxious. “You should try not to worry so much,” I say to my daughter who has just told me about her stomach problems of the past week. I try to focus on her words and raise my body half out of the water by sitting on my heels. The hot tub is feeling hot, burning hot.

What I have of my mother’s words, besides the ancestral history volumes she wrote, is one sheet of paper titled ‘Anger.’

Burned. I think, burned. Two years (time flies) after Brother 4 was charged with the safekeeping of the journals, I asked about the journals and was told the books had been burned. I was told by Sister 1 and Brother 4 that everyone had agreed to this action. No, I said, I would never have agreed to it. When? No, I don’t have Alzheimer’s. If I were to somehow agree (and I didn’t), I would have insisted they be burned in a ceremonial way. I’m a counselor, or at least I used to be before I was a professor teaching counseling, and I know how to end things. I know, and teach, about closure, and there wasn’t any.

Another poof goes the weasel! I feel unsafe, or did I say that word is an over-exaggeration? Why aren’t siblings 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 outraged?

So, what I have of my mother’s words, besides the ancestral history volumes she wrote, is one sheet of paper titled “Anger.” I’m centering the text, so it becomes a poem. Poems are sublime. She meant it to be read. She wanted to be heard.

Anger

Unsupervised when with Carol and me killing her

Never talking to me about her death

My mother on the bathroom floor drunk? Hurt?

Parents fighting-fighting

Dad coming home drunk almost every day.

Dad leaving us at a cottage

Hating the holidays because I never knew when they would fight

I never remember being hugged as a child

I think my mother resented the way Dad spoiled me

I think my Dad may have spoiled me to get at Mom

So late for my music recital

So many times caught between them

Daughter getting pregnant before marriage

Husband not telling me about not getting the chief’s job

Husband quitting work

Moving to Indiana and leaving me in Illinois

Husband moving out of our bed and giving up sex

Husband drinking

My failure as a mother, person, wife

Never controlling my temper

My own list of angers, failures, disappointments isn’t long if I condense them into qualitative themes with multiple sub-themes—I also teach Qualitative Research. They have to do with my poor human and dog parenting, poor partnering, and poor performance. The overarching theme is poor choices. But my biggest anger is that Mom’s thoughts, for her whole life, were banished by her own children and burned.

Moby barks to remind me of his presence, once again patiently sitting next to the hot tub. Such a loyal companion.

Not long before her death, Mom wrote down every item she owned of aesthetic, monetary, or nostalgic value on a slip of paper. With a girlfriend as her witness, one at a time, she pulled the slips out of a jar to randomly assign who of us kids would inherit each specific item. Her greatest fear was that the family could be torn apart by material things, and she wanted to avoid any post-mortem arguments.

But the journals remained in her house after her death for us to deal with. Unnamed beneficiary.

My daughter is ready to get out of the hot tub. I’ve inattentively kept up with the conversation about the doctor and writing edits and promised to finish reading her script tomorrow. Lack of attentive parenting needs to go on my list, sub-theme of poor parenting. But who knew parenting would go on for so long—thirty years and counting. That I would never be able to put down the weight of it. She walks away dripping and wrapping the towel around her still young body, her young, semi-trained service dog, Maggie, bounding towards her. Moby waits for me.

I sink my body down until only my face is above water. I close my eyes and listen to the humming from the motor keeping the water warm; underwater it is akin to white noise. I relax and imagine swimming upward in deep cerulean water. Then I feel panic. The water goes black, and I break the surface with my flailing breaststroke. I’m out of breath and gulp in air.

The thing at the top of my anger list is that I will never have the opportunity to read my mother’s uncensored thoughts. Or run my fingers across her practiced handwriting as I read her words. To push aside events of drama and trauma and hear her dreams and joys as well as disappointments and pain.

I want to wrap this up and provide a tidy end, where I make peace and come to terms with aging and colleagues and children and siblings and losing my mother. And I could do this because I am trained in writing discussion and conclusions sections. I could force some kind of forgiveness message to complement being in a hot tub with a glass of cheap white wine over melting ice because I like it that way. And too bad if ice shouldn’t be in Chardonnay. Instead, I’ll follow Moby inside. Maybe I’ll forget someday.

Poof.

7 Stories About Women Coming of Age in Their 30s and 40s

Posted on February 20, 2025January 16, 2025 by Jo Lou

Coming-of-age stories are typically defined as the transition from childhood to adulthood, which is why we most commonly imagine teens and young adults at their center. But growing out of our formative childhood patterns can happen at any age, and, for many of us, the most profound periods of transformation hit well into adulthood.

A woman’s thirties and forties can be particularly charged. According to many doctors, 35 is the age that women’s fertility begins to drop significantly, forcing us to contemplate what can feel like a life-changing decision for the first time, and one that may put us starkly at odds with societal expectations. Many 30+ women today find themselves in a life that looks very different from typical narratives of “successful” womanhood, resulting in a grating sense of failure and uncertainty. But while motherhood is a common avenue for transformation at this age, it’s important to remember that non-motherhood—the forced awakenings and hard earned growth that comes from sitting with the self—is, too. When we enter middle-age without the standard domestic trappings so commonly portrayed in the popular narratives of womanhood, a deeper understanding of the self awaits, along with a reorganizing of priorities, as we begin to set and trust who we are and what we want, cultural expectations aside.

Edie, the main character in my debut novel, Nothing Serious, is a single, thirty-five year old woman reckoning with a life built on chasing the approval of men. Throughout her career—studying engineering, attending business school, working in tech—her instinct to fit in with the men around her has served as an asset, even cosplaying as confidence, but it has also left her hollow, unable to access genuine desire beyond the desire to please. The book is, at its core, a story of self-discovery, learning to untangle from a deep need to prove herself to others, to chase “success” on other people’s terms, to trust herself, instead, and in doing so redefine who she is and what it is she wants.

The list below celebrates women in their thirties and forties who, rather than conforming to the traditional paths of marriage and motherhood, embark on transformative journeys of self-discovery while choosing a life without children.

Grown Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth

Jenny McLaine is an anxious 35-year-old, eager to please and always over-analyzing. The first page starts with her agonizing over captioning the photo of her morning croissant (settling on “CROISSANT, WOO! #CROISSANT”). But Emma Jane Unsworth’s unwavering humor does not distract from the poignancy in this laugh-out-loud novel. Jenny’s journalism career is floundering, and her personal relationships begin to unravel after a breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Art. Prone to extreme self-criticism as a result of her mother’s judgmental eye, Jenny feels like a failure at the very point in her life when she imagined it would all be coming together. She takes solace in a parasocial relationship with an online influencer that only serves to heighten her insecurities and self-doubt. The book follow Jenny as she learns to face her issues-head on, build her sense of self, and define, then trust, her own version of success.

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Through philosophical contemplations on identity and art, conversations with her partner and friends, musings on her personal and family history, and a technique involving The I Ching—asking questions and flipping coins—the narrator of Motherhood takes us on a cyclical journey through one of life’s most important decisions: whether or not to have a child.

Before I knew much about this book, I was afraid to pick it up, assuming from the title that it was yet another contemplation on motherhood ending with the woman choosing to have children. If you share this concern let me dispel your worries with a necessary spoiler: the narrator decides that having a child is ultimately not for her. There are no formal conclusions, only the making of an inevitable and highly personal decision that broadens our definition and considerations of motherhood and life itself in the painstaking process of choosing.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lauren Willowes (affectionately Lolly, to her family) lives carefree in the English countryside until the death of her beloved father. Unmarried in her late-twenties, she is sent to live with her older brother and his family in London. There, she spends years helping him care for his children, fading into the background of their family, and yearning for the rural landscape of her childhood. Lolly is well into her forties when she decides—to the shock and disapproval of her family—to live on her own in a town she has only heard of (endearingly called Great Mop). The family warns her against such a rash decision, encouraging her to stay in London, but she insists. Thus ensues one of the most charming and classic romps of a woman carving out a life on her own. Once settled in Great Mop, she even encounters the devil, with whom she has apparently made a pact, in order to achieve her life of freedom, and happily embraces her role as Witch. Who among us has not longed to escape it all, buy a little cottage in the mountains, and build a life anew?

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel

The unnamed narrator is in the midst of an impassioned, albeit doomed, affair with a man referred to only as “the man I want to be with.” That man happens to be partnered with a wealthy, glamorous woman we know only as ”the woman I’m obsessed with.” The narrator’s obsession exposes her own insecurities, imagining the woman—who we become intimate with by way of social media stalking—to be everything the narrator is not. At that same time, she is entranced by the man’s manipulative charm, though he is frequently distant and sometime harmful. In addition to revealing reflections on the self, these masterfully rendered obsessions are a tool to observe the way society elevates some and marginalizes others, specifically in terms of race, class, and wealth. We watch as the narrator falls deeper into self-destruction until her wreckage catalyzes an awareness of the patterns she’s stuck in and, importantly, the societal forces that make it so hard to escape. This book has a voice like no other, veering almost into poetry in its form, a stream-of-consciousness that’s somehow both chaotic and immaculate.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Greta, Big Swiss’s 45-year-old main character, resides in a run-down, unheated farmhouse, occasionally infested with bees, in the increasingly gentrifying town of Hudson in upstate New York. Greta does transcription work for money and while transcribing sessions for Om, Hudson’s premiere (and only) sex therapist, she becomes fascinated by one of his clients, Flavia, whom she affectionately calls “Big Swiss.” It’s all a fun and intriguing escape until she recognizes Bis Swiss’s voice at the dog park, and a real relationship between the two women begins. As their intimacy grows, however, Flavia reveals part of her past that Greta is already intimate with from transcribing her therapy sessions, leaving Greta in the duplicitous and deceiving position of hiding how much she really knows. As their relationship grows in this kooky, smart, and darkly hilarious tale, the tension increases, until Greta is forced to confront her own issues and actions. In doing so, she begins to see how her own trauma has shaped her life, bringing her closer to accountability and self-acceptance.

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

This book is the essential text for neurotic women—and I mean that as the highest compliment. Immediately, we’re thrown into the unconventional, brilliant setup of this epistolary novel. Chris, a 39-year-old filmmaker, and her husband, Sylvère, an academic, move to a small town in Texas, where they meet Dick, a professor, to whom they are instantly drawn. After meeting, the couple begins an elaborate series of letters to Dick, as a vehicle for their own contemplations on life and art and self. Through her infatuation, which grows over the course of the novel— first stimulating, then straining, her marriage—Chris confronts her internalized misogyny and the effects of the patriarchy on the way her art is perceived and on the way she perceives herself. Her infatuation with Dick, which appears self-destructive and uncontrolled, ultimately acts as the mechanism for her own self-actualization. Kraus uses her own abjection—a state often imposed on women, especially as they age—as clay to shape and transform, leading to both a personal metamorphosis and a masterful work of art. She doesn’t shy away from the reality of living in a “man’s world,” but she strides in with open arms, seeing it for what it is, then subverts it so profoundly.

In so many of these stories, we see how, into middle age, we remain trapped in the assumptions that shaped us as children, and how the catalysts typically associated with youth, can, if we’re brave enough to surrender to them, transform us at any age. As Chris reflects in I Love Dick, “It was interesting…to plummet back into the psychosis of adolescence.”

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The Woman Upstairs is the quintessential novel of a single woman who feels, as she enters middle age, that her life has not gone as planned. Nora Eldridge is a 42-year old-artist by night, school teacher by day. The book opens with an unforgettable internal monologue of rage and regret about becoming what she calls the “woman upstairs”—the quiet, reliable helper for the people around her, fading into a background of mediocrity. But her life is disrupted by the arrival of a new student in her third-grade class, Reza Shahid, who she becomes enamored by, along with his glamorous parents. Reza’s mother is a successful artist who frequently invites Nora to work with her in her studio, where they form a tight artistic bond, and his father is an intellectual and charming Harvard professor. Her obsession with the Shahid family is all-consuming until cracks begin to form. When Nora discovers a devastating betrayal, her idolization of the family starts to crumble, leaving her not only with a clearer picture of the Shahids, but a clearer picture of herself, one that sets her on a path of change and resolve.

Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Intemperance” by Sonora Jha

Posted on February 20, 2025February 11, 2025 by Jo Lou

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Intemperance by Sonora Jha, which will be published by HarperVia on October 14th 2025. You can pre-order your copy here.

In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter—winner of the Washington State Book Award—a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections.

A woman who has left two husbands announces she will celebrate her 55th birthday by holding a swayamvar. Drawn from an ancient custom in her Indian culture, this is an event in which suitors line up to compete in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess’s hand in marriage. The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule, but her self-esteem and sexual libido are off the charts even as her body withers from disability, fading beauty, and her appetite for cake.

To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call—a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men’s Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She is waylaid by visitations from goddesses and princesses past, who either try to slap sense into her or cheer her on. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system—a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love?

Intemperance is at once a satirical feminist folktale and a meditation on how we might reach past all sense and still find love.

Here is the cover, designed by Sarah Kellogg, with art by Hilma af Klint.

Author Sonora Jha: “I was delighted to receive four stunning cover options from my editor at Harper Via, Rakesh Satyal. I have worked with him and the design team at Harper Via for my previous novel, The Laughter, so I knew they would send me beauty, but four works of beauty? Agony. I narrowed it down to two images, both of which had swans, which immediately captivated me. Intemperance has multiple appearances of swans in the narrative—shape-shifting swans, angry swans, mythological swans, and even a flirty swan. It was hard to pick between the two final images, but I found myself returning to stare at this one, over and over. Ultimately, I asked myself, ‘Which one will you regret letting go?’ And this was the one. Every time I look at it, I fall more in love.

In the meeting of the swans, I see union and a separateness of identity. Here we have both intemperance and temperance. Darkness and light. One of the things the novel explores is the protagonist’s need for silence and solitude, and this cover speaks to the silence of a soaring bird yet also the muted, meditative flutter of its wings. The story is one of courtship and love, and of course, there’s the kiss of the swans at the beak, but I can’t tell you what the almost imperceptible touching of the tips of their wings does to me.
I hope to see the original painting by Hilma Af Klint someday. I feel incredibly fortunate to have on my book cover the work of this radical Swedish artist from more than a century ago. The candy-like colors and crayon-like scrawl of the letters overlay a contemporary irreverence and whimsy atop the timelessness of Af Klint’s painting. A part of the story in Intemperance is set in the same years as Hilma was painting these works of hers (although on different continents), and this gives me goosebumps. Swanbumps.”

Designer Sarah Kellogg: “As I was researching imagery for the cover of Intemperance, I struck gold when I came across a painting by the artist Hilma af Klint. The painting features two swans stretching their necks toward one another as if in defiance or fearlessness, or perhaps as an act of love. The separate worlds of the two swans meet in the middle, and their wings are outstretched with no lack of restraint for what lies ahead. The hand-drawn lettering on top of the artwork provides a more modern element to hint at the story’s setting in present-day Seattle. The crayon-like texture plays into the messy process of coming into oneself, regardless of outside opinions.”

Staring Into the Void of a Five-Dollar Egg White

Posted on February 19, 2025February 12, 2025 by Preety Sidhu

The Human Condition as It Applies to the Long Island Suburbs

Every year, I grow more
tired of paying for things.
The albumen in my cocktail
adds five dollars - five dollars
for not even a full egg.
The math reminds me that I
could pay to walk inside
a historic fort in Augusta,
or stand outside it for free
and relive history as one
of the Wabanaki people.
Unfriendly neighbors
run deep through history.
I should not be surprised
by the raging woman
who tells me to go back
where I came from - all
because she doesn't like
seeing my parked car
from her window.
I wonder what view
she thinks I'm ruining;
perhaps it's the bird shit
on her garbage cans, 
its milk-white marbling
reminiscent of a veil
of egg whites dropped in gin, 
or perhaps it's the space
she needs to stare through
while she has the morning cigarette
that burns a small hole
in the atmosphere between us.

Observing the Void Ten Feet From a Swing Set

A small worm assaulted
by smaller ants, twists and flips.
I watch the violence and
consider my options.
Save the worm. Let the ants eat.
How do I pretend I can choose
- that the worm is good
- that the ants are good?
Only five minutes ago, 
I discovered the common park bench
is an endangered species,
its habitat reduced to fringe
spaces of dedication
to late loved ones.
I wrestle with a side effect
of my imperfect faith 
in destiny, my concern 
that I can ruin 
what is meant to be.
From this seat placed in memory 
of a stranger's husband,
I thumb this fear like a coin:
I am not special (heads)
I am alone (tails)
I would hate to die (heads)
or to live forever (tails)
Each path goes nowhere.
And so, the worm goes
into the earth, riding
on the backs of its captors.
I wipe the crust 
from my inner eye
and sit in the position 
I imagine God assumes
when watching over
our breaking hearts.

The Sieve

A friend used to joke that we’re all just blood bags
trying to avoid sharp objects.
He’d say this wryly as he threw out perfect
yogurt cups with creased lids.
Eventually, everyone else’s sadness catches up with me,
and I am forced to admit
that even though I feed the birds, it is the squirrels
who know I fill the feeders.