On my tenth Christmas, I peeled back the wrapping paper to find a book about the size of a dictionary. The cover was printed with the image of a living room. Around a piano, five white women stood singing in the light of a hurricane lamp. Their dresses could easily be mistaken for curtains. TheContinue reading “How LITTLE WOMEN Saved Me”
Tag Archives: stories
Stealing Other Lives
So I subbed down at Auburn Library yesterday, and maybe the staff were just trying to impress the new girl, but I overheard them talking about a recent shooting in the park behind the library. A few minutes earlier, I’d seen children splashing in a wading pool while their parents knotted birthday balloons to aContinue reading “Stealing Other Lives”
Be of Good Courage
What’s the use of stories? One friend, a writer, argues that entertainment itself has value—to provide escape from our difficult lives and give us pleasure for a few hours. In a recent TED talk, novelist Elif Shafak encourages us to see stories as a way out of insular identities. Stories, she says, can “poke holes”Continue reading “Be of Good Courage”
Beautiful Boys
Today at the college, a freshman hunched over the form I handed him, checking off boxes. Male. Under 25. Native language Mongolian. He shouldn’t have had to fill it out again. The writing center where I work had misplaced his file, and the young man was understandably frustrated. But this wasn’t your average freshman sulk.Continue reading “Beautiful Boys”
The Trailer Park MFA 
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