’I wondered, too, whether he was suffering inside, whether he sometimes cried, as I did, for reasons unknown.‘
For my father, the world–and by that I must mean this very land, the United States, his chosen nation–operated on a determined set of procedures, certain rules of engagement. These rules were the inalienable rights of the immigrant.
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Fifty years I’ve played here, except for stretches in Arizona and Mississippi, after my divorce.’
Fiction by Kate Lister Campbell.
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘A should probably write that it hit uz like a smack in the guts, or the red mist cem down or sumet like that, but in all honesty, a can just remember feelen upset.’
New fiction by Shaun Wilson.
‘I’m simply trying to do good, Sharon, in the way that I can.’
Fiction by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump.
‘It’s a paper bag filled with pastries. Chicken turnovers.’
An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
‘It’s the year of “the human being”. The year of race-creed-color blindness. It’s 1963.’
