Explore Essays and memoir
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The Casualties
Katie Kitamura
‘The following are some of the Japanese players who also appeared in the major leagues during the Age of Ichiro.’
Heart and Soul in Every Stitch
Tash Aw
‘Where wealth and technology go, culture quickly follows, and soon it became acceptable, even desirable, to express an interest in Japan beyond the mere practicality offered by its products.’
Cynthia Ozick | First Sentence
Cynthia Ozick
‘Some stories begin with an incident, or a set of enigmatic circumstances, or a scene indelibly witnessed, or the relationship of unlike temperaments, or even something as gossamer as a mood. And then there is the kind of story that is rooted in an idea.’
The Abyss
Rafael Frumkin
‘I came home this past fall to the Chicago suburb where I’d lived with my parents from age nine until I left for college in 2008, and I moved back into my childhood bedroom.’
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
David Gates
‘It took longer and longer for the next one to come, and then there wasn’t a next one.’
L.A. Diary: Notes from a Mexikorean Country
Juan Pablo Villalobos
‘I was reassured to see that my hotel does not resemble the one in The Shining.’
Three Japanese Books
Samantha Harvey, Phil Klay & Tao Lin
‘Each word is a snowflake falling, and with each paragraph the snow settles deeper.’
Arrival Gates
Rebecca Solnit
‘It was like trying to go back to before the earthquake, to before knowledge.’
Nudity
Norman Rush
‘I nursed a precocious rage at the stratagems society was employing to keep me from seeing naked women.’
Laparotomy
Alexandra Lucas Coelho
‘At forty, I think the world leads to the body. Besides, laid out on a stretcher, you are your only home’ .
Melinda Moustakis | First Sentence
Melinda Moustakis
‘We all would like to think that with one line, one brush, we could make a reader fall madly in love, and there are writers that elicit such a response with the appropriately gorgeous.’
