The author of Days of Distraction on microaggressions in fiction and writing confrontation through fragments
Can you say Mommy’s name, sweetie? Can you do that for Mommy?
“The very moment I thought I was lost / My dungeon shook and the chains fell off.”
The slippers allowed her the pleasure of spatial recognition, an opportunity to go back in time and become the person cared for, rather than the one perpetually burdened with the responsibility of caring.
52 years since it was first published, the groundbreaking novel No-No Boy has been reissued by Penguin Classics. The new edition features an introduction by Karen Tei Yamashita.
Sometimes you wonder if there really is a place called heaven nearby. You will ask yourself which would be better: Death? Or 38 years in prison?
How might a children’s book explain prison abolition?
As soon as they touch your saliva, the filaments dissolve. Their structure can’t sustain the contact. The sweetness is the taste of collapse.
She kissed a fingertip and touched it to the frayed edge of a small sketch of her face. It was all she had left of him, a drawing that he had made of her.
I will outrun the smell of wet decay, your Mekong river in a Gatorade bottle.
Mama runs inside to bang on the bathroom door and yell Chinese vocabulary words at me—yellow light, borrowed light, get in the car, open. I dip my head underwater so every word sounds like a vowel, oceanic and slow.
A headline buried deep inside the paper catches my eye. “They’re extending AFSPA for another six months in Assam,” I announce. She nods, and continues to massage the green beans in her bowl.
땀과 핏물과 진물이 뒤섞여 끈적한 그의 맨발이 젖어 번들거린다. || His bare feet, sticky with a mix of sweat and blood and ooze, glisten.
20 Thai Baht = 33 Philippine Pesos = 44 Indian Rupees = x bolt of fabric = y square vuông of rice = 15,000 Vietnamese đồng = 2,600 Cambodian Riel = 2.6 Malaysian Ringgit = 9,100 Indonesian Rupiah = unquantifiable sweat
รองเท้านักเรียนคู่นั้นยี่สิบบาทเองหรือ || These school uniform shoes are only twenty baht?
By what divine aberration did our souls divide into two, unaware of the splitting?
It wasn’t the kind of place you’d notice as a casual passer-by, but one you could only find if you were looking for it.
A two-minute stare-down with their father’s deathbed occurs. As though the thing will explain itself.
Astra unwrapped her long spindly fingers and weighed his member with a chilling fascination.
The dreams only start after camp, after I take my first swim with Appah. I watch him with binoculars as he moves farther and farther out into the deep.
A collection of essays, poems, and stories by Asian American writers that trouble, expand, and redefine the space of the camp
Can you say Mommy’s name, sweetie? Can you do that for Mommy?
A headline buried deep inside the paper catches my eye. “They’re extending AFSPA for another six months in Assam,” I announce. She nods, and continues to massage the green beans in her bowl.
“The very moment I thought I was lost / My dungeon shook and the chains fell off.”
땀과 핏물과 진물이 뒤섞여 끈적한 그의 맨발이 젖어 번들거린다. || His bare feet, sticky with a mix of sweat and blood and ooze, glisten.
The slippers allowed her the pleasure of spatial recognition, an opportunity to go back in time and become the person cared for, rather than the one perpetually burdened with the responsibility of caring.
20 Thai Baht = 33 Philippine Pesos = 44 Indian Rupees = x bolt of fabric = y square vuông of rice = 15,000 Vietnamese đồng = 2,600 Cambodian Riel = 2.6 Malaysian Ringgit = 9,100 Indonesian Rupiah = unquantifiable sweat
52 years since it was first published, the groundbreaking novel No-No Boy has been reissued by Penguin Classics. The new edition features an introduction by Karen Tei Yamashita.
รองเท้านักเรียนคู่นั้นยี่สิบบาทเองหรือ || These school uniform shoes are only twenty baht?
Sometimes you wonder if there really is a place called heaven nearby. You will ask yourself which would be better: Death? Or 38 years in prison?
By what divine aberration did our souls divide into two, unaware of the splitting?
How might a children’s book explain prison abolition?
It wasn’t the kind of place you’d notice as a casual passer-by, but one you could only find if you were looking for it.
As soon as they touch your saliva, the filaments dissolve. Their structure can’t sustain the contact. The sweetness is the taste of collapse.
A two-minute stare-down with their father’s deathbed occurs. As though the thing will explain itself.
She kissed a fingertip and touched it to the frayed edge of a small sketch of her face. It was all she had left of him, a drawing that he had made of her.
Astra unwrapped her long spindly fingers and weighed his member with a chilling fascination.
I will outrun the smell of wet decay, your Mekong river in a Gatorade bottle.
The dreams only start after camp, after I take my first swim with Appah. I watch him with binoculars as he moves farther and farther out into the deep.
Mama runs inside to bang on the bathroom door and yell Chinese vocabulary words at me—yellow light, borrowed light, get in the car, open. I dip my head underwater so every word sounds like a vowel, oceanic and slow.
A collection of essays, poems, and stories by Asian American writers that trouble, expand, and redefine the space of the camp