TELLING OUR STORIES,
SHARING OUR LIVES
A COLLECTION OF STUDENT MEMOIR WRITING
BROOKLYN COLLEGE
FALL 2011
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful for the support of:
Karen L. Gould, President
William Tramontano, Provost
Donna Wilson, Associate Provost for Academic Programs
Niesha Ziehmke, Coordinator, First College Year Program
Ellen Tremper, Chair, English Department
Janet Moser, Director of Freshman Composition
Sarah Brown, Program Administrator, Freshman Composition
Michelle Billies, Writing Fellow
Fall 2011 English 1010Instructors:
Ana Acosta, Moustafa Bayoumi, Lauren Belski, Katie Blakely, Marissa Brostoff, Sarah Brown, Caitlin Brubacher, Martin Cloutier, Ally Collier, Heidi Diehl, Yulia Greyman, Timothy Griffiths, Eliza Hornig, Chet Jordan, Jared Keel, Diane Marks, Judd Merrill, Melissa Phruksachart, Aubria Ralph, Mark Sitko, Harris Solomon, Ariel Stess, Cherry Lou Sy, Robert Tumas, Emily Zaentz
Brendan O’Malley, WAC Co‐Coordinator
The Staff at Printworks
And, most especially, Edwidge Danticat
Cover art: The Baron in the Trees, 2011, Su Blackwell Cover and interior art: Photographs of Book‐cut sculpture by Su Blackwell
iii
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments iii
Introduction 1
Part One: "YOU'RE WHERE YOU ARE" (Danticat 181) 3 Island’s Illusion Geoffrey Mercene 5 Excerpt from: Turning Point Alexandra Berlingeri 9
An Act of Kindness Hillel Burstein 13
Khaleema Khaleema Cox 15
Exodus Redux Victor Didia 17
Library Nicole Fishman 19
The Dark Stone Houses in the Middle of Campos Thomas Rivera Montes 21
Hark the Herald Lola Sichrovsky 25
Splintering Memories Monika Walker 27
Part Two: "MWEN LA. RIGHT HERE. " (Danticat 269) 29
The Perfect Storm Sarah Stone 31 Exposure Nisar Chaudhry 33 Not Gray Either Devin Dinsmore 35
Last Goodbyes Under Sullen Skies Jessica Lima 37
Train Brian Mo 41 Suerte Brieanna Ngui 43
Just You Wait Tahreem Riaz 47
A Perfect Night Allen Yevtukhov 51 From A Chemist's Perspective Samantha Dannenberg 55
v
Part Three: "MAY YOU BE A REPOZWA" (Danticat 254) 57 The First Day Yaoyu Chen 59
The Embrace Patrina Best 61
Love Me for Who I Am Soraya Karkari 63
Fatherless Generation Ashanti Perez 65 My Grandfather in Kashmir Adil Rao 67
Like Lost Cubs in the Wild Jinanne Taha 71 The King Jessen Thomas 73
A Second Look at Grandma Pamela Weiss 77
An Anomalistic Grandmother Steven D. Zayas 79
Part Four: "MEASURE YOUR WORDS" (Danticat 119) 83 My Two Homes Cornea Khan 85
Living the American Dream Jazlin Brioso 87 The Intrusion of Political Chaos into Family Histories Ken Chan 91
Bonds Here and There, Bonds Then and Now Avinash Jairam 93
My Grandparents, A Living Textbook Spencer Kim 95
Mantras, Mottos, and Reflections Joel Philip 97 Papou Samantha Vouyiouklis 99
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INTRODUCTION
Brooklyn College students of the class of 2015 began their college experience through the
pre‐freshman reading of Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying during the summer before
the start of the Fall 2011 semester. Once classes began, students discussed Danticat’s
memoir and then attended a lecture and reading by Danticat when she visited Brooklyn
College in September 2011. Conversations about Brother, I’m Dying continued in class during
the first weeks of the semester, culminating in students' writing their own stories. We call
this collection of student memoirs Telling Our Stories, Sharing Our Lives.
1
PART ONE "YOU'RE WHERE YOU ARE"
(Danticat 181)
Out of Narnia, 2009, Su Blackwell
Geoffrey Mercene • Alexandra Berlingeri • Hillel Burstein Khaleema Cox • Victor Didia • Nicole Fishman
Thomas Rivera Montes • Lola Sichrovsky • Monika Walker
3
ISLAND’S ILLUSION Geoffrey Mercene
“Hey, where’s the duct tape?”
I hand my mother the duct tape as she
finishes packing the boxes to be sent to the
Philippines. The boxes contain old clothes,
vitamins, crayons, canned food, and old Barbie
dolls that my sister used to play with. As I help my
mother tape some of the boxes, I notice several
photographs in one of them. I look through them
and notice a group photo in my grandfather’s
house. I recognize my brother and me on the right
side of the photo. Next to us were my cousins and
a large group of village children.
“Why are you sending this picture,
Mommy?” I ask.
“Your grandfather wants to frame it in the
house. We never had any pictures with the village
children altogether,” she replies, as she drops a
stack of clothes into a box.
“Can I write something on the back of the
picture then?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I leave the room, run upstairs, and enter
my bedroom. I sit down on my chair and place the
photograph on the desk in front of me. I stare it for
a while. What should I say to them? Would they still
remember me? I hold up the photograph to the
light. Is that Russel? Renz? Why can’t I remember all
of them? I grab my laptop from the shelf above me
and open it. Hoping to remember their names, I
look through each picture that I took back in the
Philippines in 2007.
On August 2007, my family and I flew to
Aklan, the island where my mother grew up, to
visit relatives and to celebrate my middle school
graduation. As the plane approached the island, I
looked out the window. Palm trees were swaying
in the wind. The rivers were gleaming by the sun’s
reflection. The rice fields extended to the hills far
ahead. The plane landed and we climbed down the
staircase to meet my uncle Roger, who was
waiting outside of the small airport. He drove us to
my grandfather’s village, which was an hour away.
As we entered the village, two children, both in
rags and barefooted, approached our van, hoping
to get money. I had nothing to give.
We arrived at my grandfather’s house. It
was pink, the windows were barred, and the door
looked like it was about to fall off. Looking around,
I noticed that it was the only house in the midst of
many huts and farmlands. As the boxes and
luggage were hauled into the house, children
emerged from their huts, staring at my siblings and
me. Some wore baggy clothing over their bony
bodies, while others were wearing ripped shirts
and shorts. I felt like an outcast wearing my blue
jeans, white sneakers, and polo shirt.
My siblings and I gradually adjusted to the
village lifestyle. Electricity was on and off. Chores,
such as laundry, were done manually. There was no
Internet. Some electronics had to be plugged into
voltage convertors in order to work. My younger
brother Chad and I would play tennis on the
concrete field in the back of the house, using
5
bamboo and rope to create a net. We also watched
television or played the Wii in the living room. My
sister Tara, the youngest out of the three of us,
shopped with my mother in a local marketplace or
listened to music on her iPod. The village children,
however, went to school or helped their parents
harvest crops.
Sometimes they observed my siblings and
me, but we didn’t bother to communicate with
them. One day, a little girl approached us.
“Pwede ba akong makipag laro sa iyo?”
My siblings and I looked at each other.
“Mommy!” Tara yelled.
My mother emerged from the kitchen and
Tara asked her to translate. We learned that the
girl’s name was Camelle and that she wanted to
play with us. Eventually, the other children also
asked to play. They understood a little bit of
English, while my siblings and I understood a little
bit of their dialect. We introduced them to the Wii,
tennis, and the Black Eyed Peas, while they showed
us how to climb trees and catch chickens. I learned
their names one by one. Joeven. Steven. Maria.
MaryAnn.Russel. Renz.
The next week, my parents hosted a party in
celebration of my graduation. A pig and several
chickens were roasted. Large baskets of rice were
gathered and cooked. Crabs and fish were bought
from a local market. The village never experienced
such a feast before. Either the fields were not
enough to maintain their families or the market
prices were too expensive. Even though everyone
ate as much as they could, there was still a table
full of food left after the celebration.
“Can you three give out the leftovers to
each family in the village?” my mother asked, as
she stacked the plates to be washed outside.
“Okay,” I replied. “We’ll also give out the
old clothes and toys in the boxes we brought.”
The next day, we visited each hut, giving
the families little trays of pork, fish, and rice. We
also placed a table outside my grandfather’s house
to distribute the toys and clothing to the villagers
that passed by.
“Wow, I think we should have brought
more clothes and toys,” I said, as I handed out the
last piece of clothing left in the boxes.
“Let’s bring more boxes next time!” Tara
said.
For the rest of the week, my siblings and I
explored the entire village, went to the nearby
beach, and visited my relatives outside the village.
The day before we left for the United States, all the
children and some of my cousins visited the house
to give each of my siblings and me a bracelet as a
farewell present. For much of the day, my siblings
and I hung out with them. Soon we came back to
the house for a break.
My cousin Nicole plays her Nintendo DS on
the couch while Liana, Chad, and I watch her. Joeven
plays Glen’s Nintendo DS on the bench beside the
couch. Camelle, Russel, Maria, and Renz sit on chairs
and stools to watch television, while Steven sits on
the floor. My mother takes the opportunity to take a
picture of all of us. She calls in the other children
from outside to be part of it and they sit on the
bench next to Joeven.
“Hey, where’s Tara?” Chad asks.
6
“She is probably sleeping upstairs,” Liana
replies.
“Ibalik mo sa aking yong DS!” Glen says.
Give me back my DS!
“Sandali lang, malapit na ako matapos!”
Joeven replies. One second, I’m almost done!
Renz hides behind Maria while Steven
wraps his bandana around his neck. The children
next to Joeven laugh and chat about what pose to
make.
“Say cheese!”
My mother took the photograph from the
dining room, and everyone immediately went back
to what they were doing before.
My family and I went to the airport the next
day. We checked in our luggage and boarded the
plane. As the plane started to take off, I looked out
the window for a final view of the island. No longer
did I see beauty there, but the fathers chopping
palm trees for their homes, the mothers washing
clothes by the river, and the farmers working on
the fields.
Ten hours later, the plane landed in JFK
airport. We gathered our luggage and called for a
taxi to drive us home. As soon as we arrived, I
placed my luggage in the living room, grabbed the
camera from my mother’s purse, and went
upstairs. I skimmed through the pictures on my
bed until I saw the photo of the village children, my
cousins, my brother, and me. I wish I could stay and
live with them. Will I ever visit them soon? What
more can I do for the islanders? I looked outside my
window and saw nothing but buildings, cars, and
pedestrians. Is this home? Why do I feel homesick? I
sighed, placed my camera next to my pillow, and
went to sleep.
It has been four years since I visited the
Philippines, and each year since then, my mother
has sent one or two boxes to Aklan. Staring at the
photograph still, I realize that I have not thought
of anything to write for them. I don’t even know
how to write in their dialect!
“Geoffrey! Are you done yet?!” my mother
yells.
“One second!” I reply.
I look in my room for something to give
away. I place the photograph on my desk and rush
to my drawers and toy chest. I gather two large
bags full of my old favorite toys and clothes. I grab
the photo from my desk and head downstairs to
the room where the boxes were.
7
EXCERPT FROM: TURNING POINT Alexandra Berlingeri
After your father hit you, after your boyfriend was
gone and the screaming was over, after your
parents retire to their room to decide what was
left to do with you– you pack. You take your
backpack and shove it full of what seems essential
clothing: a pair of jeans, t‐shirt, completely useless
but stylish sweater, sneakers, and all the money
you could find. You call your boyfriend and tell him
to meet you at the elementary school up the
street.
“I’m running away,” you tell him, “I’m
fucking done with these people I can’t do this
anymore.”
He reluctantly agrees, and just as you
hang up you hear your mother coming up the
stairs, you quickly toss the house phone on the
desk, and stash your bag under the layers of covers
sloppily arranged on your bed.
“Give me that phone!” she said. “How
could you do this, have a boy in the house while
we’re out, try to sneak him out the back when we
come home, what’s wrong with you!”
You think to yourself: what’s wrong with
you? How could you stand by and watch dad do
that to me, watch me fall to the ground while he
kept coming, watch me crying and begging for him
to stop. You don’t love me, nobody loves me. I’m
alone. You tell her you’re sorry and touch your
face. She tells you that you deserved it and leaves.
You wait for her to go downstairs and lock
the door before carefully tiptoeing down, past
their bedroom, which sits at the base of the stairs,
the door they confidently informed you they could
hear anything through. You walk to the front door
and tightly grip the handle, conscious of the alarm
that sounds every time the door is opened.
Pushing down and out, you run as fast as you can
out the door and up the driveway, your bag
slamming against your back as you flee down the
street. You don’t stop until you’re out of breath –
they don’t come after you; maybe they didn’t
notice.
Your boyfriend takes you to the bus
station in silence, his hands and feet moving only
mechanically as he stares blankly ahead. Before he
hands you the pre‐paid cell phone the two of you
just bought, he looks at you, “Are you sure you
want to do this?” He asks. “Maybe things will
change; this isn’t the answer to your problems.”
You tell him you’ve waited too long for things to
change, that this was the final straw. He hands you
the phone and asks that you let him know you’re
safe. Tears well up in the corners of his eyes while
pools form in your own and drip slowly down your
face. He changes your name in his phone so no one
will know you’re talking.
As you pull into New York a wave of
nausea comes over you, your adrenaline has worn
out – your head pounds as your mind nervously
wraps itself around what’s happened. You take
comfort in Manhattan’s dense population and
assure yourself they’ll never find you. Leaving Port
Authority, you consider your finances and prepare
for a job search; where will you sleep? Who can you
9
stay with? Who won’t tell your family where you
are? Suddenly a voice calls out your name; it’s one
of your father’s oldest friends. He asks what you’re
doing in the city and you quickly explain your plans
to meet a friend for dinner. After promising to pass
on his regards, and watching his unsuspecting
departure, you scramble back into the station and
look for the next bus out.
Stationed policemen stand at every
corner; you pull your sweater tighter around you as
you sink into your shoes. Thoughts of the Midwest,
California, as far away as you can get scatter about
as you notice the ticket lines boast 15 or more. You
see an automated ticketer for Philadelphia – it’s
not so far, but it’s somewhere you’ve never been,
and where no one would think to look.
You watch as the familiar skyscrapers fade
behind you, replaced by meager attempts at the
one of a kind grandeur found only in New York.
But it’s not the architecture or scenery that makes
this place memorable; it’s the people, their
unprecedented generosity.
A few hours later you find yourself weary
and emotionally drained. Your eyes are red and
your stomach rumbles angrily, having been empty
all day. You see a girl sitting on the side of the
street holding a cardboard sign, “traveling and
broke,” it says. Her short brown hair has been
knotted into dread locks adorned with plastic
beads, smudges of dirt and grime have situated
themselves among various parts of her body, and
rainbow hemp slippers peek out from under a long
green skirt. You touch your dyed red hair and
contemplate your ripped Hollister jeans and
bejeweled wife beater before asking if you can sit
down.
You can’t remember her name anymore,
only that she’s older than you, that when she
finally shared her story – shamelessly sharing detail
for detail of the abuse she so long suffered –
suddenly any experience you had seemed ordinary.
The two of you settle on a stoop a few doors down
from a major theatre, set up your sign and wait for
people to walk by. You think of the homeless in
New York, the ones mothers usher their children
away from, that cops kick off benches and toss out
of stores; you’re one of them now. It’s only a
matter of time before the teenagers who walk by
kick dirt and other objects in your face.
Soon the hat she placed on the ground is
filled with coins, even paper! Your drooping face
lifts as people stop to talk to you, ask where you’re
going and where you’re from, give you the food
they took to go. You immediately gobble the
grilled cheese sandwich; she picks at the fries and
decides it’s time to start walking – on the street,
she said, she never sleeps at night, it’s not safe.
Welcome to bum 101.
Around three you walk by a luxury
apartment building; through the floor to ceiling
lobby windows you see a pair of luxurious brown
leather chairs and swoon. Your aching legs imagine
themselves draped over one of the arms, your
blistered feet dangling off. A middle aged black
man comes to the door, the security guard
working the graveyard shift.
“Do you want to come in and rest?” He
asks. You nod and sit in the chair, she immediately
spreads out and gets comfortable, you sit rigidly
10
unsure of what to do. “Go ahead,” he assures you,
“You go to sleep now. I won’t let no harm come to
ya.” As your eyes flutter closed he speaks again,
“There are some really nice men that live in this
building, maybe they could help you, give you a
place to stay.” Your eyes shut and you fall asleep,
waking every so often to make sure she is still
there; you’re scared she’ll leave you, she’s all you
have. At 5:30 you both wake up, thank the man
and leave. He could have lost his job, you could
have robbed him, he didn’t know who you were
and he didn’t care. About how many other people
can you say the same?
11
AN ACT OF KINDNESS Hillel Burstein
I take a final breath before I throw myself into the
gauntlet. I open the door and run down the steps
to freedom. The old lady shakes her jangling can of
quarters after me as she calls out, “Tzedaka!
Tzedaka!” “Charity! Charity!” But I am already
gone. I made it.
This is a daily occurrence for me. After
prayer each morning, I must pass the old lady
sitting by the entrance to my synagogue, soliciting
every person who passes through those doors.
Bundled up in layers of coats and hats, she
vigilantly keeps her post, shaking her collection can
and dispensing blessings in heavily accented
Hebrew to those that give and a steaming pile of
guilt to those that do not. Guess which category I
fall into.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not a
heartless jerk who hates homeless people because
they “smell,” nor am I one of those social
Darwinist types who think that if someone needs a
handout, it’s because they’re lazy and should get a
job. The reality is I give when I can. I was raised in
an Orthodox Jewish community which strongly
emphasizes charity. Tzedaka is woven into the
fabric of my community, my family, and me.
A synagogue, as a focal point of the
community, is a bastion of giving. It is quite normal
to see a host of odd characters shuffling
methodically through the aisles, hand extended
and head bowed in silent supplication. Every
synagogue has a similar roster of beggars: a
Hasidic man with peyot (side curls) and beard, his
traditional dress lending dignity to an undignified
task; a man who has traveled all the way from
Israel to raise funds for his wife’s surgery or his
daughter’s wedding; more than a few old men
with disheveled clothes and noticeable limps.
Occasionally, a raving man will have to be escorted
outside. Each story on its own is heartbreaking.
Taken as a whole, the parade of suffering begins to
build a rough callous on the soul, until one feels
nothing at all.
Eventually, we start to pretend these
people are not really human, and treat them
accordingly. We create this illusion to shut out
their suffering. How else can one cope? My heart
would break into smaller and smaller pieces every
time I had to contemplate the hardships these
people have to endure. Our solution is to remove
all emotion from the act, to turn the entire process
into a sterile and abstract transaction. The Israeli
man, the old cripple, they all mercifully avoid eye
contact to maintain this illusion. I think they see
our discomfort and know it is in their best interests
to make the deed easier for us. The old woman,
though, is different. She looks right into my eyes,
shattering the illusion and reminding me that she is
a human being. She is a person with thoughts and
feelings and memories and hopes. This makes me
angry. I am angry at her for exposing this lie I tell
myself, selfishly shielding myself from her
suffering. Ultimately, it makes me face the truth. It
is not just about giving these people money. That’s
the easy part. The difficult part, and real test, is
13
giving these people the dignity that every person
deserves.
Today is different. As I reach out to open
the door this time, I am nervous for a very different
reason. She is there staring at me expectantly. I do
not tuck in my chin. I do not keep my eyes laser‐
focused on the ground as I hurry past. Instead, as I
drop a coin in her cup, I look into her eyes and
smile. I say, “Good morning.” She says, “Good
morning.” back. After her usual mumbled
blessings, I tell her to “Have a great day.” And as I
walk away, I imagine I saw her hardened and weary
face soften just a bit and I smile.
14
KHALEEMA Khaleema Cox
It took me seventeen years to realize the
importance of my voice. Throughout my
adolescence, when I complained of not having
something I wanted, my mother would say to me,
“Well, did you ask for it?” One would assume that
my own name, “Khaleema,” which means
“outspoken” in Swahili, would have been an
obvious giveaway long beforehand; however, my
outspokenness was an intrinsic quality that needed
to reveal itself in a special event in order to spark
my self‐reflection. I needed my inner voice to
demonstrate its power through dance moves, my
outer voice, and my writing; I needed it to grab
hold of opportunities that would allow me to soar.
I began studying the language of ballet at
The Dance Theatre of Harlem as a tiny, optimistic
five‐year‐old. There I performed ballet and tap
dance pieces on various stages at annual shows,
until I turned eleven and told my mother I wanted
to explore other dance styles that The Dance
Theatre of Harlem and the Police Athletic League
(the organization I was taking gymnastics classes
at during that time) did not offer. After two to
three months of pleading, I skipped my way into
Perry Studios—a dance school that remains my
favorite to this day. There I learned two new dance
techniques (hip‐hop and step) and I performed on
stage twice by the end of my second year. One day
during my third year, the director of the school,
Denise Perry, stopped me and a group of my peer
dancers after our hip‐hop class had ended to tell us
about an audition opportunity for matriculation
into the Millennium Dance Company, a scholarship
program at Perry Studios. “Do it,” the little voice in
my mind said to me. I auditioned and within the
next week or so received my word of acceptance
from Ms. Perry, which officially made me the
happiest twelve‐year‐old in the world. As a
member of the company, I practiced more ballet,
learned contemporary, modern, modern‐jazz, and
praise dance styles, continued my annual
performances with the school as a whole, and
performed monthly at various venues around
Harlem. This was when I came across another
passion of mine: traveling.
My high school provided its students with
international travel opportunities to Spain,
Mozambique, India, Paris, Thailand, Berlin and
many more places; upon admission, I told myself I
would take advantage of one of these trips. During
my freshman year, I submitted my three‐page
application essay with high hopes to go on the trip
to Seville, Spain (since I speak Spanish). But the
trip was cancelled. It was costly and lacked
applicants. I applied again the next year. Cancelled.
Same reason. Come junior year, I gave up.
At the end of my junior year, the history
department was advertising the Spring Berlin trip
for 2011 seniors. I had doubts that the trip would
actually happen due to my prior experience with
the Seville trips cancellations. I downloaded the
Berlin‐trip application, threw together some
paragraphs in a Word document (knowing they
were not my best work), and brought them to the
15
history teacher who would instruct the Berlin
senior class the next year. Before handing them to
him, I said, “This isn’t what I want to hand in. May I
have tonight to make it better?” Surprisingly, he
said “Bring it to me tomorrow.” My asking him
gave me another chance. I went home and headed
straight to my laptop, on which I constructed an
essay full of my voice, passion, and yearning for
travel. I handed it to the history teacher the next
day with pride. The summer flew by and so did the
first semester of my senior year. On April 12, 2011, I
found myself in a plane soaring over the Atlantic
Ocean, on my way to Berlin.
I was due to perform my self‐
choreographed dance piece at my school’s show
on May 2, a week after my return from Berlin. This
was the second self‐choreographed piece that I
would perform at my school. I had been practicing
it, tweaking it, and teaching it to four other girls
since September 2010—the beginning of my senior
year. Right before the performance, as I listened to
the muffled voices of the audience waiting to enter
the auditorium, I reminisced about when I was a
freshman, and how much I marveled at the
upperclassmen dancers who performed solos in
the school dance show. Now I was seventeen, and
I was about to do the last dance performance of
my high school career. This was crucial. I had
always wanted to perform a solo, and had never
felt such a burning urge to do so than I did that
night. Who would have the guts to ask the music
manager to add a song to the show soundtrack
thirty minutes before the show? I would, and I did.
“If you want something, you should ask for it,
because the worst answer you’ll get is ‘no,’” my
mother would always say to me. My voice granted
me a chance once again—this time not to travel
but to execute a form of self‐expression that I had
never shown to anyone before.
That night, after performing my
choreographed piece with my fellow dancers, the
auditorium went pitch black. I was now alone on
stage. Then the spotlight was on me, and the
music I had given to the manager a half hour
before the show began to play. The audience
watched as I took over the stage; through my
movements I expressed all my love, my pain, and
my affection. My simple conversation with the
music manager before the show initiated my direct
communication with my audience through an
improvised solo. This realization of the power of
my voice, along with my newfound ability to
improvise, is what brought me to tears that night
on stage. Later, many of the audience members
told me they cried during my performance as well.
My inner and outer voices are my
trustworthy companions. With them, I have no
fear. They articulate themselves in my essays—
essays that have brought me from good schools to
great schools. They tackled and discarded my
shyness at a young age. They helped me take on
travel opportunities. My inner voice allows me to
be at peace with myself, and it encourages my
outer voice to make its position known. Whenever
I am in doubt, I tell myself, “If the voice in my head
says I can do it, it shall be done.” The sound of my
name rolling off another’s tongue, a request for
me to speak, a calling for me to bestow my
expression, will be a daily reminder that my voice is
powerful.
16
EXODUS REDUX Victor Didia
My mother's family arrived in America in the year
1972. But it is how her family came to arrive in
America that sets them apart from many other
immigrants. They eventually came to live in the
U.S. because of many unforeseen and, at times,
unfortunate circumstances.
My mother, Brenda Green, was born in
1956 in Cairo, Egypt to an upper‐class Jewish
family. Her father, Vita Aslan Green, was of
Austrian Jewish descent and owned a marble
factory. But the Green family, as a whole, had
owned banks and land in Egypt. Her mother,
Fortune Albouker, also came from an upper‐class
Jewish family that was involved in the building of
railroads in Egypt. A large number of Jews in Egypt
retained ties with the European countries from
which the earlier generations came. In Egypt, Jews
as a whole were never allowed to have Egyptian
citizenship. Egyptians called them apatride, which
literally means apartheid. This is a fact that most
people do not know – that Jews were never
allowed citizenship in the Arab countries in which
they lived and were born.
In 1948, everything changed due to the
birth of Israel. Anti‐Semitism was constantly on the
rise in Egypt and it sometimes led to altercations
between Egyptian Nationalists and Egyptian Jews.
The aftermath of the Suez Crisis led Gamal Abdel
Nasser, the president of Egypt, to declare that all
Jews were Zionist enemies of the state and,
therefore, expulsion ensued. Despite having been
in Egypt for centuries, the Egyptian Jewish
community was uprooted by Nasser in the blink of
an eye. Thousands of Jews in Egypt were forced to
sign declarations that they were “donating” their
property to the state. Only two years old, my
mother along with her family was forced to leave
the country penniless with only the few belongings
that they were able to carry in one suitcase with
them. With all their assets (bank accounts,
property, businesses etc.) seized by the Egyptian
government, they left and headed to France,
where they lived for fifteen years. Today, fewer
than twenty Jews remain in the once thriving and
ancient Egyptian Jewish community that at one
time numbered about 80,000 people and
produced many Jewish scholars among whom was
Maimonides.
Many of the Jews who were expelled from
Egypt left mostly for the Americas, Israel, and
France. My mother's family already possessed
French passports that secured a life for them in
France. My grandfather, Vita, was a foreman in a
British company that manufactured textiles and
was able to make a decent living. Anti‐Semitism
was alive and well in France and sometimes it
escalated into violent actions. For example, my
mother and her sister, Nancy, who was a year
younger, were chased and thrown many times into
bushes by children of the neighborhood calling
them sales juives, meaning dirty Jews. Sometimes
they would even hear derogatory comments by
17
their teachers about Jews. This is quite surprising
since in 1936 France was one of the first countries
to have a Jewish head of state, Léon Blum
In the late 1960's, my mother's older
sister, my Aunt Ondine, married an American in
France and shortly after moved with her husband
to America permanently. She was able to sponsor
her family to bring them to the U.S. My
grandparents were able to come to the U.S. in 1972
with all their assets, and were able to leave freely
without any government interference.
Despite having been in America for the
past forty years, my mother still has very strong
emotional connections to France and its culture.
She still speaks French with members of her family
and constantly draws comparisons between
America and France. This is in contrast to the rest
of my mother's family who seem not to miss
France or have the same attachment as she does.
My only regret is that my mother did not speak
French to me as a child so that I could learn the
language. But I do have one benefit, which is that I
am able to get a French passport since my mother
is a French citizen.
My mother's family was grateful for the
opportunity to stay in the U.S., which gave them
the freedom to thrive and succeed in whatever
direction they chose for themselves.
18
LIBRARY Nicole Fishman
To some people the library is just a quiet place to
study or do research, but to me it is so much more.
It is a bridge to countless worlds, a step away from
reality. People find an escape through a variety of
ways, whether it’s drugs, music, etc. My escape is
picking up a book and entering a new realm
created by another’s mind. Visiting the library
expanded the horizon of my imagination.
On avenue J and east 16th street is the
Brooklyn Public Library where I spent most of my
time. This two‐story sanctuary of books was my
getaway. I came early, eagerly waiting for the
library to open. There was usually a small group of
friends or elderly folk coming to avoid hour long
waits to get on the computer. Unlike them, I was
there to find a new book. As the doors opened, I
immediately stormed to the young adult section, a
small space taking up about four book shelves.
There was no particular way I selected a book. I
would blindly pull book after book and read the
back until something really caught my eye. I would
bring a large tote bag along, ideal for the large
quantities of books that I would check out. There
wasn’t a particular genre that was my favorite. I’d
indiscriminately select books, from girly anime
comics to adventurous thrillers. Every book was a
new adventure waiting to tell its story. When I
read, I felt I was a part of them. I was the shadow
in the background, omnipresent, watching every
move. There didn't seem to be enough hours in the
day for my craving to read. When I woke up
there’d be a book close by, one that I’d fallen
asleep reading.
During one particular instance I practically
camped out at the library. Previously, I had a large
fine for overdue books, approximately a few
hundred dollars. After that, I hadn't bothered
paying the fine back so I was restricted from
checking out materials. But if the books couldn’t
come to me, I’d come to the books. I recall
sneaking in food and scoping out a seat in the very
back, far away from the view of any librarian. I
rushed to the young adult section searching for
books. I stumbled on something that really caught
my eye. It was called Cirque de Freak, a book about
a boy who was turned into a vampire. This was
when my fascination with vampires started, with
the exception of Twilight. I stayed at the library
until closing time and finished the book. By the end
of the book, I was thrilled to learn that it was a
series. There was a sequence of twelve books
throughout which I developed an emotional
connection to the characters. Since I couldn’t
check the books out, I snuck the next book in the
series back home and returned it the next day. The
beginning plot of the books had a simple main
idea, but as I progressed with the reading, the plot
intensified. It was a small disappointment that
none of my friends read the books. At the same
time, I couldn’t convince them to read it because
of the complexity of the plot. Like all good things,
this series came to an end, and I had to move on to
the next read.
19
Throughout my time at the library, I
learned that I had more of a connection with
characters than with people. I didn't quite get
along with classmates at school because they
thought I was quiet and weird. Not that I cared for
them either; I thought that they were obnoxious
and boring. Rather than socializing, I came to
understand people more through reading. Every
time I left the library with new found hope, and
knowledge of people. After some time, I met
people that didn’t fit in with the rest of the generic
people I had previously encountered. Although I
don’t read as religiously as I used to, books helped
me realize I was not alone.
20
THE DARK STONE HOUSES IN THE MIDDLE OF CAMPOS Thomas Rivera Montes
I come from Spain but I live in Switzerland. Does
that make me Spanish or Swiss? This kind of
question is prevalent in today’s society, as the
world has become a melting pot of cultures,
countries and ways of thinking. Edwidge Danticat
is an American citizen who was born in Haiti. In her
book, Brother I’m Dying, she talks about the life she
had in two different places in the world: Bel‐Air and
New York. In the chapter, I’m Not a Policeman, she
shares her trip back to Haiti for the funeral of her
Aunt Denise. As she describes the trip precisely,
she makes the reader feel that she is no more part
of that country she lived in for twelve years. While
reading, I felt compelled to ask myself a question
that I had never thought about before: What is it
to be an immigrant and how do we negotiate
between the influences of two different worlds?
I remember going with my family to Spain
every summer to see my grandparents. It’s the
kind of thing that maybe people here wouldn’t
understand but it’s a true habit that Spanish
families living in Switzerland have. It’s as if they
needed to justify the fact that they were truly
Spanish by going there. I believe that the situation
for immigrant families is pretty hard to handle
because when you leave a country, you do not only
leave it physically but also mentally, losing all the
memories, the culture and missing all the political
and social changes that may occur. “It’s
heartbreaking,” is what my parents always used to
say when they talked about how they left that
small town in Spain with its beautiful bright green
“campos” (fields) and the small dark stone houses.
But they always tell me that they couldn’t go back
there now to live because everything has changed,
and they did too. This is exactly what happens to
Edwidge when she goes back to her country, as
seen when she describes “the faces of people she
barely recognizes.” The implicit meaning here is
that she doesn’t recognize the life she had there
only a few years ago.
I often remember my great‐grandmother
from Spain who was getting sicker every time I
went to see her in summer. I was looking at her,
always closer to death and always losing more of
her memory. In the end, we couldn’t recognize her
and she couldn’t see us because of her Alzheimers.
I felt like our immigrant status and the fact that we
were far from the rest of the family were more
obvious with her than with anyone else, as her
memory loss was there as a proof of our absence.
The fact that we were not there every day to
remind her of our presence was a thing we
couldn’t change. It was as if, through her illness,
we were facing our condition. I’m sure this was a
hard situation to accept for her granddaughter
who had been raised by her, my own mother.
This is not only about the recognition of
people but rather the number of things you can’t
relate to anymore. Sometimes my parents used to
tell me they didn’t remember the ocean, its
intensive salty smell coming through a fresh air and
its dark color that contrasts with the bright and
sunny sky.
21
I still think that the worst for them is to
not recognize their culture. The problem is that,
through the years, the definition of what it is to be
Spanish has changed, but they still seem attached
to an old image of Spain that they had when they
left. The best example of this disjunction is music:
Every Spanish person living in Switzerland listens
to old records from the 80s while in Spain, people
listen to modern songs, which illustrates the clear
contrast between two visions of one country. The
difficulty for immigrants is that when they go back
there on vacation, they feel that they are no more
part of it and people don’t see them anymore as
Spanish. They have so much adapted to their new
environment that they have lost their identity in
the country they used to live in. They feel lost
because people there give them an image they
don’t want to accept.
As I feel that my parents love their new
lives, I just ask myself what is the reason for them
to always talk about their origins and describe
themselves as Spanish if they don’t want to go
back to their country and don’t feel they are part
of that world. I believe that they have become like
the Swiss. I mean, we eat early like Swiss people,
most of our friends are Swiss, and we speak French
at home. All these details that could seem
unimportant are for me a true step in the direction
of cultural adaptation.
As an immigrant, the hard truth is that you
are in front of a choice: stay as you are, not
adapting to your new environment so that you are
sure you maintain your identity, or change to be
more comfortable in your daily life, but accept the
fact that these changes can have consequences on
your past history. Even when making the second
choice, people don’t accept the changes that
happen. Most of my Spanish friends tell me that
they live in Switzerland just as in Spain and that
they have the same kind of life. The truth is that I
don’t believe it. They say this because they don’t
want to explain that they have evolved. The word
evolution is a bad word for them because they
relate it to oblivion. They didn’t go to a new
country for personal growth but mostly for
financial or practical improvement. They still love
their country and they feel like citizens of it.
Gloria Anzaldua’s novel Borderlands, which
explores living in the U.S. as a Mexican woman,
addresses these issues well. As she talks about the
Chicana position of being in a place governed by
the Americans, she declares her love of her
country, asserting that Chicanos believe that
“being Mexican has nothing to do with which
country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of
soul—not one of mind, not one of citizenship.”
This passage reflects the complexity of what it is to
love a country you left. It’s something you can’t
understand if you are not an immigrant, and maybe
this is the reason why people in Spain don‘t see my
family as Spanish, because they don‘t understand
the true affection we still have for Spain.
The fear of not being seen as from your
home country is very common. In Brother I’m
Dying, for instance, when Edwidge shows her
foreigner’s custom forms to a Haitian officer,
revealing her American status, she says that she
and her father felt “traitorous” while giving over
these forms. The guilty feelings immigrants have
for leaving is, I think, a secret that immigrants
22
don’t want to reveal because most of them are too
proud. But what type of guilt exactly? For my
mother, it is certainly related to the fact that she
left her ill grandmother. For Edwidge, it must be
for escaping a poor and politically unstable country
where her Uncle, Aunt and other members of her
family stayed. For Gloria Anzaldua, there’s no guilt
because she has always lived in what she calls the
Chicano’s country, a place that Americans occupy
but that still is for Chicanos, their land.
In my explanation of the immigrant
condition and guilt, I have learnt that everybody is
different and needs to be seen as an individual
person. Seyla Benhabib in her essay The
Generalized and the Concrete Other, explains to the
reader how it is important that we “view each and
every rational being as an individual with a
concrete history, identity and affective‐emotional
constitution” (159). I understand better why these
Spanish families of Switzerland never go on
vacation to places other than Spain. I know now
why they eat Spanish food and support Spain’s
soccer team. These small acts constitute a private
justification for membership in their distant Nation;
they do these things because they doubt their
legitimacy as “both” and because of their guilt.
They have a personal pain that they try to forget.
Is Edwidge Danticat’s book not only a way
to share her story but also a personal therapy to
get rid of her own guilt? Isn’t she justifying her
nationality? These are only suppositions, but after
having read the passage and the violence of the
word “traitorous” that she uses, I feel like, in
Danticat’s mind, there is a true scar that has been
left by the immigration process. This is what we
could call an immigration complex.
My parents have become too Swiss for
their friends in Spain, but they still are Spanish in
Switzerland, which makes them everything and
nothing at the same time, rejected wherever they
go. Between the guilt feeling and the identification
problem, the status of the excluded is more
complex than anything else, “una herrida abierta”
as Anzaldua would call it.
As an optimistic person, I think that
immigrants can go through this complex and
accept that they are not only part of one group but
that it’s more complicated and this is what makes
it beautiful. As soon as you see yourself as a
combination of ideas, origins and traditions, it
makes your life easier and all this pain disappears.
Edwidge Danticat herself, who talks about
her own experience of leaving Haiti, gives a great
lesson about how she has been able to accept this
status of immigrant by starting a new life in Miami
and still being connected to Haiti through her
Uncle Joseph. I think that in this memoir, she really
shows the fact that even if she has become
American in an administrative way, she is Haitian in
her heart—just as Anzaldua feels Mexican. Her
book is a declaration of love to Bel‐Air. In
conclusion, identity is not about what passport you
have or people telling you who you are. It’s about
being whom you want to be part of and how you
want people to see you. Everybody is different and
has to be analyzed individually.
My name is Thomas Rivera Montes. I’m
Spanish but I was born in Switzerland and I’m
proud of it.
23
HARK THE HERALD Lola Sichrovsky
Denbigh, North Wales was a sweet little town. A
school resided down the hill from Woolworths
though, and this was not so sweet at all. It was
Howell’s School. At Howell’s School, “Personal
development takes place in happy, fulfilling yet
disciplined surroundings, through work, play and
social activities.” Or at least that’s what it said in
the pamphlet. It was my first year at a new school
in a completely different continent than the one in
which my parents were waiting for my phone calls.
At first, I made wonderful friends and got used to
this new environment but a big challenge was
coming up: my first Christmas at a Christian school,
being the only Jew in Denbigh.
“Girls, there will be hymn singing practice in the
great hall instead of break today, and I expect to
see you all there,” Miss Lea barked at us in the
breakfast room right after she announced who
was cleaning the tables because of naughty
behavior the night before. Miss Lea was a bubbly
and plump middle‐aged woman that resembled
Miss Piggy from the Muppets, and was very hard
on me.
“Hello Miss Hodgeson. I’m so sorry to disturb
you, but I need to speak to you about one of the
girls…” This phrase was the first sign of the misery
that girl would soon experience.
Miss Hodgeson was the school’s Head. She was
a beast. When her crippled fingers pointed at you,
they looked as if they became ten times longer.
Her mushroom haircut made her big nose bulge
out, and her obnoxiously musky scent could be
detected from oh so far away. But her voice was
the worst part. It was very high pitched and shrill,
no matter what she was speaking about.
After breakfast, I begged Miss Lea to speak to
the headmistress and tell her that I would not be
able to participate in the singing because of my
religion. She refused and assured me that
someone was going to keep an eye on me and
report my contribution back to her. I felt my heart
swell and my eyes moisten as her words reached
my ears.
“This can’t be happening. I need to call my
parents,” I nervously said to myself but I soon
found out that request was denied as well.
I scurried to the school building, hoping to get
to my first class on time. What should have been
only a few hours between my first lesson and
lunchtime felt like months. My mind was blocked
with anxiety and confusion. Although it was not a
big deal to even my closest friends, it was a big
deal to me. Why were my beliefs and customs not
valid to these ignorant people? The more I thought
about it, the more mortified I became.
I got to the dining hall and all of a sudden I felt
different. At the enormous wooden tables, I lost
the sense of belonging I’d worked so hard to
attain. It was shocking to me that practicing
Judaism and not feeling comfortable singing
Christian hymns made me so emotional. I was
never religious back home, and the only time I liked
going to the synagogue was during the annual
Purim party because I got to dress up and eat junk
25
food with a purpose. Although I wasn’t quite sure
what that purpose was, my usually serious Rabbi
would dance and laugh with joy, so I knew it was a
great one.
“Everyone report to the Great Hall immediately
for practice,” my evil headmistress screeched with
her unbearable voice.
I made sure to sit in the last row of the Great
Hall. I could not hear what the teacher was
instructing because of the shamefully fast pulse I
could feel traveling through my head into my
throat. I did not want to sing.
“HARK THE HERALD ANGELS SING” everyone’s
voices merged together to make the least angelic
sound I had ever heard.
“That was awful! Again! From the start girls…”
A teacher spotted me not singing and she
began to walk towards me. I panicked. These
people were so cold. I was so scared of
punishment. Every inch she got closer to me, I
squirmed in my chair more and more. Wishing that
I could stand up for my rights and respond to the
horrific way I was being treated, I just sat there and
hoped she wouldn’t shout at me. I was a coward.
“Lola if you don’t start singing I will have no
choice but to report you to the head!”
“Why am I such a damn coward!?” I said to
myself fuming in the inside but on the outside I
looked up shyly and politely responded “yes Miss”.
I looked down at the tiny print in my hymn book
and prepared myself. Before I knew it the piano
started playing, and what I thought was the cue to
start the song came.
“HAAARRRKKKKKKKKKK” I squealed in my
terrible singing voice.
That was the moment when I realized I started
at the wrong time, and no one else was singing
with me. It was humiliating. All I could feel was the
hot blood rushing to my head and face. I was
blushing and tears were about to fall from my
eyes. Without a word, I got up and tried to walk
out of the hall as calmly as possible because the
head mistress and Miss Lea did not deserve to see
my tears.
I sat in the garden and wept. Embarrassed by
what I had done, I made a promise to myself. I had
to be myself and stand up for my own beliefs, even
if it was going to lead to penalty. The feeling of
getting screamed at or receiving a miniscule
punishment does not even compare to how I felt
because of doing nothing.
26
SPLINTERING MEMORIES Monika Walker
I have heard that memories do not exist in the
brain in their full form; that recollection is literally a
process of collecting the shards of sight, sense and
sound littered throughout the mind. Each event is
fragmented like broken glass, then glued back
together with nothing but imagination in some
vague central cortex. Somehow that explanation
for the splintering array of memories from that
perfect weekend in the spring of 2010 sounds
much better than my original one, which involved
an awful lot of something that rhymes an awful lot
with “shmalcohol,” and several hoarse, sputtering
visits from my good friend Mary Jane. There is no
continuum of time for those vague 72 hours; only a
splattering of random sequences, fluttering
through my brain in a sort of tattered limp.
I know we arrived in Pennsylvania hours
and hours before Pittsburgh sprang upon us but I
couldn’t tell you why a 9 hour drive took 14 hours
in journey. At the time, I felt the universe unfolding
and expanding around us, as if we were driving
along a huge intake of breath, not black asphalt
cut between trees. I turn to express this to Nic and
in response to my intangible remark now hovering
in the air between us, he continues his retelling of
a Japanese fable in a hushed and serious tone. I
only half listen as his story darts in and out of my
dark blue Scion with the wind.
A loud “whoop!” reverberates throughout
the cube‐shaped metal frame; a war‐cry, primal in
its exaltation. I instinctively turn to the backseat.
My eyes greet those of a madman, on the verge of
a maniac cackle, holding up a lit joint in front of my
nose. “It is done. And it is perfect,” Malachai says,
grin stretching from one Ray Ban lens to the other.
My attention rests, curiously and
suddenly, on a dark silhouette of towering metal
and machinery in the distance. My heart catches at
the seam. “Pull over...” I breathe, and Malachai
nods his head in excited agreement, echoing my
whisper with shouts.
The town which cradles the abandoned
factory stares at us with forlorn eyes in broken
shop windows and leering bars. There is practically
nothing, save a strip of dilapidated houses and
storefronts, which dwindle and disintegrate in the
distance from the doors to the old factory. The
three of us stand in reverence at the rusty cast iron
gates. Time has left gaps and holes for intruders to
leak in, and we do so. We leave our prayers to
America's archaic paganism, to the once mighty
God of Industry, in the form of a ceremonial
silence. Then, in a haphazard dash for the car that
is fueled equally by restlessness and a smoldering,
inexplicable fear, we take our leave.
It is somewhere between seconds or years
later that we finally fall into the clutches of
Pittsburgh. The morning chill marks our late hour
as we fumble my scion into a space in a dark,
crowded parking lot. Deniz, our host, directs us to
her room and the cold, dew hour of night folds me
into spare sheets and a weary rest.
At the next day’s dusk, we find ourselves
bussed out to the other fringe of the city, arriving
27
at an old church building. The monument, which
still harbors a darkly painted cross, had once
housed God but was now crawling with the
accursed, the drunk, and the twenty‐somethings. I
stand in awe in front of the bell‐tower and find
myself now in homage to America's True Industry;
Sex, Booze and Loud Music. We are asked to
display our ID's at the door in what seemed to be a
preventative measure. As we are flung through the
threshold and into the mass, however, I realize
that this ritual is in truth a final reminder that we
have any identities to present at all, before our
minds are swallowed into the collective churn of
bodies.
Hours later, the crowd spits us into a
basement, where bottles upon bottles grin at us
from shelves on the wall, taunting us from behind
an iron cage. With a defiant glee aimed at the
establishment, I thrust my too‐skinny arm between
the bars and pluck the alcohol like fresh fruit. We
emerge from the once‐holy grounds gasping for
smoke like air, bundling our prizes to our chests.
Practically howling with joy, we share a cigarette
like a peace pipe. Soon, we are drawn into
conversation with the neighboring group of
smokers, and our trail of communication leads us
to an astonishing conclusion; each group of four
possessed a member with the same name. We are
shocked, and I peer at the parallel Monika with a
bizarre moment of both self‐awareness and
anonymity. Never had the universe felt so
Metaphysical. This was destiny. All eight of us stare
at our mirrored selves, searching for similarities
and inconsistencies, all the while flitting between
hysterical laughter and a deep disquiet.
Our captivation is loudly cut short by a
voice at the altar, informing us of the cameras
buried in the cellar walls that have seen and
acknowledged the identities we thought we had
lost. We quickly abandon our stolen stock and flee,
procuring a ride to our homestead from a shy,
slightly tipsy girl in a mini‐van.
Dawn greets us upon our return with
outstretched fingers, beckoning us towards the
road. Bidding our host farewell, Nic, Malachai and I
slip away in the dead of hangover, cooling our
growing headaches with smoke. As my mind cools
and the leftover froth simmers down, I wonder at
my own youth, the rising sun lifting my
consciousness with her. For once, nothing is
“happy” or “sad” or written in such black and
white terms; our drive in and out of Pittsburgh has
been nothing but miscellaneous and inexplicable.
Content without a connotation, the rest of the ride
falls from my memory in drips, scattering
completely in ripples as my car nears home.
28
PART TWO "MWEN LA. RIGHT HERE."
(Danticat 269)
Pandora Opens the Box, 2009, Su Blackwell
Sarah Stone • Nisar Chaudhry • Devin Dinsmore Jessica Lima • Brieanna Ngui • Brian Mo
Tahreem Riaz • Allen Yevtukhov• Samantha Dannenberg
29
THE PERFECT STORM Sarah Stone
The days leading up to the hurricane I paid little
attention to the news. There is always something
happening, always something tragic, and always
very far from where I am in both the literal and
psychological sense. And if tragedy is not the
theme of the evening news, it is something
frivolous such as what my pillows say about my
personality. Thank you Yahoo, I’m a “bohemian.”
In fact so many of the times that I follow the news,
it seems as if it were all a large‐scale reality show.
The world continues to premier disasters on a
regular scheduled programming. So reading about
Hurricane Irene and her “churning winds,” I was
not impressed. In fact, I regarded the whole event
in a nonchalant manner as each member of my
family called to tell me their respective views of
the hurricane and what I should/would do about it.
The truth is, though, that I was secretly
excited. I am a skeptical optimist. I say it won’t
happen but secretly dream it will. And in my mind, I
was finally part of the action. I was one of those
poor souls in New York, preparing as Hurricane
Irene “barreled North up the Eastern Seaboard.”
As in all my favorite disaster films, Dante’s Point
and Day After Tomorrow, I was a character in
something exciting. It is a horrible thought, but
part of me craves these life‐threatening scenarios. I
am such a bored, cautious person that I actually
want disasters to make my life more interesting.
This is often why I will spontaneously force myself
to do stupid things like skateboarding down a hill.
This is a stupid thing to do because I don’t know
how to skateboard and I do these stupid things to
remind myself that I am still alive, to remind myself
what it feels like to be alive. This feeling is
commonly known as an adrenaline rush but I
ignore that finer scientific anecdote.
So this hurricane, in all its glorious bane,
was on its way and I half dismissed it because I
distrusted the news, and half anticipated it with a
disturbing impatience. I knew I was nowhere in the
evacuation zones, that the worst I’d get would be
possible flooding, a loss of electricity, and
according to the weather reports, winds rushing in
at sixty‐two miles per hour. But my roommate
informed me that sixty‐two mile per hour winds
were strong enough to knock me over, and this
was something to hesitantly look forward to. I
wanted to brace myself against a force stronger
than I was, to get sopping wet and caught in a
falling building. I would survive, of course, but only
after being rescued by some darling in a uniform. I
wanted a storm, a real storm but I still retained my
realistic notion of what would likely occur. Some
lousy weather, and nothing too horrific.
Nevertheless, my brother called me early Friday
morning and asked what I was going to do. He too
had fallen into the trap of the world news reality
show. “To prepare” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”
I’d answer. “I’m not in the evacuation zone.”
My father called later that afternoon. He
told me to board up my windows. “You don’t want
the glass to blow in on you.” He also told me to fill
bags with water and put them in the freezer. They
31
would not only keep my fridge cool if I lost power
but I could drink from them if in the midst of
flooding my pipes broke down. Shortly afterward,
my mother called to tell me about the clever idea
my father had come up with. “Sarah, your father
had such a clever idea! Freeze bags of water.” My
parents, like everyone outside of the hurricane‐
promised land, were wondering what would
happen next, wishing they could be a part of it all.
This episode had its selected cast and everyone
else was left to wonder what was happening
behind the scenes, reading the news articles of a
show’s synopsis.
As Friday ended and Saturday began, I
spent more time by the windows. I was a princess
awaiting her prince, and a deranged lady impatient
for her disaster. But there was sun and there were
birds and I told myself that this was just the calm
before the storm. That soon enough these little
blue jays would get sucked into roiling black clouds
and the sun would disappear into a black abyss.
But the damn birds were obstinate and it seemed
this storm would never come. Yet the news
continued to flash its warnings. Like a preview for
House, drama reigned in cyberspace as the
hundreds of articles gave credence to
exaggeration. The sun was shining and I was being
told of an apocalypse. Thankfully, by Saturday
night the winds had started to increase‐‐‐winds so
powerful they knocked over my empty carton of
cigarettes.
Around four in the morning, I had the idea
to go on the roof with hopes of maybe seeing
some fifty‐foot waves with sharks and torched oil
spills. According to what I read online, this was not
far‐fetched. Instead there was just mist and I
couldn’t see much farther than the extent of the
building I stood on. As one can imagine, I was
pissed. Here the news had promised me a
hurricane, and my friend’s bleating belief further
convinced me that perhaps it would happen but
then this, this ridiculous lack thereof. There was
more lightning and thunder during the rest of the
year than this news‐wide weather report and the
branches littered on Eastern Parkway did little to
appease me. Sunday, too, which had promised the
sixty‐two mile per hour winds and came with
worried phone calls from family and relatives, was
a disappointment. New York had not fallen into an
“eerie silence” as one newspaper claimed and the
only real issue was the dysfunctional subway
system.
Perhaps I should have gone to Manhattan
for the weekend, truly placed myself in a danger
zone. There were enough photographs popping up
of taxis driving through flooded streets to get me
interested. Manhattan, so close to it all, and yet
without a functioning subway, so very, very far
from me. Like everything before it, I was nowhere
near the danger. No winds or flooding or power
outages, just large blocks of ice shaped like Ziploc
bags and a staggering conviction that I was right all
along. The news truly is just another reality show,
scripted to fit but ultimately false.
32
EXPOSURE Nisar Chaudhry
In a small village in Pakistan, where I was born,
people led simple lives. Everyone had the simplest
of jobs and everyday tasks just to get by and
nothing less and nothing more. Everyone in the
village knew everyone else to the extent of
everyday personal activities and no one minded
this intrusion of privacy. Maybe it was because of
the relations that everyone had forged with each
other and relied on for all kinds of support.
I still have many close cousins and other
relatives living there today. Maybe that’s why I
think about it so much. I have seen many things
there and experienced a lot‐‐‐ for example, I broke
my arm there and went down to the bottom of a
canal. Thinking back on all this, one notices how
easy life can be in developed countries such as the
United States and those in Europe. People in these
countries aren’t shown the real hardships of under
developed countries because it is deemed too
graphic and will taint their “perfect” lives.
Having seen many people go days without
proper food and water and live without any
utilities, it becomes easy for me to say I have seen
a lot in life. It is not easy to forget any of this but
you have to if you are to move on in life and do
something to help those in need. Whenever I think
of such people, I try not to forget the animals. You
can only imagine what state some animals would
be in if people are starving. Helping people is
something I always look forward to but when I see
animals in pain and suffering I feel they are in more
need of my help.
In the winter of some year between 1995
and 1999, I witnessed an animal being slaughtered
from just a few feet away. It is traditional in many
parts of the world to slaughter an animal of your
choice and divide the meat among the poor and
those most in need. Many people reading this in
the more western countries would say this is
animal cruelty and abuse but their perfect little
lives have never been exposed to the severe
extent of poverty seen in many countries. I would
say the same, considering I grew up in the U.S. but
then again I, as well as others, have to understand
that this is the only time of the year hundreds of
thousands of families receive food to last a couple
of days. This also brings psychology into play to
explain the lack of compassion for these animals.
People under certain situations will go as far as to
kill a family member in order to survive; then how
can the lack of compassion for animals in these
people ever be questioned? Fortunately the
following event took place out of the so‐called
civilized and developed countries, so there was no
one there in protest holding posters trying to be a
self‐proclaimed hero.
Now onto the slaughter of the animal, I
remember walking to a nearby town to see a lamb
or goat of some sort being taken to be slaughtered
and many people had gathered to see and get their
share of the meat. First, the butcher prepared the
animal for slaughter by washing it thoroughly to
prevent the meat from getting dirty. Then he tied
the goat upside down to begin the process. This is
33
the part where I wanted to jump in and save the
animal but I was maybe 5 or 6 years old and what
toddler in the world can help stop such a thing?
At this point, people are patiently waiting
to see it all go down and the only sound being
heard was that of the animal pleading for help,
knowing of its impending doom. Now the butcher
grabbed a knife and took a step towards the tied
up and helpless animal crying for mercy. As for the
next part, we can all imagine what it must be: a
slice to the throat, squirts of blood from the aorta
and the bloody animal is unable to scream or
breathe, just struggling uncontrollably to get
loose, to somehow stop the suffering and wake up
from this nightmare. However the suffering, pain,
and death of this cute and furry animal were
equivalent to food for many families, for many
humans, for days.
After a couple of minutes of the animal
twitching uncontrollably, he finally stopped and
the butcher began to skin and cut the animal apart.
Even though I hated seeing the death itself and
couldn’t stand such cruelty, I somehow managed
to stay and see the distribution of the meat. First,
the butcher skinned the animal, careful not to cut
any meat off in the process. Then began the part
everyone was waiting for. I saw a line of people
with utensils of various sizes to collect their share
of the meat. Soon, people began to walk away
with multiple steak‐sized pieces of meat with
smiles on their faces. I, just a curious child at the
time not knowing better, questioned those smiles
following the gruesome act.
Afterwards, I thought about what I had
seen for days on end, not able to come to a
plausible conclusion to satisfy my curiosity. But
being just a 5 or maybe 6 year old at the time, I
moved on just as any innocent child would. Maybe
a new toy or game had taken my attention away
from the slaughter but I was thankful I didn’t think
about it for a long time, even though it was
somewhere deep in the banks of my memories.
Soon after I came to U.S., and despite visiting my
village in Pakistan in 2003, luckily, I didn’t go to the
town that had planted this memory in the first
place. Today, I can satisfy my childhood curiosity
of the event with a better understanding of why all
this took place and hope, seeing how I have
become accustomed and streamlined into this
society, my perfect little life never has to be
exposed to such an act again.
34
NOT GRAY EITHER Devin Dinsmore
I slowly walked towards the casket across the
dimly lit room, maintaining a typical ten‐year‐old’s
image of manliness in my head. “Don’t cry,” I
thought to myself, “just keep your head up.” The
room smelled old and uncomfortable, fitting for a
funeral home. I tried my best to keep my
composure as I passed by several weeping mystery
relatives. The room gave off an aura of miserable
awkwardness as I fought through the fog of grief
that seemed to cover every facet of the home, and
soon I was standing at the coffin. The coffin area
gave off a much different feel than the rest of the
room. There was a silence that rested around the
coffin that was nearly sacrilegious, but that also
seemed to echo the loss of the man lying in front
of me. There was a silence caused by this death,
and it was almost tangible.
Then finally, as I forced myself to look, I
saw him lying there: my uncle, Lou, lying
motionless, with a mock peaceful grin plastered
onto his face. He looked cold, and it sent shivers
down my spine. What I thought at that moment I
can’t precisely explain. It was something like when
you get the wind knocked out of you, except it was
in my head. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was the
feeling of something leaving forever.
This rush, this feeling being sucked out of
me, was one of the last doors being shut on my
true childhood. It is a moment that every man and
woman can understand, the end of true innocence
and the transition into the pre‐pubescent mindset.
Death was of course something that I grasped as a
concept, but it was not something that I
understood from personal experience myself. I
was quite literally staring in the face death for the
first time in my life. It was not, as one would think,
terrifying, but rather it was devastating. It wasn’t
only that I was for the first time losing someone
who had been more than a mere acquaintance; it
was also the realization that comes with
understanding of death. In one moment, all these
emotions hit me like a tidal wave, and then I could
feel the cold warmth of tears running down my
face. So much for being a “man.” I bawled. The
tears streamed down my face, the ashes of my
childhood. I could feel every childish hope being
ripped out of me, and as I finally rose to leave my
uncle’s body, everything seemed much grayer than
it had before.
I drifted towards the closest seat,
pretending to take solace in the relatives crowding
around me to assure me that it would be OK.
“What is this?” I thought. “This isn’t what they
taught me in school. This isn’t how things are
supposed to be. People aren’t supposed to feel
this way.” Grief, grief for my loss. “Is this what it
feels like to grow up?” “Is this what comes with
adulthood? “Why!?” All these questions were only
secondary to the feeling that was building up in my
heart. Emptiness. Complete helplessness. It was
unlike any experience that I had had up to that
point.
The funeral directly followed the wake,
and my mind clawed from the helplessness I felt
35
from seeing my uncle to another, much different
thought as I sat through the funeral mass. Religion.
“Why would this so called ‘God’ do this to people?
Why cause so much pain to a people you’re
supposed to love?” These thoughts danced around
my head, not setting off a revolution, for I had
already begun to have my doubts about religion,
but adding fuel to the fire. The sorrow turned into
anger, and it was an anger that wanted to drive my
thoughts back to how they had been. The seats of
the church were much like my thoughts at that
time: hard and uncomfortable. The remainder of
the funeral is very much a blur to me, but those
few moments in which I walked up to my uncle’s
casket and viewed his body have always stuck out
to me.
After the funeral I went on living my life as
a normal fifth grade kid again, but things were
never quite the same. Suddenly things that had
seemed so clear, things that were to me
undeniable truths, became topics of debate in my
head. Suddenly things weren’t so black and white.
The introduction to death changed everything.
People who had always seemed invincible objects
in my life were suddenly vulnerable human beings.
They were all vulnerable to death. I was vulnerable
to death! “Grandma is really getting up there,” was
a thought that crossed my mind. Things weren’t
simple anymore. Everything held gravity. I soon
had to begin to come to grips with my own
mortality, something that I had never really even
considered before.
These thoughts plagued my brain for
months. They are still questions that are
consistently running through my head, but at the
time they were hostile intruders, and a threat to
my peace of mind. But finally something
happened, and a beam of dim sunlight broke
through the darkness. “What about my aunt? She
must be having such a hard time with this too,
much worse than me.” It clicked. There were other
people out there, people who were close to me,
who were dealing with this very same thing. It
wasn’t exactly a wonderful notion, but the fact
was that death is linked with life. This was
something that everyone had to deal with, and I
recognized it, at least somewhat, at that moment.
Someday I was going to die, and there was nothing
I could to about it. I couldn’t spend all my time
dwelling on death, because it wasn’t something
that I could fight. It is the very antithesis of life, and
yet it is what gives life value. These ideas did not
cross my mind exactly this way at the age of ten,
but I could feel the significance of what I was
thinking and beginning to understand, and it began
to lift the shroud of confusion and sadness that
had been weighing down my mind. Everything was
going to be, and I had my whole life to figure that
out. Sure everything wasn’t black and white, but it
wasn’t all gray either.
36
LAST GOODBYES UNDER SULLEN SKIES Jessica Lima
I was just an unsuspecting youth, lollygagging and
multiplying numbers like the rest of my peers when
death busted into my life. At the time, the entire
concept of death was a foreign riddle, encased in
an impenetrable box of diorite. The only thing I
could distinguish was that death put everyone in a
state of deep despair. So when the time came, I
followed along, not asking a single question. I only
wore the look of misery upon my face because
everyone else did too.
I woke up, that early morning, to a grayish
cottonball sky. To the west, a looming storm
approached, ready as ever to drench us in all its
gloom. My mother drove to the funeral home.
Everything was quiet. When I entered through the
home's heavy, Maplewood doors, my eyes and
feet followed the thin brick‐red carpet. The carpet
had no patterns except for the edges. It was just
like us: empty and bland inside, just shells of flesh. I
glanced up to look at the intimidating stained glass
doors before me. My mother entered first and I
followed close behind.
Inside were rows of wooden chairs
occupying the center of the large room. The only
color that existed among the pillars of black
dresses and suits were the various kinds of flower
arrangements. Sympathy flowers were scattered
randomly about the room. Empty, uncomfortable‐
looking couches were placed along the side walls,
each one separated by pillars. The walls. The walls
were an insipid, emotionless color, one that
corresponded to the carpet on the ground.
I became slightly nervous, for no apparent
reason, and rightfully fearful about what was at
the far end of the room, so I purposely avoided it.
Although I'd never been to a funeral before, I knew
that there must have been a cold, lifeless body
among the people crowded at the far end of the
room. I stayed close to my mom as she expressed
her condolences to some grieving family members.
I saw my father crying, letting go of pain in the
form of tiny little crystal droplets which were
flowing freely from his eyes. My grandmother was
sobbing even harder, letting out the agonizing
emotions that had consumed her since she first
found out her son was dead. As much as I wanted
to comfort them, I couldn't bring myself to speak
to them. My desert‐dry throat failed to make even
the slightest sound; my words would've been
useless anyways.
Then I saw it‐‐‐the casket, the open box
where the body of my uncle lay upon plush, ivory
cushioning. The casket's color was the same bluish
grey hue as the storm clouds blanketing the sky
that day. I felt like I was in a bad horror movie.
Maybe my uncle would just spring up and step out
of the coffin? But all hope was lost. The body
continued to lie there. I half‐expected to be scared
out of my wits, but surprisingly, I was not. My
uncle was just there. And I was just there. I
scrutinized his mortal remains even closer, perhaps
in some crazy attempt to satisfy a primordial,
sinister curiosity of mine. Closer and closer I
inched, reaching a finger out towards….his…skin –
37
but my mother backed me away. She motioned for
me to kneel down on the pew in front of the
casket and then I whispered a last heartfelt prayer
for my uncle, the cancer victim. My forehead
rested on my warm, folded hands, and I slowly
peered up, eyeing my uncle from a whole different
vantage point. He looked as though he were
asleep, lost in an all too familiar dream, one of
those dreams you never really want to wake up
from. And he actually didn't wake up. Aren't
people always wishing they never had to wake up
from those kinds of pleasant dreams?
My uncle's skin was sort of pulled back,
like layers upon layers of clear plastic saran wrap;
stretched, stiff, and hard looking. This is how I
came to realize that he’d never move again. All life
and motion and time had departed from his body. I
felt a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my
stomach, the horrible realization occurred to me.
Then I could feel it. The salty moisture forming in
my tear ducts, stinging my eyes. The burn. I quickly
closed them, but not in time to stop the vulnerable
tear that quivered down the slope of my cheek. As
I kneeled before the casket in still time, in a
darkness fashioned by my own mind, I realized that
death is certain and life is not. That was the real
tragedy and I began to ponder the regrets my
uncle might've had. Was he happy with his life? Did
he feel he had squandered away precious time? I
continued to fight the tears. My heart pounded
louder and my body began to shiver. After a
moment I regained my composure.
Then I began staring at the carpet again. It
was dull yet glaring. It had this sort of unique,
ethnic zigzag pattern around the borders it. The
pattern was a distinctive feature, what saved the
carpet from being completely boring. That’s what
everyone would see if they took the time to pay
attention to it. The border made the carpet okay,
in some alien way.
I stood up with my mom and wrapped my
arms around her, refusing to ever let go. We spent
the rest of the wake together; death can really
force you to appreciate time spent with those you
love.
I watched my father spend the entire
wake standing in the same spot by a cross‐shaped
flower arrangement near the stained glass doors.
He stood motionless except for when people
walked up to him to tell him how sorry they were
and how very unfortunate it all was. I had never
seen my dad act so coldly and indifferently
towards people, but I could sympathize with him.
I’d never seen his eyes so puffy like sheep’s wool.
Later that day, the room began to empty
out. I walked out with everyone, past the doors,
not questioning where everyone was going, but
instead following the carpet’s pattern, consumed
by its meaningful meaninglessness. Outside, water
droplets fell through the air and chaos exploded;
people ran in every different direction, rushing
towards their cars. My mother and I waited, like
everyone else, for the hulking hearse to lead the
way and when it finally did, the rain got worse. I
watched the wipers move back and forth along the
drive, side to side, back and forth. I even wrote on
my foggy passenger‐side window. With my tiny
index finger, in crooked little handwriting I spelled
out “R.I.P.” and then quickly wiped it away. Then I
stared out of my window, past the little beads of
38
water, observing the rows upon rows of gray
marble headstones. We finally reached the grave, a
six‐foot hole in the ground.
The sea of gray was juxtaposed against
the dark green grass. The dreadful dark sky
seemed to spill out ice; everything was cold and
the tent could not protect us from that. I looked
around at all the mourning faces, some
recognizable, others strange. Raindrops were
falling down their faces; weeps filled our ears with
despair. The air felt dead and lost of all feeling.
The clouds seemed to endlessly weep, never
letting up, sympathizing with us. A quick psalm
was read, flowers were laid down, and whatever
bad memories that had once existed were buried
along with the coffin. Little chunks of black earth
were then piled on top of his casket. I placed a
single flower, ever so gently, ever so graciously on
the edge of his hard wet gravestone. Things had
changed so cruelly, so prematurely, but we never
forgot the way things used to be. Things just kind
of picked up where they left off after that day; life
continued on.
I finally realized that death was a time
when a life would be judged; when everything life
had stood for would be placed on display for those
who cared enough to see; when friends and family,
all those who mattered most, the shells of flesh,
the small insignificant patterns of the world would
suddenly gain immense value one last time.
39
TRAIN Brian Mo
“Listen!” the lady yelled into her phone, “I make
the decisions okay? I’ve given everything for this
company.” She was standing with her back to the
subway door, deeply infused in her conversation.
Around her was everyone else, still trying to fully
wake up and the grasp the morning commute.
We were all on the W train that was
running early morning on the N line. I was sitting
on the seat closest to the door and facing across
from the woman on the phone. This train seemed
at least a decade old. There was a brown stain on
the floor, probably the work of a neglected cup of
coffee. There were also scratches on the window
reading SPK, or at least that’s what I made the
scribble out to be. Looking up I analyzed the
infamous Dr. Zizmor advertisement: a disorganized
array of clouds and rainbows followed by photos
of patients and results. I wondered how much
business Dr. Zizmor gets, for being able to proudly
present his face on every train for the past era.
As the train left the 8th Avenue station, it
began to descend into the tunnel. It started to get
dark, the windows turned black, and as the lights
in the train became more visible, the truth slowly
emerged. My eyes scanned across the passengers,
stopping dead center and staring at the woman
still on the phone. Her conversation continued
without break as the train moved through the
underground tracks. I noticed the other
passengers, giving short glimpses at the woman,
and then turning back away.
Getting bored with listening to the woman
rambling on into her magically advanced phone, I
fixated my attention on something else. Staring
across from me was a girl sitting down, trying to
concentrate on her novel as she ignored the lady
on the phone. The train picked up speed and began
to sway. A constant pattern of thuds and clacks
was heard from the wheels of the train as they
clashed against the tracks. An empty Snapple
bottle rolled across the floor, thrusting back and
forth. My eyes followed it until it came to a stop,
trapped between a wall and a bag.
Faceless and expressionless, everybody
else was sitting quietly, awkwardly staring at their
feet or looking up at an advertisement. Each with
their own destination, they dreaded the long
mundane ride (as did I) that they take every day to
work or to school. There was no interaction
between humans: no eye contact, no feeling,
nothing. There wasn’t a single soul on board: only
physical entities, a visual. They were all trapped in
an imaginary machine. They were in a vortex
where nothing was real. This time and place did
not exist; reality was a figment of their
imagination. At the moment, everybody’s life was
on hold.
The train slowed down to an eventual
stop in the middle of the tunnel, causing a wave of
groans and angry murmurs. We all sat quietly,
numbed by the familiar and mutual feeling of
disappointment caused by the routine problems of
the MTA. As we waited, the end door of the
41
subway opened. A middle‐aged homeless man
walked through and stopped at the first pole.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your
attention please,” he yelled. I, like most people,
tried to divert my attention away, as he continued
his speech and made his rounds of panhandling. He
walked to the other end, thanking and blessing
everyone for their charity. He disappeared through
the other door, and it was quiet again. The train
started up and continued on its route. It reached
my stop (City Hall) and I gladly got off the train. I
returned to reality and left behind the rest of the
passengers still waiting for their destinations. My
mind wandered elsewhere, knowing that soon I
would again take another dreadful ride on my
everyday commute.
42
Suerte Brieanna Ngui
When I was growing up, my grandma was never
short on stories. Whether they were old fashioned
fairytales from a leather‐bound Grimm’s book she
kept handy or stories of her own life, of her
struggles and adventures that she endured after
she came to the US from Puerto Rico as an
adolescent; No matter what the story was, three
things always stayed consistent. The first was that I
heard each story dozens of times, enough that
someday when I have my own grandchildren, I’ll
tell them too. Second was that every single one of
those stories has taught me something. And third
of all was that every single story that didn’t come
from her leatherbound Grimm’s book began with a
sigh, quickly followed up with an “Oh Brieanna…”
in her thick Spanish accent, which always put too
much emphasis on the “anna” in my name.
So surely enough, when I was about seven
years old and resting my head on my grandma’s lap
as we watched her Spanish soap operas together,
my head instantly perked up when she sighed and
followed with her trademark introduction into a
story.
“Oh Brieanna… Looking back, I think we
are all young and foolish. In fact, I think it’s kind of
important that we all get to be young and foolish.
It’s how I have gotten some of my best memories,
my worst memories too, but more importantly my
best. But what is really important is that you learn
from every experience. Be foolish, do something
stupid once, maybe do it a second time, but never
do it a third. That’s how you learn, and that’s how
you get to be old and wise.
Did I ever tell you about the time I went
for a walk along Broadway in the middle of the
night? Yes, I know I did it more than more than
once, probably more than three times. I still don’t
know why I enjoyed those walks so much.
Broadway isn’t the same now. It was rougher back
then, with people leering at you from their broken
windows. But I still liked my walks. Maybe it was
the warm summer air. Or just this need to walk?
Even now, I still remember the last middle of the
night walk I took.
It wasn’t a quiet night. The sound of the
trains on the elevated tracks above thundered
through the thick warm air. There were also sirens
off in the distance that disappeared as quickly as
they first appeared. The streets seemed deserted,
and the closest sound to me was the sound of my
own chancletas…”
I interrupted her there, speedily shooting
my question at her, eager to have my confusion
abated. “What does chancleta mean again?” She
looked at me and frowned ever so slightly,
emphasizing the laugh lines and crinkles in her
forehead that have been permanently etched into
her thinning face. “How could you forget again?
This is why you need to learn Spanish…” Not
wanting to listen to a spiel about the necessities of
being bilingual, I asked again, “What does
chancleta mean again?” She sighed, leaned over
and picked up her slippers and waved them in my
43
face, slowly saying “chancleta,” drawing out every
syllable. My grandma then dropped her
“chancleta” and picked up her story without
missing a single beat.
“The streets seemed deserted, and the
closest sound to me was the sound of my own
chancletas hitting the sidewalk. And it remained
like that for a while, block after block, nothing
changed.
Suddenly the sound of glass shattering
pierced through the air. I turned the corner to
come across four drunken men throwing their
emptied beer bottles at lamp posts, brick walls,
and unfortunate cars parked along that corner. As I
briskly walked past them, they called out to me in
hastened Dominican Spanish, but I kept walking.
My heart quickened, beating out of my chest until I
turned the next block, sure that I was far enough
away from the men that made my stomach uneasy.
Once again, the sound closest to me was the sound
of my own chancletas hitting the sidewalk. I was
soothed by that sound until the sound of heavy
stumbling footsteps broke the rhythmic claps of
my chancletas.
My heart stopped for the briefest second
as I glanced behind me to see one of the four men
recklessly stumble in my direction. I picked up
speed, hoping to increase the distance between
the drunken Dominican and myself. But the sound
of his heavy stumbling footsteps didn’t disappear
with distance as I hoped. Instead, they got louder,
and with every footstep my heart raced faster and
faster. My breathing grew panicked as I could hear
him nearer, slurring his speech, trying to call out to
me. I could only glance around me, taking in as
much as I could as my walk increased to a run. I
looked for an open deli, a store, a friendly looking
home, a kind stranger sitting on a stoop, even a
homeless person on a street corner, but found
none. Running, I turned on one corner and then
another and yet another until I wasn’t sure where I
was anymore. The only thing I was still sure of was
that I could hear him behind me still following me,
still trying to get my attention.
I didn’t know what to do. No one knew
where I was. I didn’t even know where I was. Tears
welled up in my eyes as I could feel my heart
pumping my blood faster and faster through my
veins. My vision blurred and I made the first quick
right, running up the stairs of a brownstone.
Panicked, I meant to knock on the door only to
slam my whole body into the door in my rush. I
quickly discovered the door to be unlocked and I
rushed in and up the flight of stairs, and up another
flight of stairs and another until there were no
more stairs. I could still hear my pursuer struggling
to climb the stairs in his drunken state. There was
nowhere else to go, so I pounded on the nearest
apartment door. The door swung open and a
middle‐aged woman appeared before me; in one
look, she saw my tears in fear‐filled eyes and
ushered me in. I gestured to the stairs where you
could still hear my pursuer yelling in his slurred
Spanish and she grabbed a baseball bat propped
up against the wall right next to the door and ran
down the stairs. Both physically and mentally
exhausted, I leaned against her wall and slumped
to the floor. I could hear every swing, when each
swing missed and hit the wall, and when the swing
struck. Maybe it was five minutes or even an hour
44
later, but she came back up the stairs and stood
over me, and said but one word, “Suerte.”
My grandma looked down at me, as I had
returned to lying down on her lap at some point
during her story, and stroked my hair and pulled it
towards my side. She chuckled and asked, “Do you
remember what ‘Suerte’ means?” Proud that I
could show off my extremely limited Spanish, I told
her that it means “luck.” She smiled at me,
crinkling her face once more and said “Si, that’s
exactly right.”
The woman from the apartment definitely
had the right idea. My grandma was lucky that
night. I don’t know what that drunken man wanted
but any imagination can come up with a million and
one answers to that question. That story always
stood out in my memories because it wasn’t
something you should tell a seven‐year‐old girl, or
an eight‐year‐old girl or even a nine‐year‐old girl.
But my grandma told me anyway; she even went
so far as to buy me a can of pepper spray. I
suppose she tried to teach me something before I
could even begin to appreciate what I was being
taught. When I look back at that story, she wasn’t
much different than I am right now. She was
young, naïve, and foolish and so am I. But I like to
think that I’ve learned from her mistakes so I won’t
make the same ones. And at the very least, if I’m
out in the middle of the night as she was that
night, I have pepper spray.
45
JUST YOU WAIT Tahreem Riaz
It is dark outside; there is a storm on its way. It’s
quiet and you can hear the small gusts of wind
playing with trees in the neighborhood. I live off a
red brick road, in a large neighborhood. The
houses are large, painted doors, high fences,
luxurious at the least. Tall white gates, plants in
huge pots all around the garages, polished marble
floors, and great balconies overlooking nicely
trimmed lawns are the main characteristics of each
house. Unfortunately, there is a blackout and all
the glam of the houses is churned into small candle
flames, visible only through some windows.
I am wearing a dress, barefooted, and
running to catch up with my cousins. We are on the
roof; empty glasses of ice‐cold lemonade for the
kids are settled in one corner of the roof. The
adults sit next to them, speaking quietly and
sipping tea. I would like to sit with my mother and
hear their stories. They think that I don’t listen to
them but I hear everything and I do listen. They like
me because I am silent, unnoticed, and not “wild”
like the rest of their kids but tonight one of my
cousins has challenged me to catch him and I am
up for the challenge. My seven other cousins join
him and so it’s a full blown game of tag.
Twenty minutes later, the roof is filled
with laughter, nine sweaty and panting children,
one angry uncle with tea all over his clothes, and
the other adults laughing ‘till the face turns red
and is visible in the moonlight. An older cousin,
Rayan, comes along with his careless attitude and
taunts me “oh Tehreeeeeeeem, you can’t catch
me, I’ll bet you an ice cream if you do.” I give him a
ridiculous look and within seconds my bare feet
stomp the cold concrete floor and run after him. I
corner him in one corner of the roof, and start
laughing; he starts laughing also and says that he
owes me a big vanilla cone and will take me
tomorrow to get it. He then ruffles my hair and
goes to taunt another cousin. Yeah, he owes us an
ice cream party.
The storm is an hour away and the still sky
is clear. Far off, I can see dark clouds begin to
clothe the pearly sky. I climb up onto a side of the
roof, the top of the ledge reaching my knees and
my feet grappling the ledge. I hold on tightly to the
black iron fence that tops off the ledge and in one
breath look up at the sky. The sky is so open,
billions of sparkly stars basking in the moonlight,
turning me and everything around me into a
surreal, serene, soft blue. My dress is blue, my skin,
my roof, my family and my whole world is bathing
in a blue light. I stay here, on my ledge, looking,
wondering into the sky, trying my hardest to get
closer to it but also balancing my small body. I stay
here, while the nonstop laughter from my family
continues to float up into the air, into the sky; it
hovers over the stars and disappears into the
galaxy. The universe, how can it be so big? How
many people are on this earth? What is in the sky?
Is there another me, looking down from the
heavens, seeing into my awestruck face? Why is
that star red and this one yellow? Why is the one
over there blue? The sky seems close, yet when I
47
reach for it, I feel microscopic. Has anyone ever
touched it? I keep staring and wondering until I
hear the clatter of parents gathering to leave. I
don’t want to leave but my hands are cold now
and my feet are aching. I look at the sky one last
time, look behind me at the storm soon
approaching, and see a massive blanket of black
fleece almost crashing into the sky. Sighing, I begin
to step off the ledge, but my dress gets caught into
one of the intricate designs of the fence, I lose my
balance and fall backwards onto the concrete. I
scrape my knee on the ledge and my palms on the
concrete.
Burning pain springs up from my wounds
and tears blur my vision. My mom is the first one to
notice, and in one swift movement picks me up
and hugs me. A strong gust of dusty wind passes
by, urging all of us to go inside where the hot,
humid air greets us, and mothers wash their kids
while fathers begin to tell stories. My uncle starts
talking about the time he met a funny ghost at the
edge of the town; my dad examines my cuts,
washes them gently, and band aids them.
Fall 2007
It is the first day of high school. The school
I go to is Midwood High School. I am shocked at
the amount of noise that emanates as soon as the
bell rings. Everyone is scheduled on that one single
bell, and it is overly crowded. If you stop to think
for just a second in the halls, you’ll be pushed into
a direction you weren’t headed. It is hard to stand
out here. You need to speak up, make your voice
audible, if you have to say or ask something. The
routine is the same every day; I try to not think of
Pakistan much. I am trying very hard to simply get
over it. I don’t have any trouble in the classes that
involve creativity, although chemistry is a whole
new ball game.
My maternal Grandpa passed away this
summer. I stayed on the top bunk bed and cried as
soon as I found out. I was still in my school clothes
and I didn’t eat for a few days. One of my aunts
who still lives in Pakistan said that he passed away
peacefully, after praying. I don’t understand the
concept of a peaceful death. How can a person die
peacefully, when your whole world is being ripped
away from you? When everyone you know, love,
and cherished is being taken away from you, and
you are just helpless?
I loved my Grandpa, I miss the way my Grandpa
and I would snuggle together in my Granma’s
quilted blanket close to the radiator and eat
endless amounts of peanuts. My small hands
would curl up in his strong, gentle and wrinkly ones
and he would tell me endless stories of princesses
and princes in magnificent kingdoms. I miss the
way my Grandpa used to put a teensy drop of pure
attar in to his finger tips and run it behind his ears.
In the moments I am homesick, I find a silent
companion. A word, letters, books, anything
readable, becomes my escape into another
universe‐‐‐universes where the skies are endless,
where everything is possible, where I do not have
to listen to everyone, where I can feel what the
characters feel through simple words.
Fall 2011
I go to Brooklyn College. My high school right
across the street and my junior high not ten blocks
away. I like who I have become, a strong,
opinionated woman who believes in justice. I know
48
that I’ll be able to see my family again and create
more moments and cherish them. My cousin is
getting married, and my grandma is really sick, so
we have a family reunion of almost four
generations. There have been many deaths and
many more births in our family. It will be amazing
to catch up to them.
Rayan is now 26 years old and lives in
London; he will be coming also. My aunt has had a
baby, and her oldest daughter has had a baby; she
lives in Qatar. They will be coming from Qatar. The
wedding is in Pakistan because it is an opportunity
for everyone to get together after seven years.
Even if we are not financially ready for six airplane
tickets in the middle of December, we are going. It
is final. And I am so happy. Everything is falling into
place. I will once again see Pakistan, and meet my
own family and play and laugh like we did when we
were younger. I will visit my grampa’s grave, pray
for him to be in heaven. I will visit my grandma’s
old house and touch the walls again and just live
the history we created in it. I figured that I had
tumbled into a sort of depression when I missed
home, and the thing with me is that I don’t let
myself down. I’m like my own personal counselor. I
counsel my brothers and my sisters when they
need help with something. I feel good about it
because I remember that when I was their age, I
didn’t have an adult to look up to. I had myself, and
it made me who I am today. It will make me in the
future also. I will become a great writer in the
future; I’ll make sure of that. My story might be an
immigration story, but it will, most definitely, be
unheard of. And although I might be seeing my
grandmother for the last time, I am going to put
that aside and live through the moments with
great passion. This December, New Years, and the
January of 2012 will be amazing, I’ll make sure of
that.
49
A PERFECT NIGHT Allen Yevtukhov
We huddled together in a half circle around the bar
and the lights shone into our eyes like thousands
of dying stars. I stood at the edge of the photo,
followed by Maite, Andy, Veronique, and her
brother Max. We were dressed pretty casually,
except for Maite and Andy, who were always
looking to reveal more of their bodies, the results
of countless hours in the gym and the tanning
booth. The domed roof of the hotel’s “Show
Pavilion” towered above us, drawing all sound and
light into the dark shadow at its peak. Sounds of
falling rain and the cries of tropical animals merged
with the chatter of countless people behind us.
Every so often, the Mexican emcee would tell a
joke, and the chatter would turn to raucous
laughter.
I had my arm around Maite. She didn’t feel
relaxed. Her back felt awkward and rigid, as
though she were trying to conceal inner turmoil
with perfect posture. I was concerned, but I was
determined not to let that show through in the
picture. Max’s dad, who was standing a few feet
away holding a bulky camera, gave us a thumbs up.
On cue, we all whipped out the best time‐of‐my‐life
smiles we could muster…
“Et... Fini!” The camera clicked three
times in rapid succession and the flash left a large
blue afterimage in the place where Max’s father
had previously stood.
I turned to Maite: “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied in her customary
unobliging tone, “I’m just not feeling it tonight.”
She walked towards Max, to try her hand at hitting
on him for the third time in the past few hours. I
laughed on the inside; I was the only one besides
Veronique that knew Max couldn’t stand her. As
Maite approached him, Max stood stock still,
putting on the most standoffish face his friendly
complexion would allow him. I could already tell
that it was going to be a long night.
After milling about for a while, our group
finally became organized enough to move in a
single direction. We walked to the club, playing off
our excitement by directing one another’s
attention to the constellations above our heads. It
seemed as though people from Montreal and
Spain were just as impressed by a sky full of stars
as those from New York.
Andy, who had already had a few drinks,
stumbled over herself and almost fell. Max and I
held her up as she righted herself. She normally
moved with the grace of a cat, her legs moving
purposefully with every step. Now, the nefarious
combination of alcoholic beverages in her body
was making sure that wasn’t true.
As we approached the club, my bad
feeling from earlier was manifested in the form of
a smelly, loud and unkempt enclosure not fit to be
called a hovel. A peek in between the two large
sliding metal doors revealed a room filled with
people we’d seen only minutes ago, who had in
the meantime transformed into something more
feral. The only indication that the creatures inside
were human was that they were all moving to one
51
beat, generated from several concert‐style
speakers positioned at various corners of the club.
The smell of sweat hit us first, followed by a wave
of something that could’ve been the odor of
formaldehyde. Max patted me on my shoulder.
“Well,” he said, looking surprisingly
cheerful after having been harassed by Maite for
the past few hours, “are you coming or not?” As he
entered the club, the rest of the group followed,
disappearing into the haze. Smoke that had
escaped from the club hung suspended before me,
swirling hypnotically in the cool night air. After a
few moments, Veronique’s head popped out from
the entrance. “Come on already, you’re being
lame,” she said. Then she grabbed my hand and
pulled me in.
Never before had I experienced such a
sensory overload as I did upon entering that club.
The heat that resulted from so many bodies being
trapped in a small enclosure and the strobe lights
made every movement seem sharp and indefinite,
as though I wasn’t the one controlling my own
body. Every flash brought back the faintest
afterimage of Max’s father’s camera, and the faces
that surrounded me seemed otherworldly and
distorted, as though I’d stepped through a door
into another dimension.
Though she was only a few feet away,
Veronique was already a faint outline against the
fog. The only reassurance I had of her physical
presence was the tight grip she had on my hand.
Pushing through the mass of people was almost
impossible. It was only when the music changed,
and the tightly joined pelvises of the dancing
couples would separate, that we were able to
squeeze through another few feet. After searching
through the crowd for at least twenty minutes, we
finally gave up and sat down on a nearby couch,
carefully avoiding a cushion covered in what we
hoped was water.
“I wonder where everyone else is,” I
shouted, struggling to be heard above the deep,
rumbling tones coming from the speakers.
“I can’t hear you!” Veronique shouted
back.
I pointed at my ear and shook my head,
indicating that I could hardly hear her either.
Wiping the sweat off my brow, I looked down. A
blacklight positioned a few feet away illuminated
the menagerie of stains that covered the floor. I
just wanted to leave with everything I had when I
came in, and maybe with my hearing intact, if I was
lucky.
Still, determined to do something other
than sit around, I stood up. Motioning to
Veronique that she should join me, I stepped onto
the dance floor. For the next half hour, we gave
our best shot at dancing to the DJ’s twisted
versions of the salsa and the meringue. Eventually,
another couple bumped into us so hard we almost
fell over. Pushing down the urge to retaliate we
apologized for them and began to move away.
Then I took another look at the other couple,
recognizing the dimly lit and heavily inebriated
forms that were Andy and Max. With difficulty we
pulled the two away from the dance floor.
Veronique and I shared a look; there was
something particularly sluggish about their
movements.
52
We sat down at the couch we’d found
before, which had become a checkpoint of sorts
between the atmosphere of the club and
conscious thought. Andy looked like she was
several shades of green, but I couldn’t tell if it was
the lights or just the amount of alcohol she’d
consumed. Max was better off, but not by much.
Veronique leaned over and looked into her
brother’s eyes. When he turned to her, his face
devoid of any understanding, she slapped him in
frustration. He didn’t seem to notice. By now, the
migraine that had been slowly growing between
my temples peaked to a ringing crescendo. Anger
conquered anxiety. I stood in front of the group
and crossed my arms in an X shape several times.
My meaning was obvious: “Let’s get the hell out of
here.”
I had to carry Andy. She was out cold and
couldn’t walk on her own. As we made our way
towards the entrance, we saw Maite standing by
the doors. She hadn’t even gone all the way in; she
was too busy flirting with the bouncers. I tapped
her on the shoulder and she turned around. Her
expression changed from a welcoming smile to a
sneer within seconds. Right then, I truly hated her.
But knowing that we probably didn’t have much
time before either Andy or Max was sick, I pleaded
with her to come with us and help however she
could. Thankfully, she came along, even if it was
only to hold Max’s hand.
My arms burned. I was no bodybuilder,
and the strain of holding Andy was making my
migraine worse. I shifted her a bit, so she’d be
easier to carry. This was not a good idea. She woke
up, and my first instinct was that she was about to
vomit. Surprisingly, she restrained herself and
began to cry. Her eyes welled up with tears, and
she said, “J'ai voulu ce soir être parfait… I wanted
tonight to be perfect…” I forced a smile, but
before I could say anything, she passed out again.
The moment we reached Andy’s room, I
put her down into the closest bed and collapsed
onto the carpet. As she left my arms, so did the
pain. I lay there, barely feeling anything from my
shoulders down to my elbows. I tried to move my
hand. Nothing happened. Concern dominated my
thoughts, but only for a moment. I was far too
exhausted to be worried. A draft from the open
window sent a ripple of cold air over my body. As I
looked outside, my eyes began to close of their
own accord. The stars shone vividly in the cool
Mexican night. Everything that I’d gone through,
every frustration was utterly meaningless to them.
The stars shone just as brilliantly as they always
did. I remember lying there and wanting to be up
there, away from all the troubles of that night.
When my eyes finally shut, a thousand tiny lights
ushered me off to sleep.
53
FROM A CHEMIST'S PERSPECTIVE Samantha Dannenberg
Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. Stop just staring at
your textbook and class notes and start taking
some good chapter notes. Erin should be here
soon. Oh, dry erase markers, great! I can’t fit all
these molecules on my white board. I need
another one… Do dry erase markers work on the
window? Let’s try. A small blue dot on the window,
wait for it to dry, wipe it. YES! It works! Oh, there’s
someone at the door; it must be Erin.
“Hey Erin, I just realized that we can go
into the lounge and take organic chemistry notes
on the windows!”
“What? That’s great, okay.”
Okay, I have my textbook, class notes,
markers, I’m pretty sure that’s everything.
I follow Erin and her waist‐length light brown
hair next door. There are a few people in the
common room but we start taking notes and
drawing molecules on the wall of windows lining
the room. I sit on the white radiator under the
window and open the book to chapter seven and
start taking notes while Erin tells me things that
correspond from the lectures. Jean and Daniel are
debating about which days of the week it is okay
to smoke pot without its interfering with classes
while Erin and I keep working. They are curious
about what we are doing since they are both a year
below us, and though they will likely never need to
take organic chemistry, as any science will fill the
requirement in college, they like the idea of
colorful writing all around the huge yellow and
white common room.
We finish chapter seven which uses about
three of the four windowpanes along the outside
wall in the common room. I realize that I was
having so much fun that I did not budget enough
space for all four chapters. Erin then looks over
and says to me that she has to go to a hall advisers’
meeting and that she will be back in a few hours.
At this point, Daniel is gone and Jean is doing
psychology homework at the kitchen table on the
“kitchen side” of the large room.
I move on to chapter eight. After finishing
the final windowpane on that wall, I look out past
my notes onto the field, wondering about the rainy
Portland weather and my upcoming organic
chemistry test. I need to push on!
Hm, I can either finish chapter eight on the
windows facing the hallway, or I can see if anything
in the kitchen area can be written on. Let’s try the
lamps; they’re glass. Awesome, it works. I bet the
stove works too, but if the ink gets heated it might
not come off... The counter tops work. Excellent, I
can finish the chapter eight notes on the lamps by
the kitchen and the counter top. Does the
refrigerator work with dry‐erase markers? YES!
Amazing. Ok, chapter nine notes, here we come. I
hear the door open and look up. There’s Erin. She
has changed her clothes; I guess she got stuck in
the typical Oregon fall rain that drenches you
almost immediately.
“Wow Sam, you’ve made some progress,”
she says to me as she giggles.
“Yeah, this is a lot of fun, I have to say.”
55
Erin looks around at the chapter eight
notes in the kitchen area while I continue to write
the chapter nine notes all over the refrigerator.
“This all looks great Sam, but you might
run out of room once you finish chapter nine.
Should I look for more surfaces and start chapter
ten?” Erin says to me as I’m writing “Holy crap Sam, what are you doing?!” I
hear as I look up to see the door to the kitchen
opening.
“Sounds great, Erin.”
While I finish defacing the refrigerator, Erin is
figuring out that the coffee table in front of the
couches is dry‐erase friendly. Erin starts writing the
chapter ten notes on the two small windowpanes
that look into the hallway and finishes writing on
the coffee table. I begin looking up any laws or
reactions we missed and start writing them on the
lamps around the couches and on the ceiling by
balancing in my socked feet on the coffee table
while being very careful not to smudge any notes.
“Oh hey, Joe, I’m taking chemistry notes
all over the common room. I hope it’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure, can I just get into the
refrigerator quickly?”
Joe reaches in with his well groomed self
in trousers and a long sleeve button down shirt
and dress shoes to get a Yerba Mate from the
fridge. He has always been an interesting person to
me. He almost never leaves his room because he is
always studying or smoking cigarettes and he is
the only person at this atheist, free love, hippie
school who insists on wearing pristine, unnatural
clothing all the time, making him look like he
walked out of a men’s clothing magazine—the
clothes that he claims remind him of the uniforms
he wore to Catholic school and make him feel most
comfortable.
“What the fuck Sam?! This is some strange
Beautiful Mind shit going on in our common room!”
Jean exclaims upon returning after a trip to
commons for dinner.
“I’ll take that as a compliment Jean,” I say
in response, and then left with Erin to get some
food for ourselves.
56
PART THREE
"MAY YOU BE A REPOZWA" (Danticat 254)
Margaret and Marjorie, with light, 2008, Su Blackwell
Yaoyu Chen • Patrina Best • Soraya Karkari • Ashanti Perez Adil Rao • Jinanne Taha • Jessen Thomas
Pamela Weiss • Steven D. Zayas
57
THE FIRST DAY Yaoyu Chen
The sky was grey. It seemed like the sun would not
come out behind the clouds. The new room was
grey. There was only a bed and nothing else.
Suddenly, my world became grey too. That was my
first day in this country. I put my heavy luggage
down carefully and walked along the floor slowly.
“Is it the United States of America?" I asked my
father softly. "It is not same as you described
before.” I kept walking. Grey dust covered the
whole bed. I wiped some of it off by hand, then I
sat down. “Really, it is not the same thing,” I said.
My father stopped cleaning the cobwebs. He stood
on the chair, looked at me and asked,” So what is
the real United States in your mind?” I didn’t know
but I knew that it was not this grey world at least. I
bowed my head finally. I didn’t answer my father. I
couldn’t.
There were two bedrooms, a kitchen and a
restroom in the apartment that my father had just
rented three days ago. In my father’s plan, my
brother and I would have a room and then he and
my mother would have one too. I felt so sad. I
couldn’t accept this. We had a bright house in
China. Why were we here now? What were we
looking for? How long would we stay in this small
apartment? I didn’t want to be an immigrant at all
at that moment. I was seventeen and my father
had lived in the United States alone for ten years
before his family came. I never knew what kind of
life he had because he never told me. Maybe my
mother always knew but she also chose to
suppress the truth. Now I knew. It was not better.
In fact, the source of my family’s income was
from my father. Every month he sent some money
to China to pay the debt used to get him to go
abroad and help maintain the family. “He is a great
father. He loves you very much. You will know
everything after you grow up,” my mother used to
say when my brother and I were little. Was it an
irresponsible concealing? Two little boys started to
be proud of being an immigrant’s family and to
enjoy the rich substantial life while in China. They
didn’t know what the meaning was behind
“everything.” At the same time, they could feel
that their lives had changed but they were too
young to know what their new lives cost. Finally, I
found the answers in an unexpected place.
Some hours later, my father went to his original
apartment and wanted to carry his old luggage
back. I followed him even though he said he could
get it by himself. Then we soon arrived at the
apartment. The apartment was surprising. It had
three bedrooms. The bedroom that my father lived
in was even smaller than our new apartment.
There were three small beds in it. Furthermore, the
bedroom was filled with all kinds of odds and ends,
so it was very crowded. My father said that all of
his roommates, who worked in Chinese
restaurants, were not there that day. The
bathroom was so dirty because over ten people
lived in the whole apartment. They had to share
59
the same bathroom and no one wanted to clean it.
In addition, I found that there was no kitchen
there. How did he live here for over ten years?
What did he eat every day? Did he live in the
crowded apartment for economizing reasons? I
looked at him and wanted to hug my father
closely. He was bending down and carrying his
bags. Suddenly, my eyes were wet. I knew what
my mother had said and what the happy life in
China had cost us at last. They were about my
great father, his youth, his love and his silence. I
came out of the apartment quickly. It was sunny
already.
60
THE EMBRACE Patrina Best
My earliest memories of my paternal great
grandfather are of sitting on his lap with his arms
around me as he told stories of his youthful
escapades or my father’s boyhood. He was the
only other father figure I had in my life. His visits
usually meant a treat of some sort was in store for
me. Many times, I fell asleep in his embrace while
he slowly rocked in the rocking chair which was
placed in front of the television in the living room.
Exotic fruits and snacks were also introduced while
I was in his arms, such as the “mami apple.” This
was not an apple at all but a cantaloupe‐sized fruit
that has a hard, rough brown exterior and a thick,
soft, juicy orange interior which surrounds a rough
mango sized seed. This fruit, in some ways, was
like my great grandfather. The exterior was
designed to turn you away by its appearance but
once you got past the outside, the inside was like a
hidden treasure of flavor. In my great
grandfather’s case, he had an unforgiving visage
and rough demeanor. However, his friends and
family knew that beneath that rough exterior were
a soft heart and an abundance of love.
As I grew older, I came to realize that my
great grandfather expressed his love by hugging.
Not once can I recall his saying the words “I love
you.” He had a way of wrapping his arms around
you and pulling your face into his chest while he
rocked from side to side that expressed his love
more clearly than mere words could. During these
embraces, we wouldn’t speak, just hold each
other. Often I would close my eyes and inhale his
scent. It was a mixture of Benson and Hedges
cigarettes and Brut after shave. The subtle
smokiness that underlay the aftershave was
unique to him.
After I left Barbados to come to the
United States, my great grandfather became ill. I
always felt guilty about leaving because I believed
the he wouldn’t have gotten sick if I had stayed.
His illness progressed to the point where he
needed to be hospitalized. While he was lying on
his hospital bed, he would often ramble and call
out the names of people he knew. Often, he didn’t
recognize the faces of people who came to visit
him. The only name he called consistently was
mine.
“Tri!” he would call, “Where’s my Tri?”
That was his nickname for me. My family
became worried that if I returned, he would give
up his will to live after having his wish of seeing me
fulfilled. For two years I avoided going home but
the time came eventually when I had to return. By
this time, my great‐grandfather required constant
care and lived with my parents. He had become
surly, difficult and did not speak to anyone. The
day I returned, I went into his room to see him. It
was an extremely hot day, but as I entered his
room I started to shiver. The curtains were pulled
over the windows, which made the room dark and
stuffy. My great‐grandfather sat on the edge of the
bed with his head bowed. His chin touched his
chest. He wore a plain white cotton vest with a
shirt unbuttoned over it and a pair of plaid boxer
61
shorts. It seemed to me almost as though he had
shrunk into a fraction of himself since the last time
I saw him. As I stepped into the room, he noticed
my presence. He sat up on his bed when he saw
me.
“Tri, is it really you?” he asked.
“Yes, Grandfather, it’s me.”
“I thought you were never coming back,”
he said as his eyes roved over me in disbelief.
“I can’t believe you’re really here!” His
disbelief echoed in his voice.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked
him.
“My heart recognized you,” he said.
With that he pulled me to him and put his
arms around me. We stayed like that for almost
thirty minutes, rocking from side to side. Soon I
realized we were both weeping silently. At that
moment, I felt more loved than I ever had before in
my life.
Two months after I returned, my great
grandfather collapsed while my father was bathing
him. I helped my father carry him to his room, and
sat on the bed with my arms around him. I held him
in my embrace as we sat in silence like so many
times before. His breathing became shallower and
fainter as I watched. As I sat, I stroked his hair and
hoped for a miracle that was not to be. I looked
around his room. I realized that there was nothing
of comfort in the room. He had stripped the sheet
from the bed, the windows were tightly shut with
no way for even a slight breeze to pass through
and none of his personal effects were visible. It
dawned on me that my great‐grandfather had
been preparing for the inevitable. He was ready to
go onto the next life even if his family wasn’t ready
to see him go. I tightened my arms around him and
watched his chest lift one final time, then became
still. As the minutes ticked by, I began to accept
that he would not take another breath and my
vision began to waver as my eyes filled with tears. I
sat, as tears streamed down my face, with him in
my arms until I was forced to leave.
His embrace was my resting place as I
came alive and grew older. My embrace was his
resting place as he died.
62
LOVE ME FOR WHO I AM Soraya Karkari
For as long as I can remember, my mother has
been my light in the dark and my best friend. My
mother exudes the beauty of simplicity, happiness,
and love, although she is far from simple. There is
more to my mother than I had ever taken time to
realize before I became sixteen. I always assumed
that she had all the answers and a body made of
steel: one that never gets sick, never hurts, and
never dies. As I have grown older, she has taught
me that mothers aren’t always what you want
them to be. They can’t always be perfect, and they
have hearts that get broken just like yours.
At the age of fifty‐three, my mom has
done away with hair dyes and make‐up, and lets
her natural, aged beauty shine through. Her hair is
a tousled, short, salt‐and‐pepper grey. Laugh lines
encompass her eyes and her ears show wear and
tear from decades of wearing heavy earrings. She
is worldly and intelligent, much more intelligent
than she gives herself credit for. She finds beauty
in so much and has always tried to open my eyes
and get me to see things I did not want to see. I am
stubborn but she has always been patient. I am
fragile but she has always been so comforting.
Late at night, my mother and I sit together
in the kitchen and we find ourselves in the middle
of a never‐ending discussion. Even when I was
younger, my mother would let me stay up with her
past my bedtime. I lay on the couch, facing away
from the X‐Files episode that was illuminating the
television. After the aliens left the screen, I would
sit up and jump into deep conversations about my
love for Spiderman or Scooby Doo. Whether I was
talking about a cartoon character, a boy I loved, or
a girl I hated, my mother’s eyes would smile as she
attentively watched me telling my stories in vast
detail.
My mother always had something to say in
response to my rambling. At times, she would get
so excited to give me advice that she would cut off
the last half of my story. As I grew older and my life
became more complicated, my mother’s stories
and advice changed. Eventually, my mother knew
that it was time to have that important talk. I had
been in a relationship with a boy for almost a year
and she wanted to let me know I could be honest
with her about anything. She told me that I should
never feel obligated to do something for a boy in
order to make him love me or want me. She said
she only wanted to know that I wouldn’t make the
same mistakes she had at my age and give
everything away for a boy who didn’t care about
me. I began to realize that my mom was a person.
She was a real human being with real life
experiences, not just my mother. She had hurt and
she had cried for all her own reasons that I knew
nothing about. I saw the pain in her eyes, and I
could tell that she knew what it was like to be
betrayed, made fun of, and left behind. Eventually,
I began to take note of all the things she was
saying.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon of spring
when I made my mother cry. We were spending
the day at a fiftieth anniversary party for close
63
friends of the family. I wasn’t comfortable with the
sophisticated country club or the abundance of old
people. I was sitting at a table alone, looking at my
cell phone, and glanced up when my mother called
me over to dance. My mother had maybe one too
many glasses of wine and was basking in the
sunlight on the dance floor. She grinned as she
swayed from side to side and talked loudly into
people’s ears. As a sixteen‐year‐old, I was
inevitably in a foul and irritable mood. I thought my
mother was making an absolute fool of herself.
Didn’t she know people were watching her? And
yet, there she was, rocking out to terrible music on
the dance floor. I was horrified. I walked up to her
and I said, “Mom, you’re so weird. Stop it.” She
stopped dancing and looked at me. It was one of
the first times I couldn’t see a smile behind my
mom’s eyes.
She walked out of the party and towards
the parking lot. I found her sitting on a ledge with
tears streaming down her face. All I could do was
stare at her. I failed to form words. Had I caused
this? Eventually I reached down to lovingly rub her
shoulders as she had done to me so many times. I
asked, “Mama, what’s wrong?” And like a small,
whimpering child, she asked, “Why don’t you love
me for who I am?” I was taken aback by the
question. As though she read my mind and found
that I had no answer for her, she continued, “All
my life, I have been so afraid that people won’t
love me. I have watched so many people leave. I
can’t have my own daughter, my best friend, not
accept me. I just want you to accept me.” Her
words, separated by painful sobs, flew at me, one
after another. Never had I felt so far away from my
mother as I had then. Sure, I knew my mother
wasn’t impenetrable, but I didn’t know that I could
hurt her.
I wondered if I had hurt my mother
before today. I wondered how many times she had
cried when I wasn’t looking. After a few minutes of
standing on the gravel, bewildered, I dropped
down to my mother’s knees and I cried. I cried for
hurting her, and I cried for all the times she had
been hurt by someone else. At first, I was scared of
how much I felt I didn’t know about the woman
crying like a child with a scraped knee, but I
stopped thinking of myself and sat in my mother’s
position. We cried because of each other, for each
other, but most importantly, we cried together. In
that moment, we were the same. When our tears
subsided, I grabbed my mother’s hand and I pulled
her to the dance floor.
It isn’t always about me. It is also about
my mother. She laughs and she cries. She gets
embarrassed sometimes but she is proud of who
she is. I am proud of who she is. She’s blithe and
loving, but she is human. I can only allow the
distance to shrink as time passes and, when given
the opportunity, I dance. I close my eyes and I take
her hand, and we dance together.
64
FATHERLESS GENERATION Ashanti Perez
The tweed blazer, brown, missing a button
smelling of old and tagged ten bucks, caught my
eye the moment I saw it. Unintentionally, the
following day a goading thought dwelt in mind;
this blazer was grandpa‐ like. Grandfather...
Grandpa...Father. Then it occurred to me; I never
had a grandfather, or a father, that wore blazers
comparable to this one. Grandmother had an
abusive father who beat her and sent her to work
at the ripe age of twelve. Towards the end of every
month, her mother and father would casually
collect the measly allowance painfully accumulated
to help support her seven siblings. Years later, my
grandmother, in haste to find a meal to sustain her
one year old and a place to sleep for the night, lay
with the man who would be my grandfather. She
who in the eyes of her father was despicable,
remembered this host as a kind one. My mother
met him once; I never met him at all.
That autumn day, the blazer reminded me
of our fatherlessness. My grandmother, my
mother, and I all grew up with no concept of what
it was to trust, love and be loved by a father. This
deeply affected us, seeping into every area of our
lives. My cousins, uncles, and siblings have all been
robbed of a father. The fatherlessness mocks us in
parks when other children play confidently and run
to the arms of fathers. It stings when I have to
guess at what so many others take for granted. Do
I have the shape of his eyes? Do we strike the same
pose when something bothers us? It stabs us when
we only whiff that which we were meant to
partake.
The worst part is that this plague has not
only defiled my family but has spread across the
face of the globe. Children in most parts of the
world are forced to become adults working for the
benefit of siblings and parents. According to World
Orphans, there are more orphans today than in all
history combined, one hundred and sixty three
million orphans worldwide (1): orphans left
fatherless due to HIV/AIDS; orphans due to
poverty; orphans because of wars; orphans due to
starvation; orphans kidnapped and forced to
become soldiers; orphans running away from
abuse; emotional orphans dwelling with walking,
talking ghost fathers.
But many of the issues mentioned are not
reasons that apply to fatherlessness in America.
Why are so many children fatherless in the United
States? We can blame the culture that injects the
fatal idea of hyper‐sexualization, encouraging
young men and women to engage in casual sex,
disregarding responsibility and consequences. We
can look at the growing trend in our society of
divorce. Young people are not often trained or
held accountable by the society to be responsible,
critical thinkers who will one day have families and
“run” America. We are not taught to be good
parents, and most importantly to teach our future
generations to be responsible parents as well.
Sitcoms and television programs often degrade
men, undermining their roles as husbands and
fathers. Fathers are due respect and appreciation
65
by their families and society. Our culture should
regard parents‐‐‐not celebrities who get drunk,
party, waste money lavishly, and only think of
themselves‐‐‐in high esteem. They are the ones
who gave us life after all, the only ones who are
there for us when we need them most, who would
give life and limb to see us succeed.
Fathers give children roots to establish
themselves. They should provide the
establishment of boundaries in love. A father is the
person we can confidently turn to when things are
chaotic. They are the picture of safety and heroism.
Fathers teach us to be patient. Numerous studies
show that children who grow up with involved
fathers flourish mentally, physically, emotionally,
and spiritually compared to those that don’t (2
a,b). Fathers give us a clue as to how to relate to
others. Girls and boys learn to properly relate to
their peers all throughout their lives by the
fundamental connections made with their fathers.
I have drunk the bitter cup of not growing
up with a father that I could see. I always longed
for a father, cried for one, and became angry at my
mother for having made stupid decisions that
robbed me of a father. How had she coped with
having been dumped at an orphanage at the age of
three? One day I heard these words: “When my
father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will
take care of me,” Psalm 27:10. I pondered for so
long what this could mean for me and the many
orphans around the world. It was breathtaking to
uncover the hidden truth in my life. I had someone
watching over me that I never knew was there.
When I finally took note, I realized that in many
terrible situations when I was most vulnerable,
nothing ever happened to me. My hope is that
those words would fill with peace those who, like
me, have not had a father. Most importantly, I
hope that we would take responsibility for our
lives, doing everything in our power not to leave a
legacy of fatherlessness to another orphan
generation. That tweed, brown, grandpa blazer
reminded for me of our loss, but now embraced in
its warmth, I knew I had a Father who would never
leave me.
66
MY GRANDFATHER IN KASHMIR Adil Rao
Pakistan declared independence from India on
August 14, 1947 to create a separate country for
Muslims living in India. This was supposed to make
it peaceful for both Muslims and Hindus living in
that area. However, that peace goal was never
accomplished. An ever‐lasting fight has persisted
between India and Pakistan over a segment of land
known as Kashmir ever since Pakistan declared
independence.
My grandfather died before I was born so
this recollection of events of my grandfather’s life
has been told to me by my grandmother. My
grandfather moved to Pakistan at the end of 1947.
My grandfather was cooking food to feed
himself and his young son, Jumshaid, from his first
wife, who had died from tuberculosis a few years
after their marriage. He had just come home after
fifteen hours of farming. He was thinking about
the harvest when four Indian police officers came
into his house. One of them walked straight up to
my grandfather and held him by the collar. “You
were supposed to leave by last month. Pakistan is
your country; this is ours,” he said, his face an inch
away from my grandfather’s. My grandfather was
a respected man in the community and wasn’t
used to someone being so disrespectful to him. My
grandfather was young and strong and hot‐
blooded. He got furious at the officer and knocked
him to the floor with one punch. My grandfather
had played kabadi all his life. It is an intense game
that mixes wrestling with boxing. He had never
lost because of his big size and huge muscles. The
other officers stood still in shock as the other
officer backed away to the door. Little Jumshaid
started crying and ran to my grandfather’s side.
“This is my country, and I don’t have to go
anywhere,” my grandfather said to one of the
more sensible‐looking officers. The officer looked
at the other officers before answering.
“Sir. Pakistan has been established and
the governments of both countries want a
separate country for Muslims. We have come to
inform you that you have to leave by the end of
the week or the army will force you to move.”
My grandfather sat down in one of the
brown worn‐out chairs, worried and exhausted.
“What about my land?” he asked.
“You will be given a murabah, sir.” A
murabah is about 25 acres of land. My grandfather
hesitantly agreed to move because he had no
other choice.
My grandfather moved to Sahiwal, a small
town near the city of Multan in Pakistan. He now
thought of Pakistan as his country, since India
forced him to move and took away his hard‐earned
property. A lot of his relatives lived in Sahiwal, and
he got his promised murabah. My grandfather
started farming again, even though the new soil
wasn’t as fertile as the land he had owned in India.
He soon married my grandmother. In 1952, my
grandmother was pregnant with my father. She
recalls my grandfather bringing home chocolates
and flowers every day when he found out that she
was pregnant. My grandmother says that she felt
loved most at that time in her life. Chocolate was
not cheap at the time in Pakistan and was
67
considered a rare treat but my grandfather had
money saved up and spent a lot of it on that.
In September of that year, my
grandfather’s cousin’s dead body arrived home, to
Sahiwal. He was a civilian killed in the Kashmir
conflict. That was around the time my grandfather
made up his mind to help protect the country and
joined the Pakistani army. He was influenced by
the death of his cousin and wished to complete the
job of making Pakistan safer by fighting in Kashmir.
He left for Kashmir in November of that year, one
month before my grandmother gave birth to my
father. He left some money for my grandmother,
and thought it would be enough until he returned.
However, he didn’t return for five years, and the
money ran out in a couple of months, forcing my
grandmother to work long hours in a fabric factory
to support herself and her son.
My grandmother was very surprised to
see my grandfather walking home wearing a dirty
army uniform with an army bag in his hand. She
had not received any letters from him over the last
five years and assumed he was dead. Every week,
bodies would come home of soldiers that were
killed in Kashmir. She was out in the murabah,
planting some seeds for the next harvest. She
dropped the bag of seeds in her hand and stood
shocked. She felt as if her body wasn’t under her
control, and no matter how much she wanted to
run to my grandfather, she couldn’t. She was in a
state of shock until my grandfather threw his bag
on the ground, ran to my grandmother and hugged
her. He picked her up from the ground and swung
her around and around, kissing her face where the
tears were now flowing. He told her that he
couldn’t remember a single day during his five
years in Kashmir that he didn’t take out the black
and white photo of my grandmother and stare at it
for hours and think about her and his son. My
grandparents hugged each other for a while
before they were able to go inside and talk.
My grandfather didn’t talk at all about
what had happened in Kashmir. Whenever my
grandmother used to ask him about the war, he
would become silent and close his eyes. Tears
would slip from his closed eyes onto my
grandmother’s hand, which was always there to
comfort him. She stopped asking about the war
altogether, and started her married life all over
again after years of thinking she had become a
widow.
My grandmother noticed a lot of changes
in my grandfather’s behavior. In the middle of the
night he would wake up screaming and would cry
in my grandmother’s arms for hours before going
back to sleep. He talked very little to her and
would sit and stare at random items for hours at a
time. He would jump at the tiniest of noises. A
couple of months after his homecoming, he
started having outbursts of anger. He would yell at
everyone he saw for no reason. He even raised his
hand to my grandmother one day for no reason.
My grandmother cried for hours that day. She
didn’t understand what had happened to her
husband. He hadn’t ever even raised his voice to
her, and today he had actually slapped her in
anger. Why was he angry and what was he always
angry about? Had he gone crazy because of the
war?
68
My grandfather’s condition kept on
getting worse. My father had become a young man
and started caring for his father. However, my
grandfather would beat him and started hitting
everyone he saw. My grandfather’s brothers
brought a doctor home one day to see what was
wrong with my grandfather. The doctor diagnosed
him as depressed and mentally unstable; his
disorder is known as Post‐ traumatic Stress
Disorder in today’s medical jargon. My
grandfather’s throwing tantrums all day and being
violent led his brothers to lock him in a windowless
room so he wouldn’t hurt anyone.
My father grew up in a family where his
mother had to work long hours to support him and
his mentally‐unstable father. He saw his father’s
condition worsening each year, no matter how
much he tried to help him. At the age of sixteen,
my father started working at an iron shop and
picked up the family’s financial responsibilities,
allowing my grandmother to stop working. He
would also take care of my grandfather every day,
dressing him, bathing him, feeding him, and trying
to bring him back to his senses by talking with him
for endless hours.
My grandfather’s condition had greatly
improved around the time my father turned
twenty‐five, due to my father’s persistent care. My
grandfather started talking normally again and
stopped throwing tantrums. However, he
constantly wished to see old friends from the
army. He had developed a close friendship with an
army lieutenant, Mr. Khan, who he had met in the
Kashmir conflict. My grandfather went to see Mr.
Khan daily and would always take my father along.
They would chat for hours every day. My father
soon fell in love with Mr. Khan’s daughter, my
mother. My father asked his father to ask Mr. Khan
for my mother’s hand. My grandfather replied,
“This is the first time I’m doing something for
someone else that I know I won’t ever regret.”
My father married my mother in 1980. My
grandfather had his arm around my grandmother
as he welcomed the guests. All his life, my father
had dreamed of seeing his father and mother side
by side, happy. Coincidentally, the happiest day of
my father’s life quickly turned to the most
sorrowful one. After my father wed my mother, my
grandparents and parents went to their Sahiwal
house. In the middle of the night, my grandfather
suffered a heart attack. My father quickly took him
to the hospital but doctors couldn’t revive him. He
was declared dead on July 14, 1980 at 3:42 a.m.
My grandfather lived a courageous life
and helped his country as much as he could. He
was helpless during the years he was suffering
from PTSD, but tried to do as much as he could for
his family when he was sane. My father wouldn’t
have ever met his beloved wife if his father hadn’t
fought in the Kashmir conflict.
69
LIKE LOST CUBS IN THE WILD Jinanne Taha
I lazily opened my eyes and glanced at the cable
box sitting on top of our television. 1:34 AM. I had
never been awake at this time before. I already felt
as if I were in a different world. The silence of the
night was broken by my dad yelling at my sister
and me to get out of bed. We hurried outside still
in our pajamas, our shoes uncomfortably slipped
on. It was a windy September night and only hours
before my first day of kindergarten. My dad, my
sister, and I stumbled into our old burgundy Ford
and drove to my Uncle’s apartment just a few
blocks away. Confusion as well as drowsiness
overcoming me, I fell asleep shortly after I arrived,
the hectic night overshadowed by the fact that my
mom was nowhere in sight.
I woke up bewildered, unaware of where I
was. I saw my aunt’s face where I was expecting
my mother’s. “Your mother is in the hospital,” she
said sternly with no further explanation. My older
sister was nowhere to be found. I got out of bed
and dressed in the change of clothes my father
must have brought while we were rushing out of
the house. I started my first day of school with a
woman who lacked any sympathy. I have never felt
a connection with my aunt. She was a chilling
woman and although she had four kids of her own,
she seemed to have no clue of what to do with me.
She made me feel as if I were a burden to her. As I
walked on to school with my aunt, I squeezed my
eyes shut and opened them up again, hoping that
when I looked back, it would my mother’s hand
that I was holding and my mother’s face smiling
back at me. My mother was in the hospital
suffering from the effects of untreated bi‐polar
disorder, something that blindsided the entire
family all the while making everything clearer. She
was undergoing invasive treatments while being
isolated from her family. My father worked long
days attempting to give his family a sense of a
stable life. This place I could hardly call a home was
where I would be living for a month. I felt as if I
woke up in a different life.
A month without your parents is a blessing
when you are eighteen but when you are five, a
month without your parents is foreign and
frightening. Leila and I felt imprisoned at our aunt’s
apartment. We missed the silly mornings shared
with our mom, watching cartoons and eating
sugary cereal. Now we were in a place with no
cable with our aunt who scarcely bought cereal.
Bright boxes of Leprechauns and Toucans were
replaced by the blandly “health conscious” lumpy
yogurts and flavorless eggs. Leila and I were
overwhelmed with the adjustments sprung onto us
with no warning. When things got rough, we
would sit together in the basement and cry,
wishing we were home, like lost cubs in the wild,
hoping our wails would bring our mother back to
us.
This was only the beginning of my
mother’s struggle with her health. She was
diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and clinical
depression, conditions she still has a difficult time
dealing with today. While she was at the hospital,
71
she had undergone electroconvulsive therapy to
help her depression. From that cold 1:34AM on, I
learned I had to be dependable and to rely on
myself because when my father is working long
hours and my mother cannot always provide me
the emotional support I need, I am the only person
I have to rely on. It was not easy to recognize at
such a young age why my mother could not make
me lunch, take me to school on time, pick me up
after school, or play simple children’s games with
me. At night, when I was too restless to sleep, I
would overhear my mother’s sobs through our
paper thin walls. I was her shoulder to cry on,
which made it difficult for me to lean on her
emotionally. How was I supposed to tell her of my
woes when she had so many of her own? My mom
could not afford to take on anymore burdens; she
was already indebted to her depression. My
emotional uneasiness was exacerbated by my
parents’ growing arguments which, unfortunately,
I also overheard despite doors being closed. My
walls were terrible at keeping secrets.
Despite the harder lifestyle that came with
the learning of my mom’s depression and Bipolar, I
began to form habits that worked in my favor. I
became more independent. I took on
responsibilities not only because I had to but
because the responsibly calmed me. As I grow
older, it is not just my mother and my father
arguing. Bipolar disorder dictates my mother’s
mind, the mania overcoming her rational thinking.
The littlest mistake will set her off. She screams
and I scream back. I sink into the fiercest
frustration and the angriest tears shoot out of my
eyes, “I hate you.” I do not mean it. I went too far.
I need to get out of here.
Fighting with my mom takes energy out of
me and the only thing that revitalizes me is
keeping busy, using unsolved math problems to
distract me from my never‐to‐be‐solved familial
problems. When I am getting too overwhelmed by
what life storms upon me, I can lock myself in a
room and begin to do work and suddenly, the
harsh thunderstorms become calm and steady rain
showers.
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THE KING Jessen Thomas
Now he wears a wristband that says “T.M. John”,
but we all call him “The King,” a moniker that
matched his greatness. Either way, my
grandfather, like a lot of other Indian white‐haired
82 year olds, reigned over his empire with an iron
fist and an open heart. From his well‐used throne,
an old king‐sized bed, comments about politics,
daily affairs, and rants about each speck of dirt in
his room would radiate. Whether it was a critique
or a conversation, his mood offered a glimpse at
the insatiable sage he was. All I see now is an
empty bed and a room collecting the specks of
dust that fall, as if the room itself were crying in his
absence.
For as long as I could remember, my
grandfather was the most religious man that I had
encountered in my life. When he woke up, there
was never a moment when he didn’t hold that
Bible, read a passage, and sing Gospel songs. Could
anyone have gotten a better wakeup call? I
remember all the prayers that the king would
royally bestow on me when I got sick or dreamt a
nightmare. He always managed to do something
that modern medicine can never do; he touched
my soul. As a kid, I had always questioned my
faith. How do we know that there is a God? Where
exactly is heaven or hell? Has someone ever come
back from the dead to tell us about heaven or hell?
He often said, “Believe what you want to believe,
but always stay steadfast in what you believe.”
Remembering his saying, it would seem
that this belief is what got him into his dilemma
and what eventually led him out of the ordeal. Like
Uncle Joseph in Edwidge Danticat’s “Brother, I’m
Dying”, T.M. John constantly yearned to go back to
his homeland, a place riddled with memories.
When I think of India, images of sheep, open rice
fields, and excruciatingly hot weather instantly
flood my mind, leaving a sense of warm nostalgia
and painful longing. But these are only memories
formed in the spans of the month‐long summer
vacations when I am fortunate enough to breathe
the country air. Imagine if I had spent my whole
lifetime in such a sanctuary; the longing would be
unbearable. Could I have held out as long as my
grandfather? Never. After constantly hounding my
dad and uncles, my granddad finally got to travel
back to India. Because my dad couldn’t land a
vacation, my uncle brought my granddad to India,
where near‐tragedy struck.
When my grandpa came back from India,
he suffered from low blood pressure, low blood
sugar, and fatigue. Everyone was taken by surprise;
no one knew how he became sick. The king, even if
he dominated our house, had little control over
himself. The man who once scared his wife and
children by climbing up trees and diving down
deep earthen wells became a frail shivering mass
of humor and silence. As his condition would
progressively worsen, he always managed to make
everyone, his kids and his grandkids, laugh. I have
always found something intrinsically noble in
granddad’s ability to laugh away a life‐threating
problem; he emphasized laughter as the world’s
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best medicine. Unfortunately, one of grandpa’s
legs became black and scaly, like a salted fish left
out in the sun. Not only had this made walking
difficult for him, it also made talking even more
difficult because the conversations always involved
his pain more than it involved him. Three weeks
after coming back from his home, he was admitted
to the ICU.
Watching my granddad humbled by tubes
protruding from all over his body was unbearable.
For as long as I could remember, my grandfather
was a man who loved the smell of open air. The
smell of sweat and the idea of being surrounded by
disease made my grandfather, for some period of
time, very short‐tempered. To make matters
worse, he always had to deal with the taunting
tubes, which always seemed to proclaim a royal
death. My grandfather was steadfast in his belief.
He didn’t have an audible prayer or a visible Bible,
but I felt his soul. There was no gradual
acceptance, or even denial. All I felt was a strong
unwillingness to let any of his children or
grandchildren down. No king ever gives up easily;
grandpa was not going to break that tradition. In
about 2 weeks, the arterial clot in his leg was
cleared and his body was stabilizing. He could
barely conjure that teary‐eyed smile that he had
that night, acknowledging all the prayers of each
one of his children, grandchildren, and wife.
This was not the first time he cried. When I
told him about going to school, he would tell me of
the abject poverty that was his childhood. His
father couldn’t afford to buy my grandfather a
notebook, but somehow, my grandfather always
got one from his father. My great‐grandfather
would do anything, even if it were above his
means, to see his son succeed in school. Of course,
grandpa could not continue school; he did not
have the money or power for that. According to
my grandmother, the king was an astute
businessman. With almost nothing (a few chicken
eggs, goat milk, and some rubber), the king eased
the poverty that still remained in his married life.
However, with the birth of my mother and my
uncles, he was given the choice between financial
success and family. A true testament to his nobility,
my grandfather chose his family. To me, my
grandfather represents hope. He invested all his
dreams in the lives of his children, who did the
same in their children. He is one of my motivational
forces; failure is not an option when I think of the
troubles that grandpa had to experience as a
youth.
His smile had two meanings: happiness at
escaping death and an introspection of all the
obstacles that he has overcome. Although his soul
was strong, his body was not. My grandpa’s leg
muscles became so weak that he couldn’t stand
up. The man who, even in old age, would walk and
run lengths of distance, was confined to a
wheelchair. Soon, my granddad fell into the same
symptoms and had to be admitted into a nursing
home. Maybe he was too shocked at the possibility
of never being able to walk. It became clear to us
that we could not leave grandpa alone, but it was
equally impossible to stop work. In the end, “the
king” left his kingdom to conquer a new territory,
surrounded by complete strangers speaking
strange languages.
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My grandfather spoke sparse amounts of
English. One of the few things that he could say is,
“My name is T.M John.” Because of this handicap,
it was impossible for grandpa to talk to other
people and for other people to talk to him. One
day, he had a big fight with a nurse who was trying
to wash his clothes. He assumed that she was
stealing his clothes and he yelled and screamed.
Though humorous to us, it was not so for the king
or for the nurse. She did not know what he wanted
and she was quite terrified because my
grandfather was throwing a small tantrum.
Eventually, this issue was resolved when my uncle
clarified the situation to the king. Though he still
doesn’t speak much English, my granddad has
made a few friends. None of them know what the
other is saying, but they all seem to be at ease with
one another.
I always make an effort to visit grandpa.
He always has a remarkable humor and an
endearing spirituality. Before college, I made sure
to see him. The king told me, with tears welling up
in his eyes, “Hardships are inevitable, it’s how you
overcome them that defines your manhood.
Always achieve with faith and family.” His words,
his life, his tribulations, his joys, in every way my
grandpa inspired me to put my heart into
everything that I do.
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A SECOND LOOK AT GRANDMA Pamela Weiss
I don’t know anyone who could multitask better
than my Grandma Lin. She could cook a mean
chicken soup while browsing through the latest
Macy’s catalog, while sweeping her already
spotless kitchen. She was always volunteering at
various shelters, visiting her sick friends at the
hospital, and calling the local day cares to see if
they needed any extra help with the children that
day. She was able to do all this, and more, with a
smile on her perfectly powdered face, her
bleached white teeth shining under her bright
raspberry lipstick.
Grandma Lin was always telling me and my
brother Ben stories about her parents and growing
up in Russia. I was her oldest grandchild and she
took an extra interest in helping me, as she put it,
with her “area of expertise”—clothes and
makeup. Every Friday afternoon, she’d call me to
wish me a good Sabbath and to ask me what I’d be
wearing the next day. I could never just give a
simple answer; she would always want to know
the brand of my dress, where I’d gotten it from
and what shoes I’d be wearing with it. When
Macy’s was having a sale, Granma Lin was first to
know and I was second. She begged me to buy the
newest blouse and the latest shoes. She taught
me how to chew with my mouth closed and how
to sit like a lady. I asked my mother how she did it
all, and she answered that everyone made time for
what was important to them, and no matter how
busy Grandma Lin was, she’d always put time into
making herself look good. Her makeup was
flawless, and her clothes immaculate. I wouldn’t
call her vain, because she was the least selfish
person I knew, and vain sounds negative, but there
was nothing more important to Grandma Lin than
the way she looked.
I will never forget the day of Mr.
Braunstien’s funeral. The Braunstiens and our
family had emigrated from the same area in the
Carpathian Mountains. They lived on the same
block as Grandma Lin and they’ve been close to my
family ever since I can remember. Carpathians
from all over Brooklyn came that Tuesday to
Riverside Chapels to honor the late Mr. Braunstien.
I sat next to Grandma Lin on one of the old
wooden benches in the third row. The huge room
was dark, cold, and dingy. Everyone was still and
quiet. The only noises you could hear were the
Rabbi giving his eulogy and the people crying and
sniffling, and, of course, Grandma Lin’s compact
case clicking every time she opened and closed it.
Obviously she was crying too, but she needed to
make sure her tears wouldn’t smudge her mascara.
After the funeral, she explained to me that
something bad happening is no excuse to let
yourself go.
She told me how all her life she had taken
care of herself until she turned sixteen, when the
Nazis took her to a concentration camp. She
explained how everyone wore the same thin
cotton dresses and wooden clogs and every girl's
head was shaven bald. “We all knew we were
going to die,” she said, “but nothing made me cry
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more than my reflection in the mirror‐‐‐no hair, no
clothes, so dehumanized. After the Holocaust, I
promised myself I would never lose control of my
appearance.” “Don’t worry, Grandma Lin,” I
answered, “you never have and you never will.”
In the beginning of my eighth grade year,
Grandma Lin was diagnosed with leukemia. Just
when I was about to finish ninth grade, the doctors
gave up and she was put in a home, lying all day on
what everyone knew was her death bed. At first
she would wake up early to apply her usual full
face of makeup but as her condition worsened she
stopped. I remember stopping by Parkshore
Manor, the home at which she stayed, and being
shocked at how she looked. She barely had any
hair left to put a hat on, she wore no pearls, and
her raspberry lipstick was gone. This reminds me
of what Edwidge Danticat said in her memoir
about her beautiful Tante Denise. When she got
sick, Edwidge noticed: “Her glamour, her elegant
dresses, her pretty face, her wigs, her gloves now
seemed very far in the past.”
Grandma Lin realized how surprised I was
and motioned for me to come closer so I could
hear her weak, raspy voice. “You know, sweetie,
every girl deserves to look beautiful, and every girl
should put in everything they have to feel good
about themselves, but at the end of your life the
only thing you can take with you is the reward
you’re going to get for the good things you’ve
done in your life.”
I always remember those words. Grandma
Lin didn’t only teach me how to put on fantastic
eye makeup and how to match my shoes; she
taught me to be helpful and kind to others. She
taught me what’s really important in life.
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AN ANOMALISTIC GRANDMOTHER Steven D. Zayas
My grandmother on my father’s side was a staple
part of my extended family (and considering that
I’m Puerto‐Rican, and have a lot of extended
family, that’s saying something). Whereas most of
my relatives live in Puerto Rico, Texas, or places
other than New York, where I’ve resided most of
my life, my grandmother lived in Williamsburg for
the majority of her later years . To my immediate
family, she was the closest and most personal
reminder that we weren’t a secluded handful of
Hispanics turned‐white in New York. Her friendly,
however strange manner and personality kept me
subconsciously‐grounded in the reality that I was
part of something bigger; this I would come to
miss in later years.
Approximately ten years ago, when my
family and I lived in Sheepshead Bay, I would often
find myself, along with my two parents and three
sisters, driving off to Williamsburg on Sunday to
“say hi to grandma.” I remember being turned off
by the strange surroundings on the way there;
from the Hasidic Jews in their dark clothing, to the
loud and rowdy teenagers, I always considered the
trip to grandma’s one of strangeness and
boredom.
It was never grandma I didn’t care for, but
instead the procession that led up to the visit.
Once we had reached the apartment and finally
knocked on the door, we were greeted by my
smiling grandmother’s face before entering the
cramped living space.
Grandma would sit down on the couch,
with the television set on some Spanish channel
that barked out the news. As my siblings and I each
took turns exchanging kisses on the cheek with
grandma, I knew that the experience of the visit
had only just begun. It was a trial for a young and
impatient me. I rarely stopped imagining what else
I could be doing as a better use of my time: “That
Star Wars Lego set I got on Christmas still needs to
be put together. I could be playing Super Mario
64!”
“Get your coat, we’re going now,” was
the best thing to hear from my parents after
several long, arduous hours of nothingness. Apart
from getting the occasional chuckle from grandma
showing us her newest strange purchase – one I
remember in particular was a stuffed gorilla doll
that, when squeezed, sang Elvis songs – those
Sunday hours spent huddled up in that little
apartment were dreary in every way. I always felt a
wave of relief wash over me when we gave our
kisses goodbye and began the drive home. Again, I
didn’t dislike grandma – she was rather sweet,
despite being mostly unable to speak English, and
me only being able to respond with smiles and
nods – but everything else about the visit spelled
out a distasteful day for me.
I didn’t see grandma as much when we
moved to New Jersey, as driving the extra miles
down to Williamsburg simply collided with my
family’s busier schedules. It was only for family
events that we went down and paid her a visit, and
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it was the same routine: cram into the apartment,
kiss grandma, find a seat, and hold on tight until
you could leave before you were held back by
grandma’s display of old classics like her Elvis
gorilla, or a recent purchase like a fifty‐roll pack of
tissue paper. It was during this period of my life
that I grew even more distant from my extended
family, seeing them at most once a year.
“Grandma has cancer.” I won’t pretend
this is exactly how it was told to me, but I do
remember, after some point in time, that she was
in my prayers every night. She was to undergo
chemotherapy and was moved from New York to
Texas, where my uncle Jessie, his wife Tayna and
their kids, and my Titi Linda lived; grandma would
be staying with the latter. Sometime after, my
father got his hands on two plane tickets to Texas,
and I volunteered to accompany him. Was I missing
grandma as a reminder that I had people outside
my immediate family who cared for me and loved
me? I never stopped to think about it – not that it
would matter, because, as I would soon discover,
she was not quite the same person.
We stayed at my Uncle Jessie’s house for
the duration of our visit. I recall one time in
particular, when my father, Uncle Jessie, Titi Tayna,
and my Titi Zulma, who was also visiting at the
time, were all sitting at a table in the backyard,
having laughs over margaritas. As I look back on
that night now, from the bad jokes to when my
father vomited on the grass, I can’t help but
wonder if this was their way of coping with the
situation. Yes, it was sad for me, hearing that
grandma had cancer‐‐ but I never stopped to think
about what her condition was doing to her closer
family; if I heard that my mother had a terminal
illness, and would likely pass away soon, what
would my reaction be?
I saw her the next day for five minutes. At
my Titi Linda’s house, I was ushered from the living
room into a narrow hallway which led into a small
bedroom strangely reminiscent of that old
apartment in Williamsburg. The room was dark,
and with several others standing over her, my
grandmother had a dark shadow cast on her pale
frame. She was no longer smiling, no longer giving
us robust kisses on the cheeks and following up
with a badly‐articulated form of the sentence
“You’ve gotten so big” in English. She lay still in
the bed, her breathing not noticeable and her eyes
barely open.
Upon seeing this image, I didn’t want to
step closer but had no choice when grandma was
informed that I was there. I choked out a small
“hello” but got no response. I was ushered out
minutes later, to mull over the grim scene in my
head. And that’s when it began to rise up in my
thoughts: the fact that the kind, sweet grandma I
had for so long dreaded taking the time out to visit
was essentially gone.
That feeling hit me hardest at her wake
months later in New York. For the entirety of my
childhood, she had been preserved as the same
grandma in my mind until I walked into that dark
room in Texas, where she looked like a different
person. She had lived in Williamsburg for so long,
always ready and waiting to be visited. As a child, I
didn’t know any better but to dread the visits. Yet,
as I mulled these things over in my head, I began to
miss her, even the feeling of her apartment. I
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would never have that again, and although I had
pretty much lost that old grandma as soon as the
chemotherapy and cancer started taking its toll on
her body and spirit, I didn’t quite feel the loss until
the wake.
This is not about appreciating the
replaceable things in life. I am speaking about
those things you have absolutely no control over –
those things that are there all the time, yet you
don’t quite understand. I don’t know much about
my grandmother’s childhood, or even her marriage
‐‐ she was a mystery in that regard. She was an
anomaly in the Jewish areas of Williamsburg, far
from us, yet somehow especially close. I never
truly understood her, except that she loved her
family very much. If she stood for anything, to me,
it was everything, great and small, that we don’t
think about or perhaps avoid, yet support us in
ways we are blind to. For when these things are
taken away from us, we will miss them. One should
try to identify and appreciate them before they
pass.
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PART FOUR "MEASURE YOUR WORDS" (Danticat 119)
The Book of the Lost, 2011, Su Blackwell
Cornea Khan • Jazlin Brioso • Ken Chan Avinash Jairam • Spencer Kim
Joel Philip • Samantha Vouyiouklis
83
MY TWO HOMES Cornea Khan
My father emigrated from Bangladesh to the
United States in 1981 at the age of twenty, with a
student visa and following in the footsteps of
millions of immigrants in pursuit of a higher quality
of life and a better future. Eight years later, my
mother made the same trip, and in the two
decades since then, my parents have settled into
an unfamiliar environment and built their own
world full of prospects and aspirations for my two
siblings and me. Longing for their home country,
my parents created a household full of Bengali
culture and customs, instilling in me a sense of
belonging with my family half way around the
world. However, with the passage of time, my
parents’ homesickness and perception of their
home country changed, a parallel that can be seen
in Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying. In her
memoir, Danticat tells the story of her family’s
relocation to the Unites States as they flee from
the political turmoil consuming their native country
of Haiti. In both stories, immigration results in an
unavoidable barrier, creating interesting
relationships between immigrants and their
children, and those they left behind.
My clearest memories of Bangladesh are
from two summers ago, before my senior year of
high school. Stepping out of the airport, we were
surrounded by our extended family, most of whom
I recognized from previous visits. Even though we
were strangers, my cousins engulfed me in
suffocating embraces, as though there existed an
unspoken blood bond that even time and space
could not weaken. Similarly, when Danticat
describes her second meeting with her brother,
she comments on her brother’s hug: “Did he
instinctively know that we were supposed to love
one another?” (113). With immigrating families who
are separated from their loved ones for long
periods of time, relatives automatically reaffirm
lost connections and attempt to close any
distance, as though “instinctively,” for fear of
losing that relationship forever. My cousins acted
as though we had never been separated, and I felt
as though we had had an entire childhood
together.
Soon after we settled down, we visited my
father’s ancestral home, and although they had
never met us before, the villagers welcomed us
with great fanfare and celebration. My beaming
parents looked as though they had never left, but I
felt like a stranger, similar to Danticat’s situation
when she visited Haiti years after she immigrated:
“I would stand awkwardly in front of this group,
filled with faces I barely recognized and who,
without my uncle’s introduction, would not have
known me at all, and I would tell them how happy I
was to see them” (146). I wanted to feel genuinely
happy when I saw my family; instead, I was filled
with a sense of longing and a desire to close all
gaps and forge sincere relationships with my
unfamiliar relatives.
Danticat’s father visited Haiti five years
after he immigrated, and she recalls her father’s
behavior in front of his relatives: “Dragging on a
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I always look forward to our trips to
Bangladesh because I can constantly expect to
discover aspects of my family and myself I
previously had no knowledge of. During our visits,
my parents have found ways to deal with the loss
that is inevitable with immigration: instead of
pretending to be a part of the culture they left
behind, they embrace their newfound American
lifestyle. On the other hand, I was never a part of
that family, and yet I feel an obligation to maintain
relationships with them because of those faint
familial ties. Danticat envisions how her family
would embrace her daughter: “‘Of course, of
course, I see the resemblance. You look like your
great‐grandmothers around the cheeks. You do
have the high forehead of your grandfather’s kin’”
(254). Those resemblances are reason enough to
keep visiting my family in Bangladesh.
cigarette, my father sprinted around and beamed
at everyone. Family members…tell me they’d
found his charm magnetic and contagious, almost
like a movie star or a politician…He was an actor
playing the part of someone who wished he wasn’t
a factory worker or a taxi driver” (91‐92). In
Bangladesh, visiting immigrants are given a higher
status, assumed to have a greater quality of life
and wealth. Instead of downplaying the elevated
reputation and blending in—as it can be dangerous
for foreigners in a fraud‐ridden country—my father
dressed up in his best clothes for the bazaar. He
was his own “actor,” trying to prove that his
sacrifices were not in vain, that being separated
from his family and birthplace was all worth the
supposedly luxurious life he had abroad. In fact, he
was trying to mask the longing he felt for what he
had lost by showing off what he had gained.
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LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM Jazlin Brioso
The United States is known as the country of
“opportunities, freedom, and independence,” thus
becoming the country of mass immigration.
Immigration to a new country offers the promise
of a new start where people can construct a better
life for themselves and their families. The idea of
the “American dream” became the primary motive
for immigration; however, in order to survive as an
immigrant, one needs to give up one’s dreams to
live one’s reality. In both my personal life and in
the memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge
Danticat, the veracity of the idea of a struggling
immigrant is explored. My parents and Danticat’s
parents came to the United States with the usual
hopes of a house, a stable job, earning more
money and the blessing of children, but it was not
as easy as they anticipated.
Walking to school down Dyckman Street
meant the usual routine of passing the corner
store, Johnny’s Pizzeria, the 1 train station, the tall
brown buildings, and the Subway sandwich
wrappers from the night before, but on one sunny
Tuesday morning it was different. That year I was
in the eighth grade, when senior dues for
graduation, prom, senior trip, and yearbook were
impending. That was the year before high school,
the year skinny jeans made you cool, new Jordan
sneakers came out every other week, and hoop
earrings were only used by the popular girls, and it
was the year when I was already growing up. That
Tuesday morning I made a colossal decision: I had
decided to take a different route, a route which I
felt would help me and my family. I decided not to
attend school and to go job hunting, and I thought
that this would be the next step to my own
independence. Thinking whether to apply around
my own neighborhood, downtown Manhattan or
even at a nearby supermarket, I started off at a
local clothing store. Nervously walking in, I asked
the Dominican woman at the cashier if I could
apply for a job and she said that I was too young—I
was only 13. My search started off awry—I needed
some help.
This need encouraged me to continue
walking and entering every store I felt would be
suitable to apply to, but age was always the issue,
as school should have been “my priority.” Giving
up my search, I walked into my final choice, Fine
Fare Supermarket. I was rejected again. As soon as
I walked out of the supermarket, something felt
different though—like I was being watched. I
heard the school police van driving behind me, I
saw the red and blue lights flashing before me, I
touched the newly standing hairs on my right arm,
I tasted the salty sweat dripping down to my lips
and I definitely smelled the trouble. I continued to
walk as my heart began racing at about 100 miles
per hour and when I heard the unexpected sirens,
my shoulders swung up to my face, my eyes
opened widely and my head suddenly jerked
towards the direction of the police van. Then, as I
tried to relax as they approached me, they asked
me why I was not in school. This had never
happened to me. I was always the quiet, studious
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girl with perfect attendance and in this now
unexpected situation, I tried to explain how I
wanted to get a job to help my family. Nodding,
they just took me in the large white and blue NYPD
van, and like a criminal, took me to school and
called my parents. My mother’s anger was all I
heard over the phone and my tears were all I
tasted. I anxiously waited for her to pick me up and
I knew that there was a speech coming, the speech
that would change my future.
Being born in another country gives you
the ability to compare your life and understand
what is actually best for you, my mother told me.
She came to America at the age of 19, already
having a husband and a family, which she had left
in the Dominican Republic. As soon as she arrived,
she began working in a factory in order to save
enough money to bring her family. After two years,
she was able to bring her husband to the United
States, and they soon had their first baby boy. Four
years later, my mother had twins and the
enlargement of the family meant that things had
to change. Living with my grandmother, my
parents decided to make their own life in a new
residence and eighteen years later they were still
living in the same two‐roomed apartment. Their
new home was the root of many problems which
sprouted to bigger issues between my parents.
Their disappointments caused tensions between
them because they both felt stuck in their lives:
what they had expected, after twenty years, from
a country that promised prosperity, had not
occurred. The circle of their lives really seemed
never‐ending. My mother had to give up going to
college because three children were enough to
handle and the language barrier was difficult
enough; all that was left was getting a steady job
and living check to check continued. In Brother, I’m
Dying, Mina, the protagonist’s father, came to
America on his own to support and bring his family
to America and also needed to get a steady job
because of the continuous layoffs. Working as a
taxi driver to earn extra money, he worked in a
dangerous setting where every day there was a
risk of his being killed, but when “one was …poor
like my father, or desperate, like both” (Danticat
54) life in America always sounded like a well
thought out idea. Life in Haiti, the novel’s native
country, was getting difficult, especially with all of
the political disruptions, and life in the Dominican
Republic as well; a change had to occur either for
better or for worse.
The first time my mother returned to her
country, her real home, she inhaled the tropical air
that she immediately remembered after a couple
of months of being gone. While Mina also returns
to Haiti, in both situations, both parents were able
to return to their hometown, after their
experiment, and it was surely not easy to “return
home on a trip that you’d been dreaming about”
(92). America had become a different place, with
different expectations, where in this sarcastic tone
the author portrays the betrayal of American life.
Life, however, was still different in America
because of the many opportunities available in
relation to public education, jobs, technology and
even health care— the children were able to take
advantage of these since in their native country it
was more difficult to find. The opportunity of
being in America could not have been taken for
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granted; the return was necessary and home had
to be left behind again.
Leaving home meant that life in America
continued and the struggles did as well. Growing
up, there were many winters without heat, where
we were wrapped up in blankets like gifts for
Christmas. There was no hot water; we had to
shiver nakedly every morning in order to go to
school and work. There were unfixable floods on
Sunday nights where nothing could be done
because there was no super in the building. There
were drug dealers outside my apartment door
where every day there was danger stepping in and
outside of our home. These struggles motivated
my parents to want to succeed, but despite my
mother’s dreams of being a detective, she ended
up as a home attendant and after many years
began moving up in the company; my father
dreamed of becoming a painter, but instead
became a salesman throughout Brooklyn. They got
trapped in their everyday lives; they got stuck in
America without being able to progress as much as
they dreamed. Their lives became more about
surviving on an everyday basis—it became “a place
where only the brave survive” (Danticat 93). In
both situations, my family and the author’s family
were brave enough to move out of their homes
and their bravery had to continue in America
because the weak are just rejected in such a
competitive nation. My parents never imagined
their children struggling to find a job to help them;
they always imagined themselves helping me and
my siblings until we were able to support
ourselves—not vice‐versa. My mother ended her
speech telling me how God gives you difficulties
and opportunities; He gives you different ways to
suffer but none the less happiness—her children.
My family and Danticat’s passed down their
dreams of success in order to be fully content with
their lives because hope in us was all that was left.
Their dreams had to be dropped, passed down to
us, because reality kicked in and it was different
than expected.
America, for some immigrants, becomes a
place where reality is a let down compared to their
dreams. They begin to make a living with what
they can: no matter the humiliations, no matter
how dangerous the job may be, and no matter the
time it takes. My parents immigrated from the
Dominican Republic and their difficulty has made
me the person I am today. In Brother, I’m Dying,
Danticat narrates the story of her father and how
at the end of his struggle his only happiness was
his children’s successes. Even though it might have
been easier to get away from difficulties at home,
it was definitely not easier to create a new life in an
unknown place, where whispers about greatness
were all that was heard. One grows as a person
and then one dies, and all that is left is the
remembrance of the hard work.
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THE INTRUSION OF POLITICAL CHAOS INTO FAMILY HISTORIES
Ken Chan
Family histories are passed down from generation
to generation, with new chapters written in them
as time progresses. However, entire family
histories or parts of them are sometimes scattered
or lost and, as a result, descendants try to restore
them by piecing together family stories, family‐
related legal documents, like a puzzle. Author
Edwidge Danticat epitomizes this case in her
memoir Brother, I’m Dying, which, she explains, “is
an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re‐creating a
few wondrous and terrible months when [my
father’s and uncle’s] lives and mine intersected in
startling ways, forcing me to look forward and
back at the same time” (26). In creating this
narrative, Danticat addresses numerous real‐life
issues, keeps the memory of her deceased father
and uncle alive, and adds a cultural touch to the
book by using her native country’s languages.
When I reflect on my own family history, certain
aspects of my family history that I’ve accepted
over time become clear to me, such as how
authoritative governments perpetrate heinous acts
of injustice to reinforce their own ideals and
maintain control over their nations, and how death
is an inevitable event that all people must accept at
some point in their lives because of circumstances
caused by the surrounding environment and the
natural cycle of life and death. Both Danticat’s and
my family histories were affected by the political
situations in our native countries, and Danticat and
I have both experienced death, and because of our
family histories and these deaths, an unbreakable
bond between family members, living or dead, can
be seen.
In Danticat’s native country of Haiti in the
1960s, Papa Doc Duvalier established the Tonton
Macoutes, a countrywide militia, because there
was “growing dissatisfaction with his increasingly
repressive methods of imprisoning and publicly
executing his enemies” and his unwillingness to
step down and permit elections (51). The Tonton
Macoutes were allowed to do whatever they
wanted to do, which is exemplified when they
entered her father’s shoe store and took his best
shoes without any compensation (Danticat 51).
When her Uncle Joseph’s adopted daughter, Marie
Micheline, and her child, Ruth, are held hostage by
her husband, a Tonton Macoute, and not
permitted to see anyone, Uncle Joseph decides to
confront danger and ventures out in search of
them (Danticat 82). Eventually, he is able to find
them and escape safely with them. Marie
Micheline tells him that he “just gave birth tonight.
To [her]” (Danticat 86). This emphasizes the idea
of the cycle of life and death, since he rescues her
from what seemed to be an imminent death,
enabling her to start fresh.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the
violence in Haiti caused by the fighting between
U.N. peacekeeping forces and gang members
reached its zenith, resulting in the burning of Uncle
Joseph’s church and school in Bel‐Air, as gang
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members accused him of cooperating with the
provisional government (Danticat 170‐180). Uncle
Joseph is forced to depart from his neighborhood
and flee to Miami (Danticat 181‐205). However,
when he requests temporary political asylum,
Homeland Security officers imprison him (Danticat
209‐211). He dies of pancreatitis several days later
while still in custody (Danticat 247). A few months
later, his brother, Mira, Danticat’s father, dies.
Both men were forced to move to the United
States to avoid the political chaos in Haiti, with
Danticat’s father eluding the Tonton Macoutes and
pursuing a better life for himself and his family,
whereas neighborhood gangs threatened her
uncle’s life. When she imagines them walking
through the mountains in Haiti, she says that
whenever they lose track of each other, one of the
two would call out, “Brother, where are you?”
(Danticat 269). The other would reply, “Right here,
brother. I’m right here” (Danticat 269). This shows
Danticat’s acceptance of death because she
envisions both of them being in a state of
tranquility. If Danticat’s father hd lived longer, he
would have been unable to escape a fire that
engulfed his home a few months after his death
(Danticat 267‐268).
My great‐grandfather was an apothecary
during Mao Zedong’s communist regime. During
the 1960s to the 1970s, the Cultural Revolution’s
goal was to impose socialism forcefully on Chinese
society and eliminate Chinese traditions,
capitalism, and class enemies, such as the
intellectuals, and the wealthy. To carry out this
movement, Mao mobilized Red Guards, comprised
mainly of young people. However, jealousy caused
neighbors to accuse other neighbors of being rich.
Because my great‐grandfather had saved a large
sum of money, one of his neighbors was envious of
him and so the neighbor “ratted him out” to the
Red Guards. As a result, my great‐grandfather was
sent to a hard labor camp for ten years. After
serving there, he and his wife immigrated to the
United States to be with their children, but
because he had lost many of his possessions, he
had to continue working until his death.
My great‐grandmother outlived him by
more than thirty years. However, in her late‐
nineties, she started suffering from Alzheimer’s
disease. When my great‐grandmother died a
decade later, my family and I were deeply
saddened at our loss, but because she lived past
the age of one hundred, we were able to accept
her death, for she had lived life to the fullest,
wasn’t suffering anymore, and had experienced all
that she could in her lifetime.
By reflecting upon our family histories, we
gain a sense of identity and a better understanding
of ourselves and our connection with the past.
Some family histories show how families
successfully assimilate into a new society while
others show the ability to overcome economic and
social obstacles such as poverty and alienation. We
are taught that governments are supposed to
protect the individual rights of citizens, but
sometimes they intrude upon and violate them.. If
our ancestors hadn’t done what they did, we
wouldn’t be who we are today. Because of this, a
strong bond exists between the living and the
dead, with the cycle of life and death sustaining it.
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BONDS HERE AND THERE, BONDS THEN AND NOW Avinash Jairam
Familial bonds don’t flourish as a result of
proximity, nor do they wither because of physical
distance. What really determines the level of
affinity among relatives is the presence or absence
of genuinely expressed emotion, the time invested
in the relationship, and the quality of the mutual
experiences shared. These elements play a
consequential role in the development of kinship
among family members.
I was five years old when my father left
our native Guyana in 1996 to have a hip
replacement operation in Canada. During his
absence, my mother and I would still communicate
with him via letters (telephone services were still
restricted to the urban capital city). Our
correspondence went smoothly for a few months
before his operation. However, after his surgery,
he wrote to us, saying that there was a fault with
his new hip and that he was experiencing severe
pain. Moreover, he would need to undergo a
corrective operation. We were bombarded with
feelings of despair and despondency. Our attitude
towards writing him changed. We did not want him
to worry or feel homesick, as we feared that this
would only compound his suffering. We stopped
telling him about the meaningful details of our
everyday lives. Our letters became succinct and
devoid of emotional content; we simply asked if he
was feeling better and when he was coming home.
As much as this suppression of emotions
prevented us from feeling one another’s pain, it
also prevented us from having the kind of
authentic relationship which I, as a young child,
wanted to have with my father. Because we did
not share our important experiences or exhibit our
emotions, we felt paralyzed around one another.
In Brother I Am Dying, the author shares a
similar experience with her father, who had left
her in the care of her Uncle for almost eight years.
During that period of time, she and her father did
not share emotions in their letters (they too were
trying to minimize the emotional impact of
separation). As a result, their relationship suffered
a similar fate.
My father returned to Guyana in
September of 2001 after a chain of operations to
his hip. The school year had just started and
whenever I would return home from school, he
would ask “How was school?” I would
mechanically answer, “It was good” and the
conversation would end. Similarly, whenever I
would ask him if he was feeling better, he would
mutter, “Yes. A little bit.” Also, there were some
simple questions and situations which I felt
agonizingly uncomfortable discussing with him.
For example, my friends and I were playing cricket
in the street one day and I accidently broke one of
our neighbor’s windows. The neighbor
subsequently complained to my father about the
incident. Immediately, I was summoned to his
study and was asked, “Do you not have any
respect for the property of others?” This was the
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first time I had seen my father display the emotion
of anger (he had neither done so in person nor in
his writing). I was dumbfounded. I just couldn’t
answer him. This pattern of conversation
continued for the next three years.
Edwidge Danticat had a similar
experience. A doctor had confided in her that her
father had a terminal illness, yet she was unable to
tell her father the tragic news because she just
“didn’t know how.” Her lack of practice
communicating with her father in a genuine way
left Danticat unable to predict her father’s
reaction, and thus, unable to speak.
Whenever my mother would ask me about
school, I would fervently complain about the
megaton of homework which I was assigned. Also,
whenever she would scold me, I would quickly find
an excuse for my mischievous deeds. As I grew
older, I came to realize that my father and I had
shared a mutual experience—our inability to
express ourselves freely. This revelation sparked a
series of emotional discourses between us. My
father told me that, during his suffering, he just
wanted to express to someone the agony and
loneliness that he was going through. In the
beginning, he dealt with his discomfort through
the letters he wrote us. However, when he sensed
that it was having a demoralizing effect on my
mother and me, he ceased dealing all together. I, in
return, told him that we were in fact very
perturbed to learn that he was in such discomfort,
and to not exacerbate his condition, we stopped
writing about anything which we deemed too
joyous or too negative. This mutual disconnect also
served as the catalyst which propelled our once
stymied relationship to new heights. From that day
onwards, and until his death in 2005, I was able to
relate to my father on almost all levels and I
developed a strong attachment to him.
While my father was in Canada, my kinship
with him stagnated but my relationship with my
mother blossomed and I spent an enormous
amount of quality time with her. My mother would
delegate a number of household chores to me and
then perform an inspection when I was finished.
Whenever she went anywhere to transact business
or to “run errands,” she would carry me along. She
would dictate the daily “to do lists” to me. On
religious holidays, I would assist her in the
preparation of the rituals. Also, I would accompany
her to all of the relevant funerals, weddings,
christenings, baby and bridal showers, prayer
meetings and thanksgivings. By spending this
amount of quality time with my mother, I got to
know her better—her political interests, her
perseverance and honesty, the way she stole our
neighbour’s cashews, the way she argued
relentlessly with traffic cops, her skilled
negotiation tactics at the local market. I was able
to forge an unyielding bond with her. Similarly,
Edwidge Danticat spent eight quality childhood
years with her uncle in Haiti while her father was
away. As a result, she developed a very strong
bond with him, a bond so strong that it rivaled the
one she had with her own father.
Genuinely expressed emotions, shared
experiences and quality time must be had among
family members for there to be intimacy.
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MY GRANDPARENTS, A LIVING TEXTBOOK Spencer Kim
Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying is a memoir
that brings life to her long‐gone family members
through expressive and informative writing.
Danticat explains that her book “is an attempt at
cohesiveness, and at recreating a few wondrous
and terrible months when [my father’s and uncle’s]
lives and mine intersected in startling ways” (26).
On the surface, her writing appears to be a simple
memoir, narrating the story of her family members
“because they can’t” (26). In actuality, her writing
proves to be far more complicated, telling a story
that reveals the cycles of life and death present
throughout her family history. Her narrative
reveals other juxtapositions as well, such as those
between having a voice and voicelessness, and the
lines between one’s cultural and national
identities. As a whole, Brother I’m Dying reveals the
social, historical, and emotional importance family
holds—and the effect it has on our personal lives.
While Edwidge Danticat may have needed an
entire novel to piece together the history of her
family, I have a much more powerful resource: my
grandparents.
Through the eyes of her audience,
Edwidge Danticat essentially becomes the author
of her family, piecing together her family’s history
through her own point of view. Through my eyes,
my grandparents act as the authors, piecing
together the story of my family and heritage
through their own point of view. Although my
grandparents only offer a brief glimpse into the full
history of my family, their narrative contains many
of the same themes found in Brother I’m Dying.
The juxtaposition of voice and
voicelessness is a powerful theme in Danticat’s
memoir that can be applied to my family’s history
as well. In Brother I’m Dying, Danticat graphically
describes her uncle’s tracheotomy (63) which
leaves her once‐verbose, well‐spoken uncle
without a voice. As a result of the tracheotomy,
her uncle doesn’t “like to go to too many places by
himself” (64) and he communicates through
“gestures or with his sometimes indecipherable
handwriting, then one of us would interpret him”
(64). Her uncle’s tracheotomy leaves him unable
to communicate his thoughts—instead he has to
be translated by his children. In much the same
way, my grandparents were left without a voice
when they first immigrated to the United States
over thirty years ago. Like a tracheotomy,
immigration to the United States and the
subsequent language barrier were painful and
powerful changes which resulted in my
grandparents being unable to communicate with
others. Like Danticat’s uncle, my grandparents
required help from relatives and their own children
to translate their thoughts into English words.
Danticat explores the significance of one’s
cultural identity and national identity throughout
her memoir. As a child, Danticat managed to
integrate both Haitian and American cultures into
her identity, but at a cost: the degradation of her
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“blood” language. Her mother refers to her as a
“blan” or someone who “was not just a white man
but any foreigner, especially one who spoke the
type of halting and hesitant Creole that my
brothers and I sometimes spoke with our parents”
(47). Her bilingualism is a product of her
biculturalism—which combines her cultural roots
from Haiti with her later life in the United States. In
the same way, my bilingualism is a product of my
biculturalism, combining elements from my Korean
heritage and American nationality. Although my
Korean is nowhere near as proficient as that of
someone who was born and raised in Korea, I still
identify strongly with my Korean heritage.
While Danticat’s and my own experiences
with family may be entirely different, both of our
experiences are really “an attempt at
cohesiveness” (26) as we attempt to recreate
entire lives by piecing together fragments from
narratives. Families all have elaborate histories
simply waiting to be discovered, waiting to impart
the wisdom, traditions and language that the
family was built on.
96
MANTRAS, MOTTOS, AND REFLECTIONS Joel Philip
In her memoir, Brother I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat
discusses a point of her life when she had extreme
difficulty coping with reality. She learned her
father was dying after taking him to the doctor, as
well realizing she was pregnant shortly after.
Processing the information seemed to be very
challenging for Danticat, because not only was she
about to lose her father, but she was going to
welcome a new life into this world as well. She
chanted “I’m pregnant and my father is going to
die” (p.14). I can’t relate to a pregnant woman
who’s about to lose her father, but I do know what
polarizing adversity is like. A situation with similar
meaning occurred for me over four years ago
when I had very intense plastic surgery on my face
that saved my life, but in turn stuck me in a facility
for two weeks that scared the hell out of me. As
far as memories go, this is one of the most critical
of my life. This experience helped shape the ideas
of who I was, where I came from, where I was
going, and most importantly, taught me that I
didn’t know a damn thing about life.
In September 2007, I had to move back to
New York from Washington, DC. I was approaching
my senior year in school but I had to drop out due
to my deteriorating health. I was sick with a blood
infection and a skin disease called kelosis, which
causes inflamed scar tissue to spread and harden
against the skin, forming keloids. I still do suffer
from this illness but at that time, my health was at
its worst. I no longer had any money for hospital
bills, let alone school, so I had to give up my life
and move back home to prepare for a final surgery.
The surgery was necessary to remove the infection
before it reached my spine, as it had already
spread to my arm and caused me major difficulty.
During that time, I also broke up with my
ex‐girlfriend. The break up was nasty, and my ex
did not take the situation lightly, which caused
intense fights between us. Before my surgery was
successfully done, I was told the biggest part of my
recovery was to keep my stress levels down.
Shortly afterwards, I ended up having another
fight with my ex making my stress levels soar when
she revealed that she was pregnant. I don’t
remember much because I blacked out but
according to the doctor, I put my body at risk while
it still had anesthesia in it by becoming so stressed.
Finding out such daunting information while at the
same time knowing my life was at risk was a scary
situation, and at the time I had no idea how to feel
or even what to think. I had to force myself to
relax so that the procedure could begin.
I woke up to an enormous amount of pain.
The doctors explained that my infection was a lot
more intense than they had first believed, so they
had to remove all the infected flesh from my face
and leave the wound open. The entire bottom half
of my face was exposed, covered only in gauze to
soak up the infection and blood. The pain was
furious, especially when my bandages needed to
be changed. Feeling fabric removed from raw flesh
is not a comfortable feeling at all. That scenario
lasted for five days. After the five days were up, I
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was informed that because I had no insurance, the
hospital could no longer keep me. I was to be
transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Roosevelt
Island. I was stitched up and had a wound vacuum
attached to my head, and then sent off. My initial
thought was that it appeared to be a retirement
home. In reality, it housed drug users, people on
life support, paraplegics, and the mentally
damaged. This was a huge shock for me that I was
not prepared for. I actually cried after the
ambulance dropped me off because I had no idea
how to take this new situation. I kept saying to
myself “I don’t belong here”.
Within a few hours, a doctor came to
speak to me about my stay. He told me he
understood how I was feeling but that the staff
would take good care of me and my time would be
short. I decided to listen to him and the advice of
my family. I then created my own mantra to
survive the next two weeks, which was “There’s a
lesson to be learned here, don’t be afraid”! I am
not the most religious person at all, but I do
believe there is a higher power than human beings.
I believe in fate and altering fate. The way I see it,
whatever exists decided I needed to be in this
facility to learn what life truly means and what
suffering truly is. I believe that the scenario was set
up so that I could understand that my pain,
feelings, and opinions don’t really matter in the
grand scheme of things.
Within my first week, I talked to my two
roommates who were older male paraplegics who
were drug users before they lost the feeling in
their legs. They told me about their lives and how
they had ended up at the facility. They helped
clarify that my life could have taken a worse turn.
Viewing the people on life support from illness or
violent wounds gave me a harsh reality call about
life and death. All these people I viewed were
desperately struggling to cling onto what last piece
of humanity was theirs and start over again. These
impressions gave me a new outlook on life that I
don’t believe I could have gotten anywhere else. I
realized the world is bigger than me and what I
know, which helps me to understand my place in it.
The reason this scenario reminds me of Danticat’s
life is because when her father told the family he
was dying, he did not have any regrets. He was
glad he had lived his life the way he did and that his
family was able to prosper. That’s the kind of
attitude I learned to have for myself during those
two weeks.
I understand there was a symbolic tone to
Danticat’s pregnancy attached to her father’s
death because I watched a man dying while I was
in good health. I saw all these people who had put
themselves at death’s door and were fighting to
come back. That can put life into perspective for
anyone. So I carry that memory with me to this
day, because it is the major reason I fight so hard
to have a better life. I may get mad when things
don’t go my way. I get frustrated when I feel my
success is so slow while other people who have
not worked as hard may rocket to the top.
However, my mantra has kept me grounded. I
learned my lesson and I have not been afraid to
take risks. So that’s one way to tackle a challenge,
especially when you realize you don’t have a
choice. You can either deal with it or get left
behind. I will not be left behind.
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PAPOU Samantha Vouyiouklis
On July 1st, 2011, I found myself in Haiti. From the
moment I opened the cover and began to read
Brother, I’m Dying that day, I no longer had a
shadow, for I became one. Wherever Edwidge
went, I followed; whichever thought occupied her
mind, overtook mine; and any emotion that
conquered her feelings was the same one that
overpowered my feelings.
While I could not understand or relate to
how Edwidge was capable of remaining strong
against each hurdle, there was one particular part
in the book that for a moment made the events
and the emotions in our lives a parallel.
At the age of 96, my grandfather, or
papou as my family called him in Greek, had
learned to call the bed in room 4220 in Lutheran
Hospital his home. After breaking his hip, time and
pain seemed to be his worst enemies. Day by day
we could see life slipping out of his frail body. The
love we had for him, and he for us, seemed to be
the only thing that kept him alive.
When New Years came, carrying us into
2004, the newest member of the family, my little
cousin Nicole, had not yet been born. The delivery
was expected to come any day now, but as the
days of my grandfather seemed to pass by with
more and more pain, his life began to slip away at a
faster rate. His time was ending quickly, and it was
not certain if he would be given the chance to hold
the granddaughter he had been waiting to meet
from the instant that he was delivered the news.
Three days before Nicole was born, my
grandfather’s health was at its worst. He seemed
to be nothing but a bag filled with bones. Moving a
finger or opening his eyes was the most difficult
task to ask him to complete. In those three days
that I stayed by his side, I stared long and hard at
his near lifeless body, asking myself how the
human body could be in such a state and still be
alive. We, as a family, however, had beaten the
timer. Nicole Hope was finally here‐‐‐healthy,
beautiful, and ready to meet her papou. The day
the family brought Nicole to meet papou was the
day I knew why he had been holding on to life for
so long.
The moment he heard Nicole’s name,
papou’s eyes opened wide and his lifeless arms
gathered enough strength to signal that he
wanted her in his arms. With my family and those
of his other two sons gathered together in one tiny
hospital room, we watched papou hold little Nicole
in his arms the best he possibly could. The smile
that formed on his face overflowed with
happiness. Not once did his eyes look up from
sleeping Nicole. We were overwhelmed with relief
and joy, celebrating life together. We had raced
against time and we had won the race.
The next day papou was no longer forced
to feel the pain that tortured him for so long. He
had gone, but not before putting a smile on the
face of each and every one of us. Papou knew that
if he had never met Nicole, it would have broken all
of our hearts and left us with a memory that was
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nearly impossible to forget. As I read about Mira
holding his granddaughter for the first time, every
emotion that I felt throughout papou’s situation
found its way back to me. The grief and pain did
not weaken the slightest bit even though seven
years had passed since papou’s passing. I was
stunned to see that, as I read this part in the book,
every word that Mira said and every description
written by Edwidge about her father was an exact
description of what I thought papou would say if
he were strong enough to speak. It was as if
Edwidge were standing in the corner of the tiny
hospital room recording everything that took
place. I could understand how Edwidge felt, but it
is not easy to feel these emotions, for not just one
is felt, but multiple emotions of frustration, grief,
and uncertainty are combined, each one pulling in
their own direction.
Danticat’s storytelling possessed a
magnetic force that pulled me into the book,
placing me right by her side through every obstacle
that stood in her way. Each time I picked up
Brother, I’m Dying, I became Edwidge’s shadow
and experienced everything she did. While I
couldn’t relate to most of her life experiences, the
one that I could‐‐‐about Mira holding his
granddaughter for the first time‐‐‐made me feel as
if I were reading about my own life experience.
Sharing a common situation, however, is not the
only reason why I felt that I could connect to
Edwidge. The events that occurred to Edwidge
possess emotions and feelings that every person
has felt at one point or another in his or her life.
The events that take place for these emotions to
arise vary for each individual, but the emotions we
feel and how we feel them are what connect all of
us.
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