FLESH, BONE, AND SONG My father’s bones are a ver­sion of him. The struc­tur­ing ground inside, a con­nect­ing archi­tec­ture. Light­weight, strong, dense, his bones pro­tect­ed his heart, his lungs, held up his bel­ly and all the rest. Bones bind and sup­port, con­nect us to our­selves. They allow us to move, go for­ward, to change. My father’s […]

  WORLD WITHOUT END: A BOOK OF PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS   I   When I was in parochial school, a nun from the mis­sions came to vis­it my class. The nun wore a light gray habit. The nuns who taught us wore a lot of black and a lit­tle white.   Our teacher turned the lights down, […]

A Cup­cake Bou­tique of One’s Own (or, Mrs. Woolf Said She Would End the Reces­sion Her­self) But, you may say, we asked you to speak about the cur­rent eco­nom­ic reces­sion; what has it got to do with a cup­cake bou­tique of one’s own? I will try to explain. I sat down upon a kitchen stool and […]

→ 2012 Map Lit­er­ary Non­fic­tion Prize ← ABDUL      for my Abbu           As a pro­fes­sor of mul­ti­eth­nic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, I often teach the writ­ings of immi­grant authors. We pon­der what it means to speak of “home” and belong­ing, and their oppo­sites: home­less­ness, exile, and the expe­ri­ence of dis­place­ment so lay­ered that peo­ple can spend their life­times unpeel­ing, unfold­ing, and repack­ag­ing it. […]

CARNAGE IN THE TIME OF GAGA:  A ROMP IN THE AESTHETIC FIELD OF GURLESQUE POETICS   A decade ago two Gen X female poets, Lara Glenum and Arielle Green­berg, iden­ti­fied an emerg­ing trend among dis­parate female poets born of the same gen­er­a­tion. It was not a the­o­ry or an orga­nized move­ment but rather a new […]

2012 Map Lit­er­ary Non­fic­tion Con­test Hon­or­able Men­tion     10/31/98           I am a cau­tion­ary tale. I am the after-school spe­cial you tell your col­lege-bound daugh­ter to watch, the pam­phlet on drinking/date rape/safe sex you pick up at the uni­ver­si­ty health cen­ter. If you work up the nerve to lis­ten to my sto­ry, you can­not help […]

2012 Map Lit­er­ary Non­fic­tion Prize Hon­or­able Men­tion     OTHER MONSTERS When fill­ing a pot­hole, it’s impor­tant to pay close atten­tion to the lip – that line where the new clean, black asphalt meets the exist­ing road. This is espe­cial­ly true when the pot­hole sits at the bot­tom of the hill that neu­ro­sur­geons such as […]