It is dark and I am driving down the highway under a sky full of crows caterwauling, cawing, a crazed crowd of crows in their black priestly robes with their flawed claws and I think, yes, there is a flawed, black claw in my flawed, black heart. In the distance, my husband has closed the …
Among many English words I learned as a beginner, the polite expressions, such as thank you, excuse me and I’m sorry, are used most often in my life and are also the most well-known to Chinese; even my father who doesn’t speak a word of English would say “Saw-ly” or “Fan-Q” to my English-speaking friends. …
I love being alone. I love staring out my window at nothing, and sitting here thinking of nothing. This is an essay about nothing at all, an essay addressed to the whole world, which is to say no one in particular. The world is a nice place, but you can’t just hang out with the …
Somewhere among my effects—my stuff, my junk—there is a small book with a white cover, stiff and warped. It’s not a Bible, and I’ve not read it very much. It’s a copy of poems by Tennyson. For the first twenty years of my life I lived in an apartment house in Manhattan, a five-story L-shaped …
Subtly rendered with glimpses of brilliance, we can only hope that Matthew Gallaway’s first novel, The Metropolis Case, is not his last and indeed bears no similarity to the opera at the heart of its plot. Tristan and Isolde, notorious for its tendency to claim lives and careers because of its length and difficulty, acts …
Can you believe an Asian woman like me with dark hair, dark eyes and round face is considered an Englishman? Or can you believe as a tourist you cannot openly take photos of where you are or stare at the local riders in the horse and buggy? On one of my visits to the Amish …
Lucy Clark, a nun who teaches in East Los Angeles, returns to Homestead, Pennsylvania, having kidnapped fifteen year-old Mercy Rivera whom she believes is in danger after witnessing a murder. Lucy’s old boyfriend Oliver and her mother Vivian reluctantly take in the girl. What ensues is a four-way struggle for power in an upside-down world …
as I drive to work the dawn light right in my face there’s the threat of rain So I’m looking at one of these TV clips with the good hearted GI giving candy to this kid. An uplifting story. So let me tell a little war story about why I don’t do uplifting. Early December …