In 1959, the woman who brought me into this world bundled me in a basket and placed me in a Hong Kong stairwell near Sai Yeung Choi Street, a bustling region of the British colony. I was 4 days old. A passerby called the police, who transported me to St. Christopher's Home, the largest non-government-run orphanage on the island.
The sisters gather to remember their late father, but the jesa is intended to honor both parents, creating a complex emotional landscape. Grace's home is immaculate, yet the sisters' grief disrupts the intended smoothness of the ritual.
Both plays set out to examine the ugly ways that American capitalism has twisted itself up with the striving of characters of color - characters whose immediate roots stretch beyond the U.S. and whose ambitions within its borders have resulted in a malignant combination of rugged self-reliance and internalized self-hatred.
Tracy Kidder's gifts for storytelling and tireless reporting are an enduring reflection of the empathy, integrity, and endless curiosity he brought to everything he did.
It is embedded in how I live. Specifically, writing everything that I dream of, and everything that fails me, all of the emotional reality. Often, there are things I'm afraid to say, and then I put them in my writing, and they're said. Then I can say it! I can read it in the book, and people aren't that shocked by it. Often, what people are shocked by has nothing to do with what I'm afraid of.
There's a well-worn playbook for politicians who yearn to occupy the White House. One of its most common tools is to write a book, or have a book written, to introduce the presidential supplicant to voters. Historians trace the practice to Thomas Jefferson, whose 1785 book, "Notes on the State of Virginia," predated his first campaign for president in 1786.
The South Orange & Maplewood community in New Jersey has been through some very tough times. Schools superintendent Jason Bing says at least five young people enrolled at the public Columbia High School (CHS) have attempted to die by suicide this year. In December, one CHS student died in an accident; another young person, enrolled at a private school but known to many CHS students, died by suicide the same month.
Throughout many immigrant experiences, stories collected from family members can be a starting point for migrants. The memories gleaned from parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles-who crossed dozens of borders at great risk and with immense pain-can settle into the consciousness of new host communities for decades. For the migrants, these stories and memories represent the first step into a new world and contain lifelines with the potential and promise to build new, resilient identities and a sense of belonging in often hostile environments.
In 1968, a "good girl" is squeaky clean. She studies hard, follows the rules, gets into college and doesn't embarrass her parents. She doesn't lie or drink or do drugs. She doesn't participate in the Summer of Love or experiment with any of its alternative ways of living. She definitely doesn't have premarital sex, get pregnant and upend everyone's meticulously laid plans for her future.
Her writing tends to be classified as virkelighetslitteratur, or "reality fiction," and for good reason. Hjorth makes Norway sound like a small town-the sort of place where your neighbors know you're home if they can see your footsteps in the snow-and the overlap between her life and work has more than once been the literary version of tabloid news there.
Research has linked reading for pleasure in childhood to a host of positive educational and socioeconomic outcomes. But now 14 years after the Department for Education, in a more innocent time, commissioned a chunky report on the matter—reading books for pleasure is an activity in crisis. The culprit usually blamed for this falling-off is the smartphone and its many short-term distractions; the mere presence of a smartphone in the room, recent research suggests, has an impact on our ability to concentrate.
The book that changed me as a teenager Donald Barthelme's Sixty Stories, because he was having such a good time and seemed so so smart, but was also mischievous and irreverent. It may sound corny but these stories made me grasp the existence of a world of art and literature. And Barthelme lived in Houston, where I was growing up, yet he was a major world writer.
For those unfamiliar with the beloved heroine, Samantha is one of the first three historical characters introduced by American Girl in 1986. Samantha, Swedish immigrant Kirsten and WWII homefront heroine Molly demonstrated courage, compassion and resilience. Along with an 18-inch doll, each 9-year-old character was featured in a series of easy chapter books; kids could follow each fictional story as well as the historical context surrounding it.
I think there's a deep loneliness to her life that cohabiting with her brother kept at bay-and, now that he's gone, she is forced to face it. As more of Kim's letters are delivered, Helen becomes invested in the narrative they form, as if she were piecing together a puzzle, one that, in some ways, echoes her own past. Kim's family is Muslim, from Pakistan.
You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone.
Out today, Woman Down centers on writer Petra Rose, an author who has writer's block and checks into a remote cabin to finish her next book. Petra, who took a hiatus after fans blamed her for a producer's decision to cut a fan-favorite character out of the film adaptation of her book A Terrible Thing, has "learned the hard way what happens when the internet turns on you," a synopsis states.
In addition to writing fiction, you're a staff writer for the and a screenwriter. How do you think of your career? I think of myself as a storyteller. I'm nosy, so once I'm telling a story, I want to know what happens. I do find, with fiction, I can't toggle in and out of it. It's like acting, where you have to stay with that character, in that world.
San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita invites writers featured in Women in a Golden State to present at SFPL's Monthly poetry reading. was San Francisco's seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, was published in 2024, and her book of essays, Noodle, Rant, Tangent, was published in 2022.
