[{"id":258377,"date":"2026-09-10T06:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T10:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258377"},"modified":"2026-09-08T22:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:33:08","slug":"god-of-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/10\/god-of-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"God of My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is an intimacy no one prepares you for: the bodily fluids and secretions of a slowly dying man, the scents of fermentation and fear on the skin, the ache in your body from lifting his body: from the bed to his wheelchair, from his wheelchair to his recliner, his full weight heavy against your body. He wails. He shakes. He keens so often, and you didn\u2019t know people keened outside of poetry. You want to write honestly about the death portal but what is the line between vulnerability and exploitation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Inside, you are keening, too. You used to exercise. You used to cook nourishing and beautiful meals that took hours to prepare and eat them in a light-filled apartment you took a decade to decorate. You used to brush your hair consistently, your teeth. You used to meditate, sing to yourself daily, and dance alone in the living room. You were once a writer, you broke the unspoken class restrictions and published a book while working as an iron painter. Those days are gone. You wake up in the middle of the night in your childhood home to remember all the ways you are failing but know you have to get back to sleep because you\u2019re lifting a dying body, feeding a dying body, keeping a dying body safe. He is your father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You tell yourself this is an act of decolonization but really, you\u2019re here because the health care system has failed. This kind of stepping outside of capitalism isn\u2019t so much an act of radical liberation as it is a way to keep your father alive. You try not to panic at how you will survive when his death portal opens, where you will live, how you\u2019ll feed yourself, if any publisher will ever trust you again. You push back knowing no one will ever love you the way he does. In your braver moments you call this liberation, you wonder if it\u2019s just survival. His diagnosis came a month before your book was published. He began dying as soon as you tasted the fruits of your success and had to step away from them. You both love and hate the good Mexican daughter you inhabit. He needs his diapers changed. He needs to be fed. You learned the machines keeping him alive. Your sisters have husbands, young children, they keep the family business going, support everyone. Your mother has her own work with him and too often you hold her as she sobs in the laundry room at midnight, 2am, 4am, another load of piss-soaked sheets spinning in the wash. Your family has moved into hypervigilance. Your father would never have chosen you to be his caregiver, you\u2019ve always been called selfish for choosing art over everything else. But here art isn\u2019t real and death is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You embody the kind of community care queer theory sanctifies. You are outside of capitalism, you\u2019re engaging in direct care, with disability, your body a tool and gift against a broken medical system and yet, the patriarchy of your Mexican father is constant. You are middle aged, unmarried, the childless one. Your life is worth less because your body has not been given to a man, to children, to the lineage of labor you were the first to break free from in generations. Still, this is another kind of labor. Sacrifice is work. You harbor quiet resentment. Caregiving requires unsentimental tenderness and you have no idea who you will be when the death portal swallows your father\u2019s life forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Death came slowly, cruelly. ALS kills by degrees, muscles waiting for signals that never arrive. His motor neurons stopped firing until his heart sputtered into silence. You were there until the end, when his jaw unhinged and his death mask, that primal yawn into eternity, seared itself into you. He died early one morning while you slept at his feet. You heard your mother crying, begging <em>papa bear, papa bear, your hands are so cold, let me warm you<\/em>. You jumped up and felt the cold; your own feet were ice. You needed socks for this, you knew this with stunning clarity, you wouldn\u2019t have time to put them on later. You ran out of the living room where you slept as a family: father, mother, eldest daughter. You went to your room, grabbed a pair of socks, slid them on and ran back out. You touched his face. It was cool, tight, his skin soft and oily. You turned on the light. His jaw was unhinged, mouth gaped open. He was dead. <em>Oh<\/em> <em>Mama,<\/em> you said in the most painful voice you\u2019ve ever spoken, <em>he\u2019s gone<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Days earlier you\u2019d prayed to your father\u2019s god, humbled and pissed you were that desperate. God of tyranny, god of punishment, you called to him. The god you were thirty-three years free of, sadistic Jehovah. In your head you spoke in a strange old-testament-meets-latina-baddy dialect: <em>Oh god of my father my father is dying. I know we have beef but I can come to you strong, respectful and say what I need to say. When he greets you, let him speak of us, his wife, his daughters and grandchildren and tell him you\u2019ve been watching over us, even if it isn\u2019t true. I love how human he is, his imperfection. His singing has been my favorite prayer and my first invitation to entering something sacred: creation. I\u2019ve cared for him with my human body and my artist\u2019s pen, I\u2019ve cared for him with medicine grown of this earth and fed him fruits grown in his garden. I feel him shifting between worlds. I hear his breathing move towards an eternal end. His body no longer hungers for what can nourish him. He is emptying. It is so human of him, this exhaustion. When he comes to you, tell him I came to you, that I prayed to you for the first time in 33 years but only because he was dying. I want nothing to do with you. Hold him tenderly for me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first hour after death was holy. Your sisters came and ritual rose into all of your bodies at once, encircling him, touching him. You each took time alone with his corpse, you marveled that his belly was still warm. At dawn you made calls and your village came, babies to elders. Food. Weeping. Laughter. His body at the center of it all, draped. You placed the sheet just under his nose because no matter how hard you\u2019d tried, you couldn\u2019t get his mouth to close. The day was an endless fever-dream. Swollen with absence, your body ached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That night before bed you stood in front of your bathroom mirror. You wanted to do something animal, you\u2019d never felt more animal in your life. You stared at your face, puffy and ravaged with exhaustion. You unhinged your jaw, half closed your eyes and arched your neck painfully backwards, attempting to make the death mask you saw on your father\u2019s face that morning. Your teeth are crooked, crowded together and sharp. You have your father\u2019s teeth, his beautiful shovel-shaped incisors. His were dry in death but still shone. You\u2019d touched them for the last time earlier, they felt like ivory piano keys. Your teeth were wet, fuzzy from eating so much sugar in grief. You saw your own death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ritual begged and you answered. You went into the backyard where a fire was burning, embers really. Earlier you\u2019d gathered with the women in a way that felt like an initiation, and you ate cakes while the fire burned, tequila buzzed and death-ugly until everyone went home. Alone, you lit sage and walked the house and garden, sobbing as quietly as you could, saying <em>I love you papa.<\/em> You went up to the garden your father tended for 46 years, California winter lush, and told the trees <em>Our father is gone.<\/em> A part of you relished the sharpness of the pain, it required presence that was also the absence of everything else and the everything else you were about to enter felt more terrifying than death. Your teeth were rotting in your mouth. Your joints stiff, your inconsequential fertility ending. You\u2019d ignored your inbox and body and collapse felt close. The sage burned, the smoke blue and sharp in your nostrils. You left it in the embers and crawled into your first sleep as a fatherless daughter. You were at the breaking point, which is also an opening, which is also a portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your old god haunts you, the first toxic relationship you ever knew and there isa riot of intestinal trauma worms coagulated inside; pull at one and they all bleed, try to remove the whole mass and you will collapse. The structure of pain is one that has formed you and feels like home. You hated Jehovah so much as a child that it has given you a lifelong sympathy for the devil, or for what the world calls darkness or evil. It has only been as an adult that you can see that the shame you embodied as your inevitable legacy is one of empire and not your inheritance. That God and his judgements are not yours to bear. Still, it feels impossible to untangle. Your father was a man of faith but first he was a man of the earth. His belt and prayers said one thing while his hands in the earth or on his guitar prayed something else entirely. You vacillate between shame and glory, between the god of empire and the ancestral ones who live in your blood, calling you back to them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From birth, the end of the world was promised to you. Every day was spent wondering if the end was nigh, if the skies would open and you, if you were good enough, small enough, obedient enough, would be whisked away to a garden-like paradise where the lion lay with the lamb and everyone who wasn\u2019t a witness would be barred from entering. The worldly would die awful deaths. You prayed it wouldn\u2019t come because even though you were trained against it, you loved the sinning, complicated world. You didn\u2019t think Jehovah\u2019s garden would have a library or bookstore and it would be full of self-righteous and deeply uncurious witnesses. There would be no death metal album covers to stare at with erotic fascination, no fantasy books to escape to. Eternity with believers sounded like hell to you. You knew the promised garden would never compare to the one your father grew out back. You knew sweetness and he was one who showed you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The world didn\u2019t end but your father\u2019s death was awful, apocalyptic to your inner world. You retreat to his garden, the paradise you were promised exists just outside your back door. The mornings are thick with birdsong and the incense you bring to pray. You feel your father there, his love for the earth carried with him from his coastal jungle childhood in Mexico. Hummingbirds camouflage their bodies and chirp amid the tiny mangoes you\u2019ll eat whole when they ripen, skin and all. Crows gossip from the banana trees. You yearn to love the way your father loved: a relationship with the earth, the seasons, the microbes under his nails, on his bare feet, connecting him with the great interwoven mysteries. He knew how to love through dry seasons and flood, how to cut away dangerous growth and insects, how to make the garden safe enough for children, a place birds would build their nests. His Jehovah could never love like that, could never fill so many mouths with sweetness and song. You lean into the earth, ask to be taught, forgive, become your own creator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You tell yourself this is an act of decolonization but really, you\u2019re here because the health care system has failed. This kind of stepping outside of capitalism isn\u2019t so much an act of radical liberation as it is a way to keep your father alive. You try not to panic at how you will survive when his death portal opens, where you will live, how you\u2019ll feed yourself, if any publisher will ever trust you again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118104,"featured_media":258378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[81576],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[85317],"class_list":["post-258377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>God of My Father - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You tell yourself this is an act of decolonization but really, you\u2019re here because the health care system has failed. 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You try not to panic at how you will survive when his death portal opens, where you will live, how you\u2019ll feed yourself, if any publisher will ever trust you again.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/10\/god-of-my-father\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/10\/god-of-my-father\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/10\/god-of-my-father\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/shutterstock_2700468197-scaled.jpg?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/shutterstock_2700468197-scaled.jpg?wsr","width":2560,"height":1600},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/10\/god-of-my-father\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"God of My Father"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/322648a77b2cdd298698b576675a969f","name":"Lizz Huerta","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/08d5f83980fb632655b3e854aa15834fcb09f197da11992250fb70f4b78ad3bc?s=96&d=mm&r=ga9fc904df1c7fbc2913af084497d6d25","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/08d5f83980fb632655b3e854aa15834fcb09f197da11992250fb70f4b78ad3bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/08d5f83980fb632655b3e854aa15834fcb09f197da11992250fb70f4b78ad3bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lizz Huerta"},"description":"Lizz Huerta is the bestselling author of The Lost Dreamer, a finalist for the Barnes &amp; Noble Book of the Year. A queer, working-class Latina writer and speaker, her work explores identity, power, ancestry, and resistance through speculative fiction.","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/lizz-huerta\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":85317,"user_id":118104,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lizz-huerta","display_name":"Lizz Huerta","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/08d5f83980fb632655b3e854aa15834fcb09f197da11992250fb70f4b78ad3bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Lizz Huerta is the bestselling author of The Lost Dreamer, a finalist for the Barnes &amp; Noble Book of the Year. A queer, working-class Latina writer and speaker, her work explores identity, power, ancestry, and resistance through speculative fiction."}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/shutterstock_2700468197-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258379,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258377\/revisions\/258379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258377"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258121,"date":"2026-09-09T09:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258121"},"modified":"2026-09-01T13:45:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:45:46","slug":"their-clear-unobstructed-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Their Clear Unobstructed View"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Years after we had moved out, men in coveralls and yellow hard hats cleared our grove of avocado trees. The trees had been dead for decades, nothing but rotted trunks. Trees stood through my childhood, clawing upward past dirt and the mat of curved leaves. An excavator pulled the stumps. The eucalyptus were next, chainsawed limb by limb. The men swarmed over the house, tearing out the walls and floors, collapsing sheetrock and stucco, and carting away broken fixtures and stripped carpet. The backhoe dredged the creek; what survived followed the water down to the valley marshes. Months after the house was gone, stucco duplexes with red cylindrical shingles came up along the clearing. Beyond the duplexes was an eighteen-hole golf course. A clubhouse where members enjoyed drinks and a view of the ocean below the mesa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ocean had never been visible from the house, blocked by the eucalyptus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni crouched over the bathtub, a cigarette in her mouth. Her breath was garlic and smoke and a faint rattle. The suds warmed my chest. She scrubbed my arms and back. The tap water smelled of minerals, not quite overpowered by the baby shampoo. No words, just the washcloth on my skin, the warmth of the water, and the mirrors gone white with steam. Halmoni\u2019s face, and the memory that contained it, was drenched in the colors of light behind closed eyelids\u2014bright yellows, greens, and violets, the colors of rubbing your eyes for too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We lived in a place for people who did not matter. No one considered it a town\u2014just an overpass above the freeway, dry fields to the east, overgrown hills to the west, a place cars passed under without stopping. We called it the Mesa. It was unincorporated and secluded: sandy hills covered with eucalyptus trees and ice plants, with dilapidated barns, mobile homes, and trailers, each with a shallow well and septic tank, unlike the valley or the beach, with their fancy stoplights. Everything was eucalyptus\u2014pods, bark, thick piles of scythes blanketing the roofs and the ground, shielding us from the sun and suffocating us in menthol dust. Our house was covered in the same stripped white paint as the barn beside it, a dead car inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a persimmon tree between the house and the barn. Each fall into winter, dozens of fleshy golden fruits grew on its branches. Halmoni and I picked them using a long stick and a potato sack. The ones we couldn\u2019t catch in the sack bruised or splattered on the dirt. We buried the damaged ones in the compost mulch, but never deep enough. We heard raccoons fighting over the fruit on those nights, hissing and chattering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We peeled and tied them in pairs with strong twine, hanging chains of them in the kitchen window. On the second day, we moved them into the barn, hanging them from the old meat hook in the dark and returning every day for a month to massage their drying flesh. When they were finished, they became stiff to the touch, coated with a sweet, white dust. They were gelatinous, chewy, and sweet. Candy. We called them kotgahm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mom forbade me from having candy. I saw the other kids eating it in front of the mini-mart next to my bus stop, and the bright wrappers littering the road and our creek. For me, kotgahm was candy, and it was wonderful. I couldn&#8217;t understand how it could frighten a tiger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni told me of how, in a quiet village in the mountains, a mother hushed her young boy who would not stop crying. A Siberian tiger heard the threat and considered eating the child to end the racket. \u201cIf you don\u2019t stop crying,\u201d the mother said, \u201ca tiger might listen to and eat you.\u201d Defiant, the boy shrieked even harder. Before the tiger could pounce through the door, the mother told her son, \u201cWhat if I gave you a kotgahm?\u201d and he stopped crying. Listening but unable to see inside, the tiger noticed that, while the threat of his jaws didn\u2019t stop the boy\u2019s crying, the threat of a kotgahm did. Terrified, he ran to hide in the woods. I didn\u2019t realize until many years later why he was terrified of it: he never tasted one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I rode a bus to school every day. The school was closer to the ocean and had no other Asian children. My first language was Korean, which I spoke with Halmoni, but I also spoke English to Mom and Dad. I had no friends on the Mesa. Our neighbors lived far enough away that we never knew any of them, aside from maybe recognizing their cars. The only other children I encountered were the teenage boys who rode bicycles up and down the road, but they ignored me if they saw me. Sometimes, they sat under our bridge and smoked cigarettes out of view of their parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was difficult for me to speak at school. My tongue wanted to slip into Korean. Languages had flavors, and English tasted like soggy cutlets and canned green beans in the cafeteria. I wished to speak in Korean, which tasted like sesame oil, garlic, and chili paste on my tongue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other children looked at me from a distance. Their parents worked with mine; one boy\u2019s mother worked as a cashier at the market where Dad cut meat, and a girl\u2019s father was my mother\u2019s manager at the restaurant. Still, they didn\u2019t speak with me, and during recess, I walked alone around the playground while the others played. Some of the boys teased me, holding the corners of their eyes up and making noises, exaggerating what my language sounded like to them. Other times, they tripped me or wrestled with me on the playground. Even if I fought to get away, others would join in. Sometimes, I came home with spit on my clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I walked into the kitchen to Halmoni peeling and slicing a persimmon, arranging it on a plate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mom couldn\u2019t hide her disdain when she looked at me. My lips were too thin, my nostrils too big like Dad&#8217;s. I didn&#8217;t look white enough, and I didn&#8217;t look Korean enough. No matter how she cut my hair, it formed a sloppy bowl. She said that I looked like a dirty Chinese. Hwagyo. When she was growing up in Korea, Hwagyo were Chinese peasants who became either beggars or criminals. Her mouth upturned as she combed my hair. And she was beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She looked like a character from the Technicolor movies we watched together on television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI saw this in Korea in the theater,\u201d she said as we watched <em>The World of Suzie Wong<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was the title character: long, beautiful hair, raised cheekbones, and the lightest skin. It distinguished her from the other poor women working in bars or as seamstresses, struggling to eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMom, were you a waitress in Korea, too?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSomething like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every time we watched the movie, Mom fell in love with Robert Lomax, the way Suzie did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There weren\u2019t many scenes showing Suzie\u2019s infant son. A landslide collapses Suzie\u2019s house, killing him. Lomax asks Suzie to marry him at the baby&#8217;s funeral. Funeral flowers where her child had been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we finished the fruit, we walked to the creek. Halmoni always held a cigarette, smoke rising from her open mouth. The sun was dusty through the eucalyptus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A crane walked on the mud, its legs bent so that its knees faced behind it. It was taller than I was. Purposeful but tentative, a step, another, its three black toes dug under the surface of the mud, then the others. It dipped its beak into the water, its eye a dead black disc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A loud crack. Dad\u2019s white Chevy van, rusted through its back panels. It backfired, spilling smoke from the exhaust as he headed up the driveway. The crane&#8217;s wings rose instantly, and the yellow and black beak pointed into the air. Its wings heaved downward once, then fluttered, and the crane slowly lifted into the air. We saw it make its way up into the sky, then glide out of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I caught small white dandelion plumes from the air; they gathered in my palms and dimpled knuckles. Halmoni squatted with her hips at her heels, cigarette in her mouth; she held her mouth open as smoke rose from her lungs. Deep wrinkles broke under her eyes and on each side of her mouth. She said I had her dark eyes, which rested on raised cheekbones. Her hair was gray, and she did little to care for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No one saw or spoke to her besides me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her eyes, almost black, were filled with muted light whenever she looked at me. She smiled and touched the hair on the side of my head. I held her hand as she smoked, rubbing my knuckles on her cuticles. She kissed me noisily on the forehead, tousled my hair, and bit me in the cheek. I giggled as I tried to squirm out of her grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My father was a column of steam. His hands were dry, calloused, and nicked with scars; they didn\u2019t feel like skin anymore. He woke before sunrise to drive his white van, followed by a hazy brown cloud, down the driveway, bridge, creek, and foggy valley. I only saw him at night, when his van came back down the driveway just as the sun set. In the backroom of a grocery, he put a white butcher\u2019s smock over his work shirt and a hard white plastic bump hat over his hair, oily and fragrant with Vitalis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The beef carcasses hung on hooks, headless, cut in half lengthwise, their feet and organs removed: dense pink fat, blood-grained flesh, gray bone sawed crosswise, revealing blood-black marrow. Dad cut cheap, tough cuts of meat like flank or tri-tip. He threw scraps into the iron grinder with thick chunks of suet; the flecks of fat pressed against the cellophane like baby teeth. At the end of each day, Dad sprayed the concrete floor with hot water, and the steel trays and meat saw fogged up with steam. No matter how much bleach he poured, there wasn\u2019t enough to overpower the smell of blood and fat. It was a film on his hands, greasy and rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dad made a decent wage as a butcher at the supermarket in town. It paid the mortgage for our property. He had a gun locker in the barn, but I never saw what was inside. Once, on the Fourth of July, we stood near the bluff&#8217;s edge, watching the fireworks shoot off from the pier miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He fired a pistol into the air. The shot was the loudest sound I ever heard, and it turned off all sound except for a violent hum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just before I was born, when they first moved onto the mesa, Dad was unemployed. For cash, he slaughtered and butchered animals for people who had livestock but didn\u2019t know how to do it or didn\u2019t want to. He brought hogs, cattle, and sheep down our driveway, shot them behind the barn, and let them bleed out before hanging and rendering them in the barn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Mom got pregnant, Halmoni pleaded with her to get him to quit the job. She insisted that it was bad luck. Mom agreed, and Dad became a butcher. Halmoni thought that was bad luck too, but after that, there was no trace of the animals in the barn, just the old van and a refrigerator for kimchi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We gathered herbs and vegetables that grew freely around the mesa. Dandelions and nettles grew everywhere. We found burdock by its bright purple spiny burrs. Wild watercress and garlic mustard grew in and along the creek, shepherd\u2019s purse and wild parsnip around the house. Most of what we gathered was too bitter to eat raw, even though we tried only to pick the youngest and most tender plants. Halmoni blanched or boiled them according to how tough or bitter they were, or pickled them in brine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni grew garlic; I helped her bury the cloves, which grew into green shoots. She picked the chives while they were still tender, stir-fried them in oil, and mixed them with chili paste, sugar, and sesame oil. The other plants she let grow into maturity, waiting almost a year before she dug up the bulbs. The bulbs flavored nearly everything we ate, lingering on our breaths. Only Halmoni and I ate the chives. The hollow stench emanated from Halmoni\u2019s mouth and pores, mingling with the odor of dishrags and cigarette smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Heart. Tripe. Kidneys. Spleen. Lengths of intestine. Not red like steaks or roasts, but the color of organs: purple, black, and fleshy white. They would have ended up on the shop floor, but Dad wrapped them neatly in butcher paper and brought them home. And Halmoni cooked everything. Bile floated to the surface of the steaming water as the tripe boiled, never combining with the layer of grease. Black specks of shit floated on the surface within the gray foam. She dumped the water, rinsed the guts, scrubbed them with salt, rinsed again and again. She trimmed the fat. She stewed them with chili paste and onion. The beef heart she sliced thin and quickly grilled over a gas burner on the highest setting. She cooked the kidneys and spleen in soup until they were tender and bitter with iron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou are lucky,\u201d Halmoni told me as we ate it together, with rice, kimchi, and garlic chives. \u201cYou have never been hungry. And there is always meat. You don\u2019t even know how lucky you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou were born so well. Aren\u2019t you the greatest thing ever?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She sneered, but fished out the smoothest tripe and laid it on my rice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni told me stories as I sat on the kitchen counter while she cooked or cleaned, listening to her talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA long time ago,\u201d she told me, \u201ca prince came from heaven and landed on a big mountain. An enormous mountain! He was all covered in light, all over his body, all coming down from the sky. This was in Korea. There were no people there back then. Just animals. And all the animals saw his light. But first, only two animals. Can you guess what they were?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA dog and a cat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019re a fool\u2014I love you! It was a tiger! And a bear! They walked up to the light and followed it until they climbed to the top of the mountain. And all the light was coming from the prince. They walked up to him. But they knew from the light that he was magical. And that it was powerful magic, the kind that lets you do anything. What do you think they asked the prince?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey wanted food.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo! They wanted to be people. They wanted to be human, walk on two legs, wear clothes, and speak with words instead of growls and roars. They wanted to eat cooked food and sleep on warm wooden floors rather than on the ground. So the prince said yes, he would, but only if they could live together in a cave for one hundred days. A cave that would be blocked with a boulder so they couldn\u2019t see any sunlight, and eat nothing but twenty cloves of raw garlic and a stack of mugwort.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe wanted to see if they could stand it. They would have to become the strongest if they were to become human. The ones who weren\u2019t afraid to suffer. Or to be hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCan tigers eat vegetables?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo! The tiger wouldn\u2019t eat any of them. And he became hungry. He wanted meat and to eat other animals. So he left the cave. But the bear\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWanted honey?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cShut up. I love you\u2014don\u2019t interrupt me, you little brat! The bear kept eating the garlic. And the mugwort leaves. You know how bitter they are when you don\u2019t put sauce on them? Or cook them? So the prince was very impressed that the bear stayed twenty-one days and, when it came out, he turned her into a beautiful woman, one with black hair and high cheekbones, and skin that was light like yours, not brown and wrinkled from the sun, not like mine. And then what did he do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe made a man for her?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo! He was the man for her! She was the first Korean. He blew on her\u2013his breath gave her a baby. She became pregnant from his breath and had a baby. And that baby was the first king of Korea. That\u2019s why all Koreans are bears. Half-bears, half-breath from Heaven. All of us are related to a bear who ate raw garlic in the dark. We are not spoiled because we are bears. We can eat raw garlic and mugwort forever if we have to, not like your mother and father. They will always be tigers because they would rather starve than eat something they do not like. And neither one would ever do as any prince told us to, being so stubborn. The garlic is good for you. It will turn you into a man. You need to eat as much as possible!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBut if it turns bears into women, what will happen to me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s the clove, not the stem. And shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo the mountain was a real place? Or pretend?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat mountain was my home, a place called Pyongyang. I was born there, grew up there, and married Haroboji there. Your mom and her brother were born there. We lived in a big brick house with bright wooden floors until it was all taken away, and we had to leave with nothing. It was a war. By the time it was over, everyone was starving. So many people were dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019re so lucky,\u201d she said. \u201cAnything is better than that place. Even though your mother is crazy, you are very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She kissed me noisily on the cheek, shaking me and cackling under her breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAre these stories real?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDid they really happen? There aren\u2019t talking bears. And is Korea really like that? People walking around in heaven?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn the story, they are real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn the story, they are real. When you dream of something, it\u2019s real in the dream. When you remember something, it is real in your memory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She wiped her hands with a rag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese are the ways I want you to remember me when I am not around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBut you are always around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pyongyang existed on the Mesa. I see Halmoni washing the dried soybeans overnight, then soaking them, and boiling them in a worn iron gamasot. I feel the hot steam coming from the sokuri, faded from years of use, its bamboo frayed at the edges. I hear the heavy wooden jeolgu pounding the cooked beans, then watch her hands forming the coarse paste into cakes. I see the fermenting soy lining the walls of her storehouse in Pyongyang, tied into bricks with straw. I smell them, pungent, rich, and savory throughout a house I have never seen, that never existed in my lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni and Mom once argued at the dinner table. I didn\u2019t know what they were talking about, only how their voices changed, how the language formed edges and grew brittle, bloodying the air around us as they began screaming at one another. Halmoni threw her rice bowl hard enough onto the floor that it shattered. Mom picked up her bowl and chopsticks and threw them noisily in the sink. When they became silent, they each quietly began cleaning up the broken rice bowl: Halmoni gathered the pieces of cheap ceramic in her hands while Mom picked up the scattered cooked rice with a washrag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I asked Dad what they were fighting about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHow would I know? It\u2019s all gook shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We kept chickens next to our porch. They had a house and a run covered on all sides and top with fencing to keep them in and the raccoons and possums out. Three of the hens were black, and one was speckled gray. As they grew older, we had them breed with the neighbor\u2019s rooster so that we could raise the chicks. Only the speckled salt-and-pepper hen\u2019s eggs hatched, and one day, three chicks followed her around the run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni placed vegetable trimmings in the run for the chickens. We saw the speckled hen and her chicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat\u2019s on her side?\u201d I asked, pointing to the smallest chick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt looks like blood,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, the small chick caught up to the mother, reaching for radish peelings in the feed tray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Without hesitation, the hen began to strike its beak mechanically at the chick. The chick ran away, but its mother followed, striking and pecking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey just do that,\u201d Halmoni said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She opened the door at the side of the run and went inside to separate them, but when she stepped inside, they scattered. The chicks entered the hen house, and the hen walked to the corner of the run. Halmoni reached, picked up the chick, and brought it outside. The black spot on its side was dried blood. It had other pecks on it, some fresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhy would the mother want to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey\u2019re birds,\u201d she said. \u201cAnimals. Why do they do anything?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mom sucked air through her teeth in a wet hiss, shaking her head at me as Halmoni arranged torn lettuce leaves in a colander next to a bowl of brown ssam-jjang, fragrant with sesame oil and red pepper. Mom did all the shopping and didn\u2019t buy romaine lettuce the last time she was at the market. No matter how upset she was, she never admonished her mother for the occasional produce she stole from the fields Mr. Hashiguchi owned down the hill. She scolded me instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou know who picks vegetable off of ground? Keujji! You want people to think you\u2019re geuji?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo, Umma.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThen don\u2019t let her do that! Mr. Hashiguchi might see you do that. He thinks you&#8217;re low-rent! Are you low-rent?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo, Umma. We are high rent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She slapped my face, hard. I felt tears going down my face, too hot to leave tracks. She pounded her fists against me, my arms, shoulders, and chest. My breath stranded me. I put my arms over my head and drew my knees to my chest. She swatted me with the sides of her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni and I walked on the black dirt of the valley below the Mesa. We descended on the fields when the pickers clocked out before Mom or Dad left their jobs. In the workday bustle, crops dropped in the dirt roads, sliding off open trailers. We hurried onto the fields and picked up the fallen vegetables: a few misshapen cucumbers, an untrimmed flower head of broccoli, or maybe some lettuce or cabbage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re not keujji because we pick up vegetables,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFarmers here have so much lettuce that they wouldn\u2019t miss whole truckloads of it. So they would never have left it on the ground if they needed it or were hungry. No one knows what real hunger is like in America. When Americans went through a war, it wasn\u2019t like when the Koreans did. The soldiers didn\u2019t come into their towns, into their homes. They didn\u2019t have to march to find new homes. Their babies didn\u2019t starve to death at breasts that couldn\u2019t give them milk. Everyone here sleeps well. And the dead are all in graves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We followed the black silt to the Lemos\u2019 easternmost field, where white daikon grew, even thicker than my arms. Halmoni held one up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLook, it&#8217;s one of your stupid mother&#8217;s legs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We gathered it into a paper shopping bag with the two heads of lettuce we found earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni pulled a kotgahm from the paper bag and fed it to me. It was sweet, and it took me a long time to chew. She didn\u2019t eat any. She lit a cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLet\u2019s go home and eat your mommy\u2019s leg!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We heard laughing under our bridge as we approached the creek. Boys. And we smelled smoke. We continued walking. Halmoni\u2019s gentle tugging on my hand told me she didn\u2019t want to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were giggling and speaking in brash, smug tones. As our footsteps hit the bridge, they hushed one another. We were almost over the bridge when the boys beneath went silent. I looked at Halmoni; she looked straight ahead and kept pulling me, preventing me from slowing down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A loud bang, like Dad\u2019s van backfiring, and all the sound in my ears was suddenly muffled. I could see Halmoni had stumbled. She was saying something as she picked herself up, but I couldn\u2019t hear her voice over the ringing in my ears. The boys were at the edge of the bridge, and one tossed another lit firecracker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo,\u201d Halmoni\u2019s mouth formed, her hand held in surrender. \u201cNo\u2026never mind!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The boys laughed at her and threw another. It exploded in the air near my face. Halmoni had a streak of dirt on her forehead, her eyes wide. We ran up the driveway, her shower slippers slapping against the bottoms of her feet. She dropped the shopping bag; the daikon rolled out. I looked back to see it lying innocently on the ground. The gravel slipped beneath our feet, the dandelion plumes in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPlease, never mind!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNever mind!\u201d the boys taunted, no longer hiding in the creek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni made me undress and guided me to the tub, scrubbing me with a rough red washcloth with black stripes. It sloughed the dead skin off my shoulders and back, gray slivers floating in the bathwater. My skin turned red and glowed. The dandelion plumes, the red dirt that coated the driveway, that covered our shoes in the entranceway, all of it floated at the surface. She filled a bowl with water and rinsed baby shampoo out of my hair. There were still dirt smudges on her forehead and cheek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stood as she dried my body and hair with a towel, rubbing baby lotion onto my legs and back. The pink cream stung the welts from mom\u2019s hands, and I quickly shuffled my feet, but she didn\u2019t say anything. I wore white briefs and a white undershirt to bed, the cotton sheets soft against my skin, and I reflexively rubbed my legs against the cool fabric, mesmerized by the pleasure of clean skin against soft, clean sheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The chickens squawked and ruffled as I passed the coop; I saw a mouse\u2019s tail disappearing into the salt-and-pepper hen\u2019s throat. She swallowed, then puffed her chest, slowly scratching her feet before the other hens. I quickened my pace. The speckled hen walked inside the coop. She pecked at her chick, her baby. Her beak made staccato pokes at its yellow down, trying to rend it to pieces. The black scabs blended into dewy blood spots. It backed away as Halmoni picked its mother up, wings fluttering angrily. She quickly wrung the hen\u2019s neck, its head swinging like a hinge while she held it by its legs, its wings thrashing. Halmoni placed it in a pot of boiling water to scald off the feathers. Later, I saw the partially digested mouse in the trash among the hen\u2019s entrails. I tried not to eat the grilled chicken at dinnertime that night, but she kept putting the best pieces in my rice bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I chewed and swallowed them as quickly as I could. Wasting food made her angry, like when I didn\u2019t finish the heaping bowls of rice she scooped for me, or when there was uneaten food in the trash, or when she saw strawberries scattered on service roads, or when she watched television and saw Lucy and Ethel in a pie fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhy would you do that to food? Why is that funny?\u201d she asked the television&#8217;s glow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mom drove us into town in the brown Thunderbird. I sat between Mom in the driver\u2019s seat and Halmoni in the passenger seat. I sank into the fabric upholstery and pushed the rectangular radio buttons, changing from one AM station to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>You see,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>I&#8217;ve forgotten if they&#8217;re green or they&#8217;re blue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Yours are the sweetest eyes I&#8217;ve ever seen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>She talks kinda lazy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And people say she&#8217;s crazy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And her life&#8217;s a mystery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Oh, but love grows<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Where my Rosemary goes<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And nobody knows like me<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Did you know that true love asks for nothing?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Her acceptance is the way that we pay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Did you know that life has given love a guarantee<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>To last forever and another day?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Snowy sound of static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I clicked the buttons anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We pulled into the hospital parking lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The examination room was bright and gray, with fluorescent lights and no windows. I looked at Halmoni sitting at the table, wearing a paper gown. The stout doctor with gray hair and a pockmarked nose showed us Halmoni\u2019s chest X-rays on a lighted wall panel. The doctor spoke slowly and deliberately with my mother, repeating himself to make sure she understood, never looking at Halmoni, never looking at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halmoni stared at the x-ray of her lungs: the outline of wings surrounding white dots. While Mom clumsily translated the doctor\u2019s words, Halmoni was expressionless, as if Mom was telling her how many minutes were in a day, or how many ants were on our driveway. The white dots were indistinct from the dandelion florets in the breeze, only these drifted in the wind that was her breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We lived in a place for people who did not matter. No one considered it a town\u2014just an overpass above the freeway, dry fields to the east, overgrown hills to the west, a place cars passed under without stopping. We called it the Mesa. It was unincorporated and secluded: sandy hills covered with eucalyptus trees and ice plants, with dilapidated barns, mobile homes, and trailers, each with a shallow well and septic tank, unlike the valley or the beach, with their fancy stoplights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[23715],"tags":[1206],"ppma_author":[88879],"class_list":["post-258121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Their Clear Unobstructed View - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We lived in a place for people who did not matter. No one considered it a town\u2014just an overpass above the freeway, dry fields to the east, overgrown hills to the west, a place cars passed under without stopping. We called it the Mesa. It was unincorporated and secluded: sandy hills covered with eucalyptus trees and ice plants, with dilapidated barns, mobile homes, and trailers, each with a shallow well and septic tank, unlike the valley or the beach, with their fancy stoplights.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Their Clear Unobstructed View - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We lived in a place for people who did not matter. No one considered it a town\u2014just an overpass above the freeway, dry fields to the east, overgrown hills to the west, a place cars passed under without stopping. We called it the Mesa. It was unincorporated and secluded: sandy hills covered with eucalyptus trees and ice plants, with dilapidated barns, mobile homes, and trailers, each with a shallow well and septic tank, unlike the valley or the beach, with their fancy stoplights.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-09T13:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"W.S. Gong\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Juliana Luna\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"25 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Juliana Luna\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4\"},\"headline\":\"Their Clear Unobstructed View\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-09T13:16:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":5058,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr\",\"keywords\":[\"fiction\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Fiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/\",\"name\":\"Their Clear Unobstructed View - The Rumpus\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/09\\\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-09T13:16:00+00:00\",\"description\":\"We lived in a place for people who did not matter. 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Gong","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"25 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"Their Clear Unobstructed View","datePublished":"2026-09-09T13:16:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/"},"wordCount":5058,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","keywords":["fiction"],"articleSection":["Fiction"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/","name":"Their Clear Unobstructed View - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/their-clear-unobstructed-view\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-09T13:16:00+00:00","description":"We lived in a place for people who did not matter. 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Gong","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<span data-sheets-root=\"1\">W.S. Gong is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. An alumnus of Bread Loaf, Tin House, Kenyon, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, his work appears in Fourteen Hills. He is at work on a novel.<\/span>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/matt-hardy-6ArTTluciuA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258122,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258121\/revisions\/258122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258121"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258446,"date":"2026-09-09T08:53:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258446"},"modified":"2026-09-09T08:53:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:53:52","slug":"heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Heaven, Hell, and Nowhere: Gregg Araki\u2019s Changing Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a longtime fan of Gregg Araki, I was caught off guard by how, frankly, <em>ugly<\/em> I found <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>. Even at their most sordid and grimy, Araki\u2019s earlier films render Los Angeles beautiful: The camera lingers over bare skin, cheap motel rooms, fluorescent convenience stores, cigarette smoke. Lights pulse in nightclubs, shadows expand in the middle of the night, and beautiful young people dream and experiment, seeking transcendence through drugs, alcohol, sex. Where his earlier films make cheap motels and marginal spaces feel charged with possibility, <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em> makes even expensive interiors feel thin, lifeless, claustrophobic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLA is like nowhere.\u201d So says Dark, the disaffected protagonist of <em>Nowhere<\/em> (1997). Indeed, during Araki\u2019s seminal \u201990s arthouse run, Los Angeles often conjured this feeling of the liminal: dark alleyways, decaying punk houses, anonymous motel rooms, convenience stores, highways, and unexplained dead zones. His characters pass through urban spaces that feel disconnected from the \u201creal\u201d world of work and school. These films feel beamed in from the underground, documents of a counterculture in which young people were free to follow their appetites and urges. Violence erupts randomly, sex happens wherever it can, often unexpectedly. Adults and institutions remain at the edge of the frame, and what we see feels secretive, private, even illicit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nearly thirty years later, <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em> places its young protagonist in a very different Los Angeles. Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), a gallery assistant, becomes entangled in an affair with Erika Tracy, his older, wealthy artist boss (Olivia Wilde), only to find himself implicated in her apparent death. The characters are interrupted by texts and calls while masturbating (or record themselves masturbating for an installation). They\u2019re secretly filmed for monetary gain. They\u2019re interrogated by the police about their erotic experiences. Rather than the Los Angeles of underground parties and hedonistic road trips, where individuals seemingly have total freedom, this Los Angeles feels floodlit, the characters like ants under a giant microscope. Everything is brightly illuminated, categorized, narrativized, and increasingly public, especially experiences that once belonged to the murky realm of private desire.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As social historian Mike Davis writes in <em>City of Quartz<\/em>, \u201cThe ultimate world-historical significance\u2014and oddity\u2014of Los Angeles is that it has come to play the double role of utopia <em>and<\/em> dystopia for advanced capitalism. The same place, as Brecht noted, symbolized both heaven and hell.\u201d Araki\u2019s Los Angeles has always embodied this contradiction, depicted as a site of both menace and freedom. At the beginning of <em>Doom Generation<\/em> (1995), the characters dance and fight at a party beneath a fiery \u201cWelcome to Hell\u201d sign. When Amy and Jordan leave, Jordan asks, \u201cCan we go to heaven?\u201d Heaven turns out to be his car, washed in soft blue light with Jesus dangling from the rearview mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The drifters and artists of Araki\u2019s early films live at the margins of capitalist society, largely detached from work and school. They live exposed to violence, but also free from the structures that organize adult life. Capitalism has an absurd, arbitrary logic. In <em>Doom Generation<\/em>, at convenience stores, every item rings up at $6.66. In contrast, in <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>, the characters live inside capitalism\u2019s institutions: workplaces, luxury homes, police stations. Unlike any of Araki\u2019s other young protagonists, Elliot is defined by his need for income. His erotic life is framed by work\u2014Erika is his lover and boss.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film makes that difference clear almost immediately. Elliot first appears bloodied and dressed in pink lingerie, stumbling toward a swimming pool where he discovers the naked body of his boss, Erika. The film flashes back nine and a half weeks to Elliot in a prim button-down shirt working as a gallery assistant in a bright white space, chewing pink gum and sticking it onto a crude drawing of a vagina. In this \u201chipster sweatshop,\u201d as his co-worker calls it, Erika summons Elliot into her office and questions him about himself. He stumbles through his answers until she bluntly proposes that they have sex. The film then cuts to a grey, noir-lit interrogation room, where two detectives (Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho) ask Elliot to reconstruct his relationship with Erika from the beginning. In Araki\u2019s earlier films, desire precedes explanation; characters act first and rarely have to account for themselves afterward. Here, Elliot\u2019s desire is almost immediately turned into testimony.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The detectives quickly turn the interrogation into a commentary on the relationship itself. They employ the language of sexual consent and boundaries, which would have been anathema in his earlier films. \u201cSo you were obsessed with her.\u201d \u201cShe was your employer.\u201d \u201cShe took advantage of you.\u201d \u201cGrooming.\u201d They ask who held the power, who pursued whom, and what kind of relationship this actually was. Elliot\u2019s experience may be messy and contradictory, but the investigation keeps pushing it toward legal clarity. Araki satirizes a contemporary tendency to moralize and categorize sex, though his argument is oddly muddled. The language of grooming and power imbalance does not come from Elliot or his peers; it is imposed on him by older authority figures. The film wants to mock young people for overthinking sex while simultaneously portraying them as subjects of an institutional vocabulary they did not create. Araki has said that <em>Secretary<\/em> (2002) was an inspiration for <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>, but the contrast is revealing. That film allows its power imbalance to remain part of the relationship\u2019s strange erotic logic, while <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em> immediately surrounds a comparable dynamic with a vocabulary of consent, exploitation, and abuse, much of it grafted onto the characters from the outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Authority figures certainly appear in Araki\u2019s earlier films, but they remained outside the intimate lives of his protagonists. Here, the cops are brought directly into the sexual narrative, enlisted to question and interpret it. Their role becomes even more absurd when it is later revealed that Erika manipulated Elliot into involving them in the first place, using their authority to help make her staged death convincing. Araki\u2019s earlier characters hardly understood what was happening to them, and there were few adults around demanding that they do so. In <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>, private experience is surrounded by systems for describing, evaluating, and reproducing it. Every confusion must eventually be made legible. That insistence on clarity extends to the film\u2019s visual language. Instead of handheld 16mm textures and saturated colors, <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em> feels more digitally sharp and exposed than anything he has made before. Its images are clean to the point of harshness. Some of the sets are shockingly ugly: the tacky, thin-looking walls of the interrogation room; the grotesque Nickelodeon-ass orange, yellow, purple of Elliot\u2019s apartment; the porn-y white and grey apartment of Elliot\u2019s equally soulless girlfriend; the garish white leather couches and chrome accents of Erika\u2019s mansion. The film\u2019s bright, flat lighting and conspicuously artificial interiors give it the visual texture of a sitcom or a commercial. The effect makes this version of Los Angeles feel exposed and synthetic and underlines the fact that we\u2019re in a world in which sex, fantasy, and transgression are immediately legible. Whether Araki is parodying that visual language or has simply absorbed some of it is harder to disentangle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Part of this new look comes from a notable change in Araki\u2019s filmmaking process. On <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>, he used two cameras for the first time, a practice common when directing television. Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/features\/podcast\/gregg-araki-i-want-your-sex-filmmaker-toolkit-1235207180\/\"><em>IndieWire<\/em><\/a>, Araki says: \u201cAs an editor, having two cameras is this amazing tool because you always have a perfect cut. The hair is exactly the same, the gesture\u2026it&#8217;s so freeing.\u201d Coming from Araki, the enthusiasm for the \u201cperfect cut\u201d is striking, even off-putting. His early work drew much of its energy from roughness, discontinuity, and an indifference to conventional polish. Now, a problem his earlier filmmaking seemed largely unconcerned with has become something his process is specifically tailored to solve. The industrial method and the world being depicted begin to resemble each other. Araki seems to recognize and dislike the world of legibility, categorization, professionalization, and surveillance, but his own filmmaking partially absorbs those same values. This makes the film less a clean critique than a conflicted artifact of the world it depicts, critical of its values but still caught in its logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That resemblance produces one of the stranger contradictions in <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em>. On his press tour, Araki has repeatedly described the film as \u201ca sex-positive love letter to Gen Z,\u201d a plea for young people to explore their sexuality more freely. But Elliot and the other young characters are not especially unwilling to experiment; they are constrained by work, money, school, unequal power, and the possibility of constant surveillance. Even the sex itself is comically unerotic, staged in bright, artificial spaces that make intimacy feel exposed rather than liberating. Perhaps that is Araki\u2019s point. But if so, \u201ca sex-positive love letter to Gen Z\u201d feels less descriptive than aspirational\u2014a statement of what he hopes the film might inspire, rather than what it actually depicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Against a harsh visual world, the film\u2019s rare moments of beauty and lyricism occur in fantasy, like when Elliot imagines Erika in costume, surrounded by blue smoke and soft light. That beauty seems increasingly disconnected from the city itself, which makes one wonder whether <em>I Want Your Sex<\/em> might represent a moment in which Araki is falling out of love with LA. Despite his free-love messaging around the film, one scene in particular seems to contain its dark heart. Erika tells Elliot that she wants to give him as a sexual offering to her friend, a fellow artist played by Araki mainstay Roxane Mesquida. But when Elliot arrives at her hotel room, she seems appalled that he has come here to offer himself as a gift. The scene revels in its sheer awkwardness, but the joke sours. For a moment, the flimsy fantasy collapses and what was supposed to be erotic and transgressive is exposed as transactional, even a little gross. I admired Araki for taking it there, for letting the fantasy curdle into something unpleasant and prickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film reaches its bleakest\u2014and funniest\u2014point in the final act. Erika reveals that she faked her own death in order to create a scandal around her work and drive up its value. The scheme succeeds. When Elliot is horrified that she used him, she tells him that one day he will thank her: The experience will become a story he can sell. Two years later, Erika appears on Elliot\u2019s seemingly successful podcast. They speak comfortably about what happened. The affair, the manipulation, and even Elliot\u2019s humiliation have all been transformed into content. The joke is almost too perfect: The endpoint of all this supposedly dangerous erotic experience is a <em>podcast<\/em>. In Araki\u2019s present, today\u2019s sex-positivity is converted into something banal and marketable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Araki thankfully provides one last twist. Rather than end on the podcast, he injects a dose of his signature surrealism and returns to that state of menace and ecstasy. Two more years pass, and Elliot and Erika find themselves at their own wedding, standing before James Duval, the central face of Araki\u2019s Teen Apocalypse trilogy, dressed in priest robes. The image delights in its own perversity as the old Araki world suddenly intrudes on the new one. Duval smirks as his long hair falls over his face, large earrings peeking through. Not even for a moment does he make for a believable clergyman. As Duval reads the marital rites, Erika and Elliot smile cheerfully at one another and say \u201cI do.\u201d They kiss, and Erika\u2019s face suddenly warps into a shriek and begins to melt. Her features sag and contort as her mouth gapes open, rupturing the glossy fantasy in an instant. Light beams through cracks in her skin. It\u2019s strange, creepy, and somewhat beautiful. In its last gasping seconds, the film feels out of control and poetic. Elliot and Erika then wake in separate beds, gasping for breath. Araki presents them in split screen with the same head-on composition, the same sudden movement, and the same expression of terror.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ending plays like an exorcism of everything the film has spent the previous hour and a half smoothing over. The story appears resolved: Erika\u2019s scheme succeeds, Elliot uses his experiences to launch his career, and the two of them can sit across from each other years later and process the experience tidily and amicably to the public. But in their dreams, none of it is settled. They are still haunted by one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seen this way, Araki\u2019s \u201csex-positive love letter to Gen Z\u201d begins to make more sense. Perhaps the invitation shouldn\u2019t be seen as simply to have more sex, but rather, to risk experiences that exceed your ability to explain them. The prize for surviving a messy relationship isn\u2019t wisdom, money, or a successful podcast. It should be something much more worthy: an experience vivid enough to invade your dreams years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lights pulse in nightclubs, shadows expand in the middle of the night, and beautiful young people dream and experiment, seeking transcendence through drugs, alcohol, sex. Where his earlier films make cheap motels and marginal spaces feel charged with possibility, I Want Your Sex makes even expensive interiors feel thin, lifeless, claustrophobic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[88701],"tags":[9416],"ppma_author":[88885],"class_list":["post-258446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Heaven, Hell, and Nowhere: Gregg Araki\u2019s Changing Los Angeles - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lights pulse in nightclubs, shadows expand in the middle of the night, and beautiful young people dream and experiment, seeking transcendence through drugs, alcohol, sex. 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Where his earlier films make cheap motels and marginal spaces feel charged with possibility, I Want Your Sex makes even expensive interiors feel thin, lifeless, claustrophobic.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Heaven, Hell, and Nowhere: Gregg Araki\u2019s Changing Los Angeles - The Rumpus","og_description":"Lights pulse in nightclubs, shadows expand in the middle of the night, and beautiful young people dream and experiment, seeking transcendence through drugs, alcohol, sex. 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Where his earlier films make cheap motels and marginal spaces feel charged with possibility, I Want Your Sex makes even expensive interiors feel thin, lifeless, claustrophobic.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/iwantyour.webp?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/iwantyour.webp?wsr","width":2500,"height":1351},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/heaven-hell-and-nowhere-gregg-arakis-changing-los-angeles\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Heaven, Hell, and Nowhere: Gregg Araki\u2019s Changing Los Angeles"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88885,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"lucia-ahrensdorf","display_name":"Lucia Ahrensdorf","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Lucia Ahrensdorf is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in <em>Film Comment<\/em>, <em>MUBI Notebook<\/em>, <em>The Film Stage<\/em>, <em>BOMB Magazine<\/em> and elsewhere. <\/span>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/iwantyour.webp?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258447,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258446\/revisions\/258447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258446"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258371,"date":"2026-09-09T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258371"},"modified":"2026-09-08T22:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:02:30","slug":"the-missing-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/the-missing-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The Missing Word"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At twenty-two, I saw a film about Mahmoud Darwish at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. It opens with Darwish on Mount Nebo in Jordan, looking west toward Israel and Palestine. According to the Bible, this is the mountain from which Moses (Musa in Arabic) saw the Promised Land but did not enter it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By then Darwish had long been the poet most closely identified with Palestine, a towering figure across the Arab world. In the film he reads to electrified audiences about the homeland he left, about childhood and landscape, about his native village of al-Birwa, destroyed in 1948 and rebuilt in language. I remember his voice and the charge in the crowd. I had never seen people respond to a poet that way. I was a twenty-two-year-old Jewish Israeli sitting in the dark, captivated by how alive the work felt, by its pain and its playfulness. His poetry did not describe a world. It brought one into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet I had no idea what he was talking about. I was reading his words in Hebrew subtitles, about a place I simply thought of as mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I listened as though the story had happened elsewhere, though I grew up in north Tel Aviv and studied at Tel Aviv University, which stands partly on the lands of Sheikh Munis, a Palestinian village whose residents were displaced in 1948. I learned that later. My parents were born in Tel Aviv; theirs came from Damascus and Cairo. No one told me about the Nakba, the mass displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians during the war in which Israel was established. I began looking later, first in Hebrew and then in other languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two years ago, a close friend was sitting in my kitchen in Berlin. His grandparents had come to France from Tunisia and Algeria; he was born in Jerusalem and later moved to Paris. He is, like me, an Arab Jew, from a family rooted in the Arab world. We were talking about what it means to be displaced, what a homeland is, what we inherit. I told him my conscience was clear: my family had arrived in Israel in 1949. They did not cause the Nakba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He became angry and accused me of washing my hands of it. I was furious. The conversation ended when his father called him urgently to Paris to say goodbye to his dying Tunisian grandmother. But my own family story was too clean as well. I had heard once, almost in passing, that when my family arrived in Israel they lived for a while in a Palestinian house. We never spoke of it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Only later did I understand my mistake. I did not need to prove that my family had caused the Nakba. I needed to understand that I had been born into the world it made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Citizenship and language already carried 1948 inside them. So did the map, the names of villages, and the houses that had disappeared. My innocence was possible because the Nakba had been defined as somebody else&#8217;s catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem is not simply what Israelis know about 1948. Israel needs a new story about itself. The old one has become a trap. It knows how to tell Jewish stories of exile and return, but not Palestinian ones. It can imagine the land as a Jewish home while barely seeing the Palestinians who lost their homes there. And it has narrowed to the point where it can imagine survival almost only through force, borders, separation, and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This fall Israelis will go to the polls. The opposition promising to replace the current government has been shaped by years of protest over the courts, and later by the struggle around the hostages and the war. It talks about security and democracy, about October 7 and repairing state institutions. But Palestinians barely appear in the future it asks Israel to imagine. When they do, the language still tends to begin in 1967, with occupation, borders, and separation. The rupture I am concerned with begins earlier, in 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am writing about 1948 while Palestinians in Gaza are still living through mass death, displacement, and destruction. It is easy, at a moment like this, to say that the more distant past can wait. I believe the reverse: if we do not understand which past has been allowed into the Israeli story and which has been pushed outside it, we cannot understand the limits of what we are able to see in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The state itself understands the power of story. In 2011 Israel amended its Budget Foundations Law so that public funding can be reduced to institutions that finance events marking the establishment of Israel as a day of mourning. There is no need to ban a word; pricing it teaches silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eleven years earlier, in March 2000, Education Minister Yossi Sarid proposed adding poems by Darwish to an optional part of the high-school literature curriculum. The decision triggered no-confidence motions in the Knesset. They failed, but Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared that Israel was not yet ready for Darwish. All this over the prospect that Israeli students might read him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Politics operates within the limits of what a society can imagine. Literature cannot replace power, law, or policy; it changes the material that political imagination works on. That is what I saw in Darwish without understanding it: he turned homeland, loss, and return from facts into a world one could inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which brings me back to Hebrew. It is my mother tongue, the language I write in and cannot stand outside of. It is not innocent either. Hebrew has been used to govern and dispossess. It has silenced, and it has allowed us to remain silent. The Nakba is there in renamed places, in villages erased from maps, in houses called \u201cabandoned,\u201d in memories reduced to a whisper. The landscape is scarred, and words know how to plaster over a scar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Nakba has already been written in Hebrew. In 1949 S. Yizhar published Khirbet Khizeh, narrated by an Israeli soldier taking part in the expulsion of a Palestinian village&#8217;s residents. Anton Shammas did something different in his 1986 novel Arabesques, published in English in 1988: a Palestinian writer claimed Hebrew from within, not as a guest in the language but as someone entitled to change it and to challenge the idea that it belonged exclusively to Jews. Shammas also translated Emile Habibi&#8217;s The Pessoptimist into Hebrew, a novel that uses satire and grotesque comedy to write about the Nakba and Palestinian life after 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But those cracks did not become a climate. The Nakba has appeared in Hebrew literature as an event, a wound, something to be looked at. What remained rare was literature that simply assumed it, the way it assumes the sea, the army, the language itself. In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison showed how what she called the \u201cAfricanist presence\u201d shaped white American literature even when Black characters seemed absent. Absence itself organizes what characters see and what they never think to ask. In A.B. Yehoshua&#8217;s 1963 novella Facing the Forests, an Israeli forest conceals the ruins of a Palestinian village until a fire exposes what the landscape had hidden. The Nakba does not need to enter the Hebrew imagination. It is already at work inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Years before I knew the word Nakba, I was already making stories inside that gravitational field. One summer I worked at a university day camp with four-year-olds and made up stories for them. Once I told them about green people who had to leave their home. I do not remember what happened to them afterward, or where the story came from. At the time I regularly passed the Green House at the edge of the campus, a stone house among the trees that had always been there. I knew its name and never asked where it came from. I did not know it was a remnant of Sheikh Munis; I did not know the village&#8217;s name. My green people had to leave a house that did not exist. A short distance away stood a real house, a remnant of a village whose residents had been displaced. The two things did not touch in my mind. In my imagination, perhaps, they already had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not long ago, while looking something up in the digital edition of one of my novels, I noticed that other readers had highlighted a passage. In it, a character based on my grandmother recalls that when the family arrived they stayed for a while in a house that had belonged to Arabs, and that she pressed them to move to a new building in north Tel Aviv, where my father would grow up. I had heard the story from her, remembered it, and set it down. The Nakba was in that sentence. I did not see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this is what I want from Hebrew literature, my own included. Not simply more novels \u201cabout the Nakba,\u201d but literature in which it turns up in a marriage, an inheritance, a lease. Literature that cannot leave it alone, not a civics lesson. If the Nakba belongs to life, it should not appear only in rituals of mourning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am writing this in Berlin, in a Hebrew that left Israel with me. Distance does not give me clearer sight. It keeps the Israeli story from being the only one I hear. Here my Hebrew lives alongside German, English, and Arabic. This matters at a time when Israel is increasingly closing in on itself, imagining Palestinians as a permanent threat that can never be resolved, the Arab world as an eternal enemy, and the outside world as a hostile audience whose gaze can simply be dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A state may demand loyalty to land. Literature is loyal to story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Palestinians do not need Hebrew literature to give form to their loss or longing. In Adania Shibli\u2019s Minor Detail, an atrocity committed by Israeli soldiers in 1949 is not left behind as history; it goes on shaping a woman\u2019s movements decades later. Tamer Nafar, the Palestinian rapper from Lyd (Lod in Hebrew) and a founder of the pioneering hip-hop group DAM, has a first book, <em>3Gs: An Imaginary Memoir,<\/em> due in English in December 2026. His imagined daughter Shaden returns to Lyd to rescue objects and memories and carry them into a \u201cPalestine in the cloud.\u201d Saint Levant&#8217;s 2024 album Deira takes its name from the hotel his father built on the Gaza coast, destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in late 2023. He imagines himself and his father walking into a rebuilt Deira to perform there, in a liberated Palestine. He has described this vision as a kind of science fiction inspired by Afrofuturism. In both works, art moves return into the future tense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since I discovered Saint Levant&#8217;s songs, I have kept going back to them. They move me, but they also give me pleasure. They make me dance. They carry me toward an Arab world I never lived in and yet partly recognize, from my family&#8217;s Damascus and Cairo and from the place where I was born. I was born in the Middle East and taught to think of the Arab world as somewhere outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We know something about longing for a lost home. For centuries Jews kept an absent place alive through prayer and poetry, through memory, building in words the hope of return. One of Zionism&#8217;s terrible ironies is that Jews returned to the place they had longed for and turned others into people forbidden to return. Palestinians do not need Jewish memory to tell them what they miss. Their longing forces us to confront what we did to <em>galut, bayit, shivah<\/em> \u2014 exile, home, return \u2014 when we made them rights reserved for us alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the Israeli imagination, the hardest test of the new story is return. This is not an abstract possibility I am asking literature to invent. Palestinians have been making the claim for nearly eighty years, in international institutions and courts, in politics, and in proposals about property, compensation, citizenship, and return to places transformed beyond recognition. Palestinian refugees themselves have imagined its realization in different forms. What is almost entirely missing from the Israeli imagination is the ability to encounter all this without translating return immediately into one picture: they come back, we disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani&#8217;s 1969 novella<em> Returning to Haifa,<\/em> a couple returns after 1967 to the home they left in 1948. There they meet the Jewish woman who raised their son, now an Israeli soldier. Two contradictory histories enter the same house, and no one resolves them. Literature can break the monopoly of the single picture. Instead of \u201cthey return, therefore we disappear,\u201d it can bring people and lives into the imagination \u2014 houses, neighbors, property, languages, children, quarrels. Not to decide what return should look like, but to stop the word from meaning catastrophe before the argument has even begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The election this fall will ask who governs Israel. It will not decide what story Israel can tell about itself. No change of government will be enough if we go on living inside the same story about ourselves, the Palestinians, and the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At twenty-two I sat in the dark at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque reading Darwish&#8217;s words in Hebrew. I thought he was speaking about another place, though it was the place I thought of as mine. Years later, in a Berlin kitchen, I was still trying to prove that this catastrophe belonged to someone else. The place I had called \u201cmine\u201d did not stop being mine. What changed was what belonging to it could mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For years I thought the missing word was Nakba. I had not understood that I could write the history down and still fail to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Israel can no longer tell its own story as though the Nakba happened somewhere outside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Israel needs different policies, but the old story keeps narrowing what Israel can imagine. Before the country can change course, it will have to change the story it tells about itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/otherpress.com\/product\/the-diamond-setter-9781590518915\/\">Excerpted from <em>The Diamond Setter<\/em> by Moshe Sakal and translated by Jessica Cohen, published by Other Press on September 1, 2026.&nbsp; Copyright \u00a9 Moshe Sakal and translated by Jessica Cohen. Reprinted by permission of Other Press.&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The problem is not simply what Israelis know about 1948. Israel needs a new story about itself. The old one has become a trap. It knows how to tell Jewish stories of exile and return, but not Palestinian ones. It can imagine the land as a Jewish home while barely seeing the Palestinians who lost their homes there. And it has narrowed to the point where it can imagine survival almost only through force, borders, separation, and control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":258372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":258373,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[81576],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[88880],"class_list":["post-258371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Missing Word - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The problem is not simply what Israelis know about 1948. Israel needs a new story about itself. The old one has become a trap. It knows how to tell Jewish stories of exile and return, but not Palestinian ones. It can imagine the land as a Jewish home while barely seeing the Palestinians who lost their homes there. And it has narrowed to the point where it can imagine survival almost only through force, borders, separation, and control.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/09\/the-missing-word\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Missing Word - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The problem is not simply what Israelis know about 1948. Israel needs a new story about itself. The old one has become a trap. It knows how to tell Jewish stories of exile and return, but not Palestinian ones. 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He is the author of six Hebrew novels, including\u00a0<em>The Diamond Setter<\/em>\u00a0(Other Press, translated by Man Booker Prize winner Jessica Cohen) and\u00a0<em>Yolanda<\/em> (Stock, Paris). His work has been translated into English, French, and German. His fiction explores exile, diaspora, queer identity, and the shared Arab-Jewish world before 1948. Sakal is the co-founder of Altneuland Press, the first Hebrew literary publisher established outside of Israel since 1948. He is a regular contributor to the\u00a0<em>Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung\u00a0<\/em>and has also written for\u00a0<em>Le Monde, Lib\u00e9ration,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Haaretz<\/em>. A two-time nominee for the Sapir Prize, recipient of Israel's Levi Eshkol Prize, Fulbright Scholar, and Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, Sakal was awarded the Berlin Senate Grant for Non-German Literature in 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She is the author-illustrator of OUR LAKE (Kokila) which received a Caldecott Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, the Dilys Evans Founder's Award, and was featured on \u201cBest of\u201d lists by NPR,\u00a0Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Horn Book, and more.\u00a0She is also the illustrator of NAVIGATING NIGHT, written by Julie Leung (Anne Schwartz Books), which received the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award and was a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Prize. Her work was named a finalist for the 2026 James Beard Awards, shortlisted for the 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize, and featured in\u00a0The New Yorker, The Believer, Narrative,\u00a0and elsewhere.\u00a0She was a 2026 Sendak Fellow and the 2024 Ezra Jack Keats Fellow at MacDowell. 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Lee"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/03b113f84111c5025d5d8e184768c3cc","name":"Angie Kang","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3c3d8de24b5e6495c20a3c5978b9539a960d1da8bb692da71dbc4a012b5c31c6?s=96&d=mm&r=g748739c2f7428cb5bcddda92a714115f","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3c3d8de24b5e6495c20a3c5978b9539a960d1da8bb692da71dbc4a012b5c31c6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3c3d8de24b5e6495c20a3c5978b9539a960d1da8bb692da71dbc4a012b5c31c6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Angie Kang"},"description":"Angie Kang makes art in LA. She is the author-illustrator of OUR LAKE (Kokila) which received a Caldecott Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, the Dilys Evans Founder's Award, and was featured on \u201cBest of\u201d lists by NPR,\u00a0Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Horn Book, and more.\u00a0She is also the illustrator of NAVIGATING NIGHT, written by Julie Leung (Anne Schwartz Books), which received the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award and was a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Prize. Her work was named a finalist for the 2026 James Beard Awards, shortlisted for the 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize, and featured in\u00a0The New Yorker, The Believer, Narrative,\u00a0and elsewhere.\u00a0She was a 2026 Sendak Fellow and the 2024 Ezra Jack Keats Fellow at MacDowell. Find her at\u00a0angiekang.net\u00a0or on Instagram @anqiekanq.","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/angie-kang\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":83608,"user_id":119380,"is_guest":0,"slug":"angie-kang","display_name":"Angie Kang","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3c3d8de24b5e6495c20a3c5978b9539a960d1da8bb692da71dbc4a012b5c31c6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Angie Kang makes art in LA. She is the author-illustrator of OUR LAKE (Kokila) which received a Caldecott Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, the Dilys Evans Founder's Award, and was featured on \u201cBest of\u201d lists by NPR,\u00a0<i>Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Horn Book<\/i>, and more.\u00a0She is also the illustrator of NAVIGATING NIGHT, written by Julie Leung (Anne Schwartz Books), which received the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award and was a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Prize. Her work was named a finalist for the 2026 James Beard Awards, shortlisted for the 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize, and featured in\u00a0<i>The New Yorker, The Believer, Narrative,<\/i>\u00a0and elsewhere.\u00a0She was a 2026 Sendak Fellow and the 2024 Ezra Jack Keats Fellow at MacDowell. Find her at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/angiekang.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">angiekang.net<\/a>\u00a0or on Instagram @anqiekanq."}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/randylee_angiekang_Page_01_COVER-IMAGE-2.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258430,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258345\/revisions\/258430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258345"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258300,"date":"2026-09-08T12:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T16:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258300"},"modified":"2026-09-08T13:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:03:29","slug":"why-widows-bay-is-truly-peak-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/08\/why-widows-bay-is-truly-peak-television\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Widow\u2019s Bay Is Truly Peak Television"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In episode 1 of <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em>, Apple TV\u2019s latest hit series, the mayor of a remote New England island, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), courts a <em>New York Times<\/em> reporter (Bashir Salahuddin) in hopes of getting a write-up that will boost tourism. But Mayor Loftis is also hiding a huge secret\u2014the frights, curses, and zombie-filled legends in the history of this island community are, in fact, gruesomely true. And when Loftis\u2019s own fears finally drive him into a state of panic, the <em>Times<\/em> reporter suggests he gets the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI see what\u2019s going on here,\u201d he tells Loftis. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be Nantucket; you want to be Salem. It\u2019s a nice town. You don\u2019t need the gimmick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cpaper of record\u201d is, of course, wrong on that score: Widow\u2019s Bay is a place of great complication. And in ten episodes, this deservedly lauded show has trapped us in a world at once both familiar and foreign, with jump scares following on the heels of hilarity. Through Loftis\u2019s eyes, we see a vacation spot we\u2019re grateful to visit and <em>never<\/em> live in (to say nothing of being born there), with so many beautifully untied loose ends that can only lead to spine-tingling magic. And best of all, it is operating in a genre\u2014horror-comedy\u2014that has finally risen past cult status into the mainstream. That its writing, directing, acting, and production have earned the series nineteen nominations for the upcoming Emmy Awards is no surprise. Presumably this will earn the show some well-deserved gold, but at the Emmys, nothing is ever guaranteed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Again and Again<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Emmys\u2014which air on September 14th\u2014are unique among award shows in that most of the honors given every year allow for an insane amount of repetition. From 1994 to 1998, <em>Frasier<\/em> won five straight Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series (over, among other shows, <em>Seinfeld<\/em>, <em>Friends<\/em>, <em>The Larry Sanders Show<\/em>, <em><\/em>and <em>Mad About You<\/em>). The feat was matched from 2010 to 2014 by <em>Modern Family<\/em> (which topped <em>Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em>, <em>The Office<\/em>, <em>Parks and Recreation<\/em>, <em><\/em>and <em>The Big Bang Theory<\/em>). In both instances, some of the more uniquely styled shows were shut out, since playing it safe has often been a hallmark of Academy success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the TV Academy has also, by slow necessity, mirrored the evolution of the industry. Traditional broadcast shows ruled the evening for decades until cable, and then pay cable, and then streaming ruined most of their fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HBO\u2014and now its streamer, HBO Max\u2014remains a major threat every year, leading all comers this time around with 122 nominations. Of those, twenty-four are for the bittersweet final season of the comedy <em>Hacks<\/em>, and twenty-five are for the sophomore season of last year\u2019s Outstanding Drama Series winner, <em>The Pitt<\/em>. The latter is the frontrunner to repeat this year, and understandably so. It has traditional medical drama pedigree (and, of course, a great Noah Wyle), but it\u2019s fashioned for the post-Covid era, and while it keeps some of the soap allure of, say, <em>Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>, it also had enough blood in Season 1 to make one of its ER characters pass out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It has some great competition, including Apple TV\u2019s magnificent first season of the post-apocalyptic dynamo <em>Pluribus<\/em> and a best-season-yet vote for Netflix\u2019s political thriller <em>The Diplomat<\/em>. What it <em>doesn\u2019t<\/em> have is competition from BritBox\u2019s glorious <em>The Other Bennet Sister<\/em> or the season\u2019s biggest culture-shifting entry, HBO Max\u2019s fire-on-ice romance <em>Heated Rivalry<\/em>. Arcane Academy rules have banished them to international awards consideration because they were not initially US co-productions. To which I say, \u201cI mean, <em>come on<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, the Emmys, much like most televised award shows, are also known for other arcane rules, although these usually go unwritten. For instance, no presenters are permitted to hand out a trophy until they\u2019ve first engaged in at least one or two minutes of such pointless, incessant patter. You would be forgiven for shouting, \u201cI will never get this time back again!\u201d at the television, should you choose to watch the shows live. And that other famous rule: Poignancy in acceptance speeches <em>must<\/em> be eliminated quickly (\u201cCue the music!\u201d), unless delivered by a rambling, entitled star. But I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The best nominees from cable and streaming are great examples of what TV has always needed and gets a bunch of in this era: chance-taking series. While commercial broadcast television remains, for the most part, formulaic, the best streaming entries go bigger and deeper. There\u2019s a reason we were addicted to <em>Severance<\/em>, <em>Ted Lasso<\/em>, <em>Euphoria<\/em>, <em>The Bear<\/em>, <em>Succession<\/em>, <em>Stranger Things<\/em>, <em><\/em>and <em>The Studio<\/em>; they each tapped into a need for either comforts, passions, or a view of lives that were even more outrageous than ones we were, or are, living in. Without censors or advertisers to potentially dictate the breadth of content, and without the need to worry about viewer complaints, shows on premium networks or streaming don\u2019t need the blueprint of the weekly procedural. They can focus on story continuity and extra layers of realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Scare Tactics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> is the favorite to take Outstanding Comedy Series <em><\/em>this year, and if it does, it\u2019ll be a triumph some thirty-six years in the making. That it became the most captivating binge of the summer is no surprise, since it shares a don\u2019t-go-near-the-water bloodline with <em>Jaws<\/em>. But its true tie extends to 1990, and the series that first made it safe to explore the border between the horrific and the comedic: <em>Twin Peaks<\/em>. Like David Lynch and Mark Frost\u2019s masterpiece, <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> gives us a look at the chilling darkness of small-town life, the rot on the inside of the white picket fence. A tolling church bell might seem quaint and ordinary, but given that the church bell in Widow\u2019s Bay has long been dismantled, it becomes a harbinger of evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Peaks<\/em> remains a beloved classic, but it has never risen to the type of universal acceptance it always deserved, even if its influence is secure. (As <em>The Sopranos<\/em> creator David Chase once put it, \u201cAnybody making one-hour dramas today who says he wasn&#8217;t influenced by David Lynch is lying.\u201d) But what makes <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> work so well is how it perfectly balances the chills and the laughs. Other series and films have treaded there with different levels of balance. <em>Shaun of the Dead<\/em>, <em>Zombieland<\/em>, <em>Fargo<\/em> (the movie <em>and<\/em> the subsequent series), <em><\/em>and <em>What We Do in the Shadows<\/em> (which scored four Emmy nods for Outstanding Comedy Series) all come to mind. But none of them have you teetering the way <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> does. When Loftis interviews the zombified remains of island founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), and you sense that <em>anything<\/em> can happen, breakout star Kate O\u2019Flynn\u2019s entrance into the scene\u2014\u201cSorry, I forgot my purse,\u201d is her character Patricia\u2019s astonishing excuse\u2014becomes the stuff of comic magic. Plus, no one on earth does horror and comedy together quite like Stephen Root, who is perfection as Wyck Crawford, a walking catalog of the town\u2019s many dreads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em> does win the Emmy, it\u2019ll widen the audience for a genre that belongs solidly in the mainstream. But there\u2019s actually an Emmy category <em>Twin Peaks<\/em> would be perfect for: this year\u2019s new Legacy Award, honoring a show that has made a profound and lasting impact on culture and society. The award is a very good, long-overdue idea. (As to why it hasn\u2019t happened before, Television Academy President and Chief Executive Maury McIntyre admitted to <em>The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, \u201cWe were idiots and didn\u2019t think about it until now.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alas, <em>Peaks<\/em> isn\u2019t eligible. A show must have had at least sixty episodes, and there were only forty-eight for that series. Let\u2019s hope the first recipient is truly deserving of the honor, and is a show that hasn\u2019t already received lavish love from the Academy. Any other choice would be both a laugh and a horror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like David Lynch and Mark Frost\u2019s masterpiece, Widow\u2019s Bay gives us a look at the chilling darkness of small-town life, the rot on the inside of the white picket fence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[88701],"tags":[9416],"ppma_author":[88827],"class_list":["post-258300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Widow\u2019s Bay Is Truly Peak Television - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Like David Lynch and Mark Frost\u2019s masterpiece, Widow\u2019s Bay gives us a look at the chilling darkness of small-town life, the rot on the inside of the white picket fence.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/08\/why-widows-bay-is-truly-peak-television\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Widow\u2019s Bay Is Truly Peak Television - 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He is an editor at <em>TV Guide<\/em> magazine and is currently at work on his first novel.<\/span>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Widows_Bay_Photo_010606-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258349,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258300\/revisions\/258349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258300"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258123,"date":"2026-09-08T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258123"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:00:28","slug":"three-poems-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/08\/three-poems-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Twenty Questions for the Twin Boys who Spat in my Hair in Seventh Grade<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why on a school bus returning<br \/>from a field trip? Why the back<br \/>of my head as I sat in the row ahead<br \/>of you? Did you both spit or only one?<br \/>Who followed whose cruel idea?<br \/>Did my puffy blonde hair waterfall<br \/>to my shoulders or was it in a ponytail<br \/>my mother had meticulously slicked up,<br \/>securing loose strands with mists<br \/>of water? When I felt something<br \/>heavy in my hair, a beetle perhaps,<br \/>and groped around until my palm<br \/>swiped a loogie, why didn\u2019t I lose<br \/>my shit on you two? Why was<br \/>my tucked, hot face my only<br \/>fire? Since I remember your names<br \/>is it unethical to out you in this poem?<br \/>Did you know I was a grade under you?<br \/>Do you have a younger sister? Do you<br \/>still spit? Still spit in anyone\u2019s hair?<br \/>Why don\u2019t more girls and women spit?<br \/>Why, when my teenage son tried to teach<br \/>me to spit, was the hardest part not<br \/>hocking the necessary phlegm but<br \/>picking a target\u2014any walking path,<br \/>squirrel-studded lawn or fishy lake<br \/>on which my saliva wouldn\u2019t intrude,<br \/>infect, insult? All these years, have I<br \/>misunderstood you two? Was something<br \/>in your throat you needed to forcefully<br \/>expectorate? Can either of you whistle?<br \/>Roll your tongue into a clover leaf?<br \/>In other words, did you consider all<br \/>the good mouths can do on a bus ride?<br \/>Is it too late for you to learn a duet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Following Orders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most children need blankies to fall asleep.<br \/>For my child that\u2019s a start. Puffy quilts hide<br \/>all but her pillowed head, like she\u2019s neck-deep<br \/>in ocean frothing her footboard and bedsides.<br \/>Over her eyes is a chartreuse sleep mask;<br \/>thick, furry, a cat face shimmers on the front.<br \/>Enclosing her are gauze curtains she asks<br \/>remain untied\u2014sheer wall, ironic stunt.<br \/>I nudge curtains apart and reach a hand<br \/>to her soft mouth and chin; she drifts off best<br \/>when I caress her skin, that narrow band.<br \/>What\u2019s next, my other hand smoothing her nest<br \/>of hair? Tonight I\u2019m a compliant mother.<br \/>But what if she looks back and says I smothered?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>My Dad Hopes to Stroke Out Mid-lecture<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead he retires from his university,<br \/>strums songs at his goodbye party in the campus courtyard.<br \/>Instead he picks up a pipe, puffs to fill new silence.<br \/>He and my stepmom announce, if they grow feeble, together they\u2019ll drink end-of-life cocktails.<br \/>Instead he divorces her after 16 years and countless doors she shuts on my siblings and me.<br \/>Instead he moves to Missouri\u2014<br \/>I can drive there in the length of a kids\u2019 movie.<br \/>For the first time my daughter paws his accordion,<br \/>jumps on his bed, un-scolded for mussying quilts.<br \/>Instead there\u2019s no instead about breakfast\u2014<br \/>scrambled eggs I had as a child, tortillas charred on a stove.<br \/>At his stovetop he points to loosening skin<br \/>inside the crease of his elbow, wrinkly as crepe paper, sign of old age.<br \/>Instead of marathons he used to run, he walks.<br \/>Instead of two pill bottles in his bathroom, twelve.<br \/>He liked tailoring tests to class discussions;<br \/>instead he tailors espressos he makes me, less sugar.<br \/>Instead he tweaks the spot for his dog\u2019s crate until it stops night-panting.<br \/>Instead he turns his attention to his soft heartbeat,<br \/>accelerated when he sits on his sunny back deck, neck slick with sweat,<br \/>so he climbs a ladder and installs a canvas shade from deck to fence.<br \/>There are days he talks with no one,<br \/>days we text about a baseball game,<br \/>weekends I visit and I can\u2019t tell if his sighs mean calm or exhaustion.<br \/>Instead I trust his words:<br \/>My life is family, this dog, the lake around me.<br \/>Instead of him cruising in a little sailboat he moved with<br \/>the boat squats in a marina parking lot for weeks, guzzling rain.<br \/>Instead of hiring someone with a truck to tow and lower his boat into a dock<br \/>he feels overwhelmed, landlocked.<br \/>One day a sailor stops him in the marina lot and offers a tow rig\u2014<br \/>my dad could blush, toe gravel, shake his head.<br \/>Instead he fights for his boat\u2019s life:<br \/>the sailor\u2019s truck backs up into a lake,<br \/>the truck gives birth to his boat\u2014unknot the cords, finally float\u2014<br \/>my dad, inside the boat, gently steers it to a dock.<br \/>Instead he\u2019s at the marina daily varnishing the wooden mast and rail.<br \/>Instead he texts videos of himself jumping off the transom.<br \/>Instead he swims beside the boat, laughing mouth an inviting cove.<br \/>My sister worries he\u2019ll drown;<br \/>instead his legs curl freely, like a sturdy child\u2019s, mid-leap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why on a school bus returning<br \/>\nfrom a field trip? Why the back<br \/>\nof my head as I sat in the row ahead<br \/>\nof you? Did you both spit or only one?<br \/>\nWho followed whose cruel idea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[10691],"tags":[667],"ppma_author":[88877],"class_list":["post-258123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Three Poems - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why on a school bus returning from a field trip? Why the back of my head as I sat in the row ahead of you? Did you both spit or only one? Who followed whose cruel idea?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/08\/three-poems-17\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three Poems - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why on a school bus returning from a field trip? Why the back of my head as I sat in the row ahead of you? Did you both spit or only one? Who followed whose cruel idea?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/08\/three-poems-17\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-08T14:23:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Kunkel-2026-Marianne-Kunkel-1.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1574\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1819\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Marianne Kunkel\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Juliana Luna\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Juliana Luna\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4\"},\"headline\":\"Three Poems\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-08T14:23:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":778,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/Kunkel-2026-Marianne-Kunkel-1.jpeg?wsr\",\"keywords\":[\"poetry\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Poetry\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/\",\"name\":\"Three Poems - The Rumpus\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/08\\\/three-poems-17\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/Kunkel-2026-Marianne-Kunkel-1.jpeg?wsr\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-08T14:23:00+00:00\",\"description\":\"Why on a school bus returning from a field trip? 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Austin State University Press) and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Laughing Game<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The Threepenny Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Missouri Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Notre Dame Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rattle<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of English at Johnson County Community College in the Kansas City, Missouri, area.<\/span>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Kunkel-2026-Marianne-Kunkel-1.jpeg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258124,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258123\/revisions\/258124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258123"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258119,"date":"2026-09-07T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258119"},"modified":"2026-09-01T13:37:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:37:53","slug":"environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bayous of Louisiana are disappearing. The people of Pelerin Parish in Stephanie Soileau\u2019s debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/should-the-waters-take-us-a-novel-stephanie-soileau\/0b7bf1ccbb78c05c?ean=9780385551786&amp;bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Should the Waters Take Us<\/em><\/a> <em><\/em>(Doubleday, 2026), have their own claim on the land, each straining to eke out a living from livelihoods they feel simultaneously indebted to and oppressed by. They are fighting to accept the many ways they are losing their home.<br \/><br \/>I identify with the deep sense of loss that comes with your roots vanishing in the name of progress. Even though I couldn\u2019t wait to leave my hometown as a teenager, I\u2019ve been grieving&nbsp; the disappearance of trivial monuments: a favorite store, a playground, an ugly sculpture. For the characters in this novel, the stakes are much higher because their monuments\u2014and the land beneath them\u2014are vanishing at an alarming rate. The characters have to confront the unsustainable ways of living they were born into\u2014the only ways they know how to be\u2014and must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to hold on to the <em>status quo.<\/em><br \/><br \/>From the environmental costs of the oil industry and levee system, to the small daily choices that are made just to make it to tomorrow, the novel shows how trying to preserve one way of living can destroy another. One wonders whether the only difference between preservation and theft is a matter of perspective. Told through five viewpoints over multiple generations in Pelerin Parish, most of the novel takes place in 2010. Bad decisions and bad weather toss these lives into fates they hadn\u2019t expected, but perhaps deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had the pleasure of speaking with Soileau over Zoom and email where we discussed the complicated nature of ownership, the long-term effects of short-sighted decisions, and the importance of looking below the surface of seemingly enchanting ways of living.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><em><br \/><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"528\" src=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-350x528.jpg?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-258178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-350x528.jpg 350w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-1024x1546.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-800x1208.jpg 800w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-1017x1536.jpg 1017w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-1356x2048.jpg 1356w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-1320x1993.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-600x906.jpg 600w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Should-the-Waters-Take-Us-scaled.jpg 1696w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> <em>Should The Waters Take Us<\/em> is as much a story about the bayous of Louisiana as it is about the people who have lived there for generations. Was there one side that you were more drawn to when you first started the novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie Soileau:<\/strong> I was interested in the place because it\u2019s been formed by and is the source of a lot of really interesting moral and practical quandaries. The coast of Louisiana is losing land at a fairly high rate due to erosion. The statistics are something like twenty-five to thirty-five square miles a year. It\u2019s already lost essentially the state of Delaware, which is a lot, right? People live in this place and are so attached to this place. It\u2019s not uncommon for people to be so deeply attached to their little corner of the world. I won\u2019t say that\u2019s especially true in Louisiana, but sometimes it feels that way. Because it\u2019s such a singular landscape and a very nourishing landscape if it\u2019s functioning correctly. You can pull everything you need to eat right out of the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Throughout the novel you question the idea of ownership\u2014who owns the land, but also what happens when you own land that is disappearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> People love South Louisiana. They want to stay there in spite of all of the hurricanes and land loss and they\u2019re hanging on by their fingernails. But at the same time, <em>every<\/em> connection to home is tenuous. So bringing in this long historical context, going back to 1603, I was hoping to highlight the idea that, \u201cYes, we\u2019ve become attached to places, but they aren\u2019t always our places.\u201d And they often aren\u2019t permanently our places, however much we feel like we want to make them so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> And that historical view really drives that point home as we follow these families over centuries. When you started, did you imagine it being a multi-generational story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Yeah, that was always a piece of it, but I wasn\u2019t necessarily thinking of the characters in the historical episodes as literally the ancestors of the characters in the present. It was more that I wanted these legacies, these stories from the past, these moments in history to be hanging over the present, as foundational <em>stories<\/em>, a mythos that helps to illuminate who these people are and how they behave right now. I took a lot of inspiration from the book of Genesis, especially the story of Jacob and Esau, which is one of my favorites, mainly because Jacob is such an asshole. And yet he receives God\u2019s blessing, steals it, really, and thus, he gets more of a share in his world. It seemed like a perfect analog for the kind of quandary that was happening in Louisiana, or in many places that are becoming less rural and are sort of entering the modern world. Jacob is the modern man\u2014he lives in tents\u2014and his brother is the huntsman who lives [in] the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The modernizing forces of the oil industry, of even the things we do in order to settle on this difficult landscape, like building levees around the Mississippi River so that it doesn\u2019t flood\u2014this robs the landscape of its processes of renewal, and it is a drifting away from traditional livelihood and natural ecologies. The land is disappearing <em>because<\/em> we have made it so that we can live reliably on the land.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> The ripple effects in your story, some manmade and some natural, show how trying to preserve one thing or one place ends up destroying something or someone down the line. Calamity seems a part of the culture there. Outsiders might say, \u201cWell, just move,\u201d but to them this is just life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Right. I started writing this book just before Hurricane Katrina happened because I had learned about the coastal land loss problem. And then Katrina happened. I was following the news online and hearing questions from people around me where I live in Chicago, and in the always terrible <em>The New York Times<\/em> comment sections, where every time a hurricane happens or something like the Deepwater Horizon spill happens, people ask, \u201cWhy are these dummies still trying to make a life there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New Orleans is below sea level, it\u2019s gonna be gone in a hundred years, so why sustain that? <em>Should The Waters Take Us<\/em> was really an attempt, if not to answer that question, then at least to lay the question out in a way that was more legible for people on the outside. It\u2019s a regional story, yes, but look at what\u2019s happening in Europe right now; record-breaking heat, wildfires. The climate changes happening region by region adds up to a more global, universal issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> It\u2019s something we will all have to face at some point. The character, Boy, exemplifies someone who grew up living off the land and doesn\u2019t know any different. You can\u2019t imagine him working a nine-to-five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> This also goes for Boy\u2019s uncle, Jacot. They both feel like they own this land, but they want very different things from it to survive\u2014Boy wants to live off the land and Jacot wants to live off the oil underneath it. It created a really compelling tension because it\u2019s this battle of ownership. Have you seen this play out in real life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Yeah. It was interesting to me learning about Louisiana land law\u2014which is sort of Kafka-esque\u2014and how mineral rights work, how the ownership of land that sometimes turns to water works. It was a complicated legal situation to get my mind around and then also to make accessible in fiction without taking over the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Hats off for explaining the legal definition of \u201cnavigable waters\u201d in a way that was interesting and didn\u2019t disrupt the flow of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> What I learned based on oral histories, especially one in particular about the history of the oil industry in South Lafourche Parish\u2014which is the parish this book is modeled after\u2014is how casual land use was. You would have your piece of property on the bayou and the properties have these long tails going off back into the marsh. You would use as much of that as you needed for your family or go out into the deeper marsh and work on some other piece of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nobody cared about boundaries until the oil industry came in and told them that it was actually worth something. Otherwise it was not so formal, but was treated more as a commons, as I understand it. Once it became a question of leasing surface rights and mineral rights and getting actual cash from the landscape instead of what you need for subsistence, then boundaries became a much more relevant question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Not that this is a legal novel, but it addresses the question of: What are boundaries when the boundaries are disappearing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> I won\u2019t say capitalism is the main antagonist in the novel, but maybe the oil industry is one of the throughline antagonists\u2014and not just in Louisiana. One of the four main perspectives in the novel is Fabian Dakolo, a priest sent to the parish from Nigeria. Was it also your intent from the beginning to give a more global perspective?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely. For one thing, the oil industry is obviously an antagonist. But it was also important to me to demonstrate that the choices that are made that ultimately read as antagonism, or incredibly damaging policy, happen on a smaller scale. These are people on the ground making decisions in the moment about their own livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Louisianans let the oil industry develop their property, they think they\u2019re going to be making money from it and will be able to sustain the lifestyle that they really love because they have this other source of income. People have a hard time fully imagining\u2014or believing in\u2014long-term consequences, even when the evidence is right in front of them, which is why there are so many climate change deniers in that part of the world, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wanted an outsider\u2019s perspective, and specifically a Nigerian perspective, to highlight that this is a global issue. Whatever Louisiana or the US faces in terms of the depredations of the oil industry or the environmental damage caused by the oil industry, it\u2019s so much worse elsewhere where the people who live there do not necessarily have the resources or platform to press for change. As horrible as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was, it got a lot of attention, people jumped into action and there was money poured into solving the problem. Not so in places like the Niger Delta, where there\u2019s a persistent spilling and persistent beleaguerment of the environment with no consequences for Shell and Big Oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> The novel shows how this short-sightedness in the people of Pelerin Parish has long-term effects. They are just trying to make ends meet month-to-month. They also aren\u2019t being given all the information by the oil companies. Jacot is complicit in this as the go-between for the oil companies and the people who own the land in the bayou, but he doesn\u2019t really have all the information, either. He just wants the three dollars they pay him a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By telling the story from five different perspectives, we get to understand these people who are, to one degree or another, making choices I didn\u2019t agree with. But I also empathized with those choices. What was your approach to choosing these characters and then getting into their life to represent it in such an empathizing way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> My favorite fiction asks questions and doesn\u2019t necessarily provide answers. It gives the full equation and you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that equation. The calculus is often complicated. A danger in writing a story about the oil industry would lie in oversimplifying the characters\u2019 motivations or their virtues. I absolutely didn\u2019t want it to be \u201cthe evil landowner\u201d against the righteous \u201cman of the field.\u201d I wanted Boy, who I would assume people would tend to side with because he\u2019s not taking money from the oil industry\u2014he\u2019s completely outside of that business\u2014I didn\u2019t want him to seem like \u201cthe noble savage.\u201d He claims to be Indigenous: he\u2019s not. He\u2019s an opportunist just like everybody else. And Jacot, who is in bed with the oil industry, is also an opportunist, but with loving reasons. He originally took a job with the oil industry because he was in love and wanted to impress his lady. And also, being an oysterman in those days pretty much sucked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Who hasn\u2019t done something dumb to win the heart of someone else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> <em>(laughing)<\/em> Who hasn\u2019t tried to impress their lady by taking money from Big Oil?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Yeah, right? Were these characters drawn from research more than, say, \u201cthe guy down the street?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Their personalities are definitely drawn from the guy down the street, so to speak. But the situation they\u2019re in took a lot of digging around and trying to simplify convoluted legal and environmental processes\u2014to simplify it as much as possible for the sake of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started getting interested in how land changed hands when I did the first set of interviews right after Katrina. I talked to this gentleman who was a recreational fishing boat captain\u2014that\u2019s how he made his living. He would hire out his boat to fishermen from Baton Rouge or wherever. He was Houma and\u2014we were sitting at his friend\u2019s kitchen table\u2014he had a very deep and long knowledge of the marsh around him, not only from living on it, but also from stories that have been passed down. We laid out maps and he could point to any place on those maps and tell a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was the one who first explained to me how the early oil men who came in were misrepresenting their business. He said, \u201cThe oil industry stole the land from these people. [pointing to the map] This used to belong to so-and-so. There used to be a church here.\u201d But now it\u2019s all oil and gas fields because they came in and basically lied about what they were doing. The people thought they were selling the mineral rights to their property, but they were actually signing quick claim deeds\u2014which is something I tried to show in the book. That was the first clue I had about the complicated changing hands of property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> When you were doing those interviews, was it for the novel? Did you have the idea for it at that point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> Yeah. I did what I always tell my students not to do, which is start with a theme, a moral question, and then try to build out from there. I was interested in these questions of ownership and home, but I didn\u2019t know who should inhabit the place. It took a long time to come to the characters who would best reveal those conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> There are a lot of, for lack of a better word, \u201cfacts\u201d in this novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> <em>(laughing)<\/em> Yeah, there\u2019s a lot of facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Not to scare anybody off: The facts are in there in the best way possible. Do you find yourself doing a lot of research to get as much knowledge as you can before you begin writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> In general, I feel like that\u2019s my mode. I\u2019ve started a new project and most of what I\u2019m doing right now is reading about nuns and getting lost in the wilderness. For <em>Should the Waters Take Us<\/em> in particular, it was really important to me to get it right because I knew if I got it wrong there would be any number of local voices pointing out all the thousand ways that I got it wrong. Every time I scratched the surface of something there was so much more I didn\u2019t know. But also, there are so many ways that coastal Louisiana has been misrepresented and misunderstood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the outside, people think of Louisiana as a sort of a monoculture. It\u2019s \u201cThe Cajun State,\u201d right? But it is not a monoculture. The place where I grew up in Lake Charles is a very particular corner of the state, very influenced by Texas. You move to the middle-south of the state and that\u2019s a certain kind of Cajun-Creole culture. In the southeast, it\u2019s a totally different culture and atmosphere. I had no personal experience with this part of the state I was writing about. It\u2019s a fishing community, and it may sound like I\u2019m an insider because I grew up in Louisiana, but for that particular place I was very much an outsider. It took a lot of work to get myself up to speed on how people lived and who owned what and how every disaster\u2014hurricane, oil spill, erosion\u2014how every disaster, in minute, daily ways, affects the people living there. It was a lot of research, a lot of talking to people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Which sounds like a great way to fall in love with a place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Soileau:<\/strong> I fell in love with the place before I learned how fragile it was. I was heartbroken and took a drive down Highway 1. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to go see the Gulf!\u201d Seeing water always makes me feel better. I had Bob Dylan on the headphones, driving down in a rainstorm, and had never been down that way and was just so enchanted\u2014enchanted in this na\u00efve way\u2014by what it meant to live along the bayou, for your daily activities to center around getting on your boat and going out to the Gulf and getting some shrimp and coming back in. It was beautiful, or so it seemed, as I was driving down there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was also enchanting how old-school Catholic it was. I grew up Catholic, and like many people who grow up Catholic, I\u2019m still a sucker for grottos and incense. At the time when I made that first drive, there were these little chapels along the highway, along the bayou. There was one that was kind of ornate and built by some guy in memory of his wife. That one still exists as of the last time I drove down, even after Katrina and Ida. There was another one that was about the size of a closet with a little altar at the front, and the walls were covered in Post-it notes that people had left with their prayers. The walls were <em>covered<\/em>. You\u2019d open the door and the Gulf breeze would flutter these Post-it notes. I spent probably a good hour just sort of perusing the Post-it notes. And there were so many desires and so many worries just fluttering on the wall of this little chapel down in the marsh. That one is gone. I think it got washed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My favorite fiction asks questions and doesn\u2019t necessarily provide answers. It gives the full equation and you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that equation. The calculus is often complicated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[88065],"tags":[3180],"ppma_author":[88453],"class_list":["post-258119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-interviews"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My favorite fiction asks questions and doesn\u2019t necessarily provide answers. It gives the full equation and you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that equation. The calculus is often complicated.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My favorite fiction asks questions and doesn\u2019t necessarily provide answers. It gives the full equation and you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that equation. The calculus is often complicated.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-07T14:37:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-09-01-at-1.28.45-PM-1024x1374.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1374\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Y.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@the_rumpus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Juliana Luna\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"16 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Juliana Luna\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4\"},\"headline\":\"Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-07T14:37:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":3211,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/Screenshot-2026-09-01-at-1.28.45-PM.png?wsr\",\"keywords\":[\"Interviews\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/\",\"name\":\"Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau - The Rumpus\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/07\\\/environmental-disaster-erosion-of-home-a-conversation-with-stephanie-soileau\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/therumpus.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/Screenshot-2026-09-01-at-1.28.45-PM.png?wsr\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-07T14:37:00+00:00\",\"description\":\"My favorite fiction asks questions and doesn\u2019t necessarily provide answers. 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He is the Layout Editor for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Third Coast<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> magazine. His work can be found in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">White Wall Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.<\/span>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-09-01-at-1.28.45-PM.png?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258179,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258119\/revisions\/258179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258119"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258143,"date":"2026-09-07T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258143"},"modified":"2026-09-01T13:24:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:24:52","slug":"the-problem-with-trans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Trans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen Truelove had everything. She was the most beloved children\u2019s author in the world. Her books had been turned into films, a Broadway musical, and a theme park\u2014the sort she had always dreamed of getting lost in as a child. She lived in an actual castle now with a drawbridge and a moat and a turret. She had an entire wing filled floor to ceiling with books, and an indoor swimming pool. A far cry from her humble beginnings when she\u2019d scribbled her stories on napkins in between shifts at her local caff. She had more money now than she\u2019d ever dreamed possible. And yet there was still something that unsettled her, a growing unease that kept plucking away at her happiness like a loose thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every day, as she went about her usual routine, a report would come on the news or she would see an article in the paper or a friend would mutter something under her breath: the transgenders. And a chill would prick its way down her spine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not that long ago, no one had been talking about them at all. They were like unicorns. She might have seen one on the tube, out of the corner of her eye. Or on a late-night talk show. But now they were everywhere\u2014trying to use the toilets or join the sports teams\u2014like a growing tidal wave that threatened to drown the entire world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She had lesbian friends. She went vegan with them sometimes and talked about feminism. She had gay friends, too. They did her hair and bought her expensive wines she had never heard of. She loved the gays and she was proud of loving them. But they were easy. They didn\u2019t demand anything from her, didn\u2019t insist the world rebuild itself in their image. Unlike the transgenders who suddenly had everyone wrapped around their cloying fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was ridiculous! Everyone knew there were only men and women, penises and vaginas, immutable and inviolate. The transgenders couldn&#8217;t change biology. But no one wanted to admit this. Everywhere she looked, people, ordinary people like her, were tying themselves in knots to cater to this mad fantasy that you could be whatever you wanted to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So she turned to the only thing that had never failed her: the internet. She read articles and studies, watched YouTube videos, and lurked on forums until her eyes burned and her shoulders ached. Then she found the blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Problem with Trans<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Something unfurled inside her, warm and thrumming, because that was it, wasn&#8217;t it? There was a <em>problem<\/em> with all of this, only the others couldn&#8217;t see it. She clicked on the link to the latest post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they&#8217;re stealing women&#8217;s spaces.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they&#8217;re erasing the gays.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they&#8217;re brainwashing our children.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She found herself nodding as she read along. Yes, yes! The blogger called herself MUD, a pseudonym because of the death threats. And there were hundreds of comments below clamoring to proclaim their agreement, hundreds who had sensed this growing threat as she had and were not afraid to speak out. It was a bloody relief!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She phoned her publicist. &#8220;I need to make a statement.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She needed to take a stand. So she logged onto Twitter and dipped her toes into the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The transgenders are not who they say they are. I will not be silenced. #truth<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She fully expected a backlash and there was one. Several of her movie leads went against her. The studio issued a lukewarm statement of dismay. But there were other voices, too, natal women like her, <em>biological<\/em> women, lesbians, a surprising number of men. They had all experienced something like her own panic at the thought of this rising tide, a shudder in the dark, a sense that the world was unraveling around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her daughter, Izzie, was confused. \u201cMum, why did you say those things? You know my friend Connor is trans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Izzie had brought Connor home a few times, a girl, Kathleen had thought, with short hair and boyish clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou really hurt him.\u201d Izzie was nearly in tears now and Kathleen\u2019s fear sharpened. It was contagious, some people thought, a disease of the mind. Put one transgender in a school and dozens would spring out of the floorboards like mushrooms. If Connor had it, would her daughter also succumb? Izzie had liked playing with trucks as a young girl, she had avoided skirts for years. Maybe even now the contagion was working on her, making her hate her female body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don&#8217;t think you should see Connor right now. She&#8217;s a little confused, but if you\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c<em>He<\/em>, Mum, <em>he<\/em>. God!\u201d Izzie stomped off to her room but that was all right. Kathleen was protecting her just like she would from drugs or STIs or a tattoo she would always regret. That was what mothers did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a new post from MUD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they\u2019re destroying science.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they\u2019re putting rapists in the locker rooms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they\u2019re stealing our children\u2019s skins.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen shivered. Bile rose in her throat. She had been right, then, to keep Connor away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As she drifted off to sleep that night, she dreamed of some other child holding up her daughter\u2019s skin, wrapping it around itself, distorting the shape, dancing wildly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She woke with her heart beating out of rhythm, drenched in sweat, unable to erase that horrible image from her mind. The transgenders, mutilating children. Kathleen had been something of a tomboy herself growing up. How close had she come to losing her own skin, only thirty years earlier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She logged on to her website this time, determined to be heard. The words poured out of her in a rush, every fear, every resentment, and all her glorious facts, the fruit of her harried research. She pressed Post with a feeling of triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>In Defense of Natal Women: A New Manifesto.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDon&#8217;t you think,&#8221; said her husband, David, \u201cyou&#8217;re taking this a little too far? Can\u2019t you just let people be themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She startled away from him as if he had slapped her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m standing up for women,&#8221; she said. &#8220;For women who bleed, for moon women. I&#8217;m standing up for children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYes, but Connor,\u201d said David. \u201cHe&#8217;s a sweet kid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cShe&#8217;s a thirteen-year-old girl. She probably doesn\u2019t even know what she wants to be when she grows up!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The international backlash to her manifesto was immense, but the support of her fellow natal women buoyed her spirits. She was speaking out for the voiceless, standing up for the powerless. She was a modern-day Joan of Arc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She checked back in with MUD.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they have nictitating eyelids.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they have tentacles under their clothes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is their blood burns like acid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She struggled to catch her breath. She had never noticed the nictitating eyelids but then she had never looked closely at Connor\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now when she left her castle and went into town, she wore a hoodie and studied everyone very carefully. MUD had said you couldn\u2019t always tell who was a transgender and who was not, but it was obvious to anyone who knew the signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A young woman walked towards her in a billowing sea green skirt. Kathleen couldn\u2019t see her eyes behind the dark sunglasses but there was just a hint of stubble on her jaw and, there, where her skirt had swirled against her legs, was that a tentacle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen muffled a scream against the back of her hand and stumbled across the busy street, a lorry swerving out of its way to avoid her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m taking you out of school,\u201d she said to her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat? No!\u201d Izzie backed away from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI have to keep you safe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCome on,\u201d said David. \u201cYou know she loves school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen squeezed the stem of her wineglass until it snapped. \u201cYou don&#8217;t understand. This is a war. And I&#8217;m on the right side, okay, the right side.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">David\u2019s face flushed and he turned away from her. They slept in separate rooms after that. She was starting to lose friends, too, but that was all right because her publisher hadn\u2019t dropped her. They were never going to drop her. She made them too much money. And it was all coming clear now. What she really needed to do was write a book, not a blog post, or a series of contentious tweets. She would lay out the whole truth before it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She locked herself in her turret office and opened her computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they devour souls.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they can make you one of them with a glance.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The problem with trans is they have four rows of razor-sharp teeth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She stopped leaving the castle altogether. She couldn\u2019t bear the thought of stepping into a bathroom and not knowing, were those smiling women who nodded at her over the sink really men? Were they watching her with that strange white film over their eyes, waiting for her to drop her guard?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m leaving you,\u201d David called through the keyhole of her locked office door. \u201cThis is too much for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But she didn&#8217;t answer. A new fear had started to bloom and writhe inside her. How did she know <em>he<\/em> wasn&#8217;t already one of them? They could have surgeries, after all. He had never had his chromosomes tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMum?\u201d Her daughter\u2019s voice echoed from the other side of the door. \u201cMum, we&#8217;re worried about you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen cringed away from the sound. Was that really her daughter calling her? Or was one of <em>them<\/em> trying to lure her out, already wearing her daughter\u2019s skin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kathleen wrote on, losing track of the days, only leaving her office to eat the dwindling supply of food her husband had left her. The castle was empty, the kitchen piled with dirty plates and trash. She didn\u2019t dare let in any of the cleaners. Her publisher called and left messages that went unanswered. She had to finish the book. Then she would tell the whole world the truth. Then she would be safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because now, every time she dared to look out the turret window, she saw the transgenders gathered in the gardens below, staring up at her. Their skin glowed faintly phosphorescent. Sometimes their tongues would flick free of their mouths as if tasting the air. And she knew she was running out of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She would rush back to her desk, then, to write even more furiously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes someone would cross the drawbridge and pound on the door or lean against the doorbell and her heart would spasm in her chest until they went away again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She stopped sleeping and lay awake all night thinking of her childhood, of how divorced she had felt from being a woman, sexless almost, and ashamed. It terrified her to think that any part of her could have once been like the transgenders and that all those girls, girls like Connor, were now rushing to them for escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt isn&#8217;t worth it,\u201d she whispered to herself. \u201cIf they only waited a little longer, they would be fine like me. I am perfectly fine.\u201d She stared up at the cracks in the ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By now she was almost at the end of the book and when she finished, she could make all of this stop. The world would rally to her cause, see reason. They had to because there were more and more of them out there now, the transgenders, and even MUD, poor beautiful MUD had gone silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The turret roof had started to leak. The ceiling bulged in one corner of the room. The garden grew more and more unkempt and a tree toppled across the moat in an especially violent storm. Kathleen ignored it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was just finishing the last chapter when they came. She could hear them climbing up the stairs, tentacles sucking at the stone floors. She barricaded the door and sat crouched in the corner, laptop before her like a shield. She was so close. But they could walk through walls now, how had she not known that? They melted through the wallpaper, fingers grown sharp like talons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI won&#8217;t let you take this from me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou can&#8217;t stop us,\u201d they hissed with one sibilant voice. \u201cWe&#8217;re the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBut you aren\u2019t even real!\u201d she shouted. \u201cYou&#8217;ve never been real!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They glided towards her. \u201cWe&#8217;ve always been here. We will always be here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She screamed once, shrill like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a fox, and the computer fell from her hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When the authorities finally broke down the door, there was nothing left of her. Only the laptop and an open document: <em>The Problem with Trans<\/em> by Kathleen Truelove. The pages were all blank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">END<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because now, every time she dared to look out the turret window, she saw the transgenders gathered in the gardens below, staring up at her. Their skin glowed faintly phosphorescent. Sometimes their tongues would flick free of their mouths as if tasting the air. And she knew she was running out of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[23715],"tags":[1206],"ppma_author":[88878],"class_list":["post-258143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Problem with Trans - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Because now, every time she dared to look out the turret window, she saw the transgenders gathered in the gardens below, staring up at her. Their skin glowed faintly phosphorescent. 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And she knew she was running out of time.","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-07T13:21:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1692,"height":2560,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tim-rebkavets-B5PNmw5XSpk-unsplash-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jonathan Lenore Kastin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"The Problem with Trans","datePublished":"2026-09-07T13:21:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/"},"wordCount":2224,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tim-rebkavets-B5PNmw5XSpk-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","keywords":["fiction"],"articleSection":["Fiction"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/","name":"The Problem with Trans - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/07\/the-problem-with-trans\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tim-rebkavets-B5PNmw5XSpk-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-07T13:21:00+00:00","description":"Because now, every time she dared to look out the turret window, she saw the transgenders gathered in the gardens below, staring up at her. 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His poems can be found in <em>Mythic Delirium<\/em>, <em>Goblin Fruit<\/em>, <em>Liminality<\/em>, and <em>Abyss &amp; Apex<\/em>. His short stories can be found in <em>Cosmic Roots<\/em> and <em>Eldritch Shores<\/em>, <em>On Spec<\/em>, and <em>Galaxy\u2019s Edge<\/em>, as well as the anthologies: <em>Ab(solutely) Normal<\/em>, <em>Transmogrify!<\/em>, and <em>We Mostly Come Out at Night<\/em>. He lives with two mischievous cats, more books than he could ever read, and a frightening number of skulls. He is trying to write a novel. Pray for him.<\/span>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tim-rebkavets-B5PNmw5XSpk-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258144,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258143\/revisions\/258144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258143"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258116,"date":"2026-09-06T10:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T14:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258116"},"modified":"2026-08-31T16:28:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T20:28:48","slug":"my-mas-hatred-grows-cavities-every-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/06\/my-mas-hatred-grows-cavities-every-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"My Ma\u2019s Hatred Grows Cavities Every Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She told me to be a dental hygenist. <em>People will always hate someone<\/em>, said my ma as she pressed a knife against my collarbone, the nice Swiss Army blade that Uncle Ric gave teenage me for my birthday after I started spending more time in the kitchen. I smiled and nodded and the motion nicked my skin. I made a mental note to wash the knife before the next time I went camping. The calculus was simple enough. My preferred major: finance, classified as \u201ctoo masculine\u201d by my ma. Her alternative: dental hygiene, a perennially popular and well-advertised career path that conjured images of smiling women bunching hairnets over their copious locks. My ma had the knife and the college funds. All I had was a dedicated parking space in the world\u2019s proverbial closet, festooned with crop tops and fuchsia bows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was hired fresh out of school by a sprawling clinic on Sixty-Third Street whose loyal clientele had included my ma for fifty-four years. Each wall was painted a subtly different shade of beige. The tools were sharper than those I\u2019d practiced with\u2014<em>higher-quality<\/em>, the dentist told me. His name was Cairn. <em>Just Cairn<\/em>, he said when I asked if I was expected to use an honorific. When I attempted to make small talk, he informed me that my short hair \u201cgave clients the wrong impression.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I decided I did not like Cairn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dental hygiene school focused on practical matters: painting sealant, operating the x-ray machine, and how to pull a tooth, in that rare eventuality. No one mentioned the emotionally grueling torture of scraping hate-plaque off the molars of the old man down the street who\u2019d paid me to mow his lawn since fifth grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I withdrew my scaler from his mouth, and he swallowed visibly. I could hear the spit sloshing in his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI swear, those rainbow &#8212;&#8212;s will be the death of my teeth.\u201d He rolled his neck with a discomforting crack; his mouth easily shaped the slur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I forced a smile. People used to believe sugar caused cavities, but that wasn\u2019t true. Plaque was formed from the hatred that collected in your mouth every time you spat an insult or a slur, or let your jaw twist in disdain. Those bitter emotions were behind the ugly buildup that decayed the edges of your oral bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMint or raspberry for today\u2019s polish?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He grunted his usual response\u2014<em>raspberry<\/em>\u2014and settled back against the headrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mouth agape, eyes closed, the man in front of me didn\u2019t look capable of hating anyone, let alone me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then again, teeth told all sorts of unlikely stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My ma went to the dentist twice a year: in May and in September. In May, my colleagues always informed her that her teeth were typical and well-brushed, the thin tracery of plaque easily removable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By September, she had, without fail, developed a cavity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I asked her one time what she hated so much about the summer. She seemed to think the very question was a funny one. That was one of her good days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJune,\u201d she said, and I said, \u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course a celebration of joy and pride would cause toxic bitterness to materialize within her jaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She smiled, like she was glad I understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I waited until I was in my thirties to tell her I was transmasc, a week after I\u2019d been offered a job three states away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My ma straight-up laughed at me. \u201cDo you truly think I haven\u2019t known for years?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cExcuse me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOh, sorry\u2014was I supposed to act surprised? You\u2019ve never brought a boy home. You wanted to major in <em>finance<\/em>. Clearly, you weren\u2019t normal. And I\u2019d appreciate some thanks, by the way\u2014for steering you onto a better path.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cShould I be thanking you for making me hate myself, too?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She raised a trembling hand to my mouth, cupping my cheek with a false tenderness I detested even more than her ever-perfect smile. \u201cMy dear, have you no regard for your teeth?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The knife, in her hand. The college funds, withheld.<\/em> She\u2019d decided, fully cognizant of what I was, to sentence me to a future spent experiencing the depth of other people\u2019s hatred of people like me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I removed her hand from the side of my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBelieve me, Ma, I have all the regard in the world for my teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When my ma arrived for her next dental appointment a week later, I volunteered to be her hygienist. She smiled when I entered the room. I made small talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA special gift for you, to reward all the support you\u2019ve given me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The month was May, but her teeth were coated in hardened tar. I scraped it painstakingly out of her mouth and into a narrow glass jar. I cleaned my tools. I set the jar aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I said, \u201cAnother appointment in August?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would not be home when she made coffee the next morning, but I knew what would transpire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She would note more chunks than usual in the grounds but attribute the inconsistency to a bad batch. The scent would be as bitter as ever. The first sip would not raise concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the second sip, she\u2019d start to taste the hate. <em>Her<\/em> hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her worst vitriol, distilled into a single drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I believed that the liquid would burn. That her eyes would bulge as she coughed, coffee spilling out over the table. She wouldn\u2019t be able to purge that hate from her throat, though. Wouldn\u2019t manage to eliminate that stink of rot and ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She would get a terrible, terrible glimpse of the pain she\u2019d forced onto me every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And after that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could not say that I cared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next time I saw my ma, she was standing outside my new dental practice, the one where my colleagues called me by my real name, a male name. An umbrella shielded her from the rain. She smiled, and in her open mouth I saw only gums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019d heard of the hate-plaque growing so thick that pulling a tooth was the only solution. I\u2019d never seen someone\u2019s hatred infect their entire mouth. Black residue outlined the edges of her lips, almost dripping out of her jaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was holding my old knife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She\u2019d decided, fully cognizant of what I was, to sentence me to a future spent experiencing the depth of other people\u2019s hatred of people like me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[23715],"tags":[1206],"ppma_author":[88875],"class_list":["post-258116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>My Ma\u2019s Hatred Grows Cavities Every Summer - 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Their work has appeared in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strange Horizons<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Apex Magazine<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Heartlines Spec<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and numerous anthologies. Learn more about Nico and their writing on Bluesky and Instagram @nicowritesbooks, or on their website,<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/nicomartineznocito.com\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">nicomartineznocito.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/quilia-y8fWicGsv4g-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258117,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258116\/revisions\/258117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258116"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]