Essays
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The Rumpus Prize in Nonfiction, First Place: Daniel B. Summerhill
A tight plot of land with poverty gripping the neck of its residents even tighter. The same way America held off on recognizing street gangs as an issue until blood was spilt outside of the hood in 1988 in Westwood…
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At Disney, I Cry Over the Water Buffalos
There are six of you in Animal Kingdom, in the section called “Asia,” and I joke to my American friends that I am home.
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An Itch to Scratch
I grew up speaking a different Kannada at home. In Bangalore, I have had to relearn the language all over again.
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Prince Edward Island
The gas station attendant looks at me and says, “My advice, get out of town.” There’s no snark in his voice. He’s worried.
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To Adopt a Grandparent
“In every interaction there’s someone with power and someone without. If you are the latter, your two most important virtues are patience and persistence.”
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Home is a Word Unspoken
Our grocery store. Our bank. Our beloved local coffee shop and pizza parlor. I didn’t know where I was until I saw the magnolia tree, rigid and charred.
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Pigs Rooting for Truffles
The state was good. Parents were not necessarily good. Sometimes, in order to serve the state, you had to turn your parents in.
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Deficiency
I’ve never had a cavity, but I brush too hard. A decade ago, a dentist told me I was scrubbing away my own flesh.
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On Tove Jansson’s Eccentrics and Oddballs
I saw my fears and yearnings magnified and reflected back to me in Jansson’s stories.
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A Bloody Brilliant Sentence: Erotic Linguistics in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”
…I had not yet read horror written by another woman with such a rich, arresting evocation of female sexuality.
