He only knew that the Blazer, like the green card, was something he wanted my brother and me to have, so that we knew we deserved things, things like America.
Abigail Ulman talks about her debut collection Hot Little Hands, the limitations of the cultural narrative, her paralyzing pre-publication fears, and why she loves adolescent narrators.
The trick is to pinpoint the time of the cycle, not to try to solve the mystery in the undertow. And to understand that everything needs time; you have to position yourself, warm up.
To lift the censorship, degradation, and foreclosure of girls’ fantasies, we may have to investigate the gendered limitations on how we think about early loves, impulses, celebrity crushes, and maybe, sexually stirring gentleman pirates.
Seeing is a critical part of normalizing, and though it seems like a rudimentary expectation, it’s important for American audiences to see Korean-Americans simply living their lives.