Essay

Economy As Intimacy

Eric Peter

During a previous artistic project of mine, I explored various one-person endeavours into positive change through dialogue against the backdrop of worldwide geopolitical issues. We would engage in a range of topics—from gender equality to environmental awareness—all with a focus on “the small-scale” and with forward-looking attitude. But afterwards, I was left thinking ideas/opinions on economics or finances were left unspoken.

See Table 1

Chris Espenshade

It is argued that it is time to classify the compulsive need to hoard military-grade weapons and ammunition as a mental health issue that would preclude the said hoarding (see Table 1).

Kampuchea

Tristan Durst

January in South Korea, without enough snow to close schools but just enough icy pavement to make walking treacherous, broke my spirit. For three weeks, the sun never cracked through the grey cement of the sky. I visited a tanning salon adjacent to the U.S. Army base in the hope that some vitamin D might break my foul mood. My co-worker Katie, from Wales, handled the frigid dishwater sky better

How to Be a Writer

Anna Doran

If you want to be a writer, distinguish yourself as the last child in your first grade class to read. As a kid, you must reject every printed word that your parents dangle in front of your face and shrug your shoulders in response. Your parents will worry, and they’ll question whether your inability to read is related to your hearing loss.

The Greatest Scientist of a Generation

Scott Wilson

“The Greatest Scientist of of a Generation” is Scott Wilson’s satirical take on what is the serious problem, CCD, or colony collapse disorder. Scientists couldn’t agree on the source of honeybee deaths, a real problem because honeybees are the pollinators of fruits like blueberries, vegetables like broccoli, and nuts like almonds. Scientists, corporations, and the INTERNET are tagged here.

And

Sophia DuRose

Sophia DuRose says it loud and clear in her essay “And.” She refuses to be labeled, having learned a lesson of discrimination against her Jewish faith when she was a teenager. Rather than taking the opinions of others at face value, she writes that we must “create our own opinions of worthiness and self-assurance.” Taking a line from Maya Angelou as her axiom, Sophia DuRose will, “like the air,” rise.

Why I Am a Writer

Maya Roe

It’s a summer afternoon and Maya Roe can’t write. The “overdramatic and rambling” prose hitting the page isn’t working. So, she goes out intentionally looking and seeing and feeling. Nature is not symbolism or metaphor. It just is. Stream and Forest. Bees and Moss. Cattails and Blueberry trees. All of this an “inexplicable world” to love.

Motherhood, Ambition

Claire Robbins

Robbins didn’t know herself before she was a mother at twenty, but she was determined to know herself as an adult. This is her story about the tension between motherhood and ambition, and how she didn’t allow ambition to lose.

A Creative Interrogation of Ishion Hutchinson’s “Homage: Vallejo”

Eli Makovetsky

Follow Makovetsky’s exegesis of Ishion Hutchinson’s poem “Homage: Vallejo” and you are in a world of awareness in which Hutchinson uses Vallejo’s lens to talk about “being born black in a racist America”—one of Makovetsky’s many insights.

To Love the Graveyard

Emily Rae Roberts

What is there about a graveyard to love? Families who visit? Animals that find shelter? “The silence of a thousand talking graves”? Emily Roberts explores those stories behind the stones.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

Sankar Chatterjee

After Sirajul Habib, an American youth and follower of Islam, sees displays of Nazi documents in Berlin, he wants to learn more about the Holocaust. In a later trip to Europe, he visits the Auschwitz Concentration Camps in Poland and is overcome by the enormity and scope of Nazi evil at Auschwitz I, the first site of the atrocities; and at Auschwitz II – Birkenau, where prisoners arrived in boxed rail cars.

Arrival Day

Shastri Sookdeo

What is “Arrival Day”? Sookdeo writes about this public holiday in Trinidad and Tobago with a critical eye. Started in 1995 to celebrate 150 years of Indian arrival in Trinidad, the name was later changed to Indian Arrival Day. Does the “Indian” in the name ignore other ethnic groups if the country’s makeup “is reflected by colonization in every part”? The issue is more complex than at first glance.

Just Places: Physical Spaces and the Stories They Tell about Justice, Terror, and Tragedy

David Will

An official NGO Observer at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Will describes the exterior of the courthouse where the 911 conspirators are tried for capital crimes. Sitting on a dilapidated “out-of-service airstrip,” the low-slung building looks like a toolshed, but upon entering the building visitors witness “the world’s most sophisticated technology.” This space is not a symbol; it represents the physical implementation of justice. The question is: Can the Guantanamo military commissions offer a narrative “to reaffirm the country’s values and to offer closure”?

Married Sleep

Hilary Nelson Jacobs

Tender and instructive, the narrative and descriptive essay “Married Sleep” offers the reader an inside look—with equanimity—at a wife and husband team who makes it through a daughter’s debilitating illness, a husband’s demanding work schedule, and a wife’s alcoholism and healing.

Rescue Me

Kathryn Jones

These are the special tenants of Jones’ home: “A hound of calm character, lazy and laid-back”—this is Jack Jones—and a fierce “ten-pound terrier, black and white, with bulging eyes”—this is Dory. As the dogs age, Jones is cognizant of her own droopy eyelids and graying hair, but as long as she is alive they will add more dogs to their household.

River Musings

George Rothert

“River Musings” is not only about the reclamation of the Willamette River that flows through Portland and the development of Waterfront Park, Portland’s gathering space. It is also about the Hide Naito family that ran a successful importing business; relocated to Salt Lake City during the Japanese internment; and returned to Portland later to enlarge their business and enrich the city with their philanthropy.

Nobody’s Daughter

Ronika Merl

You would be forgiven if you read “Nobody’s Daughter” as fiction. It is, however, an essay. Either way, the subject is difficult to absorb but absorb you must to feel the full impact.

What I’m Really Like

Yalei Wang

The word “mean” connotes “cruel,” “nasty,” or “malicious,” but Yalei Wang proposes a different way of looking at the word, and doesn’t apologize for “living life without getting caught in the weeds of emotion.”

Revolving Like Ixion

Eric Martin

An existential disquisition on the ultimate question: “Why are we here?” Doubting his teaching career, Martin returns to the novel Moby Dick to seek an answer to this perennial question. Perhaps in the end, it is unanswerable like “insight joined to silence.”

When the Bubble Meets the Needle

Carter Vance

Carter Vance lays out a trenchant analysis of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential contest. He takes stock of his own position and concludes that the media must help to bring the opposing worlds “into conversation with each other.”

Brewing Memories

Jaya Wagle

He’s Not Your Dad

Scott Zeigler

Steve’s Foolish Weather Dare

Steve Jones

The Exit Guides and the Midwives

Lisa Regen