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Some Thoughts on Short Story Endings

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by Nathan Go

Crafting good endings, like good openings, is among the most difficult feats to attain in a short story. So much pressure lies in its mastery – where a solid or tepid opening could mean the difference between having a work read or not read beyond the first page, a satisfying or lackluster ending often decides whether the piece gets published or not. The final paragraph of a story is usually what readers take away from the entire experience, as it is the last thing they get to process, and thus, the last thing they’re likely to remember.

Apart from the exhortations that a story needs to tie up all loose ends and bring closure to the readers, discussing what constitutes a good ending frequently devolves into the famous pronouncement in the concurring opinion of Jacobellis v. Ohio: “I know it when I see it.” As is the case with establishing aesthetic rules in writing, generalizations usually don’t work. In fact, what may sound like an effective closing to one reader might just be totally underwhelming to another. With those caveats in mind, the next best thing is to present case studies of endings that I think work (at least for me) within the context of those particular stories.

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Another Summer Reading List

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by A.L. Major

It’s that time of year again: SUMMER. For students, or recently graduates like myself, summer brings with it a freedom that seems limitless. Faced with so much time to do what I like, I always make a list of what I’d love to read. For those employed year-round, summer doesn’t necessarily evoke anymore those long stretches of free, unscheduled time, but I put forth this reading list in the hopes that whether you’re lounging on a beach, stuck in an office from 9-5 or doing some combination of both, you’ll give yourself time to read a w0rk that is truly lovely and inspiring. Nathan Go already started off his summer reading list with suggested works by Filipino and Filipino-American authors. Similar to my summer reading list last year, I’m going to keep my list eclectic and globally diverse. There are some some books I’ve read, some books I look forward to reading and some that have been adapted into films–for those, like myself, who love reading books and watching films and noticing, sometimes irritatingly, the differences between two versions of the same story.

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Kismet, Blueprints, & Secret Tattoos: Catching Up with Essayist Aisha Sabatini Sloan

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“For each essay, I would set myself up as though I were allowed to make a collage using last Wednesday’s newspaper, a 1996 issue of Art Forum, and the notes I took while on layover at the Minneapolis/St Paul airport. And the reason for each particular assemblage was not random: there was always some hunch that I was trying to articulate in the gathering. Race, place and art are ongoing themes.”

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Summer Reading: Filipino and Filipino American Fiction

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by Nathan Go

If you’re compiling your list of books to read this summer, below are a few titles by Filipino or Filipino American writers that I heartily recommend. Many of these touch upon the historic relations to Spain and the U.S., and the rather strange amalgam of colonial influences that resulted – as the saying goes, the Philippines spent “three hundred years in the convent and fifty years in Hollywood.”

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Everybody Hates Tourists

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by A.L. Major

I never want to seem like a tourist. I would rather ride the 3 train from 145th street in Manhattan down to Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn before glancing at a subway map or asking for directions from a grim-faced New Yorker who wants nothing to do with me. The first time I went to New York city in twelfth grade, I blushed (as much as my dark skin would permit) when I noticed that my starch-pressed khaki skort and aqua-blue flip flops signaled to New Yorkers my obvious tourist status. I avoided Times Square because tourists congested the sidewalks and snapped photos of the brightly lit billboards. In Ireland, I was the worst tourist I could be: me and forty raucous Vassar College Rugby players. At all hours of the night, we squawked drunkenly, bellowed, jogged through Dublin side streets as if the city was our playground. When I say I dislike being a tourist, I don’t mean to suggest people shouldn’t travel. We should just travel better than we do.

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Dear Claire: One Pen Pal’s Attempt to Reconnect

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by Nathan Go

“When you have pen friends you always feel there are boys and girls abroad who consider you a true friend,” the brochure stated. “In addition to letters, you can also exchange your own drawings, photos, postage stamps, records, etc. Maybe someday you can also visit your long-time pen friend.” I probably convinced my parents that same night (likely by crying) that I, too, needed this service, needed to find this true friend in my life.

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Going To Watch Junkanoo

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by A.L. Major

Every year around Christmas time Bahamians are divided by the Junkanoo groups they support. I was born into a family of Valley Boy supporters, but in theory I could support any of the main competing groups—Valley Boys, One Family, Roots, Saxons, The Music Makers or The Prodigal Sons. These groups practice all year for the Boxing Day and New Year competitive parades. Those used to be the only mornings there were Junkanoo parades, but now there are performances called rush outs every week in Marina Village on Paradise Island and routinely throughout the summer at the Fish Fry, a once cultural landmark now overrun by restaurants that sell syrupy-sweet strawberry daiquiris and bland peas n’rice on Fiestaware. I do want to be, nor do I try to be a cultural snob, but sometimes I do wonder if anything can belong to a country that shares and bends its land and people so often for the benefit of others. I wonder at one point does the culture become something else entirely, simply a shadow of its former self.

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Future Dreaming: Mariko Mori Rebirth at the Royal Academy

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by Nicholas Johnson

Mariko Mori’s multifaceted body of work stems from a yet more expansive imagination. Mori strives to show us a glimpse of a world that could have been transmitted from a distant future. Mori showed in London, 14 years ago and her vision aligned with video games, escapist manga culture and the digital aesthetic of an emerging generation. Today her work imagines a world where science and spirituality fuse with biology and technology. We get a rickety draft of future possibilities from an iridescent, alien world.

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