broken teeth. lost retainers. crumpled letters written to counselors
and discarded for illegible handwriting. phone lists of
abortion clinics. deflated valentine’s day balloons with
trampled white ribbon. sales ads on bassinette sets.
There is no titular story in Inez Tan’s debut collection This is Where I Won’t Be Alone. As an American reader, I first considered this title a statement of theme or artistic destination. But if you’re Singaporean, then you know the title as an excerpt from a popular 1998 song called “Home,” written by Dick Lee for the first in a series of songs Singapore’s National Day Parade, celebrated on August 9th of each year.
The Besieged Kingdom: A Review of Inez Tan’s This is Where I Won’t Be Alone Read More »
Walking up to a large, colorful brick building with art pasted to the windows, I realized that I had always passed by the center without properly seeing it. I learned about the Neutral Zone’s youth-driven programs, including sound-mixing classes, poetry workshops, and a printing press called Red Beard, which I would come to know and love in the coming year.
A Brick House for Books: Lillian Li on Writing with the Youth of the Neutral Zone Read More »
The transformation to bird woman happened so quickly in the past three years. Having my binoculars with me everywhere I go is surely the first clue that I’m always on the hunt.
Toni Morrison passed away late last night, at the age of 88. May she rest in power, and may we treasure gratefully all she has written. Here are her words from our Archives. Toni Morrison’s speech “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” was given as the Turner Lecture on Human Values October 7th,
Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature Read More »
Our readers are ready: Submissions open today, August 1st, and extend through December. Send us your work. We will be reading for General Submissions, for our Special Issue on Water, “Not One Without,” and for MQR Online. “Thousands have lived without love; not one without water.” In the spirit of W.H. Auden’s words, this
MQR is Open for Submissions! Read More »
As an alternative protagonist from typical fare, Jessica lives to mock consumerist ideals of Woman from her jaded, depressed, and alcoholic cloud of knowing.
The Good Paranoia: Notes on Jessica Jones Read More »
Thirty years ago, when she was first here with her husband and two young children, they’d come in the summer—June—so that Otto could teach a study abroad course, and the city then was a lush racket of color. The pale blue and pink and gold ornamental bric-a-brac of Belle Époque architecture. Stoops cluttered with terra cotta pots spilling herbs. Window box gardens bursting geraniums the startling florescent red of she-didn’t-know- what. It was all exactly as she’d envisioned Paris since she’d first wanted to go as a sixteen-year-old sitting in a high school French class.
The clinic represented a whole lot of things I feel deeply conflicted about—the medicalization of childbirth, the immense economic privilege of mostly-white women in accessing fertility services when so many women in this country can’t even access good prenatal care—and I felt uncomfortable even being assessed.
Autotheory as Rebellion: On Research, Embodiment, and Imagination in Creative Nonfiction Read More »
