Fiction
Put That Madhouse Back in Your Pocket by Arlene Ang and Valerie Fox
"That was when I learned she was using an assumed name. The yellow dress slid to the ground as I took pictures of her on a scarred Buick Skylark. I had to take her hand to stop her from undressing. Completely. The first date. She didn’t shave."
The Amma Who Took French Leave by Rumjhum Biswas
"Aditi had to unlearn her habit of drinking straight from the tap. She also had to unlearn a few more things she had picked up in the US. Like walking around her home with outdoor shoes on instead of changing into rubber flip flops, and leaving the bread in the bread bin. The roads were so dirty that it was a sacrilege to walk around the house in shoes; as for the bread, it quickly turned moldy outside the refrigerator."
"He walked away quickly, afraid to look back. He was stunned. How could he not tell a man from a woman after all these years? Why did it take him so long to find out this time? To think that because of his illusion he’d come so close to taking her home and yet, at the last minute it was as if he’d known all along."
"The smell of coffee takes me back 14 years to empty nights lying in my bed with stuffed animals and my father, hands wandering over and under my Land Before Time nightgown, stale breath on my neck..."
"Earlier, in class, one of my best students complained, 'Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don’t know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.'"
Chika Unigwe, The Per Contra Interview with Miriam N. Kotzin
"I think I made that transition when the first of my two Macmillan books was published and it occurred to me that if a child reading it were asked the name of the writer, (s)he would say Chika Unigwe. It was a heady feeling, but I didn’t get my 'writer' complimentary cards made until very recently."
"She wishes she were an octopus. Many more hands would be useful, she thinks, struggling to hang on to the huge racecar with one hand while she picks up the plastic bag with the transformer, which has somehow slipped from her hands."
© 2005-2010 Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas