Quarterly Journal, no. 20: Childhood Issue by lareviewofbooks

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS no . 20 QUARTERLY JOURNAL : CHILDHOOD 9 781940 660387 5 1 2 0 0 ISBN 978-1-940660-38-7$12.00

—Kenn Kaufman, author of Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America “It is impossible to understand today’s Central Asia without knowing Kyrgyzstan, and impossible to understand Kyrgyzstan without reading this book.”

—Neera Tanden, President and CEO, Center for American Progress Reading List

From Karolinum Press Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals A Humorous—Insofar as That Is Possible— Novella from the Ghetto J. R. Pick Translated by Alex Zucker and With an Afterword by Jáchym Topol “On the one hand, Pick’s novel is a paean to the human character, which fights for survival and dignity in the face of certain death. On the other, it is the tender and surprisingly funny story of one boy in extraordinary circumstances.”—Los Angeles Review of Books Modern Czech Classics Cloth $22.00

—Hu ngton Post “Ivey’s powerful book lays out a path for drawing upon our traditions, customs, and rich cultural heritage to help forge a brighter future—for our own country, and for people across the globe.”

Fragmented Lives Chronicles of the Gulag Jacques Rossi Translated by Marie-Cecile Antonelli-Speed “A series of portraits of inmates described in a most pungent, dry, ironic style, just like the skeleton-like prisoners he belonged to and whom he observed around him.”—Azione on the French edition Paper $18.00 From Seagull Party Fun with Kant Nicolas Mahler Translated by James Reidel

—Roza Otunbayeva, President of the Kyrgyz Republic (2010–2011)

iupress.indiana.edu

In this deeply moving memoir, UnitedthroughandjourneyrecountsGonzálezhisremarkablefromCubahisupwardtrackeducationinStates.

This book brings together sixteen female graphic artists from India and Germany to explore how women see the world and them selves. Bold, original, and outspoken, The Elephant in the Room is the perfect tonic for our dark times: affirming and entertaining but always political. Paper $35.00 Distributed by the University of Chicago Press www.press.uchicago.edu

Your Fall

“Read this worthtreasuresyou’llphotography,Williams’sandinformativebook’stextlingeroverMattstunningandagreethattheseofbirdlifearesaving.”

“Focuses on the question of what might have caused the downfall of one of the most brilliant musicians of the past century.”

EXPLORE your WORLD

With his witty visual style and clever wordplay, Mahler takes his readers to parties with Kant, an art exhibition with Hegel, the supermarket with Nietzsche, and the movies with Deleuze. “A delicious and comical journey into the realm of philosophy.”

African identity today is as enlightening as it is provocative.” —Publishers Weekly “So easy to read that one may have to think twice to realize these tales are nearly 2,000 yearas old.” —Washington Post These are some of the most famous Roman myths as you’ve never read them dangerouslybefore—sensuous,witty,audacious.

—Michael Braun, borromaeusverein.de

The German List Paper $21.50 From Zubaan The Elephant in the Room Women Draw Their World Edited by the Spring Collective

perspectivechallenging“Mabanckou’son

Drawing on insider interviews, journalists Maruf and Joseph recount the rise, fall, and resurgence of this overlooked terrorist organization that exerts Taliban-like rule over millions in Somalia.

Graziella A Novel ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE Translated by Raymond N. MacKenzie

Traces a tradition of ironic and irreverent environmentalism, asking us to rethink the movement’s reputation for gloom and doom 320 PAGES

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Translated by Frank Hugus A semi-autobiographical novel inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s travels in Italy— and one of the author’s best-known works in his native Denmark 368 PAGES Inside the Gate Sigrid Undset’s Life at Bjerkebæk

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—Publishers Weekly 200 PAGES Bad

392

GOOD BOOK FALL INTO

Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age NICOLE SEYMOUR

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In its ﬁrst modern translation, a novelcum-memoir of a Frenchman’s erotic awakening in Italy by a preeminent writer of the Romantic period PAGES 1965 GINSBERG

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Winston and Werner Herzog “Enigmatic and imaginative, Herzog creates an unfamiliar world in each screenplay through his evocative prose.” Environmentalism

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Iron Curtain Journals January–May

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208

The Improvisatore A Novel of Italy

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The ﬁrst of three in a series of Allen Ginsberg’s unpublished travel journals PAGES Scenarios II Signs of Life; Even Dwarfs Started Small; Fata Morgana; Heart of Glass WERNER TranslatedHERZOGbyKrishna

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COVER ART: ASUKA ANASTACIA OGAWA front and back: MOTHER , 2018, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 96 X 72 / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST INTERNS & VOLUNTEERS: TYLER HUXTABLE, MAX LESSER, MACKENZIE WEEKS MAHONEY, SOPHIA MARUSIC The Los Angeles Review of Books is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The LARB Quarterly Journal is published quarterly by the Los Angeles Review of Books, 6671 Sunset Blvd., Suite 1521, Los Angeles, CA 90028. Submissions for the Journal can be emailed to editorial@lareviewofbooks.org. © Los Angeles Review of Books. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Visit our website at www.lareviewofbooks.org.

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NAN BENTZEN SKILLE Translated by Tiina Nunnally A glimpse into Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset’s life at Bjerkebæk, her retreat in Lillehammer, Norway 288 PAGES None of This Is Normal The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer BENJAMIN J. ROBERTSON Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer “Shows how VanderMeer’s writing is central to any attempt to think through the plight of humanity in what has come to be called the Anthropocene.” —Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things 216 PAGES As We Have Always Done Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON “I have learned more about this battered world from reading Leanne Betasamosake Simpson than from almost any writer alive today.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine 320 PAGES a TOM LUTZ BORIS DRALYUK EDITOR: MEDAYA OCHER SARA DAVIS, ERIKA RECORDON, ELIZABETH METZGER, MELISSA SELEY, CALLIE SISKEL PERWANA NAZIF LAUREN HEMMING HICHAM BENOHOUD, CHEYENNE JULIEN, ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO NASSAR, ASUKA ANASTACIA OGAWA, NICK SETHI CHIEF: CORD BROOKS JESSICA KUBINEC AD BILL HARPER BOARD ALBERT LITEWKA (CHAIR), REZA ASLAN, BILL BENENSON, LEO BRAUDY, BERT DEIXLER, MATT GALSOR, ANNE GERMANACOS, SETH GREENLAND, GERARD GUILLEMOT, DARRYL HOLTER, STEVEN LAVINE, ERIC LAX, TOM LUTZ, SUSAN MORSE, CAROL POLAKOFF, MARY SWEENEY, MATTHEW WEINER, JON WIENER, JAMIE WOLF

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Edited by Michael Schumacher

—D. N. Rodowick, University of Chicagor Conversion Disorder Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis JAMIESON WEBSTER “Beautifully ways.”disturbingtheoreticallywritten,brave,andinallthebest

philosophiesaccounta“LucidCinema/Politics/CUP.COLUMBIA.EDUPhilosophyNICOBAUMBACHandinsightful..much-neededcriticalofnewEuropeanoftheimage.”

—William M. Snyder, coauthor of Cultivating Communities of Practice Unhoused Adorno and the Problem of Dwelling MATT WAGGONER Afro-Dog Blackness and the Animal Question BÉNÉDICTE BOISSERON “Dazzling in its reach and groundbreaking in its methodology . . Boisseron aims to rethink the hyperlegality of racism and the practice of inequality in ways that are radical and far-reaching.”

—Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley Retirement and Its Discontents Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even if We Can MICHELLE PANNOR “ThisSILVERfascinating read holds insights not only for those on the verge of retirement, but for all of us—in how we think about structuring our work and living our lives.”

—Colin Dayan, author of With Dogs at the EdgeLifeof A House Is Not Just a House Projects on Housing TATIANA BILBAO New from Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

essays 17 NOBODY HAS BLINDED ME by J.D. Daniels 42 SEEN AND HEARD: REMEMBERING CHILDREN’S ART AND ACTIVISM by Marah Gubar 64 THE GIRL IN THE FILE: MARGARETE SCHAFFER UNDER NAZI PSYCHIATRY by Edith Sheffer 100 MOTHER, FIRE by Shanthi Sekaran 108 THOSE WHO CARE AND THOSE WHO DON’T: CHILDREN AND RACISM IN THE ERA OF TRUMP by Margaret Hagerman fiction 21 THE CHANGED PARTY by Andrew Martin 53 HOW TO RAISE AN AILEN BABY by E.C. Osondu 90 THE NEW YEAR by Justine Champine 120 INDIAN CLUB by Michelle Cruz Gonzales poetry 34 TWO POEMS by Jos Charles 37 JELLY by Henri Cole 41 FEAR AND LOATHING (COMIN’ AND GOIN’) by Anaïs Duplan 58 MA’AM, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Marilyn Chin 88 VULNERABLE NETTLE by Jennifer S. Cheng 130 TWO POEMS by Leila Chatti 134 TWO POEMS by Rae Armantrout shorts 38 ELLA by Weike Wang 62 FUNERAL WEAR by Rigoberto González 98 TUTOR by Alexandra Chang 106 MURDER IN THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL by Snigdha Poonam 127 WHAT’S IN A NAME? by Katherine J. Chen no . 20 QUARTERLY : CHILDHOOD CONTENTS

—Michael Norton, coauthor of Happy Money

The Tale of Cho Ung A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance

—Michael Pettid, Binghamton University Social Empathy

The Art of Understanding Others ELIZABETH A. SEGAL “Given growing diversity and urbanization in countries worldwide, this book could not be more timely or urgent.”

TRANSLATED BY SOOKJA CHO “[A] fascinating tale of romance and adventure . Cho’s artful translation of this best seller takes readers on wave after wave of intriguing places, bold exploits, and romantic encounters.”

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Dear Reader, I have no nostalgia for my childhood. I don’t remember it well — maybe less than I should — and I don’t miss it or long for it. I am in fact, grateful it’s over, as I don’t recall it being particularly fun or easy. As far as I can tell, childhood is a pretty scary time, with little control over your life, little understanding of what’s happening and why, and much to be afraid of (both real and unreal terrors).

This issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal explores these different ways of understanding what childhood is. Margaret Hagerman presents her research on how children learn about race and racism in our current political and historical moment. Edith Sheffer translates an entire file from the archives of the Third Reich, revealing how a child in the 1940s was diagnosed, classified, and placed. From a more personal perspective, Michelle Cruz Gonzales considers belonging to Indian Club in elementary school. Weike Wang writes about a mother debating which version of Cinderella to show her child. Katherine J. Chen thinks about her name and the impact it had on her throughout her life. E.C. Osondu’s short story deals with alien babies, and that horrible day when the space ship finally comes to pick themThisup.

Editor,MedayaYours,Quarterly Journal opposite: Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, Minha japoneguinha 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

issue is not exactly for children, but for those who were children, which is to say, all of us. There are so many reasons to return to that time, whether we cherish it or think of it wearily, whether we really remember it or not.

I have certainly met people who think of their childhoods fondly, describe them as “happy” even. Childhood is itself an odd thing, since it is both shared and so particularly ours. Think about the strangeness of the word — it can be both plural and singular, general and individual. Who else has the body memory of a little you? And yet, even memory might be a composite, reconstructed from the stories and memories of others. The news cycle also reminds us that childhood is a political reality — it has been under attack at the borders of this country for some time now. It is also a historical reality — childhoods change all the time. They have changed even within the past 10 years.

a NYUPRESS@NYUPress|nyupress.org WHAT WOULD MRS. ASTOR DO? by Cecelia Tichi “Presented with a breezy authority that keeps the pages turning, Tichi’s book will captivate those interested in a light look at America’s fashionable gentry of eras past.” —Publishers Weekly A ROSENBERG BY ANY OTHER NAME by Kirtsen Fermaglich “Fermaglich’s thorough research and bright insights produce a provocative account of a seldom-explored cultural phenomenon.” —Kirkus Reviews NEW IN PASTRAMIPAPERBACKONRYEbyTedMerwin “[An] affable dive into the culture and history of the Jewish deli.” —New York Times Book Review Winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award presented by the Jewish Book Council THE GENERATIONTRANSbyAnnTravers “Given that trans children are subjected to harassment, bullying, and systemic lack of support, there’s no better time than now to have this book as a resource.” —Bitch ALGORITHMSMagazine OF OPPRESSIONbySafiyaUmojaNoble “Noble offers a compelling look into the structure of digitized information —most of it driven by advertising revenue— and how it perpetuates racist assumptions and ideologies.” —Pacific Standard WHITE KIDS by Margaret A. Hagerman “[T]wo words: must read .... [A] crucial analysis on the ‘colorblind’‘well-meaning,’racismthathersubjectsperpetuate,strippingdownthecodedlanguageofsuburbiauntilitrevealstheuglytruthunderneath.” —Foreword Reviews Books that Push Boundaries PROUDLY SUPPORTS LOSBOOKSREVIEWANGELESOF

Why Art Museums?

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Andy Warhol’s daily practice of photography during the last decade of his life, examined and documented for the ﬁrst time.

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Kyle Dargan “Dargan takes no prisoners in this book, himself or others. He looks our society right in its one Cyclopean eye, seeing sadly and bitterly that there’s always been a widening circle of murder of black males.” — Grace Cavalieri, WashingtonReviewIndependentofBooks

Read and Think Boldly New Titles from

Anagnorisis Poems

Watershed, a new novel by former Vancouver writer William Annett, is a comic send-up of B.C.’s uncertain water export industry, told by a manicdepressive snowbird coursing from Central Florida to Vancouver Island. Together with a disbarred Vancouver lawyer and a defrocked Church minister, he encounters government malfeasance, church mischief and his own watershed. “You can’t have pure water till you get the hogs out of the creek."

The Genius Checklist Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius

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The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist By Ben Barres Foreword by Nancy Hopkins A leading scientist describes his life, his gender transition, his scientiﬁc work, and his advocacy for gender equality in science.

A New Novel by William Annett through Amazon and Createspace

Edited by Sarah Ganz Blythe and Andrew Martinez

What it takes to be a genius: nine essential and contradictory ingredients. Contact Warhol Photography Without End Edited by Peggy Phelan and Richard Meyer

Alexander Dorner’s radical ideas about the purpose of museums and art, examined through his tenure as Director of the RISD Museum.

The Unﬁnished Work of Alexander Dorner

ByGarageOliviaErlanger and Luis Ortega Govela A secret history of the garage as a space of creativity, from its invention by Frank Lloyd Wright to its use by start-ups and garage bands. at mitpress.mit.edu/larb MIT Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu

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By Ria Brodell Portraits and texts recover lost queer history: the lives of people who didn’t conform to gender norms, from the ﬁfteenth through the twentieth centuries.

A New Novel by William Annett through Amazon and Createspace

The surreal scenes in Asuka Anastasia Ogawa’s new body of paintings bear no resemblance to reality, yet they appear oddly familiar: A tree bleeds sap, the perpetrator holds a yellow and blue dagger and looks away with a benign smirk; a young girl with wind-swept braids is holding a perforated knife, piercing a bright, green cactus. Were these the worlds we invented as children?

COVER ARTIST: ASUKA ANASTASIA OGAWA

Ogawa is committed to generational narratives, histories, and folklores — “alternative and diasporic bodies of knowledge,” as she puts it. She is influenced by her international upbringing between Tokyo, Brazil, and Sweden, though many of the creatures who populate her work are otherworldly. The figures in Ogawa’s paintings are almost mythic, floating in color, or roaming through the canvas, somewhat above the viewer and seemingly untouched by our present (and presence). The remove of the figures and the fantasy of the images encourage the viewer to yield to a particular kind of impossibility. These scenes are unlike any actual representations of childhood — they are almost allegorical — divorced from any temporal notions or limitations. They are untied to any real notion of the past. They encourage us to look at things anew, almost with naïvety. Asuka Anastacia Ogawa’s work extends an invitation into her world; it asks us to participate and — most of all — to play.

above: Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, Friends! , 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

opposite: Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, Açúcar, 2018 , acrylic on canvas, 30 × 24 inches

Perwana Nazif, Art Director

Although he’d lived across the street from us, he had never spoken to me. From time to time, he had growled. He was a frightening presence, a lumbering man with thick-lensed glasses and a stringy mustache, tall, with a tall curly-headed wife and three tall quiet daughters. My mother said he hit his wife and had once knocked her down a flight of stairs, breaking her arm. I remembered Mrs. E.’s arm in its cast, remembered being told not to ask her about it, not to wish her well; and I can remember looking through the blinds out of our bathroom window toward Mister E.’s house, standing in my wet bare feet on the furry yellow bathmat, and feeling shame that I was glad Mister E. had died. Not long after his death, Mrs. E. took a month-long summer trip out of town with her three tall daughters. She asked my parents if I were responsible and conscientious enough to look after their dog, a barky blonde standard poodle whose name I have forgotten or else never knew, while the family was away. My mother said nothing would please me better than taking care of an animal, and this was correct. Mrs. E. left me her slightly bent house key and asked that I walk through her house into its fenced yard, rather than jumping the rickety wooden fence to feed and water and play with her dog out back. I lied and said I would, but I dis obeyed her. It was not only the wooden fence that was rickety: the E. family lived in our neighborhood’s witch house. I did not see why I had to face the terror of being alone in the summer heat in the witch house, where the lumbering Mister E. had broken his wife’s arm and had maybe even hit his daughters, with whom I played kick-ball and four-square in a court we had repeatedly chalked and eventually spray-painted on our street.

J.D. DANIELS

Mister E. was the first dead man I ever saw. Many years later, after I had dropped out of college, I worked in a parking garage at the Children’s Hospital, and I strove to keep the hearse inconspicuous when it arrived, and I saw many small bodies on stretchers.

But I myself was just a child when big Mister E. died, and I had known him, vaguely.

19 opposite Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, The Bleeding Tree 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches NOBODYBLINDEDHASME

I was driven to the Children’s Hospital — where, years later, I would park cars for surgeons and patients alike; where Dr. Golden would ask me, when he saw me in my booth reading Dangling Man, what I thought I was doing, a question I did not understand then and do not really understand now. Dr. Golden drove an Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. Every Christmas, he gave all of the parking attendants hams. The doctor patched my eye, I took antibiotic eyedrops to keep my wound soft and wet, I could not read or play catch for the next month of the summer. The three tall E. girls grew up

20 21 los angeles review of books

A week of summer passed, two weeks, a month. I was in the E.s’ dry brown back yard, being barked at by their dog, making no progress in befriending him, when I heard his bark change. I heard the E. family’s station wagon coming into the driveway. There was no time for me to jump the fence. Now, to maintain my pretense of being an obedient, responsible boy, for the first time I would have to use the key and walk through the witch house, where only women lived. The screen door came off one of its hinges when I pulled it open. The key caught in the lock. I licked it twice and eased it in. The witch house was hot and dirty, dark, filled with too much furniture and with tapedshut boxes stacked high on the floors and on the furniture. There was a fist-sized hole in the dining-room wall. The kitchen sink was full of water. The whole house smelled wet: somewhere, buried inside, was plant matter, raisins, ferment. I wished I had just jumped the fence and been scolded. My eyes burned. My head began to pound. I hurried through the house toward its front entrance, which was opening to admit the E. family. I knew it was too late. I stole a last glimpse: over a loveseat I saw a dirty wall mirror in a gilt frame. I turned away from the mirror to greet the family, to pretend this was not my first time in their house — and drove the pointed corner of a stacked box deep into my left eye, and ripped my cornea.

The always-unhappy dog seemed even more unhappy now that his family had gone away. He was snarly and suspicious. He did not relish his food. I tried to interest him in games of tug-of-war or chase. I stood near him in the yard and let him bark at me for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I put one foot on the outdoor air-conditioning unit and one hand on a fence-post, jumped over the fence, and walked home.

I lied to Mrs. E. and to my parents, and twice a day I made a show of taking the E.s’ bent key from its hook before putting it in my pants pocket, walking across the street in hot Kentucky summer sunshine and jumping the rickety fence into the back yard.

One jump was enough for me to feel why Mrs. E. hadn’t wanted me to go over the fence into her back yard. It was a wreck, unsightly and ineffective, a theoretical fence. If Mister B. hadn’t kept my father’s old Mercury Monarch up on blocks in his front yard, the E.s’ fence would have been the rattiest sight on our street. It sagged, its paint peeled, it was shattered. My father would never have tolerated such a fence. It was only in order not to be overbearing, not to embarrass Mister E., that my father had never offered to fix it for him. It was the sort of job my father enjoyed. He ran a repair shop all day, six days a week, and came home to help neighbors for free. My father liked to fix things, and such a man can be happy every day of his life, for the world itself is broken. But the E. family was not lucky enough to have my father, with his unrelenting emphasis on construction, clarity, and precision. Their good luck, such as it was, had only been to be freed from a destructive father.

J.D. DANIELS

There is no present, there is no future. An injured boy curls up under a table like an unhappy animal, with a patch over one eye and his other eye clenched shut, and he listens to his parents as they play a board game called Trivial Pursuit. Most of our pur suits are trivial. Life is a dream.

The father who builds and is careful, and the father who hits and destroys; the living father and the dead father; the father who is too present, omnipresent, and the father who will always be absent. The mother fearful of chaos who tries, vainly, to clean everything away, and the mother who must stack over-filled cardboard boxes on other boxes, dragging her past behind her. And the son who was responsible and did as he was told, who made up lies and did whatever he wanted.

and moved away. Tall Mrs. E. remarried a nice man named Eddie. That is the end of the story.Itseems to me today that everything about my childhood is in this story, and that, although I know these things and can say them, to tell the story is farcical: I am not the storyteller, I am inside the story, I will not master the story. Childhood is a ghostly bird, flitting at the edge of my present vision. I am a ghostly bird in the story of my own life.

The logic was just short of airtight. Amanda had woken up in the middle of the night a few times in the past month, coming into our room to tell us she was worried she’d left something behind at her day camp or at a friend’s house. Lisa or I would walk her back to her room and go through her possessions, accounting for everything of value, but it didn’t seem to settle her. This was an escalation.

“Checking to see if I threw anything away by accident,” Amanda said. She held up a yogurt carton and shook it deliberately over the counter, sending tiny purple splatters across the tile. “Are you missing something?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m looking.”

“Honey, I think you need to stop now,” I said. “There’s nothing in there.”

Nick Sethi, Graffiti in Rome

“Why don’t you go find Patrick and I’ll take you guys to the arcade?” I said. It was raining again and we’d already seen two loud, terrible movies. “Fine,” she said, and slumped out of the kitchen.

THE CHANGED PARTY ANDREW

We’d been at my mother’s beach house on the Jersey shore for three days, with four still to go. My wife Lisa and I were there with Amanda, plus our friend Mike and his MARTIN

I was eating a plum over the sink when my eight-year-old daughter Amanda slipped into the kitchen and started picking through the trash. She pulled out some crumpled plastic and old food, examining each item carefully before setting it on the counter. My plum dripped dark red drops into a coffee cup filled with water. I struggled toward a casual“Whatintervention.areyoudoing there, honey?” I said.

“You don’t know,” Amanda said. “Trust me,” I said. “I’ve been alive a long time and I’ve never thrown away anything by accident.”Ithrewmy plum pit in the bin for emphasis and brushed the trash she’d put on the counter in too. Amanda watched accusingly and picked at the back of her scalp.

Mike turned up the volume on the radio until “Umbrella” blasted from the speakers for the thousandth time that summer. In the rear-view mirror, I saw Amanda with her face pressed against the window. We pulled into the parking lot and ran through the rain and up the steps of the small boardwalk to the arcade. It was a buzzing, crashing place, with prize shelves piled with boxed blenders and stuffed animals. I’d loved arcades and all manner of nonsense when I was a kid, but now it gave me an instant headache. I fed a five-dollar bill into a change machine — the saddest action of fatherhood? — and the quarters crashed into the metal dispenser. I scooped them up and dropped them into Amanda’s clear-plastic ticket“Don’tbucket.use these up too fast,” I said. “I just want tickets,” Amanda said. She hadn’t cashed in the ones she’d earned on Monday, and she still had reams left over from last summer as well. She wouldn’t tell me what she was saving them for. It wasn’t clear that she knew. “Do you need money?” I said to Mike. I asked nicely. Mike never had cash when we went places but he always paid me back. He worked for an investment firm and made more money than Lisa and I combined — he and Victoria had a house in in Newton that I would have envied if I cared about things like that. “Nah, Patrick doesn’t want to play any games,” he said. “Do you Patrick?”

ANDREW MARTIN

This set off a high-pitched whine. “Use your words,” Mike said. “Games,” said Patrick. I put another five bucks in the machine. “Don’t mess with him, Mike,” I said.

“Two days ago,” I said. He sank deeper into the couch. “They should use their imaginations. Do a play for us or“Isomething.”alreadytold Amanda,” I said. “You can stay here.” “Nope, nope.” He hoisted himself to his feet. “Gotta support the team.” He patted his pockets. “Wallet, phone. Good to go.” He pitched forward and caught himself, then snuck a glance at me to see if I’d noticed.“Why don’t you stay here?” I said. “Gonna find that kid,” he muttered and walked toward the kitchen. Amanda was sitting by the front door putting on her shoes. “Patrick is being weird,” she whispered. “That’s not nice,” I said, though of course he was weird. Patrick was prone to alter nating bouts of hyperactivity and glassy-eyed silence. He was a couple of years younger than Amanda, but they’d always gotten along all right before now. And — of course I couldn’t say this — who was she, given our kitchen debacle, to talk? “He keeps playing the same song over and over and he won’t let me talk or anything when it’s on,” she said. “What song?” I said. “‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cat.’” “At least it’s a good one,” I said. “It’s okay,” she said. “You guys coming?” I called back into the house. Patrick and Mike shuffled slowly around the corner like they were expecting a Minotaur. Mike had put on a neon orange polo shirt with a dark stain on the belly. He had a can of beer in his hand and another bulging from the pocket of his khaki shorts. Patrick’s sneakers were untied and he was wearing a Spider-Man bathing suit and no shirt. They stared at me with the same half-lidded eyes, awaiting instruction. “You really don’t have to come,” I said. “Whaddya think, bud?” Mike said. “Watch the end of Devil’s Advocate with Dad do? Blurred out “Arcaaaaade,”boobies?”Patrick said, jogging in place. “Right you are!” Mike said. “Onward, Christian monsters!”

24 25 los angeles review of books wife Victoria and their son Patrick. (My mother was on a bus tour of the West with her no-longer-new husband.) Lisa and I had recently reunited after a six-month sep aration, and hosting our old friends was serving as a kind of official acknowledgment that we were recommitted to this thing. For a variety of reasons, that was only going medium-well.Lisawasin

Atlantic City with Victoria for the day. They had been very clear that Mike and I were to interrupt only in the case of life-threatening emergency. The men and women had been trading day shifts with the kids because we all agreed that a rainy day with all six of us in that house would end in at least one fatality. Mike and I had spent our day off watching insignificant sporting events in the cavernous, gaudily ren ovated bar in the middle of town. I’d stopped drinking, out of necessity, after my third beer, but Mike, as far as I could tell, hadn’t stopped at all. Now he was in the Florida room, shirtless, drinking vodka out of a tall glass. His curly blonde hair had recently crept up to the top of his forehead, and his face was significantly wider and redder than it had been when we met as freshmen at North western. He was still, as my mother would say, a nice-looking man, as long as you didn’t focus on his belly. “Al Pacino is shit,” he said, jerking his drink toward the TV. “Godfather, Serpico, sure. After that? Garbage.” “I’m going to take the kids to the arcade,” I said. “Didn’t we take them yesterday?”

I would have insisted we walk, since it was only 10 blocks away, but since it was raining — always — we piled into the Outback. Mike fell into the passenger seat and put on the pink sunglasses he found in the cup holder. “Seatbelts!” he hollered, facing forward. “Patrick needs a shirt,” Amanda said. “It’s not the fucking yacht club,” Mike said. “Hey,” I said. “Gosh, I’m sorry, honey.” He twisted around in his seat. “Uncle Mike didn’t mean that. It’s not the stinkin’ yacht club, right? We don’t need no stinkin’ yacht club, right? No?” “You need to pull it together,” I said quietly when he’d turned back around. He cracked open a new beer. “Ever-Body! Ever-Body!” screamed Patrick. “Ever-Body wants to be a cat!”

Mike scooped a handful of quarters from the dispenser. “I’m gonna go play the gator whack,” he said to Patrick. “You can come, or you can stay here by the quarter machine being an asshole.” Mike started walking and Patrick clung to his shirt, letting himself be dragged off to a corner of the arcade. I looked around for Amanda and saw her by a big machine with a multicolored light spinning around inside it. “What are you playing, honey?” I said. “If you stop the light in the right place you get a thousand tickets,” Amanda said. “And if you get it close you still get some tickets for trying.”

“Is it fun?” I said. “Yeah,” she said without enthusiasm. Amanda was such a serious kid, incredibly smart for her age, and lacking any useful outlet for her grimness. So far, she liked scary movies and building things; the happiest I’d ever seen her was when she helped con struct a haunted house with her friends and then played a screaming, bloody murder victim in it. What would happen to her in her life? Could her brilliance outrun her anxiety? I spent a lot of time worrying about it. I watched her play the game. It was hypnotic, and I found myself willing the stupid light to stop in the right place for her. It wasn’t happening. I got a text from Lisa: “AC’s kind of a drag, we’ll be home in an hour.” I was glad they were coming back but I wor ried about the scene that would ensue. I found him with Patrick at the skee-ball machines. Mike was rolling the wooden balls too hard, beer in hand, while Patrick clambered up and down the machine next to his.“Offa there, Pat,” Mike said. “Throw it to me Dad!” Patrick said. He was perched at the top hole of his skee-ball machine, clinging to the protective netting. Mike ignored him. “So Lisa says they’re bailing on AC,” I said. “They’re on their way back now.” “Guess we should cancel the strippers,” Mike said. “Let’s sober up,” I said. “I don’t want to go through the Eugene O’Neill routine with you and Vic.” Mike took off his sunglasses. “Old buddy, with all due respect, I can handle my wife.”“Great,” I said. “That’s great.” “Dad, we need more balls!” Patrick shouted. “Let’s go get a prize, Pat,” Mike said. “We didn’t get enough tickets,” Patrick said, but he followed him to the counter. I got Amanda and stood with her outside under the awning, watching the rain. Mike would probably apologize when he was sober, but I wasn’t sure what good it would do. Time had run out on this thing we’d had, maybe. I heard him yelling inside. “Look man, he wants the ninja turtle. The thing’s been on your shelf since 1989. I’ll give you 20 bucks. Tell your manager I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Because I fucking“Staywon’t.”here,”

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I mean, he was right. 

I said to Amanda. I went back into the arcade and saw that Mike was behind the counter, with the wispy-bearded employee blocking him from escaping with the toy. “I don’t want to call the police,” the kid said. “Well, sir, that’s just silly,” Mike said. “I’m trying to fucking pay for it.”

“Good customer service here,” Mike said. “Call me if you ever need a job.” He dropped the ninja turtle on the floor and hoisted himself clumsily over the counter. “Don’t you ever come back in here,” the kid said to Mike’s back. “Hey, I’m sorry about all this,” I said to the kid, taking out my wallet. “You too,” he said. “You should know better than to let people like that into a place full of kids.”

Lisa and I had been together, happily unmarried, for five years when we decided to try to have a kid. We had a big family wedding at a hotel down the street from the beach house, soon after which Lisa got pregnant and had Amanda. (Best not to count the months on that one, actually.) These were good years. I was a senior editor at a news aggregator, a job I didn’t have to care too much about, and Lisa was able to quit her EPA job to stay home with Amanda for the first couple of years and get by with some consulting on the side. When she went back to work for an environmental nonprofit, Amanda was in preschool, and I was able to fix my schedule around picking her up and watching her in the afternoons. One night, Lisa came home from a fundraising trip asking for an open marriage. When I pressed her on the reason, she told me, after a few deflections, that she’d been sleeping with her friend Tim, with whom she’d gone to Dartmouth, and felt terrible about it. She cried, I cried. She agreed to break it off, then didn’t. The other guy made his case for true love, reminded her life was short — all that 19th-century shit. (He was an assistant literature professor at Amherst, but his guy was Wallace Stevens. Dignity isn’t transmitted via dissertation.) My reliably cynical wife, with a degree in art history and a master’s in water engineering, bought it.

On a Sunday afternoon in March, she drove from our apartment in Boston out to Western Massachusetts, taking her clothes, books, and some random kitchen supplies. It was an indefinite experiment. She’d commute or work from wherever they were living, or something — for all I knew Vronsky was promising to take care of her with his trust fund. We agreed that Amanda would visit her on the weekends and during

ANDREW MARTIN

I felt a surge of solidarity with Mike — even 20 bucks was an absurd price for this junk — but also, he was being an idiot. “Let’s leave, bud,” I said. “He’s got to follow the rules. We’ll pick up some stuff for the kids in town.” Mike met my eyes and I saw a flicker of humanity — King Kong deciding not to throw Fay Wray off the Empire State building. He reached below the counter, snatched a plastic basket of bouncy balls, and chucked a fistful of them into the arcade, where they careened off of the machines and rolled crazily across the floor.

“That’s a ten-thousand ticket prize,” the kid said. “It takes a shit-ton more than twenty bucks to win that many tickets.”

In any case, after months of minimal communication (necessary kid stuff only), I brought Amanda home from day camp and found Lisa sitting on the couch, wearing the flower-specked sundress I’d bought her for her birthday the year before. She cried, I cried; she begged forgiveness, I held out. Tim was an egomaniac, she said. He’d expect ed her to keep house for him while he worked on his book and schmoozed for tenure — Shirley Jackson all over again. She missed me (well, compared to that guy, sure), missed Amanda (obviously), hated Amherst (tell it to Emily Dickinson).

That first night she stayed home while I went out for a drink with Mike. Sure, he agreed, it was shitty, but if I still loved her, I had to forgive her and try to fix things. Because wasn’t this what I’d said I wanted? And, more importantly, wasn’t it the best thing for Amanda? Some version of this thought emerged as the consensus among my friends, family, fellow content aggregators. Mike’s wife Victoria was a notable excep tion. She cited “trust.” But see, I said, I wouldn’t ever trust anyone again, so if you looked at it that way, she was only as untrustworthy as everyone else! Vic was not convinced. Lisa slept in the guest room while we went to twice-weekly therapy sessions, during which she apologized and heaped scorn on the erstwhile emperor of ice cream. Why, if he was so awful, did she destroy her life to be with him? Well, she’d wanted to be in love with a new person. She knew now that she hadn’t been. He talked a big game but at the end of the day he was a selfish partner and a derivative scholar. I understood this on an intellectual level, but I couldn’t bring myself to empathize. One night in October, she crept back into our room and we had the kind of terrifying sex that can only be had by an emotionally drained, long-separated couple trying to prove something complicated. We stopped seeing the therapist and, at least for a couple of months, fucked our way to some kind of détente.  Back at the house I coaxed Mike into taking a shower and put Beetlejuice on for the kids for what must have been the 10th time. I deserved a beer, and my head was pounding, but I didn’t want to temper my self-righteousness. I opened the latest book about how

28 los angeles review of books school vacations. She had just turned seven, and we agreed to spin the separation as a work-related necessity until we figured out something better. At the time, I resented the fact that Amanda’s upkeep stopped me from drinking myself sick and calling every former classmate and co-worker I’d ever wanted to sleep with, but in retrospect that was for the best. I had some weekend adventures (piano bar to hotel bar to hotel room) and some long nights with the HBO Go roster. But as terrible as I felt — and, according to my friends, I was nearly catatonic for significant stretches during this period — I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be how things ended with Lisa. It was so far from the way she’d handled her life in all of the preceding years that I couldn’t imagine it was permanent. (She also, according to both mother and daughter, hadn’t introduced her new friend to Amanda, which must have been logistically dif ficult.) Another obvious possibility — that she was a fundamentally different person from the one I’d always thought her to be — was so painful that I tried not to let myself entertain it too often.

Hicham Benohoud, Untitled (“Azemmour” series), 2007, 19.7 x 23.6 inches

“There’s therapy,” I said. “Drugs.” “You’ve got to be careful with that though,” she said. “Once you start trying things — the drugs, I mean — you’re kind of obliged to see it through. It can get really hairy. I mean, whatever, you know I’ve been medicated since I was 16, I don’t know why I’m being cagy.” She took off her glasses and pressed her palms into her eyes. “Anyway. Lisa seems better. Right? I’m pretty impressed slash shocked by where you guys are at.” “We put on a good show,” I said. “I might murder Michael,” she said. “But I think we’ll probably stay together until then.”“Why?”

Patrick crawled up onto the couch and squeezed in between us. When our wives came in, Mike was nearly done with his second drink. “Isn’t this cozy,” said Lisa. “Where’s Amanda?” I looked to the floor where she’d been sitting. “Not here?” I said. I really was puzzled, but I know it came out glib. “Amanda!” Lisa called, moving into the house. Victoria gave Mike and me a glance and headed off down the hallway to the bedrooms. I watched the movie for a couple more minutes, but when Lisa didn’t come back I got up to find her. I walked through the Florida room and saw them on the back porch. Amanda was sitting behind a pile of trash — not just kitchen stuff but bloody tissues and vacuum cleaner dirt and even a couple of diapers (from where?), with the tall kitchen bin and the wicker trash baskets from the house scattered around her. I gave myself a three count before sliding back the glass door. “Yes, you will get sick playing in the trash,” Lisa was saying. “When things rot, they decompose, and they grow mold. And if you touch them, and you touch your face, even if you don’t mean to, you get very, very sick.”

“I’m not playing,” Amanda said. “Honey, I told you to stop with this,” I said. Lisa pivoted, shifting her anger toward me like a heavy suitcase. “She was going through the garbage in the kitchen earlier,” I said. “It would have been awesome if you had told me that, dude,” she said. “Amanda, go inside,” I said. “Wash your hands and go watch the movie with Pat rick.”She opened her mouth to protest, but then thought better of it and went. “I am not trying to be a hard-ass,” Lisa said. “But this really is not good.” “I’ve been babysitting Mike and the kids all afternoon,” I said. “It’s been, you know, raining and about to rain.” I didn’t even get a raised eyebrow. “I came home to Amanda going through used tampons.” “I don’t know how it happened!” I yelled. “I said I was sorry, right?” She exhaled slowly. “I really hope this doesn’t become more of a thing,” she said in a smaller voice. “It’s so hard to figure out where your head’s at, and if she’s a mess…” “We’ll do what we have to do,” I said. “We’ll sort it out.” “Is Michael drunk?” “I mean, he’s drinking.” “Victoria is going to kill him,” Lisa said. “I really can’t go through the Long Day’s Journey routine right now.”

was my obvious follow-up question. But Patrick came running toward us, crying that it was too far for him to walk. Amanda was off by herself, staring at the sidewalk. I left Victoria to deal with Patrick and caught up with Lisa and Mike.

ANDREW MARTIN

30 31 los angeles review of books badly we’d fucked up Iraq and watched Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis out of the cor ner of my eye. Mike came in wearing boxers, toweling his hair. “Word from the girls?” “No,” I said. “Still pissed at me, got it.” He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I tried to focus on my book, the movie, anything but Mike’s intake. I was resentful about having to even think the word “intake.” He came back in with a drink and sat down next to me, still wearing nothing but his boxers. “Winona Ryder, goin’ inside her,” he said gravely.

At least our points of reference were still aligned. We bent down and started put ting the trash in the big kitchen bag. As a gesture of solidarity, you couldn’t ask for much“Whatbetter.should we do tonight?” I said. “I was thinking four-way,” Lisa said. “That tank-top on Vic?” I said. “Yeah?” Lisa said. “You like that?” “In a pinch, sure.” “A pinch,” Lisa said. “Christ.” I took the bulging garbage bag out to the curb and went to get another one. Vic toria had taken my seat on the couch with Mike and Patrick. She looked at me with a warning: Don’t destroy this peace, ephemeral as it may be. Believe me, I tried to convey back telepathically, it’s the furthest thing from my mind After a while, I got up and made spaghetti. Patrick dropped all of his silverware on the floor. Mike ostentatiously drank water at dinner, but he was glazed over, and I figured he was sneaking vodka. The rain let up and we decided, why the hell not, to walk for ice cream. Mike and Lisa walked ahead with the kids while Victoria and I hungVictoriaback. had cut her hair short and I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about it. She is very pretty, but she has large, expressive features, and her eyes and nose now seemed almost abandoned without her long hair to frame them. Ahead of us, I saw Lisa with her head inclined toward Mike while he made extravagant arm gestures. Watching them walk together I remembered how much Lisa had actually liked him, way back before every one had to take sides. “I hope Patrick normalizes,” Victoria was saying. “It’ll be hard for him. Otherwise.” “I was pretty hyper when I was that age,” I said. “He’s a good kid, though. That’s the important thing. Probably.” “Are you worried about Amanda?” “I suppose I’m concerned,” I said. “Do you think I should worry?” “I just know it’s hard to see your kid unhappy,” she said. “It’s our responsibility to provide the opportunities for happiness, but we can’t make them be happy.”

“I don’t think it’s intentional,” I said. “Yeah, well, the result is the same,” Victoria said. Lisa and I went to our room under the pretext of getting ready for bed. “Do you think he’s okay?” Lisa said. “Should we go look for him?” “He knows where the house is,” I said. “He’ll come back if he wants to.” “Why are you being like that?” “Because I’m tired,” I said. I made sure to keep my voice even. “You go if you’re worried. Hey, bring the kids.” “You’re pissed at me?” “Not particularly,” I said. “Right, so, in short, yes,” she said. “I know I’ve said it a hundred times, but you can’t be mad at me forever. That’s not going to work.” I sat down next to her on the bed. “‘Indefinitely’ isn’t a great time frame either,” she said. “Hey. Look at me.” I did. Her head was cocked and I knew she was on the verge of breaking out a sympathetic smile. “It’s just me,” she said. “How do you think you’ve changed since we got back together?” I said. She canceled the smile and sat up straight. “You know how much more I appreciate what we have now. And that I know now what I don’t want, and how important that’s been for me.” It was a speech she’d given before.

“Michael, do not go have a drink,” Victoria said. “I told you what I’m going to do,” Mike said. “Then take Patrick with you,” Victoria said. “He needs to go too.” “Ice cream,” Patrick said. “Go with your father,” Victoria said. “We’ll be in line when you get back.” “He doesn’t want to go, Vic,” Mike said. “I’m not gonna drag him screaming into the bathroom with me.” “You are an incredibly selfish person,” Victoria said. “That’s the last thing I’m going to say.”“Idoubt that,” Mike said. He stalked off in the direction we’d come from. “Go,” Lisa stage-whispered to me. I jogged half a block to catch up with him, saw him sip from a battered Poland Springs bottle and grimace. “Cavalry’s here,” he said. “I was worried I’d be trusted on my own for a fucking second.”Heoffered me the water bottle, and, forgive me, I took a small, bitter sip. We were in front of Tom’s, the last dive bar left in town. Torn down now, of course. “You know I don’t want to babysit you,” I said. “Seriously,” Mike said. “You want to be able to talk to a person. And all you get is this shit.” He looked so bereft in that moment that I put my hand on his shoulder, a prelude to a hug, I thought, or at least a sympathetic gripping. But he pulled away from me. He looked me right in the eyes and raised the half-full water bottle of vodka to his mouth, sucking hard on the white spigot and swallowing theatrically. The plastic crumpled loudly in his hand as his face grew red and his eyes watered. “Like a house on fi-yah,” he said when he had finished it.

ANDREW MARTIN

“Let me take you home,” I said. “Before you fall over.” “Naw, gonna check this place out,” he said. He went in and I stood outside, staring at the door. I thought he might come back out, or get shoved out like a saloon cowboy, but he didn’t. I walked back to the ice cream line. “Where’s Michael?” Victoria said. “One guess,” I said. I hated to see her shudder, but I was also relieved. I was done takingOnresponsibility.ourwayback to the house, Victoria stepped into Tom’s but Mike wasn’t there anymore; she tried his cell phone and got nothing. When we got back to the house, he wasn’t passed out on the couch, as I’d stupidly hoped he might be. We waited an hour and Victoria drove out to check the other bars on the island. She phoned me from the last place: should she call the police? It had only been a couple of hours, I told her. If he wanted to be out without answering his phone, he was allowed. She came back and the three of us put the kids to bed. We turned on the TV and watched an awful show about a sex-murderer. By the time the news came on, Victoria was pacing the room. “Look, this isn’t the first time he’s done this,” Lisa said. “I have a really bad feeling,” Victoria said. “I just have this feeling that he really doesn’t want to come back.”

“When I was moving stuff a little while ago, I found an old notebook from college,” Lisa said, quickly moving ahead before mentioning why she had been moving her stuff. “It was full of all this detailed analysis of Renaissance sculptures. And they weren’t just notes copied from the board. They were my thoughts on these things. And now it’s all just gone. If you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you about … I don’t even know what. I just looked at it and I still don’t remember the names. Boccio? Is that “It’sone?”in there somewhere,” I said. I hoped it was. The ice cream place came into view, the line of families and dogs stretching around the block.“C’mon guys,” I called back to the kids, trying to wrangle them before the line got longer.“I’ve got to find somewhere to piss,” Mike said. “I’ll meet you guys there in a sec.” “Why don’t you just wait with us?” Lisa said. “We were having a good talk.” “Sorry, dear, I can’t be pissing my pants in front of all these respectable folks.”

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“Do you ever feel this way, Gary?” Lisa said. “Mike was talking about how some times he’ll read a client summary that he wrote years before and not recognize it at all.” “I mean, I’ll remember the act of writing it,” Mike said. “But when I look at it, I can’t imagine being as articulate as I apparently was. It’s kind of interesting.” I did not weigh in on the likelihood of alcohol-induced brain damage.

“He seemed fine when we were walking,” Lisa said. “He was being very sweet, actually.”“That’s what he does,” Victoria said. “He makes you think everything’s okay just so he can go and destroy it.”

ANDREW MARTIN

Mike did come home, close to dawn. He and Vic had a fight that left a picture frame broken and the kids in tears. When I stepped out of our room he went out the front door and took off in his car. He got arrested outside Pittsburgh after crashing through a toll lane barrier with a .21 BAC. Victoria rented a car and drove up there to deal with him, so Lisa and I watched Patrick for the rest of the week. That old Davy Crockett song became his tune of choice (he had a CD of Disney classics stashed away somewhere), and when I think about those days, I hear “killed him a bear, when he was only three” in that goofball old-timey voice. Patrick, who is growing into a smart, kind man, says he doesn’t remember that. He remembers burying Amanda up to her neck in sand on the beach after the rain finally let up for good. That day is vivid in my mind, too. Amanda begged to stay there, stuck like that, even when the wind picked up and Lisa made the call that it was time to head home. Patrick got frustrated and started digging up the sand around her neck, flinging it into her eyes and hair. Over Amanda’s screams, I told him to cut it out. We packed up all of our things, making a big singsong show of leaving without her, and then, when she made no attempt at escape, we started trudging up toward the dunes to the street. “Goodbye!” she called to our backs. “I love you! Visit soon!”

“Are you?” Lisa said. I knew she actually cared, and I wanted to know the answer, too. “I’m going to check on Amanda and see what Victoria’s story is,” I said. I closed the door behind me before she could respond. When I cracked open the door to the kids’ room, two sets of eyes stared back at me from the bottom bunk. Night creatures. “We can’t sleep,” Patrick said. “Where’s Uncle Mike?” said Amanda. “He’s taking a walk,” I said. “Honey, get in your own bed.” She clambered up to the top bunk, and I tucked her in. “Patrick and I were trying to figure out what I threw away,” Amanda said. “You need to stop with this,” I said. “I need to look in that barrel at the arcade,” she said. “I know that’s where it is.” “Where what is?” “Something important,” she said. I remembered that we weren’t allowed back in that arcade. It was a small mercy. “Go to sleep. Maybe Mom can take you to check in the morning.” Patrick whimpered in the bottom bunk. I put his blanket over him, and he quieted down. In the living room, Victoria was in the armchair, texting ferociously. “My sister thinks I should call the police if I think he’s a danger to himself or oth ers,” she said. She put down her phone and sank deeper into the chair. “Vic, you deserve better than this,” I said. “We all do.” “It’s just exhausting,” she said. “Why is it so impossible to just relax and be a per son?”It still seemed to me, then, that it was wrong to relax, that it was better to fight against Mike’s drinking and Lisa’s inconstancy and Amanda’s whatever-it-was than to accept things for what they were. I’d already tried complacency with Lisa, I thought, and learned that it bred disaster. But this was before I understood that going through these problems again and again — and we would, for a few more years to come, be in a similar place, medicating our children, trying to tame our wayward partners — was

34 35 los angeles review of books “Right, but how are you different? You see things differently, I get that, but what about you? You you.” “What do you want?” she said. “‘I’ve gained 10 pounds?’ I wasn’t perfect before but I don’t think I’m worse now.” “So you’re saying it’s me,” I said. “I don’t know what the ‘it’ in that sentence refers to.” She’d been deposed many times, most recently in a dispute between her group and the West Virginia state legislature over acceptable level of bacterial pathogens in ground water systems. I had a dismal record in our arguments. “The changed party,” I said. “That’s the ‘it.’ Maybe I’ve changed.” “You seem the same to me,” she said. I stood up and let my thoughts settle. “I’m not being very articulate,” I said. “I’m fine, I guess. Fine enough.”

the worst kind of complacency, a refusal to take responsibility for our own happiness. It took me a long time. Victoria got up from the chair and sat down on the couch next to me. I rubbed her back and mouthed empty clichés as she sat hunched over and watched Big on TV through her fingers. Eventually she lay down with her head in my lap and fell asleep almost immediately. I felt a flood of protectiveness toward her, and some concomitant, uncalculated desire. I registered the shifts Victoria made as she slept, felt the wistful texture of her fluff of hair. It scared me. I put a blanket over her and gently shifted her head from my lap on to the couch cushion. She made an unconscious murmur of protest and settled back into sleep. I sat down to read in the armchair across the room, but mostly just watched Vic’s breath rise and fall. When I got to the point where I was hallucinating extra presences in the room from exhaustion, I went back in to our room to lay awake next to Lisa.

3637 FROM JANUARY , I. JOS CHARLES The ceilingswentI under dandelions stuffed in pockets and what was it lemonsyoudogwoodstoodcoordinatedhishairamolest of vellum I bathed understood, unbelievable each emblem Signifier me Asleep in rooms I still sleep FROM JANUARY , II. JOS CHARLES They gave breathlessleafletsdays days of belief or wanting belief Inscriptions of the coming heart When boys would hold youplaceneckcomprehensibleyourandBoyweresomuch to be free

Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Luisa Strina

Rubbing the bristle brush across his backbone, securing the bridle, riding his stretched-out body on the dirt road to town (past the Texaco station), and following his head through hairgrass and corn flowers, she was some kind of in-between creature, browned from the sun. To the sightless, at the State School for the Deaf and Blind, knowledge came in small words — under, over, next to, inside — but it was the clip-clop of Jelly’s hooves, his fragrant mane, and muscle memory that carried her forward, hollering, Run, Jelly. Run! Then, with one soft-firm Whoa, he did, though she was only six, her child-hands gripping the reins tight, hearts thumping a testimony to the love feeling.

For Betty Bird and Susan Thompson

JELLY HENRI COLE

Anna Maria Maiolino, Untitled (“Vida Afora Fotopoemação” [Life Line Photopoemaction] series), 1981, Black and white analog photos. Photography: Henri Virgil Sthal

of Ella’s kind and courageous mother. A good message, but then why are Ella and her mother also beautiful? The baby prefers the new Cinderella to Ever After. The former has brighter colors, more twirling. When I tell my neighbor about the new Cinderella, she asks why. You are a professor of gender studies at an all-women’s school, why are you watching movies about a princess? I don’t know, I reply. Probably because I am tired.When

I was 10, I did not know what gender studies were. I did not know about metaphors. I did not understand why ignorance was bliss. The new Cinderella is more diverse than Ever After. At the ball, the prince is pre sented with an array of other princesses. Here, the princess of India, Nigeria, China. Diversity is good, and this is good for the actresses hired. But now, more apparently, the story boils down to choosing, out of the pack, the woman of non-color in the most color-saturated dress. So I turn the movie off. And the child becomes colicky again.

I pick is Cinderella. It is the new Cinderella, the one with the gorgeous Lily James, and is meant, by Disney, to echo the “original” Ella, a classically blonde girl in a blue dress with a waist the size of my thumb. The last movie titled Cinderella was the 1997 musical featuring Brandy and Whitney Houston. So what does going back to the original mean? And if we are being entirely accurate, the earliest version of story is believed, but not proven, to be about a Greek slave girl who marries an Egyptian king.

I have a child who is colicky, so we stay up nights. She is not so old that she can watch movies and understand them, but we do anyway. She does not need to watch movies made for children as result of the first point, but we do anyway. I could put on something educational — Chinese, for instance — but I don’t. The process of educat ing a child is going to be draining. Why start now, before we can properly scream at eachTheother?movie

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The 1998 movie Ever After is one of my favorites. I was 10 and had just arrived in the States. I have watched this movie enough times to know all of Drew Barrymore’s lines. I know the expression on the pig when she takes him out to find truffles. Bar rymore’s Ella likes to read. She befriends a fictional da Vinci, who at one point walks across water in giant wooden shoes. Over the years, I have become a shoe snob. Yet which would I rather have? Ugly shoes that get me across water or slippers made of glass? Is glass a metaphor? Why still call it a slipper? My baby puts her foot in her mouth. The new Cinderella might know how to read, though it is unclear. The message, said again and again, is to be kind and have courage. These are also the dying words ELLA WEIKE WANG

43 Hicham Benohoud, Untitled (“Azemmour” series), 2007, 19.7 x 23.6 inches

I come to party, I show up alone, I feel the beat on my feet, and I’m soloing.

I sing sunshine hits in the club. Sunshine hits baby. That’s just how I live, lawd — And Lord was like — I fled the scene, done all I possibly could. The way it works is, sunshine hits something and so, there is something.

Gradually, you become unlike that something You used to hold. I had held a cassette tape in my hands, had held a church in my hands, had held it with heavy hands, had felt love Like adrenaline, to which no one in the church spoke.

ANAÏS DUPLAN

I had heard music emanating from a cassette player, had heard it in church, had looked into the pastor’s eyes, had held her eyes In my hands, had felt her love like a fee. Evil eyes, everyone knows what your poems are about. Whatever it is got me laughing.

FEAR AND LOATHING (COMIN’ AND GOIN’)

SEEN AND ARTREMEMBERINGHEARD:CHILDREN’SANDACTIVISM

opinions, Adorno hoped, would help them to resist the impulse to blindly obey orders from leaders whose schematic, us-versus-them worldviews dehumanize members of otherAmidgroups.all the threats to American democracy that we currently face, the question of how adults regard young people might seem like the least of our problems. Yet if Ador no was right, then adopting a more egalitarian attitude toward children might be more important than we think. It’s very easy in our culture, which is already imbued with di visive thinking, to exaggerate how different children are from adults. The presumption of childish incompetence is so strong that, even when young people engage in activism and art that make the world a more democratic place, we often fail to recall their efforts.

I’d like to argue against such forgetting. It isn’t enough to contest the authoritarian idea that children should be seen and not heard. We must also remember the ways in which children themselves have already challenged the status quo and changed the world as we knowPsychologistit.

Teaching children to question both adult authority figures and their own beliefs and

Derived from aeto, the Latin prefix meaning “pertaining to age,” the term “aetonorma tive” was coined by children’s literature critic Maria Nikolajeva, who wanted to point out how age-related social norms can silence, demean, and disempower people. This terminology is general rather than child-specific because age-related cultural expecta tions and stereotypes affect the lives of older people as well as younger ones.

Do you think it’s more important for a child to be respectful and obedient, or indepen dent and self-reliant? Well behaved and well mannered, or considerate and curious?

When political scientist Matthew C. MacWilliams included these questions in a survey he gave to likely Republican primary voters during our last presidential election, he made a discovery that surprised many people. Among the voters he studied, the variable that correlated most strongly with support for Donald Trump’s candidacy was not their race, gender, class, religious affiliation, or education level. A better predictor of who would vote for Trump was how they answered these seemingly non-political questions about children. Prizing obedience and good behavior over qualities like inde pendence and considerateness, MacWilliams found, was a more statistically significant predictor of support for Trump than standard demographic variables — a fact that might seem innocuous until we learn that psychologists use these questions to deter mine how disposed people are to authoritarianism.

Aetonormative amnesia also refers to another form of forgetting. Here’s how it works: when a member of a particular age group accomplishes something that seems at odds with the stereotypes associated with that group, their achievement is often regard ed as exceptional and then is promptly forgotten. When another member of that group comes along and does something similar, that too, is treated as an unprecedented event. This is perhaps most obvious in our treatment of the elderly. We consistently seem sur prised when older people do commonplace things like curse or kiss or Tweet. This kind of forgetfulness allows our preconceived notions to remain intact: our beliefs about people in particular age groups persist, despite the existence of many, many exceptions.

Aetonormative amnesia impairs our understanding of activism on behalf of chil dren, as well as activism by children. Most of us know that the post-World War II period witnessed the rise of an international human rights movement, as well as the flowering of the American civil rights and women’s movements. But we forget that a push for children’s rights was happening at the same time, led by people who regarded ageism as deeply intertwined with other forms of prejudice. In her 1970 manifesto The Dialectic of Sex, feminist Shulamith Firestone declared it “impossible to speak of the liberation of women without also discussing the liberation of children — and vice versa.” The capacities of both of these groups, she argued, are often underestimated.

The idea that our political values might express themselves in how we think about children shouldn’t be surprising to us. In the wake of World War II, philosopher Theo dor Adorno collaborated with a group of psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley to trace how early childhood experiences might make people more suscep tible to either developing or revering what they described as “the authoritarian per sonality.” Later, in a 1967 essay entitled “Education After Auschwitz,” Adorno argued that pedagogy aimed at preventing a repetition of the horror of the Holocaust must concentrate on nurturing young people’s ability to engage in “critical self-reflection.”

Adam Phillips has described “the child” as “our most convincing es sentialism.” When we view childhood as a purely natural category defined by a set of fixed, innate qualities, we ignore the fact that social expectations also play a critical role in shaping “what children are like” in any given culture. Over time, we have grown more attuned to the potentially harmful impact of stereotypes related to race, class, and gen der. Yet we often forget to include age on this list, no matter how many times thinkers like Adorno and Phillips remind us. I call this phenomenon aetonormative amnesia.

MARAH GUBAR

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Like children’s activism, children’s art is also routinely forgotten. Even critics of children’s literature, like myself, have fallen into this trap. For decades, we have defined our subject of study as literature produced by adults for children. This sounds reason able, right? And yet, this formulation exaggerates the difference between older and younger people. When we characterize adults as active, creative producers and children as passive, inert receivers, we set into motion both types of aetonormative amnesia.

In 1951, for example, 16-year-old Virginia resident Barbara Johns and her class mates banded together to protest how inferior the facilities of their all-black pub lic high school were compared to those of its well-equipped white counterpart. The school-wide walk-out they organized later became part of the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. Virginia’s white superintendent of schools reacted to this student-led strike by insisting that Johns and company “were pawns in an adult conspiracy.” In fact, the young people had organized the protest in secret because — as Johns put it — “we knew […] that if we had asked for adult help before taking the first step, we would have been turned down.”

Krauss’s decision to pay serious attention to what children were saying and doing was motivated by an awareness of the aetonormativity of American culture (though the term did not exist yet). In the 1940s, before teaming up with Sendak, she wanted to write children’s books that would illustrate how hard it is to be little in a world built and run by big people, or, alternately, the difficulty of being elderly in a world that priv ileges youth. The idea, as Krauss told her editor, was to show readers that “our concepts of how people think, feel, and behave at certain ages are, socially conditioned [and] practically as bad as race-prejudice, prejudice against women, immigrants, etc.” Krauss’s attentiveness to the potentially disabling effects of age norms was way ahead of her time — nearly three more decades would go by before Firestone and other children’s rights activists aligned ageism with other forms of prejudice.

MARAH

Consider the case of Maurice Sendak. Many people think of him as one of the most important children’s book authors of the 20th century. We forget, however, that he launched his career by teaming up with a writer named Ruth Krauss on a series of pic ture books based on the sayings and stories of actual children. Trained as an anthropol ogist, Krauss invited children at local nursery and elementary schools to tell her stories. She then reworked their words into simple yet poetic vignettes, which Sendak adorned with lively images of tiny children cavorting, singing, and playing pretend. Several of the Krauss-Sendak collaborations — the first was A Hole Is to Dig: A First Book of First Definitions (1952) — open with a thank you to local schoolchildren, acknowledging their participation in the creative process.

Male-dominated societies tend to exaggerate how different women and children are from adult men, caricaturing them as incompetent naïfs. That caricature is then used to justify oppression. “Because the class oppression of women and children is couched in the phraseology of ‘cute,’” Firestone observed, “it is much harder to fight than open oppression.”Children themselves participated in post-World War II social justice movements in ways that scholars have only recently begun to appreciate. In If We Could Change the World: Young People and America’s Long Struggle for Racial Equality, historian Rebecca de Schweinitz alerts us to how often her colleagues have failed to credit the work of Af rican-American youth during the Civil Rights movement. Children were not just used as empathy-engendering props by their elders. They also functioned as self-motivated “agents of change” — organizing their own protests against Jim Crow laws, and often pushing adult-run organizations such as the NAACP to adopt more militant positions.

GUBAR

De Schweinitz brilliantly illuminates how Johns and other African-American schoolchildren engaged in a struggle for civil rights built on a “youth organizing tradi tion that began in the 1930s.” Yet by citing the ’30s as a starting point, she, too, falls prey to aetonormative amnesia, since that origin story overlooks the working-class children who spearheaded 19th-century labor protests. In 1828, child mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey, objected to having their dinner hour pushed back from noon to one o’clock; they organized a strike and had the meal changed back to the earlier hour. In 1836, young workers at a Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mill were preparing to strike. When the other girls had a sudden crisis of confidence, 11-year-old Harriet Hanson led the way. “I don’t care what you do,” Hanson declared. “I am going to turn out, whether anyone else does or not.” She marched out the door and they followed. The young people who hawked newspapers on the streets of New York City also organized labor protests. In 1899, a successful strike by the young newspaper sellers forced publishing magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst to raise their wages. Newsboys also managed to band together with local bootblacks to form their own professional theater company. They founded the loftily named Grand Duke’s Opera House, which held its performances in the depths of a run-down building in the poverty-stricken Five Points neighborhood. An impressed adult journalist noted that this was “emphatically a boys’ theatre, owned, built, and managed by boys — boys are the stage carpenters, actors, musicians, scene-shifters, money-takers, and the [greater part of the] audience.”

Krauss was prescient, but she was also intellectually indebted to earlier thinkers, particularly her artistic mentor Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who was in her turn inspired by philosopher John Dewey. Dewey believed that pedagogy — particularly pedagogy aimed at creating a truly democratic society — had to teach children how to engage with their elders in a shared search for knowledge, rather than accustom them to pas sively absorb information and silently do as they’re told. In keeping with that program, Lucy Sprague Mitchell founded the Bank Street College of Education, which advo cated for more egalitarian teaching methods. Mitchell also experimented with the idea that children themselves could participate in the production of children’s literature. In Here and Now Story Book (1921), she featured children’s stories based directly on the suggestions, ideas, and questions of young Bank Street pupils. These short narratives were written in a language that closely echoed the children’s speech patterns. They were also read and tested out on student audiences before publication, so that they could be altered if they didn’t appeal.

Children’s participation in the production of youth culture is forgotten — and so, too, are the insights of adults who helped to enable that participation.

Many of these projects garnered national news coverage that often portrayed them as exceptional or even — shades of Sendak — revolutionary. A little bit of digging, however, unearths evidence that belies the breathless “first time ever” rhetoric. Stone Soup, for example, was preceded by Kids, which announced itself to young readers in 1970 as “a new kind of magazine since nearly everything in it is created by kids like you.” Five years before that, six teenagers from Harlem had began working on What’s Happening, a magazine that eventually provided a forum for “young writers from all over the country” to contribute editorials, short stories, poetry, drawings, photographs, and comic strips. We can find even earlier examples of these kinds of publications. In 1934, E. B. White published a witty and heartfelt New Yorker essay in which he marveled at the wealth of material that American children had contributed to a much older children’s periodical. He traces “the fierce desire to write and paint that burns in our land today” back to 1899, when the popular children’s magazine St. Nicholas introduced a new sec tion devoted to showcasing poems, prose, puzzles, pictures, and eventually photographs submitted by young readers. White was himself published in St. Nicholas when he was 11. This early success, he jokes, was due to a calculated decision: he had made kindness to animals a key motif of his essay because another kid had tipped him off that the adult editors favored this theme. Still, White’s deep appreciation for the forum and how it enabled childhood creativity is evident. “The Pulitzer Prize was a pleasant reward to Edna St. Vincent Millay, I have no doubt,” he muses. “But it was faint fun compared to her conquest in 1907 when, [at] 15 […] she opened her August number of St. Nicholas” to discover her poem about the glories of “a gold, gold sun” emblazoned on the page.

A quick survey of American children’s culture in the 1960s and ’70s reveals why Sendak saw himself at the vanguard of a new wave. During these decades, adults fur nished young people with innumerable public platforms for creative self-expression. A plethora of children’s poetry anthologies appeared with titles like Here I Am! An Anthol ogy of Poems Written by Young People in Some of America’s Minority Groups (1969). They included work by Native American, African-American, and Japanese-American youth, among others. In 1973, a new children’s magazine called Stone Soup began showcasing stories, poems, and drawings submitted by children. Its adult editors stressed in their call for submissions that they were “especially interested in printing stories by non-En glish-speaking American children.” A new television show called Zoom became one of the most popular children’s programs of the 1970s by inviting child viewers to send in all kinds of material for the multiethnic all-child cast to perform, including plays, songs, jokes, and topic suggestions for the serious conversations known as ZOOMraps.

Hicham Benohoud, Untited (“Azemmour” series), 2007, 19.7 x 23.6 inches

Throughout the 1940s, Krauss was an active member of the experimental Writers Laboratory that Mitchell ran at Bank Street. A Hole Is to Dig was inspired by Defini tions, a game in which teachers invited children to supply their own accounts of what words meant. For the book, Krauss drew on definitions dreamed up by four- and fiveyear-olds enrolled in the Bank Street nursery school. The title A Hole Is to Dig was actu ally a direct quote. Reflecting back on that time and his work with Krauss in the 1950s, Sendak later wrote, “It was like being part of a revolution. This was the first time in modern children’s book history that a work had come more or less directly from kids.”

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Clearly, children’s participation in children’s culture wasn’t a new phenomenon in the mid-20th century. Yet Sendak’s sense that something revolutionary was afoot isn’t completely incorrect. What seems notable to me about youth culture in the post-World War II period is how many adults —working in all different artistic genres — made it a priority to help young people participate in youth culture and worked to align the act of amplifying children’s voices with a broader egalitarian ethos. Ella Jenkins, often called “The First Lady of Children’s Music,” exemplifies this trend. Building on the now-forgotten work of early ’50s predecessors such as Beatrice Landeck and Tony Schwartz, she released a series of children’s albums in which young people helped her sing a mix of material from all around the world. She borrowed a call-and-response style from African and Cuban musicians, teaching children every thing from Hebrew songs to American folk tunes to West African chants calling Mus lims to worship. Her goal, she explained, was “to give all children a traveling experience in sound, moods, and rhythms of cultures that maybe [sic] far removed from their own.” This commitment sprang from a keen awareness of recent history: Jenkins and her contemporaries acknowledged the connection between nationalism, religious intoler ance, and the rise of authoritarianism in Europe before World War II. In an effort to promote open-mindedness and international understanding, they actively attempted to increase children’s knowledge and appreciation of cultural diversity. At that time, amplifying the voices of children from around the globe was a high priority for the adults who anthologized children’s writing. Alongside the collections of poetry composed by American youth that came out in the 1960s and ’70s were more in ternational anthologies such as Have You Seen A Comet? Children’s Art and Writing from Around the World (1971). Several of them (including Comet) were actually funded by the United Nations as part of a concerted effort to get American families to recognize the shared humanity of people all over the world. The idea that a child’s voice might engender cross-cultural empathy had historical precedent. We can trace it back to the 1950s, when Anne Frank’s diary — and a popu lar play based on it — exerted a powerful effect on international audiences, even those who had previously resisted reckoning with the full horror of the Holocaust. Frank, we should recall, was neither the first nor the only child to leave behind an account of Hit ler’s deadly regime. Miriam Wattenberg, a 15-year-old who lived in the Warsaw ghetto, kept a journal that was serialized by American newspapers during the war and pub lished as a book in 1945. An anthology of poems and drawings composed by the young inmates of the Terezin concentration camp was first published in English in 1959.

SlaverySlavery is cruel slavery is bad it made are people very very sad. Who made this slavery I want to know why couldn’t they let are people go.

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What’s wonderful about this moment is not just that Marc articulates the impor tance of adults giving children some space to think for themselves — it’s that Sarah’s response shows how having that space can actually facilitate critical self-reflection. She slowly moves away from her initial insistence that adults are clueless and closed-minded and grows more introspective and self-critical: “But while we are busy opening [adults’] minds, maybe they are trying to open ours. We may be close-minded [sic] while we are trying to open them. We should try to listen to them, too.” Sarah’s involvement in a creative venture in which adults listen respectfully to her words leads her to recognize that she owes them the same courtesy. She shifts away from aggressive, us-versus-them thinking, just as her adult transcribers have done by taking childen’s opinions seriously enough to solicit, record and publish them.

MARAH GUBAR

There are also moments in these magazines when children themselves advocate the kind of anti-authoritarian pedagogy that Adorno deems vital to the development of critical thinking. A great example of this occurs in the first issue of Kids (1970), which features a transcription of a conversation between Sarah Wright, age 11, and Marc Aronson, age 10, whom the editors had invited “to discuss their feeling about the world today.” Sarah begins by making a censorious generalization. Adults, she declares, need to “grow up”: “They don’t like each other for stupid reasons. Blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans are all blinded by hate just because they have a differ ent idea about something.” This remark sparks a discussion about the importance of open-mindedness, during which Marc observes, “If parents tell you what they believe but don’t say ‘This is right and this is the only way [to think about it],’ then kids will begin to think for themselves.”

Harlem teenagers started What’s Happening in order to publicize how roughly police treated them when they participated in an antiwar demonstration in Washington, DC. The first issue of Stone Soup finds Lisa Coury, age 10, fuming about the situation in Vietnam and fantasizing that she has the power to “pick up President Nixon and throw him in the ocean.” Also in that issue, a poet named Doyle Turner, age 11, displays a more clear-eyed view of one of America’s original sins than many adults today.

In light of this grim history and the very visible struggles of Civil Rights activists and protestors against the war in Vietnam, it shouldn’t surprise us that the burst of children’s creativity and art in the 1960s and ’70s was accompanied by political activism.

It’s easy to think of Turner’s idiosyncratic spelling and grammar as ignorant or cute, but let’s take it seriously here. His use of “are” (a form of the verb “to be”) in place of “our” prompts readers to reflect on the relationship between being and owning. In the context of a poem that relentlessly repeats the word “slavery,” this error implies that treating human beings as property is a barbarous mistake.

There’s a reason why I keep highlighting the work of adults, even though my goal is to recollect children’s participation in art and activism. Dewey’s vision of education as a training ground for democracy entailed treating children not as autonomous agents, but as valued members of an interdependent community. What inspires me most about children’s culture in the ’60s and ’70s is that so many creative people were building these kinds of interdependent communities. Flip open a current issue of Stone Soup and you’ll see that it now only publishes children’s writing. But initially, its editors tested out the

series), 2007, 19.7 x 23.6 inches MARAH

Hicham Benohoud, Untitled (“Azemmour” GUBAR

idea of putting work by artists and book reviewers of all ages into conversation in the same journal. This effort to democratize both children’s literature and criticism was short-lived. But it’s worth remembering because it exemplifies an ethos of inclusiveness and interconnectedness, not a fantasy about one age group achieving artistic autonomy from the other. This groovy vibe has not completely disappeared from our culture. It pervades the films that children and adults co-create for the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival and infuses the pages of Dreaming in Indian, a 2014 anthology featuring the voices of young and old Native American artist-activists. And yet opportunities for what literary critic Victoria Ford Smith calls “intergenerational collaboration” are few and far between. Often, it even feels like we’re moving backward. Conservative media outlets often represent youth activism in a disturbingly retro grade way. In a segment on the Parkland students, for example, Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared to millions of viewers that “wealthy and powerful” adults were “us ing” the young advocates for stricter gun-control laws as pawns. Carlson even insisted that 17-year-old David Hogg “shouldn’t be involved in formulating a response” to the shooting “because he is a kid.” In this case, the assertion that young people lack the capacity to engage in meaningful, self-motivated activism serves as a means of silenc ing and sidelining them — of trying to prevent them from participating in the public sphere. Of course, this claim is no more true now than it was back in 1950s, when Vir ginia’s white superintendent of schools mischaracterized black teen activists as “pawns in an adult conspiracy.” All these decades later, and even the most blatantly aetonorma tive comments are still being aired in prime time. There are many means to counteract aetonormative nature of our culture. Newspa pers can open their editorial pages to young columnists, as The New York Times recently did by publishing a piece by 16-year-old Kelly Pinos, who recounted how inhumane US immigration policies have broken up her family. Arts organizations can sponsor more events like the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. Anthologists can include work by children alongside that of adults. Curators can follow the lead of the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, which devotes serious space to an exhibit that chronicles how child artists and activists have worked with adults to make the world a more humane place. Universities can do more to support age studies across the disciplines. And all of us can lobby our legislators to support public funding for arts education and enact more child- and family-friendly social policies. We talk a lot about children, often invoking their well-being as a cherished social and political goal. But actually living up to that ethics of care requires us to attend more closely to what they say and do. By listening to their words and remembering their activism, we emulate their efforts to make the world a more egalitarian place.

HOW TO RAISE AN ALIEN BABY E.C. OSONDU

Another rule: your house must not have any satellite dishes. You know those things that look like turned out giant’s ears, eavesdropping into every terrestrial and non-ter restrial conversation? Those are a no-no. Studies have shown that even unused and abandoned dishes retain their pings. This is a well-known phenomenon in Rocket Sci

If, for instance, you are going to adopt or foster an Earthling child, you have to obey certain rules. Yes, certain requirements must be met. Your home must be clean, at least on the day of the inspection. You must be at least 21 years old, because babies can’t look after babies. You must have some source of gainful employment. Why would you think fostering an alien baby is any different? The rules ought to be even more stringent, really. It is good manners to host visitors as you would family, or perhaps even better.

Roula Nassar, an inquiry into the nature and place of the past state in general , 2018, color pencil on paper, 24 x 16 inches

Rules are rules. They exist for a reason. They are meant to be obeyed.

The first thing to know about taking care of alien babies is that you must have a large, well-manicured lawn. What for, you ask? Well, sooner or later an alien baby must return to its mother planet and the mode of transportation to that planet is the mother ship. It is expected that you know that and keep it in mind. You are the alien baby’s Earth mom; it has many other mothers elsewhere. So yes, on the subject of lawns: keep it freshly mown with well-trimmed edges so that when that mother ship arrives — silently in the night, with its deep unearthly glow — you will not be ashamed when your neighbors come out of their houses, wearing robes and shoddy slippers. Even drowsy eyes can pick up a mess. You will not be ashamed by the photographs in the newspapers. Your lawn should be photogenic, prepared for media coverage.

And we shall feast igomiligo And we shall feast igomiligo

On their return I will say Mama welcome

On their return I will say Papa welcome

56 57 los angeles review of books ence: even when satellites die, their pings do not. You don’t want your alien baby using your house as a transmission center for sending messages back to his mother planet. Though we welcome the alien baby we would prefer to keep communication to a min imum. Always remember: country first, our planet first. And remember this too: no television antennas either. Perhaps a close friend or family member installed those for you. Perhaps they fell to their death in the act. Now is not the time for a moment of silence. If you would like to commemorate the many who have fallen while installing those spiky, dozen-fingered blighters, please take that moment at a later time. Those antennas are useful for sending back information to mother planets. Our alien guests will grab and twist every antenna-finger to tell their people sensitive things about us, if we let them. If they are living with you, they will certainly know all sorts of things about you. They will know your favorite cereal — whether you are a sweet cereal type or a cheerless, unsweetened, heart-healthy kind of person. They will know about your bowel movements too, how regular you are and if you tend to get discombobulated when you feel backed up. Yes, of course they’ll know all that stuff, you probably don’t want an entire planet knowing these things. But that is not what we are talking about here; we are talking serious business. Let’s say we plan to attack their planet tomorrow, to seize it and make it our own, to force them to come harvest our potatoes, our almonds and tomatoes, our oranges and grapes, and so on and so forth. As you well know, in warfare, surprise attack is the mother of victory. So here we are, planning to strike with the utmost surprise, and your house guest — your innocent alien baby — gets a hold of this information and decides to give their people a heads up. What do you think they’d do if they get this actionable piece of information? Of course they would strike our planet. And you bet they wouldn’t show mercy. Before you know it, they’ve annexed our home — our dear mother Earth — and taken us to their red, dusty planet and forced us break rocks all day while we sing “By the Rivers of Babylon.” Please, no antennas on your roof. You must also be sensitive in your choice of entertainment. You don’t want to go about hurting the feelings of our little alien baby. No Syfy channel on your TV please. And none of your old DVDs and space-themed movies from yesteryear. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those boxed-up video cassettes in the basement. Star Trek, Star Wars, Space 1999, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run. Get rid of them, every single one. It would be regrettable, if peradventure they stumble upon them. You don’t want your guest seeing itself through your eyes. Think about their feelings. Do you realize that most of these those movies — yes, most — portray aliens as kind and generous and lov ing? Well, some do but in a few others, they are shown to be humorless savages, creepy and wide-eyed, just saying, “Take me to your leader.” You should know that your baby will experience…perhaps we don’t have the word for it. Surely, the Germans do — they have a word for everything. I am talking about nos talgia for the mother planet, otherworldly homesickness. Your alien baby will definitely get this feeling sometimes, no matter how much of a good Earth parent you try to be. Don’t worry too much about it. It is in no way a commentary on your parenting skills.

E.C. OSONDU

What your alien baby needs is simply for you to sit them down and gently sing this folk song: Papa went to the market eeya Mama went to the market eeya Papa will buy some savory moin-moin Mama will buy some savory akara

What kind of games should you play with your alien baby, you ask? Definitely not hide-and-seek. They can hide, but when you seek them you can never find them. When you get tired of seeking and plead for them to come out, they won’t come. Soon it will no longer be a game, and you may need to go to the authorities. Follow-the-leader is also out because they will always follow the leader. They don’t know how not to follow the leader. You will never stop playing, you will be old and gray and still in the same game of follow-the-leader. More on this later, but let’s just avoid it for now. Tag is not such a good idea either because being called “It” is not good for an alien’s self-esteem.

Another question you may have: what to feed an alien baby? Mars Bars, of course! But corny jokes aside, what on Earth do alien babies eat? You can feed alien babies practically anything. They have the constitution of an ox.

While we’re on the subject, you’ll be relieved to know that an alien baby is very much like a self-cleaning oven. They do not need a daily bath. You need not towel them dry, nor powder their necks. They are low-maintenance babies. The dreaded stinky di aper is not something you need to worry about. Alien babies are pretty much self-con tained. They have an industrial blender where their alimentary canal should be.

By the time you are done your alien baby will be fast asleep, snoring slightly, an odd, peaceful smile on their face. What kind of atmosphere do you need for your alien ward to thrive? Think of your alien baby as a fruit. Grapes need a certain type of weather and soil to do well. Alien babies, contrary to what you might think, do not require any kind of special climate, so please, do not interfere with the room temperature. No air conditioning, no fan. The occasional mild breeze should do the trick. Just keep your home free of dust mites and dander, and any furry dust balls that might trigger a sneezing fit. You probably don’t know this, but here is a useful fact: when alien babies start sneezing, nothing can stop them except the finely ground feathers of the alien bird Okanukapi. When you touch the feather dust ever so lightly, patting their nose three times, the sneezing will stop. But how many people have Okanukapi feathers in their medicine cabinet? If you keep your house free of dust, you’ll both breathe easier.

It is impossible to raise a child without having to discipline them. As we all know, discipline comes in different forms: the raised voice, the reprimand, the ruler on the knuckle, the time-out, the confiscation of electronics, the demand for an apology. These are the most dreaded aspects of parenting that neither parent nor child look forward to. But you do not have to worry about this because your alien child does not need you to discipline them. They will never break the rules. Yes, that is a fact and you can take it to the bank. You are never going to catch your alien ward with their hand in the cookie jar, literally or metaphorically. They will not sass you back or slam the door. This might surprise you. Some parents have even found this fact to be frustrating, and have actually started to wish that their ward would break the rules. Some even look for ways to make them break the rules so they can feel they are actually fulfilling their parental duty. Indeed, many have concluded that their only real function as parents is to correct their children when they stray from the straight and narrow path. It comes as a surprise then, when they discover that alien children don’t need to be disciplined. Their society follows a strict command and obedience structure, you see. Sit, you tell them, and they sit. Do not ever open that door, you say, and they’ll never touch it.

Finally the day comes. You always knew it would, though you didn’t realize that it would come so soon. Your alien ward must return to their mother planet. The ship lands on your well-manicured lawn. Your eyes grow misty, but perhaps it’s just your seasonal allergies, triggered by the freshly cut grass. Your alien baby runs to the spacecraft. You linger at your front door. You wave, and they wave back. You watch the door close. The spacecraft takes off. You wave again, and keep waving at your alien baby until the space craft has completely disappeared. Your hands do not feel tired. You feel no ache and so you close your eyes and continue to wave.

E.C. OSONDU

Always tuck in your shirt, you say, and they always will. Always say please and thank you, and they’ll say it without fail.

Here’s what you need to worry about, though: play dates. Unfortunately, alien ba bies don’t play well with others. There is something about them that unnerves our Earth babies. It is something the Earth babies sense instinctively. They immediately begin to point and yell. It’s like they’re looking at something crazy! Like a dog with two heads. They usually don’t stop yelling until their moms remove them from the scene. This is strange since Earth babies are not ordinarily a discriminating group, but there we have it. A quiet neighborhood without Earth babies would be an ideal location to raise your alienInbaby.what faith should you raise your alien baby? This is a really complicated ques tion. The truth is that no one knows whether aliens have souls. Many theologians have spent years examining this question from different angles. Many have asked, If aliens do not have souls, does that mean they do not sin? If they do not sin, does that mean there are no heavenly consequences for their actions? If there are no heavenly consequences, then should we take it upon ourselves, sinners that we are, to hold them accountable for any violent acts they may commit? This is like asking whether there is more sand under the sea than in the desert. Of what use are such questions? Have you exhausted the sand in the desert? Teach them to help an old lady cross the road, to raise their hat when a lady passes by, to never spit on the street, to pause when a funeral procession goes past, to say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’m.” Teach them to never look down at any individual with disdain or look up to any fellow in fear. The alien will never be human. You are bound to fail but here’s the good thing — an alien child never forgets what he’s been taught. While our emphasis here is more practical, we will grant that you do have a cer tain responsibility in this direction. You shouldn’t just abandon the baby and run off to church, or the mosque, temple, ashram, or meditation center. Just teach them to wor ship in the way you worship. Look at the world we live in today. Very few follow the religion in which they were raised. Don’t worry that your ward may proselytize, return to their little planet up there and try to convert their kin to their new faith. All the things of Earth belong to Earth and the things of space belong in space. And what do we know really? Who knows what they worship up there? What do they bow down to? How many times a day do they pray? And if they do not pray at all, has it made them any worse or better than humankind?

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Always tidy your bed when you wake up in the morning. They will tidy their bed without fail. Don’t forget to always keep that door closed, and they never forget. Alien babies know how to obey rules. They thrive on rules. The worst thing that you can tell an alien baby is that they are free to do as they like. Do not be surprised if they beg you to tell them what to do. Freewill makes us human and it is the absence of freewill that makes an alien an alien. For them, the chain of command is important. An alien child is never going to test boundaries or try to see how far they can push you. You set the rules. Tell them what to do, and how to do it.

Ma’ am I know that you are rich And I am just a poor immigrant I’ve been selling milk tea on the street Since I was seven But my grandmother watches me close From her banana tree in heaven Ma’ am I dream of a beautiful white house Can you buy it for me Give me the keys to the republic? That baby grand in the window Some day, I will play it Ma’ am No matter what you think I am not after your son I mean, he’s not terribly smart He’s dyslexic and ridiculous Can’t hold a day job And got a D in calculus

6061 MA’AM, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY MARILYN CHIN

YouMa’amknow your son is odd He skins cats with his scout knife He carries around a rubber doll And calls it his wife HeMa’amdoesn’t love me Don’t worry about it We just have fun sex And listen to rap in the basement I’ll go away to a good college And he’ll go to prison No,Ma’amhe didn’t tell on you Not really, he didn’t say Nothing about your uncle Or your ex-husband He didn’t tell me much He just sat there, crying DidMa’amyou say, “She’s war trash She came from the jungle She’s a weirdo geek, can’t Look up from her books. Why do you want her?”

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Nassar,Roula middletheforaimandsuntheoneyemykeepi inches4x27paper,onpencilcolor2018,,

Ma’ am Did you say “Stay away, she’s schizoid Down right ugly Her father owns that rat-infested roach coach She’ll amount to nothing” Ma’ am I did not love him, exactly I did love him too much It’s that inbetweeness Of love and hate That made me stuck Ma’ am I’m gonna love him and drive him crazy I’m gonna love him though he’s lazy I’m gonna wash his feet and wrap his wounds Take him off the cross and carry him to his tomb I’m gonna love him till he hates me I’m gonna love him and drive him crazy

FUNERAL

The only family funeral I have ever attended was my mother’s. I was 12, she was 31. At the time, I was too grief-stricken to notice anything, let alone what she was wearing in her coffin. Years later, however, I came across a picture of my mother wearing a partic ular blouse and I immediately remembered where I had seen it before. As far as funeral wear goes, this was an odd choice: a white blouse with penny-sized dots in red and yellow. I would describe it as festive — it reminded me of confetti. A confetti blouse hardly sets the appropriate tone for a funeral, but I was certain. I remember it without a doubt. There it was in the photograph; there it was draped around my mother’s lifeless torso.Maybe it was the nicest blouse my aunts could find, or maybe it was the cleanest, or maybe the easiest one to put on. My mother died in Tío Chon’s car on their way to the hospital. When they pulled her out of the back seat, no one explained to my brother and me what had happened. No one dared tell us that she was gone, even as my uncles cleared the furniture from the living room in preparation for the wake, wailing while they did it. Maybe the blouse was part of that state of denial: nothing to see here, cer tainly nothing sad. The picture, on the other hand, had been taken at Disneyland. It was one of the few photographs my mother was in because she had been the designated photographer. But on that occasion, it must have been my father or me who took the picture. We were on the river cruise in Adventureland and the focus of the shot was a hippo coming out of the water, greeting us with its wide-open mouth. If this was meant to be threatening or scary, it failed (an alligator would have been a better option) but still, it was pic ture-worthy, and my mother just happened to be within range. When I realized that she was wearing the same blouse she had been buried in, I wished there was a way to shift the lens toward my mother. Her face was turned away from the camera, so I couldn’t tell if she also thought the hippo was lame or if it had genuinely startled her. I suppose that doesn’t matter; what’s important is that she chose to wear that blouse on this trip to Disneyland. What else would someone wear to the happiest place on earth? The other places she had been to — hospitals and agricultural fields — didn’t quite measure up, at least in terms of joy. WEAR GONZÁLEZ

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Once I realized that she had been buried in this same blouse, I immediately re membered the wake in a completely different way. Everyone who came wore the com pulsory funereal garb — black dresses and black church veils. My grandfather’s brother, whom I met for the first time that day, showed up in dark glasses that he never took off even though it was nighttime. My mother, lying in a coffin with four candles burning at each corner, was expressing something very different.

RIGOBERTO

I think I actually picked up on that difference. I was 12, I was excited by the pres ence of so many other kids, and I decided to join their revelry — a game of tag in the street, followed by a game of hide-and-seek, where we crouched behind the bodies of old women with nests of white hair tucked inside their black rebozos. I craved this release, especially then. I had spent all afternoon crying into a pillow and staring at the pity in the eyes of neighbors and strangers, who had all come by to offer forced smiles to the newest orphans on the block. I might have enjoyed the playing well into the night had it not been for my grandmother, who grabbed me by my shirt as I was rushing out of the house. She stopped my laughter dead in its tracks: “Don’t you know that your mother is dead?”

I remember that these characters spent a lot of time pretend-fighting each other. My brother, one year younger than me, even complained about it and refused to come close to the people in costumes until my mother pinched him and he was forced to comply. On subsequent visits to Disneyland, I’d tell my friends about my memories of Tigger battling it out with Pluto or Donald Duck giving a swift webfoot kick to one of the Snow White dwarves. They refused to believe me. That seemed so out of place, they said, for the cheerful spirit of the iconic amusement park. But I saw what I saw. I remember.

A woman standing next to my grandmother offered weak excuses on my behalf, but the anger on my grandmother’s face didn’t soften. She did let me go, however, and I walked away slowly without answering her because, yes, I did know that my mother was dead but I wanted to forget about it, just for one night since I also knew she would, from that point on, always be dead. She would be absent from my life for the rest of my days.Thepicture with my mother in her confetti blouse tricked me into the weird sense that my mother had come back to life. After the feeling passed, I thought I could pro long that feeling if I saw more photographs of her. I wanted to remember her alive and happy in that piece of clothing so I searched the pages of the family album. Alas, there were no other photographs of her: most of the pictures of that memorable trip to Dis neyland were of my brother Alex and me awkwardly posing close to Disney characters.

Asperger’s clinic, she was sent to Spiegelgrund, the child killing facility. Later, she spent several months at the adult euthanasia center Steinhof. Margarete’s shifting placements hinged upon shifting labels. Within three years, Margarete’s diagnoses ranged from “waywardness” to menstrual problems to “man ic depressive insanity” to schizophrenia. She was also in danger of being killed. In September 1941, she was “introduced” to Spiegelgrund director Erwin Jekelius and transferred to Spiegelgrund the same day; in January 1943, she was designated for Spiegelgrund’s Pavilion 17, where children were placed under observation for death.

This may feel like a different world from the one we live in today, but it is in fact, eerily similar. Teachers, administrators, and doctors determine what our children learn, what medications they take or don’t take, and what doors are open to them. My son was diagnosed with autism when he was 17 months old. Ever since then, his personality

Margarete’s file also reveals the lethal stakes of Reich social values. She faces death for violating feminine norms of docility and propriety. She is too “cheeky,” too “talk ative,” and associates with too many boys too late at night. In the eyes of officials and clinicians, these gender transgressions warrant institutionalization at Vienna’s killing centers. Despite agreement on her offenses, each expert reaches a different conclusion. Margarete’s diagnoses run the gamut: from schizophrenia to menstrual issues to noth ing at all. Her prescriptions run the gamut, too: from release home to sterilization to observation for killing. This was the deadly arbitrariness of Nazi child psychiatry.

And within the confusion, every expert appears omnipotent, writing reports that send Margarete in and out of Vienna’s lethal institutions in a flash. The file exposes the process of Nazi extermination: perfunctory evaluations efface the child’s individuality, a psychiatric dehumanization that paves the way toward death.

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THE GIRL IN THE FILE: MARGARETE SCHAFFER UNDER NAZI PSYCHIATRY EDITH SHEFFER

Margarete’s file is comparatively robust, but it is also bitter, and vexing. Readers may be struck by how fragmentary it feels. It’s jerky and confusing; it raises more questions than it answers. The reports do not add up to a flesh-and-blood child. It is impossible to know what Margarete was really like — how she looked, the sound of her voice, what she said exactly. It is also impossible to know what officials and clinicians were really thinking. We only have their stilted pronouncements, without knowledge of their private conversations, pressures, and motivations. And yet, you can still feel the harshness of the reports, the arbitrariness of the judgments, and sense the absolute power of the professionals who sent Margarete ricocheting around Vienna’s ghastly children’s institutions. Notice how there is little sense of Margarete herself in the pro nouncements. Outside of her color drawing and two short letters, Margarete is defined by the words of others. The trace is slim, but it is enough to put together some semblance of a story. From her spirited letters and drawing, as well as consistent reports of talking and joking, Margarete comes across as full of life, full of activity. After stays at the killing centers of Spiegelgrund and Steinhof, she seems more anxious and eager to please. She degrades herself, depicts herself as small and isolated, and is reported to crouch and fear poison ing (this was not sheer paranoia — patients were in fact poisoned in that clinic). Her file suggests the extensive psychic trauma Nazi psychiatry inflicted on its child victims.

Ironically, the second director of Spiegelgrund, Ernst Illing, decided Margarete was fine and returned her home.

In the three-year period between 1941 and 1944, 13-year-old Margarete Schaffer was taken from her home in Vienna and institutionalized three times. The teenager had been acting frech or “cheeky,” and her mother no longer knew what to do with her. Margarete’s first stop was the clinic of Hans Asperger, a Viennese pediatrician and a pioneer of autism research. At the time, Asperger ran the Curative Education Clinic at the University of Vienna Children’s Hospital. Asperger’s clinic was only one of the many institutions that fed into the Nazi “euthanasia” program, which murdered over 5,000 young people and children who were considered to have physical, mental, or behavioral defects. The Third Reich can be seen as a diagnosis regime, obsessed with sorting the pop ulation into categories, the godlike power of assessment and the dangers of the file. Officials cataloged individuals by race, politics, religion, behavior, and biology, compil ing massive “hereditary inventories” of the population. By 1942, Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti estimated that 12 percent of the population had been indexed, 10 mil lion people. These records, then, slotted citizens for treatment, sterilization, internment, or extermination. One’s label determined one’s fate. Asperger has long been considered a source of mercy in the midst of this systematic tragedy. He had a reputation for rescuing children from the killing program, and some even believed that he emphasized the special abilities of children in order to protect them, developing the autism diagnosis as a psychiatric Schindler’s list. The archives, however, expose a very different story. They show, instead, that Asperger was complicit in the Reich’s racial hygiene policies, and that he approved the transfer of dozens of children to Spiegelgrund, Vienna’s killing center — many of whom died. He deemed the youths irremediable, a drain on the Reich. Margarete managed to survive Asperger’s clinic, though she was not home for long. She was ultimately moved from one psychiatric institution to another, diagnosed, prodded, and assessed by the various doctors, nurses, and officials. After her stint in

EDITH SHEFFER

68 69 los angeles review of books has been plotted in detail, with ever-advancing goals and treatments. Reading the cold paper trail, you would never recognize the kid who loves puns and hugs me hard. This inevitably affected our relationship. For years after my son’s diagnosis, I treated him more as a therapist than a parent. Experts are essential of course; but there is always danger in deference, in fixed labels, and in pathologizing behavior.

What happens when you write a narrative out of fragmentary files? Narration can bring the past to life, but you lose the rawness of the documents. Here is the horror of the medical file. What follows is one girl’s case history; some sense of a child’s story.

While I want to portray the roughness of the file, this reproduction shows the histori an’s hand. There are notations. Deleted text is indicated by ellipses, grammatical errors with sic, and illegible words with dashes and question marks. For readability, I cut the file in half and arranged it in chronological order — and converted uneven typefaces and cramped handwriting into a uniform serif font. For context, I included notes in italics before each document. This translation on crisply typed pages cannot convey the jumble of flimsy papers, the inky smell, the illegible handwriting, and the harshness of Nazi-era German bureaucratese. It cannot convey the sense of holding horror in your hands.

note on the following documents

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If the ch.m. [child’s mother] talks to the mn. about this, she just jumps out the window (apartment is at ground level) and runs away. Mn. often disappears in a flash and simply stays out for half a day. Furthermore, ch.m. stated that the mn. borrowed money from people in order to claim items she wanted at a shop.

The mn. [minor] Schaffer Margarete, b. 10/13/1927, resident in Vienna 2, Schö nerer Street 4/7, has presented childrearing difficulties for about 3-4 years. She left fourth grade secondary school this year (July) and was placed in a tailor’s apprentice ship on July 28. The mn. worked with the master tailor for only one day, and ordered on that one day at the expense of the employer (Mrs. Maran, Vienna 7, Ziegler Lane) 30 RM [Reichsmarks] of flowers from a flower shop, and wares worth of 70 RM from a paper shop. […] The 2nd day the mn. did not return to the store at all. The mn. justified her absence from work because she did not like it there, she gets home late and has no time to eat. The true reason however appears to be aversion to work.[…]

The District Commissioner: On behalf of: Stichl [?]

The mother no longer knows what to do with the child. Mn. is very cheeky with her at home, incites the siblings against her, and is very reluctant to help in the household.

[…]

The ch.f. [child’s father] Schaffer Franz, b. 6/6/1906, an unskilled laborer by occu pation, has been convicted several times for theft. As of November 1940 he served a 2-year jail sentence from the district court for theft. The ch.m. Schaffer 6/17/1905, is a janitor, runs the household, and cares for 3 chil dren. She makes a nice impression, cares for the children well, is however at present not up to the childrearing difficulties of the mn. Margarete. […]

Subject: mn. Schaffer Margarete To the University Children’s Hospital (Curative Education Department) Vienna Lazarett9,Lane 14.

According to the ch.m., the childrearing difficulties with the mn. occur periodi cally. (Mr. Soukoup, the master glazier, also made this observation). These appearances occur at intervals of 14 days to 3 weeks, then mn. does well again for a time. Menses have not yet begun for the mn., who is already turning 14. There may be a connection with the seemingly periodic disturbances of the mn.

The commissioner of Vienna’s 22nd district referred Margarete on August 21, 1941, for psychiatric evaluation at Asperger’s Curative Education Clinic at the University of Vienna Children’s Hospital, charging her with delinquency, theft, and unruliness at home. In this document, he invokes numerous gender stereotypes of the time and surmises that menstrual cycles might play a role in Margarete’s misbehavior (never mind that she had not yet begun menstruating). He calls Margarete “cheeky,” or frech, suggesting that she violated feminine ideals of deference. The word frech — alternately translated as bold, brazen, sassy, and impu dent — reappears numerous times in Margarete’s file. The commissioner also suggests that a single working mother might be unable to care for Margarete.

EDITH SHEFFER

B.H.2-B.J.A. 2/L. Vienna, 8/21/1941

Univ.Duplicate.Children’s Hospital in Vienna Vienna, 8/23/1941 9, Lazarett Lane 14 n. 4888

SB.H.2-B.J.A.2/L.chafferMargarete, b. 10/13/1927. Vienna 2, Schönerer St.9.

Vienna, Tob.Mn.B.H.2-B.J.A.2/L.9/24/1941.SchafferMargarete,10/13/1927,the

Application: Transfer to municipal care.

Concerns a neuropathic girl, very unsettled and distracted. Volatile and erratic. Completely reckless, uncritical, and unreliable. Without internal stability. Very impul sive. Has only superficial interest, dismisses everything offhand. On the whole still quiteIntellectuallyinfantile. about average. The mother, who also has three smaller children, despite her best intentions can not supervise the girl adequately, because she always knows how to escape and get up to all sorts of mischief. Since the girl is particularly endangered due to her nature, we recommend housing her in a welfare education center under the jurisdiction of Welfare Dr.Education.Asperger hon. Dr. Luckesi hon.

Stichl [?] Vod[?] i.V. EDITH SHEFFER

A month after Asperger’s harsh evaluation of Margarete, the district commissioner informs Vienna’s Child Intake Office, which was responsible for welfare services, that she has been sent to Spiegelgrund. She was apparently “introduced” to Spiegelgrund head doctor Erwin Jekelius on September 19, 1941, and transferred the same day. Jekelius was notorious for scouting Vi enna’s institutions for children. Although the commissioner had reported the previous month that Margarete’s mother “made a nice impression,” he now describes the mother as “moronic” and incapable of caring for Margarete, thereby justifying the girl’s institutionalization. The document does not, however, issue a medical diagnosis, but a moral failing. “Deceitfulness, pathological dishonesty” is written at the top of the page, by hand, scribbled after the report was typed.

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Two days after the district commissioner’s referral, Asperger and his colleague, Dr. Luckesi, issue a more damning judgment of Margarete. They claim that she has a psychiatric condi tion — a neuropathy — rather than mere menstrual issues or misbehavior. They recommend that Margarete be removed from her home and become a ward of the government, placed in a “welfare education center.” In Vienna, the best-known welfare education center was the Municipal Youth Welfare Institution at Spiegelgrund — where at least 789 children were killed during the war.

Child Intake Office

Danger of waywardness (deceitfulness, pathological dishonesty, staying out for hours) The mn. has presented childrearing difficulties for about 3-4 years. The mn. stole a bottle of perfume worth 25 Pf in the department store “Falnbigl”. School attendance was favorable at the time, the matter remained at a strict warning. Lately childrearing difficulties have become more frequent. Mn. is especially cheeky with the ch.m. […] The ch.m. has to lock up everything from her, otherwise the mn. will sell or trade things < or collects them for others. […] The ch.m., who is moronic, is no longer up to the rearing the mn. at all. The mn. was evaluated at the University Chil dren’s Hospital on 8/23/1941. On 9/19/1941 she was introduced to Chief Physician Dr. Jekelius. The report is enclosed. The mn. was taken on the same day to the welfare institution “Am Spiegelgrund.”

EDITH SHEFFER

Children at Spiegelgrund were, in fact, poisoned: staff issued overdoses of barbiturates until they grew ill and died, usually of pneumonia. Hübsch and Jockl were themselves tried after the war for killing children in this way. Child Intake Office/Youth Department Schaffer Margarete, 10/13/1927

74 75 los angeles review of books Margarete spends nine months at Spiegelgrund. During that time, doctors Margarethe Hübsch and Helene Jockl diagnose her with “schizophrenia with manic-depressive phases.”

In the present manic phase, the facial expression is remark ably empty, even in seemingly lively conversation, the line of thought appears to be hindered, leading often to unmotivated laughter, to light grimacing, the gail [sic.] is stiff and mannered. This, along with the documented abnormalities […] — star ing impassively before her, her lack of contact, hallucinations of a predominantly optical nature, as well as vague delusions of persecution, (the whole neighborhood mocked her and her family called her out), delusions of poisoning, together with the incoherence of thought, the flight of ideas that appears in her essays, the neologisms, the manner of expressing herself, and the type of drawings, leads to the diagnosis: Schizophrenia with manic-depressive phases.

Periodic mood changes, together with other signs of manic disturbance present in the assessment (inclination to rhyming, stringing together words of similar meaning and volume, elevated self-esteem, and similar) would suggest a diagnosis of manic-depres sive insanity. […]

Vienna, May 4, 1942 For the director: Department Physician Dr. Helene J o c k l Dr. Marg. H ü b s c h Institute Senior Physician

D u p l i c a t e of the summary assessment of Margarete Schaffer from the Spiegelgrund institution 14, Baumgarnerhöhe 1 from 5/4/1942. Concerns a mental illness of the mn. S c h a f f e r Margarete.

The mn. is mentally ill and requires permanent stay in a psy chiatric institution. Therefore her transfer to the Wagner von Jauregg sanatorium and care facility “Am Steinhof” is Sterilizationrequested.appears to be advisable.

They see evidence of mental illness in virtually all aspects of Margarete’s behavior and order institutionalization in neighboring sanatorium Steinhof, which was a center of adult eutha nasia. They also advocate sterilization. They note that Margarete had “delusions of poisoning.”

76 77 los angeles review of books Margarete stayed at Steinhof from May 4, 1942, until October 7, 1942, when she was dis charged home. Presumably, Steinhof doctors did not believe she had a mental illness. Marga rete soon found herself in trouble again. A few months later, on December 22, 1942, a report from Child Intake Office complains that she has demonstrated “impossible behavior.” The big gest concerns are Margarete’s violations feminine propriety — disobedience with her mother and, most egregiously, hanging out with “various male acquaintances” on the streets at night. The letter states she was brought to Otto Pötzl’s famed neuropsychiatric clinic for evaluation, and that it pronounced “moral endangerment” rather than a mental illness. Officials designate Margarete for Spiegelgrund Pavilion 17 under second Spiegelgrund director Ernst Illing, the observation pavilion where children were evaluated for potential killing. Vienna, B.H.2-B.J.A.2/L.12/22/42

Mn. Schaffer Margarete, 10/13/1927 2., Schönerer St. 9/7 To theChild Intake Office Vienna Lustkandl9., Ln. 50 Child rearing difficulties, moral endanger ment. The mn,. was already committed once on 9/19/1941 due to her impos sible behavior at home. […] The mn. was released back home again on 10/7/1942. Already on XI/16/1942 at 1/2 past 9 in the evening she was apprehended near the Ostbahnhof station, where she was hanging about with a soldier. She was then returned to the ch.m. The mn. was employed as a laborer by Ketzer, XXI, Schenkendorf Lane 17/19 from XI/13/1942 to XII.15.1942. During this time she repeatedly stayed away from work for no reason and hung about in the streets until late at night. She also had various male acquaintances. At home she was cheeky with the ch.m. and did not obey at all. She stole the smoking ration card from her in order to give cigarettes to a lad she knew. On XII/10/1942 this yr. she was brought to the Child Guidance Cen ter: The assessment“Consideringreads: the clinical report (Pötzl’s clinic), extensive domestic dif ficulties, the ch.m., who is failing at child rearing and unable to cope with the child, and serious moral endangerment and workplace difficulties, the soonest transfer is request ed to Vienna Municipal Mental Hospital [Spiegelgrund] Pav. 17 (Dr. Illing, with the investigation of whether the mn. is at all capable of work deployment. Dr. Wüster hon.” […] [illegible] Frch. [?] Krummer[?] Penkler [Illegible]

EDITH SHEFFER

Child Intake Office/Youth Department Schaffer Margarete, 10/13/1927

D u p l i c a t e of the summary assessment of the Vienna Children’s Municipal Mental Hospital 14 Baumgarnerhöhe 1 from 3/9/1943

Expert opinion on Margarete S c h a f f e r, b. 10/13/1927

This is striking since Illing was a notorious killer, finding reasons to put hundreds of children to death. Yet here Illing chides his fellow Spiegelgrund doctors Hübsch and Jockl for being too critical of Margarete, writing that “the medical history entries from then did not prove schizophrenia.” Instead, he faults Margarete for lack of feminine docility, being too “active,” “independent,” and, of course, “cheeky.” He releases her home again as “educable on a trial basis.”

Due to knowledge of the files, as well as examinations and ob servations conducted here since 1/13/1943, concerns an endomorphic adolescent born in wedlock and in unfortunate household conditions, intellectually capable for her age. M. Sch. is hereditarily tainted (father a drinker, convicted of fraud and theft, father’s brother drinker). […] There is currently no evidence of mental illness (schizophre nia, manic-depressive illness, etc [sic.]). The previously issud [sic.] issued diagnosis of schizophrenia can by no means be confirmed by the present clinical observation. The medical case records from the time do not establish schizophrenia, but can moreover be interpreted as abnormal reactions of a character ologically deviant personality.Themain issue is her impulsivity. She is extremely active, talk ative, and very easily distracted. Her overall mood appears equable. [sic.] cheerful, but will [sic.] often be displaced by irritable short-term (reactive?) ill humor. She craves validtion [sic.], always wants to be at the center of attention and, due to her aptitude for imagination, has a tendency to boastful, fantas tically embellished lies. She is extremely independent, will not be influenced from any side, such that she is often outrageously cheeky to caregivers. […] As a result of her mental irregularities, M. Sch. is e d u c a b l e o n a t r i a l b a s i Currentlys. she does not necessarily require further stay at an insttution [sic.]. Her ability to work can at this time be affirmed. Return to the parents is therefore recommended on a trial basis. Acting Dr.DirectorErnst I l l i n g, Senior Medical Officer

78 79 los angeles review of books Margarete spent two months at Spiegelgrund, from January 13 until March 9, 1943. There, director Illing assesses her rather positively, declaring “there is no evidence of a mental illness.”

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EDITH SHEFFER

Eleven months after Margarete was released home from Spiegelgrund, on February 12, 1944, she ran away. The 16-year-old was apprehended four days later in Znaim and institution alized at the Children’s Home Luisenheim. Vienna’s Child Guidance Center was apparently not sure what to do with the girl and an official requested that Asperger’s Curative Education Clinic conduct a conclusive evaluation. Margarete was admitted to Asperger’s Curative Edu cation clinic on April 18, 1944, and taken to bathe. The nurse’s handwritten account suggests Margarete was desirous to talk — sharing the hardships she had endured at Vienna’s chil dren’s institutions and her fears for her future.

Schaffer Margarete, b: 10/13/1927 Admit. 4/18/1944 Immediately upon entering the bathroom she was very talkative. She was very surprised when she heard that she had to take a bath and said if she had known that she would have already bathed at the institution. The body was not very dirty, only it showed a lot of pimples. During the bath, Schaffer told me some things about her life. She was imprisoned and she does not like to remember the time in the cell. After her sentence she was in an institution where she had to work hard, among other things washing Herclothes.desire is to become a nanny, but she doubts whether she can become one after all this. On her second day at Asperger’s clinic, Margarete drew a picture of an idyllic home with bright, cozy rooms. She includes cheerful details: a bowl of fruit, a side table with flowers, a polka-dotted wall, a rocking horse, a patterned rug, and a framed mountain landscape. The kitchen and dinner tables are set with colorful tablecloths. The solitary person in the home ap pears far less cheerful, however. Tiny and isolated in the lower left corner, the figure sits in a large bathtub under a heavy jet of water, the head barely visible — as Margarete had perhaps felt in her bath the day before.

EDITH SHEFFER

These handwritten notes, only partially legible, were taken over time at Asperger’s clinic. The writer seems skeptical about Margarete’s good behavior and uninterested in either her stories or her jokes. Overall, the writer is displeased with how “talkative” she is. The notes also suggest that Margarete was worried about her standing with the clinic staff, anxious to hear what they were saying about her and even cowering before them. Polite tone to the nurse, urges the children to be, she knows first [?] when they commit improprieties. Sits demurely in a corner, writes/knits[?] a lot, sings or narrates as she does so. […] 5/10. Sits at work as diligently as ever, but is still/otherwise[?] very talkative. Has fluent speech with hackneyed expressions. Tone talking to the nurse can be opposite, either hypocritical politeness or flat and indifferent[?]. The nurse seeks to correct, in words: “Please go, stop it, don’t be so cheeky.” Then her eyes light up triumphantly, when one e.g., shakes a finger. Misses nothing, watches the nurse’s mouth to catch every word. When we report to each other about the children in the morning, she is always hanging around near us. Sometimes acts like the inmate of a workhouse. (crouches, because expects[?] better from Examinedit.) by Dr. Feldmann. Was embarrassed, sensitive, often cheeky. When asked about her offenses, she evades by reporting a lot of trivialities in detail, and never gets to the essentials. It puts the listener’s patience to the test. One is happy when she is finished a. no longer tries to get to the facts. Perhaps she does not do it consciously; because that kind of narration presumes a certain kind of personality. Her mood has changed since this exam. Speaks a lot, makes jokes, does theater all the time, imitating one nurse or another, or an aspect of life at the institution in which the adults play somewhat of a laughable role. She has a lot of success with the children with this. To the adults she seems neither humorous nor intelligent, just unpleasant. […]

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This is one of two scraps of Margarete’s personal writing in her file. In this letter to nurse Neuenteufel, Margarete apologizes for an apparent transgression, abases herself, and pledges to improve her behavior. Dear nurse Neuenteufel! Please forgive my nuisanse [sic]. I am still young and stupid. I don’t offer much even to people stupider than I am. My ambition is only one thing. Never again to falter in life. And I will try to rise up, alone and slowly. At 16-17 years old a person has a lot of stupid things in mind. Especially now in the war. Well no offense and head high. Grete Schaffe

EDITH SHEFFER

In this letter to her father, Margarete writes that she would like to live with him after her in stitutionalization and vows to “work diligently,” idealizing the future. This letter is striking, as all official reports focus exclusively on Margarete’s relationship with her mother and present her as the girl’s only residential option. This letter was apparently unsent. Dear father! I imagine my future back home again with you. From where I want to work diligently again. I like children, but I know that now in the war you cannot choose your work. I will therefore do what is required of me. I imagine how nice it would be if we were all together again. The denial of a job placement for me would have already hit the em ployment office.

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handwriting] Pride went for a walk one day. On his Purple colored [sic.] robe hung numerous gilded glass balls. He also wore a soap bubble on his head, which shimmered brightly and splendidly in the sunshine. He had put his flat feet in shoes with heels, and walked like a (fromDictionking.Hans

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Asperger’s Heilpädagogik, p. 43) Pride went for a walk one day. On his purple robe hung numerous gilded glass balls. He wore a crown of soap bubbles on his head that shimmered brightly and splen didly in the sunshine. He had put his flat feet in shoes with enormous heels and walked on them as majestically as a king.

These are scraps from Margarete’s testing at Asperger’s clinic — word associations and dicta tion. House --------------- Sand, box[?], chair, bed, bench, table, blackboard, doctor[?], church, tower[?], spire[?], snow[?], stockings, warmth[?], dresses, limbs, bones, head, neck, hand, sister, brother, service, work, female worker, window, door, tool, suitcase, [Margarete’sbroom.

EDITH SHEFFER

Concerns a character that is very little differentiated, a personality operating a low mental level with individual psychopathic features, but not a psychosis. The appearance of the yth. is very unmaidenly: she already has pronounced full feminine body forms, lacks youthful tone and turgor, her movements are rather cumbersome, without any grace, her speech is precocious, too wise; she uses stilted id ioms, hackneyed phrases. She does not participate at all in the community of children, also not with the other older girls, but constantly sits in unflagging unnatural-looking diligence, an exaggerated zeal at work. This behavior is certainly not due to a disturbance of the contact ability, but arises from her efforts to make good impression. Her good, civilized behavior is determined in a primitive manner by expediency, not greater insight or ethical motives. Therefore, despite apparent improvement she remains completely unreliable. But job performance is actually good. She tests average intelligence. […]

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As soon as she feels any kind of attention, at center stage, she becomes very talkative, makes jokes, and makes much of herself. This rapid change of her affect, her mood, does not signify morbid moods in the sense of mainic-depressive [sic.] psychoses, but is explained by the primitive reaction of her undifferentiated personality. […]

Administrative: since the girl is very useful and capable, another attempt to arrange employment seems appropriate to us. Should domestic circumstances make release to the family impossible, then that only leaves accommodation in an institution (Vie. Neudorf), but must also necessarily provide for sufficient employment.

This final assessment from Asperger’s clinic concludes that Margarete did not have a psychosis, but was “operating at a low mental level with individual psychopathic features.” It calls her “primitive” twice. The report cites Margarete’s overly good behavior as problematic, as aimed to make “a good impression” rather stemming from “greater insight or ethical motives.” It also faults Margarete for being too “talkative” and calling attention to herself. Despite these char acter failings, the report concludes that Margarete was “very useful and capable” and should be deployed for work, either at home or in an institution. In the end, Margarete was sent to the children’s home at Luisenheim, her mother was apparently reluctant to take her daughter back home. Univ. Children’s Hospital in Vienna, 6/13/44. IX Lazarett Lane 14. Vienna District Youth Office, Dept. F 2-Scha-5/44. Schaffer Margarete, geb. 13.10.1927

Dr. R.

urge and urge and urge 2018, color pencil on paper, 24 x 3 x 3 inches

I woke as a child with a wound I could not explain. Bewilderment: my desire for something beyond the size of me. I cast about and looked aside for what I had caught in my turmoiled limbs: fragment of conch, tattoo of bright kelp. How to absorb these random occurrences into a body that moves in one direction. To decipher the weather, I listened to my lungs. It was the size of a pebble but as dangerous as stone. I could grow larger. Or I could watch the world bloat. Even the sea hungers for sky, even the wet reaches its arms, tide by tide, in a rhythm that repeats and never finds its end. S. CHENG Nassar,

VULNERABLE NETTLE JENNIFER

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Roula

THE NEW YEAR

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When I was a girl my mother brought me to the New Year’s party of a couple with whom she was friendly — both travel agents at a strip mall in town, with a daughter two years older than me. They lived on a cul-de-sac in one of the many fading white prefabs that lined the block. Behind all these homes was a train track where freighters loaded with medical supplies and cabbages lumbered through the night. The track con tinued north to where my mother and I lived, about five miles away, in an apartment. Behind our building was an open-air loading center which sat like a pile of dust during the day but shook alive each night into a frenzied rhythm. Only men went there, it seemed, and my mother and I regularly watched them from our tiny second-story bal cony. They were as reliable as the sun — laboring even through furious downpours of rain, gripping the slick packing containers with gloved hands. They were there on holi days, weekends, on the most painfully cold nights, emerging from a little gray building and taking their positions like the figures in a cuckoo clock. My mother liked to drag out her pink Lucite chair — the best thing we ever found on the sidewalk — and sit in her robe, already stoned, smoking cigarettes and dispensing advice to me as the men’s howls drifted upward in halted echoes. Don’t ever give it up to any man whose middle name you don’t know, whose wife you do know, who can fire you, who won’t come all the way up to the door, who keeps their dog tied up outside all the time. She looked at me so infre quently while giving these commandments, her red eyes trained on the activity below, that I sometimes wondered whom she really meant to tell. I remember my mother dressed in gold the night of the party. Gloves up to her elbows, a long, tight dress that caught the light and threw it back at the wall in scattered frag ments. She’d found an old swim cap and covered it with metallic spray paint, and then on the living room floor with a needle and fine thread, affixed rows of tiny gold sequins to the whole thing with a dense, burning concentration. It took her almost the entire day. It looked fantastic. Before leaving, she poured a cocktail for herself in a portable thermos. I could smell the sharp warmth of the bourbon from the passenger seat. A wet

JUSTINE CHAMPINE smile spread over her face as we drove across town. I rolled my eyes and leaned my head against the glass, wishing I could’ve stayed home to work on my ship in a bottle. The kit was given to me by my math teacher, just weeks earlier, before Christmas vacation. It wasn’t the first time a teacher had done such a thing. These gifts were always presented to me quietly, after class, with a nice note invariably letting me know how much they believed in me. It all seemed to agitate my mother, so I began to lie, claiming I found the kit for a dollar at the church thrift shop. I’d already built the sail and modeled the green, plasticine sea in the base of the glass with a pair of special tweezers, and was in the middle of affixing the wheel’s spindle when she approached me, sparkling in all her gold, and said she wished I’d come with her to the party. I knew I had no choice. Just weeks earlier I discovered her asleep, shoeless and freezing cold, in the vestibule of our building as I was leaving to catch the first bus to school. Frightened, but not entirely shocked, I lifted my mother by the shoulders and escorted her back upstairs. I lost my keys, she said, groggy and irritable, you can’t let me do stuff like that. I put water on for coffee and then, pulling a leaf from her hair, made my way back down the hall to the stairwell. Anyone could’ve found me down there! She shouted after I’d already turned the corner, Didn’t you wonder where I was? After her car drink was empty she began to tell me a story about a man who’d recently come into her work at the department store. “Absolutely covered in hair,” she explained, tapping her long nails on the dashboard while we waited for the light to change. “Head to toe. You wouldn’t believe it.” “What do you mean?” “I mean hair on his face, even under his eyes and on his forehead, hair like on top of his head. He had some rare condition. His grandfather had it, too. We chatted a little and he said he once went on a talk show but then that actress was killed in a plane crash and the channel cancelled everything to talk about her.” “Wow.” I replied. “He bought a gift set. I even wrapped it for him. Who’s he going to give that to? I can’t“Didimagine.”people stare?” “Of course,” she replied, “everyone stared. You would have, too.”

My mother shrugged before saying, “He’s used to it, I’m sure. A hundred years ago he’d have been kept behind a curtain by some traveling circus pimp, now he’s buying expensive perfume in New Jersey.” She looked in the rearview mirror and adjusted her cap before adding, “He was a nice guy.” We drove past the strip mall where the travel agent friends worked. Their office was on the corner, shuttered for the night, posters depicting caravans of elephants and black sand beaches visible through the slats. Next door was a pet shop with beautiful blue and yellow birds asleep in the window. Goldfish bobbed in the corners of glass tanks, slick with algae. At the other end of the mall was a pizza shop where I had recently discov ered my first period in a tiny, dim bathroom that smelled of rising dough. My mother seemed relieved. She bought me a quarter tampon from the metal dispenser on the wall

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable.”

94 95 los angeles review of books and then took me down the street to the drugstore for a bottle of aspirin and, at the last minute, a trio of pastel eyeshadows in a kidney-shaped pan. Things will be different for you from now on, she told me, you’ll see There were cars parked up and down the cul-de-sac outside the party. I could already hear muted laughter coming from inside the house. Several people in large coats smoked on the front steps. We left our car a block away and walked one in front of the other through a narrow path of cleared snow, my mother’s gold cap flashing like a bea con under every street lamp. She wore no jacket. Her shoulder blades were prominent.

“I have to make sure she gets home okay. She usually needs help with the car by the end of the night.” “Finding it?” “And starting it. Sometimes even driving it.” The girl laughed a little, then, after realizing I hadn’t made any joke, grew quiet. I smiled at her, unoffended, and took another sip. She didn’t know me at all. I began to fantasize about becoming a piece of furniture in her room. If some magic could befall me at the stroke of the new year and transform my body into a chair or a lamp so I could sit quietly for years at her vanity table, listening to the soft clink of earrings and perfume bottles, the rhythmic brushing of her hair, not having to tend to anyone or be brought anywhere or asked for anything, to not even have a name. Directly across from us was a large picture window through which I could see train tracks, the ones that led to where my mother and I lived, cut ting through the snow in a sharp iron line. There was the moon reflected in long slicks of black ice. Another row of houses indecipherable from the one we sat in. Billboards advertising lawyers and rehabilitation centers. It was the time of night for freighters to pass by, and I could feel the distant rumble of the next one while the last was already in view. “I’ve never seen you at school before.” She finally said. “I’m still in the junior building.”

“I“No.”didn’t think so.” I’d been asked this question more and more often in recent months and never knew how to react when the asker, always a woman, would press Soon, maybe? Not soon. Not ever, I thought to myself. I didn’t despise men in the way I sensed some of my school friends also with single mothers did, but I felt no curiosity toward them, either. Just a stark indifference. When I envisioned my life rolling out ahead of me, I saw them only on the periphery. Strangers on the sidewalk. It was not for lack of exposure. Men came around to pick my mother up for dates all the time. There were ones in suits, in work boots, ones who seemed to shake with nerves, holding flowers, policemen in uniform, someone I was sure I’d seen on the news, one of my teachers, a few with accents I couldn’t identify. When I was about 11, there was just one man who appeared at our door for a long time. He even took me to dinner once, alone,

“Coffee?”“No.”“Whydid you come here with your mother?” The girl clipped. “Didn’t you have anything else to do?”

The girl and I both drank more from the amber bottle and sat side by side on her bed. She was quiet, twirling a sateen pillow tassel around her finger. “Aren’t you going out with your friends tonight?” I asked. She stiffened a little before shaking her head no. “You look so nice to just be staying in.” “I was supposed to go out, but I don’t feel well.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Oh,“Thirteen.”Ithought you were older. You really don’t seem that young.” “I know. People always tell me that.”

“Do you need some water?”

The wife greeted us at the door. She was stout and leathery, stumbling like a colt in her heels. She hugged my mother for a long moment and then touched both sides of my face. The house was full of men and women, all leaning against each other and laugh ing. My mother disappeared into the group easily, as if she had always been there and was just returning from a short cigarette break. The wife quickly led me up the stairs and into her daughter’s bedroom where she began to introduce me but, I could tell, was unable to remember my name, so simply called me Jeanette’s girl, before leaving. I watched her lean heavily against the wall as she descended the stairs, pausing to adjust her skirt every few steps, hiccupping. The daughter was lying on her bed looking at a magazine. “Shut the door,” she said without looking up. Her furniture was the kind I’d always wished I had — a full, mirror-topped vanity littered with compacts and dainty bottles, glass knobs on the matching dresser, a bed with four pillars and a vaulted tulle canopy. Cut crystal dangling from the ceiling light. The girl reached under one of her many tufted sham pillows and pulled out an amber bottle the size of my palm. She took a long gulp and silently offered the bottle to me. A slow, burning sensation spread through my chest as I drank. The girl seemed then to approve of my being there, and flipped over to her side, leaning on one elbow. She motioned for me to sit and then asked, “Do you want to look at my jewelry?” “Yes,” I replied. I really did want to look. We sat together on the floor sifting through a big, rectangular box. It was cheap, flocked with blue velvet and full to the brim. The girl pulled out oversized, glittering earrings pair by pair and then held them up to her ears, slowly turning her head for me to ob serve. I nodded with approval each time, unable to take my eyes off her as she dug for the next pair. The dip at the base of her neck, the gentle slope of her bare shoulders. I noticed then, for the first time, that there was such a thing as beautiful nail beds. This realization came entirely without envy. I wanted only to get to keep looking at hers. From downstairs I heard the sound of glass breaking, then silence followed by an eruption of laughter. At the foot of the steps a woman’s voice shouted, “They’re getting audited again, if can you believe it!” Someone turned the stereo louder.

“How old are you?”

JUSTINE CHAMPINE

She turned around once to smile at me and her teeth were long like a fox, beautiful and numerous. I wanted to put her in a bottle, like a genie, like my little ship, and keep her frozen in this moment; upright, smiling, familiar, and bring her back home before she could be dissolved.

The travel agent’s daughter tugged coyly on my sleeve. “Braid my hair,” she demanded, and I complied, sitting up immediately and running my fingers through her dense, black waves. It smelled of smoke, olive oil, Aqua Net. It could have been the hair of any woman in our city, a place so full of light and smog no stars were ever visible and everyone seemed to talk louder, faster than anyone I heard on TV. Instead of stars we had clusters of planes that appeared as twinkling red and white lights. Every few minutes one began its descent toward Newark, gradually becoming larger and clearer until its vast silver belly loomed so close to the overpasses it made your teeth rattle if you happened to be sitting in traffic right then. I braided her hair until it reached the base of her spine. She inspected herself in the window’s reflection. There was then a brief electrical outage, followed by an agitated roar from the party below. While it was dark, the girl turned around and kissed my open mouth. She locked her legs around my waist and hesitantly rocked against me for a moment. I was stunned. I felt my entire body melt against the careful push of her hips. My heart seemed to grow five sizes in my chest, beating like a wild animal. When the lights came back on, the girl was back in her original spot, checking out her braid in the window once again. Soon it was close to midnight. We drank the last of her bottle and then walked down the stairs through the party. The burning sensation from earlier seemed to have spread throughout my entire body, making my legs feel loose and unsteady against the ground. My head felt as though it might detach from my neck at any moment and float up to the ceiling. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to return to the enclave of the girl’s room, all the warmth and velvet and soft shades of matching pink, and rest together on a mountain of pillows. I thought of holding her hand, but before I could try it she crossed her arms over chest and began to walk ahead of me, as if sensing my intention. As we passed through the crowd I spotted my mother on the carpet, involved in some sort of game where everyone sat in a circle and one person, blind-folded, was spun around to the point of dizziness, then had to sit on a lap and guess whose lap it was. The adults were all silent, their hands clapped cartoonishly over their mouths. Some hair had gotten loose from under my mother’s gold cap. Her eyes looked like they were made of rubber. Our gazes met for a quick moment, but I sensed no recognition beneath the familiar blankness of her stare; wild and immune to reason, like an animal during a thunderstorm.Mymother was very young. She once trained as a ballerina, I knew, before working at the perfume counter. Around our apartment were pictures of her in delicate cos tumes, captured mid-leap. I saw her dance only once, years earlier when I was eight, on Christmas day. She wasn’t drinking as much then, but was working only part time and so we had nothing to give each other, and no heat. We put on all our warmest clothes and walked 45 minutes through the snow to the zoo, where her boyfriend at the time was working as a janitor in the big cat pavilion. He led us in quickly through a side gate and down the zoo’s old promenade with all its crumbling wrought-iron lamp posts. It was deserted but for us three and the animals, a blanket of white draped over every thing, blotting out any sound. Inside the pavilion it was warm and humid. There were trees in huge, decrepit planters, moss and climbing orchids spiraling up their trunks all the way to the glass-paned ceiling. My mother removed her layers until she was stand ing there just in her nightgown, which was blue and silky and embroidered around the bust with imitation seed pearls. She kicked off her snow boots, shook her hair out, and began, to my bewilderment, to dance. I stood there with the boyfriend, still bulky and sweating in our winter coats, watching, mesmerized, as my mother twirled like a feather around this grand enclosure. She kicked one leg up behind her in a graceful arc and leapt from one viewing window to the next as if carried by a breeze. Her dark hair whipped behind her as she spun, glinting in the sunlight. Then, a tiger emerged from its allotment of artificial jungle and stood at the glass, seemingly watching my mother. Its eyes were green, somber, and magnificent, hardly smaller than my fist. They followed her as she flitted between the trees. When I think of my mother now I think of her like this; in her nightgown on Christmas morning, pirouetting for the animals.

The girl was now smiling at her fingernails. “My sister’s wedding is coming up soon. She’s having it on Valentine’s Day. I helped her pick the ice sculptures. They can do any

JUSTINE CHAMPINE

96 97 los angeles review of books when my mother was working, and asked me what felt like a hundred questions about school and my interest in reptiles. After dessert, we went to visit her in the department store and he bought me the most wonderful pair of orange leather gloves. Our electric ity was not shut off once during this time. Still, the thought that I would ever choose to live with one didn’t occur to me until I got to an age where other girls seemed to relish such future possibilities.

The girl and I slipped through the backdoor and out into the frozen yard. There were some Virgin Mary statues clustered around a cracked birdbath. We hopped a low, wire fence and stood at the side of the train tracks looking up at the long line of billboards and, behind them, a grim procession of smokestacks patched over with iron plates. Towering over all this was Manhattan’s jagged, glittering skyline. A hundred trains went there but I never did. No one I knew ever went into the city. It just wasn’t some thing anyone thought to do. “My uncle’s funeral was last week,” the girl suddenly an nounced. “He had AIDS. Bad.” “Oh.” I told her, “I’m sorry.” “He turned purple before he died. My mother told me that.”

“It’s“Why?”just what happens to those people. Big, purple circles, she told me. Even on his face.”“How did he get it?” I asked. The girl just stared at me, one eyebrow raised. I thought of a video about AIDS I’d been shown recently in school. The virus was repre sented by people in red, felted full body costumes with antennae and large plastic eyes. In the video, these monsters lurked the perimeter of a pretty, white house. Young kids stood at the windows, looking out on this yard full of creatures. A voice-over explained that coming into contact with one of the monsters, even briefly, was dangerous, and that there could be no possibility of survival. On cue, one of the kids appeared on the porch and then, against the frantic urging of his peers inside, descended the front steps into the grass. A red monster rushed up and embraced the boy until he collapsed.

99 Cheyenne Julien, 7:20 AM 2018, oil on canvas, 62 x 70 inches

I get married I’m going to have one, too. Something different though. Maybe a butterfly.” She looked up at me before continuing, “My boyfriend said I could get whatever I wanted. He’s already done with school. He’s going to be a mechanic.”

“When“Wow.”

Then came the low rumble of an approaching freighter, the yellow headlamp funneling light our way. I could already hear the drone of its horn. The girl looked at me, “Let’s play a game,” she shouted over the charging din. “Okay.” I said. “I do this all the time.” She grabbed me by the hands and led me directly onto the tracks, laying us down vertically. I tried to get up but she pushed me gently back against the cold iron, her fingers pressing against my chest. “It’s okay,” she shouted. “Trust me. I know how to do this.” The oncoming train felt like a deep buzzing under my skin, gathering intensity by the second until my bones seemed to clatter together. If I tilted my head up slightly I could see in the window of the house. A glimpse of my mother sitting on the kitchen island, partly obscured by three men in shiny suits, picking some thing out of a jar and eating it with her fingers. The girl grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. Our breath appeared as silver vapor above our faces. It lingered for a moment before disappearing. I felt pleased to see it floating there together, however briefly. The train’s horn began to sound in shorter bursts. Then it came as one continuous roar that didn’t let up. The back of my skull rattled against the frozen tracks. “Just wait,” the girl shouted. “Just wait with me one more moment.”

JUSTINE CHAMPINE

thing you want. Swans, horses, the leaning tower of Pisa. The whole thing is ice. And then they can put a tube in it and have booze shoot out. She’s getting one of those.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Two dolphins kissing. The wine comes out of their blowholes, it’s so cute.”

Wesley, 14, mumbled quietly to himself what I could only assume was the remain der of definitions he’d had in mind. He often gave me the hardest time, being the old est, burdened with the injustice of having to spend his Saturday and Sunday mornings with little kids, and knowing I was more babysitter than tutor. Maybe I loved this job because I felt, oddly, that I belonged there, surrounded by these past versions of myself. “Everybody stop talking, right now.” I slammed the table. “And do your work. I’m serious.”They were quiet, but only for a moment. Soon, the twins were back to talking about animals. The boys kicked their feet on the underside of the table. Jessica begged for attention. Wesley took her worksheet and started filling in answers. I grabbed his wrist. He smiled slyly, like I’d done exactly what he’d wanted. Minh crawled into my lap and wrapped his arms around my neck. “Teacher, don’t be mad. I like how you drew, too. Is it supposed to be you yelling at us to have fun?”

The best job I ever had was as an English tutor in the Outer Sunset. The kids were all Asian immigrants or children of Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese, ages six to 14, squeezed around a conference table nearly the size of the room. They gave me hell. I loved them for it. “Look what I did!” Minh, age nine, pounded on the wall behind him. He’d drawn a stick figure with a speech bubble in which he’d written Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! The stick figure was smiling. It had a long stick penis pointing straight down between its legs. Baron, eight years old, and Chun, seven years old, laughed loudly. “Minh, you can’t draw on the walls,” I said. I tried to remove his drawing with the worn down nub of a pencil’s eraser, but the drawing was in ink. “Where do you learn stuff like this?” “My brother, my brother, my brother!” He couldn’t quite pronounce his th’s or r’s, so it came out as “bwofa.” “What does fook mean?” asked Jessica, six, the cutest child on the planet, with tiny teeth and huge, half-moon eyes. I had crossed out the ck’s and replaced them with n’s, and was coloring in a skirt on the stick figure to cover its genitals. “It means poop and stuff!” “You said no drawing on the wall! So no drawing over my art on the wall!” “It means you hit your toe!” “No, idiots. Fuck is a curse word. It also means people having—” “Ok, that’s enough. It’s a bad word. No saying it in here. Got it?”

TUTOR ALEXANDRA CHANG

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Minh and Baron and Chun shouted. The Irish twins (10 and 11, actually of Taiwanese descent, but I called them the Irish twins because…) were rattling off a thousand facts about platypuses, dolphins, sea lions, manatees, from their copy of Ocean: A Visual Encyclopedia, which they brought with them each weekend.

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mutable fact of belonging, of simply being somewhere and of someone — couldn’t be taken for granted. For her, it would never again be a given.

On the first read-through, the letter seems to be a sad one, a catalog of malaise and family fractures. In its copious discussion of daily detail, it remains opaque. I search for clues to my grandmother; I hope, through this letter, to know my mother better, too. But I’m finding it difficult to learn about either woman, until this: a few lines, clus tered mid-letter, ring brilliantly familiar: “You have to take care of your belongings.”

Losing one’s mother is a kind of migration — the traveler has been exiled from the land of all that is right and good, forced into a country of high winds and uncharted terrain. Migration also requires a letting go, a blind dive into new systems of language and behavior. My mother, the five-year-old girl, had to learn the laws of a new family, the emotional language of new guardians. She learned, above all, that home — the im MOTHER, FIRE

My mother, age five, stood in the doorway of her family home and watched her own mother’s body pass down a narrow village lane, borne on the shoulders of four uncles, covered in a quilt of marigolds. Beside her stood her younger sister, two years old. Her sister pointed. “Amma, thee.” Mother, fire. The body would be carried to a funeral pyre on the banks of a nearby river, covered with wood, and set aflame. My mother told me this story when I was five. I’m not sure why she thought it was a story fit for a five-year-old, but I was glad to listen. Death, at that age, was scintillating and unfathomable. The details she left off, I filled in myself: the little girls in dirty white pinafores, four faceless men carrying a body on a platform, a theater of fire, its quivering curtain of smoke and heat. As I imagined it, the body was set alight before the proces sion began, and blazed down the road, flames licking the bearers’ shoulders. The story offered a vision of death — of life — fiercer than anything I’d been allowed to know. Over the years, details did emerge: my grandmother, Lakshmi, had died of tuber culosis after spending several months in a sanitarium. My mother and her four siblings had been sent to live with a wealthy but severe uncle. One day, an unmarried aunt arrived to take my mother home and raise her as her own. None of these facts, though, meant as much as that seminal image: two small girls, a dead mother, a bed of flame. 

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SHANTHI SEKARAN

Twenty years later, my mother would leave her home again. The year was 1965 and she was leaving Chennai, India, for Albany, New York. It was a migration of the body as well as the heart. She left a few days after marrying my father, who’d finished med ical school and been recruited to train in the United States. Her wedding had been a modest gathering at my father’s home, her wedding sari borrowed from a cousin. She had no dowry, no trousseau of silk and jewels, no mother to dress her, no father to place her hand in her groom’s. All she had were visions of an American life and the freedom to pursue them. For many, immigration means sacrificing the tangible forms of memory: family mementos, treasured but impractical objects. My mother was leaving behind an aunt, four siblings, her medical texts, abandoned in her third year, and little else. One of the few objects she held onto was a black-and-white portrait of Ganesha, the god of new beginnings.Shestill has that picture of Ganesha. It sits on her dresser in a small round frame in my parents’ California home. We don’t have any childhood photos, nothing of her mother, Lakshmi, or her father, Gopalan. For a long time, all we had were a handful of facts: that Lakshmi was taller than her husband; that she was forced to leave high school to raise her motherless niece; that her wealthy older brother raised lumber-haul ing elephants.Then,afew years ago, during a visit to India, my mother’s sister handed her a letter. It had been written by my grandmother. Lakshmi had been dying when she sent it to her younger sister — the aunt who one day would adopt my mother. My mother took the letter back to California with her. Its blue ink is fading now, though she had it lam inated. It’s written in Malayalam, the language of Kerala. The script is jolly and round, the paper yellow and battered with time. My brother had a linguist friend translate it: “Dear Sister,” it begins, “Received the stamp and the letter you sent few days before. Everybody here is doing okay except me.” It was written in 1945, in the final months of Lakshmi’s life. She’d already spent time in a sanitarium and had been discharged. She was only getting worse. But her letter doesn’t dwell on her health. Instead, it offers a trail of non-sequiturs, the thoughts of a woman who knows that time might be running out. She skirts the profound and focuses on personal news: “The preparations for SriBhayi’s wedding are not done yet. Made all the ornaments.” She ventures into gossip and grievance: “Raghannan and Kochamma are not our friends anymore...Kochapy and kids will not help because of the rivalry with Annan.” In a few scattered lines, she pays some attention to her failing body: “I cannot sit straight and write a letter. I have to lie down always…I have a cough now. Does not like to eat anything. Nothing taste good.”

104 105 los angeles review of books I’ve heard this voice before. “Don’t lose things. How are you living over there? Who is cooking for you?” This busybody love is my mother’s, and I recognize it immediately. I find more familiar echoes. “We are praising God about your well-being.” My mother likes to pray for people, and solemnly tells them when she has. She sees it as a problem-solving technique. My mother herself is mentioned once in the letter: “Surabhi and kids all taking good care of me.” Five years old, already a caretaker. Laksh mi mentions each of her children once, as if somehow she knows this letter will one day be her showcase.



SHANTHI SEKARAN

With my mother, Lakshmi migrated through time, through death, and found her way to me. My grandmother is a story to me. She is a vision wreathed by other visions: a tall woman, a faded letter, two girls, a bed of fire. My mother gave me this brief and magnificent story to hold, a sad one to most people, magnificent only to me — a child hungry for the rancid truth.

I wrestled my four-year-old into his shoes and listened. Her first week of medical school, she told me, she was led for the first time to the anatomy lab. It was a room of medical cadavers. The smell of formaldehyde made her retch. It made her reconsider medical school, her lifelong dream, altogether. Her group was brought to a cadaver. It would be theirs to dissect, segment by segment, over the coming weeks. The entire body was covered with a sheet. Only that first day’s study, the arm, lay visible. The arm was ashen, nearly fleshless, desiccated by preservative. My mother made herself stand by it. She forced herself to look at it. And as she looked closer, she noticed a tattoo, etched into the inner wrist: Lakshmi. “I knew that was a message from my mom,” she told me. 

Tragedy has a way of loosening the shackles of expectation. It can, in just a moment, obliterate the predetermined path, and make way for a terrifying sort of freedom. If Lakshmi had lived, if my mother’s father, six years later, had not died of a ruptured ap pendix, my mother’s life might have followed a more predictable path. With a modest dowry, she might have grown up and married someone local to her village. She might have made a home and raised children. She might have lit a fire in her yard each morn ing to boil the bath water. She might have continued to live the only life she knew. But Lakshmi died in 1946, a few months before clinical trials began for strepto mycin, the first antibiotic to combat TB. Her stay at a sanitarium had involved rest and nutritious food, but no useful medication. Later, in the 1950s, anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy trials would be performed in Chennai, at the medical school where my mother would one day meet my father and earn her degree.  Recently, I was at my parents’ house, trying to bundle the kids up and get them out the door. As I herded them out, my mother stopped me. “Wait,” she said. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

Silent and invisible, Lakshmi traveled with her daughter, sewn like family dia monds into her DNA. She emerges now and then — when my mother calls me to ask if I’ve eaten, when she packs steamed idlis for her grandchildren. The mother’s impulse is to feed, to protect: Lakshmi was robbed of it by both illness and death, but it filtered down to her daughter, and then to me. Motherless, then fatherless, my mother was freed from expectation and forced to find her own path. That path would take her out of her village, across the planet and into a life unforeseen. Maybe it was that freedom that loosened her tongue and allowed her to tell me this story.

My grandmother lay on a bed of flame. In Hindu belief, fire destroys, but it also purifies. Her mother’s death razed the ground for my mother’s future and gave her the space — the wild, orphaned space — to create her own story. Her mother’s death propelled her every decision and led, eventually, to a life larger than anyone expected.

Nick Sethi, Selfies by Bob Nick Sethi, Selfies by Bob

Eight-year-old Pradhyumn Thakur was already dead when I first saw his face on a breaking-news broadcast. It was September 2017, and his body was found in a pool of blood in the men’s bathroom of an international school in Gurgaon. His throat had been slit. Twice. The school bag was still strapped to his back. For weeks after, the Gurgaon police followed a series of false leads. With their missteps, parents of school-going children across India grew increasingly outraged. By October, the case had been handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, and in November the agency charged a 16-year-old student from the same school with murder. They alleged the school senior had killed Pradhyumn because he wanted a class test postponed. The teen had assumed shutting down the school was one way to achieve that. Details of his home life and mental state were sensationalized on prime time television: “stressful home”; “exam-phobia”; “internet addiction”; “mentally dis turbed.” By contrast, the eight-year-old Pradhyumn was cast as angelic; his family and friends described him as an adoring son and good student. The two had only ever met in piano class. By the time the case went to court, the 16-year-old had been established as a national villain. He was sent to an observation home for juveniles in Faridabad, 20 miles from Gurgaon. In November 2017, I wrote about the case for the Hindustan Times, the newspaper I work for in Delhi. The teen dropped out of the news cycle soon after. Indian court cases drag for so long that everyone but the families lost interest. I continued to think about him though. I wondered if this was the end of his childhood, and what awaited him on the other side of his sentence. A colleague who was reporting the trial told me about a comparable case. In India, where the only typical kind of school violence is teachers beating students, only once has a student made headlines for shooting someone dead in a school. In November 2007, a 14-year-old shot a classmate in another international MURDER IN INTERNATIONALTHE SCHOOL SNIGDHA POONAM school in Gurgaon. His motive was as trivial as delaying an exam: the classmate had hit on a girl he liked. Incidentally, the 14-year-old shooter was sent to the same observa tion center in Faridabad where the 16-year-old would show up 10 years later. Given the parallels, my colleague and I set out to find what happened to that teen from a decade ago, now 24. We guessed his story might contain clues about the path of his successor.

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We found him in a jail in Hisar, 90 miles from Gurgaon. He had actually been released on bail in 2008 but was already back in prison and awaiting trial for another murder. He had allegedly killed a former member of his own gang — someone who had sold him out to a rival.

According to police and jail records, his associates had been charged with about a dozen criminal cases to date: attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion, as sault. His brother told us he doesn’t involve himself in anything less than murder. He was first approached by local gang members in 2008, just after he was released on bail from Faridabad. He turned them down. “I wanted to go back to school,” he told me. But the gangs wouldn’t leave him alone. Youths are central to the functioning of Gur gaon’s thriving underworld, which sprung up shortly after Delhi’s little-known fringe town became an “international” city with the arrival of multinational companies in the early ’90s. The gangs control the sale and purchase of land and squeeze ransom from businesses and residents. Their work revolves around extortion, robbery, and assault. Children are easily lured into this world. They arouse less suspicion, and get out early if caught. The 2007 school shooter had already proven his mettle, his penchant for violence. He had potential. “For days, he used to shut himself up in his room and cry,” his mother told us. They tried to send him to faraway places, to remove him from the temptations of this burgeoning underworld, but to no avail. At 19, he had two options: join a gang or start his own. He chose the latter. The gaunt, bearded young man facing me across the iron grille of the prison visitors’ room had become a don of Gurgaon’s underworld.Iaskedhim if he regrets what he did in 2007. He said yes. I told him he could still go back to a normal life. After all, he had been convicted on the basis of poor evidence and unreliable witness testimony and was likely to be released soon on those grounds. It was too late, he said. “If I don’t kill them, they will kill me.”

MARGARET A. HAGERMAN different, and the election of Donald Trump deeply complicated how many children in America understand their country.

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My conversation with Kenny was part of my ongoing research with youth and rac ism in the United States. My work as a sociologist focuses on racial socialization — I study how children learn about race and racism in the context of their families, commu nities, and everyday lives. Part of my work involves speaking with children directly about their experiences and perspectives of the social world. I knew from my previous research that for many white children who grew up in the Obama era, they believed that racism was “no longer a problem in America.” In many ways, it made sense for these children to feel this way. Although the United States has a long history of racism and white su premacy, in more recent years, social scientists have found that racism at the individual level has not disappeared but, rather, is expressed in more subtle and implicit ways. The circumstances, however, have clearly changed, and these same children are now con fronted with explicit and overt forms of racism in the public sphere. I wanted to know what young people, particularly children in middle school, are thinking about racism in

THOSE WHO CARE AND THOSE WHO DON’T: CHILDREN AND RACISM IN THE ERA OF TRUMP

“Trump does some bad things,” 10-year-old Kenny tells me one afternoon. I’m sitting across from him at a coffee shop in a small town in Mississippi. Kenny is black and loves soccer. As he talks, he anxiously spins a pen cap on the table between us. “Trump talks about racist things … and he does racist things! He puts inappropriate things on Twitter. Like, people won’t admit it but saying, ‘I’m going to build a wall from Mexico,’ and saying bad things about Mexicans is racist and [people] won’t admit it!” Kenny pauses, looks down to the ground, and shakes his head with disbelief. “To me, that’s somethingKenny.” is just one of the millions of children growing up in the United States un der the Trump administration. And he, like many of these children, is experiencing a shocking moment in American history. These are young people who have otherwise been taught that America is making progress when it comes to issues like racism and sexism. Their childhoods unfolded during the “post-racial” era of President Obama; their television programs celebrate multiculturalism and diversity; their T-shirts have girl-empowerment slogans; their schools conduct anti-bullying and inclusion cam paigns. For the youngest generations in the United States, racial progress was the com mon narrative across the political spectrum. This changed during the 2016 presidential election, which marked a drastic turning point in this narrative. Things were suddenly

As many people have pointed out, Trump began his political career by propagating a racist conspiracy against President Obama. Sociologist Matthew W. Hughey argued that the effect of “Birther” movement was in fact twofold: it stoked white fear of a black man in power and encouraged fantasies of a white ethno-state as a remedy for those fears. Trump perhaps noticed its effectiveness. He went on to use explicitly rac ist rhetoric and antisemitic dog whistles in his presidential campaign ads. Even after taking office, Trump has continued to stoke racial division and white fear. He has used racist, derogatory language to refer to Mexicans, Muslims, and entire nations in Afri ca and the Caribbean. He has insulted a long list of black celebrities, politicians, and athletes. And his rhetoric is also backed up by action. Within its first year, the Trump administration advanced a ban on Muslim people and refugees entering the country; it has more recently enforced family separation at the border, taking children from their parents and putting them in cages; Trump has pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a man with a long history of racial discrimination. Trump also famously refused to denounce white supremacists after their racist and antisemitic rallying and violence in Charlottesville. His racist rhetoric has only escalated in the run up to the midterm elections.InOctober 2017, political scientist Cathy J. Cohen and her colleagues at the Uni versity of Chicago reported findings from their GenForward Survey of Millennial At titudes on Race in the U.S. They found that across all racial groups, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that racism is one of the three most important problems in the United States today and that this problem is getting worse (Cohen, Fowler, Medenica, & Rogowski, 2017). However, nearly half of the white young adults in this research believed that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities.” Across all racial groups, very few young people thought racial relations were improving in the United States, and when asked if they believed Trump is a racist, 82 percent of African-American respondents, 78 percent of Latinx respondents, and 74 percent of Asian-American respondents said they did. White respondents were split almost exactly down the middle: 51 percent believed he is racist while 48 percent disagreed.

I ask her if the kids who supported Trump were black. Crystal replies immediately: “No. They were all white.” For Crystal, the connection between whiteness and support for Trump is clear. At the coffee shop, Kenny has similar ideas: “When Barack Obama was the presi dent, I wasn’t thinking about politics,” Kenny explains. “I didn’t really talk about Barack Obama because there’s nothing to talk about! He didn’t do anything bad. He didn’t start anything. So I mean, when he was president, I didn’t get into politics because I didn’t have to. Because he was a good president.”

Devion, an 11-year-old black boy, responds so quickly I can barely finish asking the question. “He’s said stuff about Mexico, and he’s basically just racial-profiling people!

I ask him how he feels when the president says bad things about black people. “I feel like if the president says something racist, I think that they shouldn’t be the president,” he replies. I hear this opinion echoed in Massachusetts, over and over again. Suzannah tells me that she thinks Trump is “very racist” and that “we need someone [who is] both of our colors so they can be more fair ’cause he only likes really the whiter people.”

Devion tells me that he absolutely thinks the election of Trump has emboldened the already-racist bullies at his school. These conversations reveal that these particular children of color are deeply affected by the state of the country and the larger events and conversations happening around them. My findings are reinforced by a recent survey conducted with teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This survey, held in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, described what the Center referred to as the “Trump Effect.” The report found that more than two-thirds of teachers noted increased anxiety on the behalf of students of color, immigrant students, Muslim students, and LGBTQ students. The report also found that 90 percent of teachers surveyed indicated that their school climate had been negatively affected by the political campaign and election of Donald Trump. This was also reflected in the news: during the past two years, headlines from across the nation have described instances of white youth engaging in forms of racial violence and other forms of harassment — chanting “Build the wall!” in the faces of Latinx kids at athletic competitions or in the school cafeteria, bringing Confeder ate flags into classrooms to taunt their black peers, sexually assaulting and “grabbing” girls, inflicting physical violence such as pulling hijabs off Muslim students, and so on (SPLC Hatewatch, 2016).

“I have heard him say something bad about black people,” Dominick tells me. “Donald Trump shouldn’t build the wall. … It’s just weird and just like, you’re making fun of a certain region because they like look different? Really?”

I ask him how he felt the day after the election. “I felt just sad for America. … I was very surprised.” He goes on to tell me about white kids chanting, “Build a wall,” and harassing Latinx kids at his school.

“Some black boys and girls were saying that that, like, they really didn’t want Trump to win or that he had won and [that they] didn’t really like him. And then some people who did vote for Trump were like, ‘I’m so happy!’ and they told their friends who also voted for Trump. … It was like allll day.”

MARGARET HAGERMAN

Trump is going to get us all bombed. Like, after he won the election, at school, everyone was like screaming, ‘Ahhhh!’ People were running around and then someone started crying and said, ‘I want Obama to come back!’” Mariana goes on to tell me how “Trump is racist” and a “bad president.”

… And people have been joining him! I’ve heard some things on the news and what he says isn’t right!”

“I honestly think that it’s crazy that kids would say that. I’ve had, um, a kid in my class that I was just fully ashamed by that kid ’cause he was saying some racist stuff [after Trump won] and that was the kid that has [previously] said racist stuff to me.”

Over the past year, a team of graduate students and I interviewed children between the ages of 10 and 13 in two distinct geographic locations: Mississippi and Massa chusetts. We asked them a range of questions about current events, their schools and families, and their reaction to Trump’s words and actions as president. After interview ing more than 50 children, we found that children of color in both states expressed a great deal of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger about the present moment. The white chil dren’s responses, however, surprised me. For many, their acknowledgment of Trump’s explicitly racist words and actions seemed to mark a rearrangement of empathy, and a rearrangement of how they thought about racism — and, perhaps more importantly, how much they cared.  One day after school in Mississippi, I talk with 10-year-old Crystal, who describes her self as “African American and mixed.” Crystal tells me what she remembers from the night of the 2016 presidential election. “We were very scared the night before...When I was sleeping, I did have a bad dream so I think I could kind of tell that it wasn’t going to end up as I expected.”

White children are also thinking and engaging in the current political moment, of course, though our conversations are notably different. With white children, I notice a

“What happened the next day at school?” I ask. She brings up race right away.

112 113 los angeles review of books the new Trump era. What are their views on this matter? How are they feeling? What do they have to say?

Later in our interview, I ask Kenny, “What do you think is a big problem in Amer ica?”“Racism is one of the main things that this country has always had problems with. And I’m scared Trump will make that worse,” he adds. In Massachusetts, children of color express similar fears and anxieties about this moment of reemerging racial animosity. Mariana is 10 years old and identifies as “Mex ican-American and white.” She and I sit together talking in a small classroom at her afterschool program. “Do you think Trump is doing a good job or a bad job leading our country” I ask Mariana.“Idon’t like Donald Trump!” she shouts as she slaps her hand on the desk. “He is terrible! I want Obama to come back. Obama is a better president. In my head, I’m like,

I also talk with 11-year-old Dominick who identifies as “black and Cape Verdean.”

Erin’s attitude echoes what contemporary social scientists have found when study ing the racial attitudes of white Americans. White people in the United States have found more subtle ways to express their prejudices toward people of color over time. These new forms of racism often help people maintain the external appearance of not being racist even as they continue to engage in practices and behaviors that reproduce racial inequality — a way of “saving face” so to speak. Drawing on findings from a large, national survey of racial attitudes spanning 40 years, sociologist Tyrone A. Forman finds evidence for an increase in what he defines as “racial apathy” in the United States. White racial apathy, he argues, “refers to lack of feeling or indifference toward societal racial and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues.” In

I ask him what it was like at his school around the time of the election.

A bit later, I ask her if she thinks the election of Trump has had any immediate impact on kids. She nods. “I think that him being elected has made some people think, ‘Oh, well, since our president has these beliefs, it’s okay.’…Like him being disrespectful to wom en, some people are like, ‘Oh [if] the president did that in his past, it’s okay for me to do that,’ … and that’s not okay.”

“Well, I think our school is more racially diverse than that school,” he responds. Based on his experience growing up in Mississippi — like Crystal — Charlie could also see a connection between support for Trump and whiteness.

Zena, another white 12-year-old girl growing up in Mississippi talks to me about some recent changes in how some of her friends are relating to their parents. “Trump’s not the best person and I think we all know that,” she tells me. “I have friends with parents who are like, ‘We need to raise you like this, and you need to do this, and you need to be a big supporter of Jesus and Trump and racism, and [my friends] are like, you know, ‘I’m going to need you to take a few steps back.’…These kids are like, ‘I should do some of my own research before I jump headfirst into his big agenda.’”

“How is it that these two schools that are located pretty close to each other have such different results?” I ask him.

“I think we are 100 percent not past racism,” she states definitively. “I think recently everyone has had this realization that we are not past this because there are people … who sit in the big chairs and say, ‘No. I don’t want that law [that would help racial minorities] passed,’ and I feel like it’s a problem because the people who have power … they like use it for the wrong reasons. I don’t think we are past [racism] because people in power like Trump aren’t allowing us to get past it. And that sucks.”

When Erin is asked if she recognizes the rise of racial tension in the United States right now, she acknowledges that Trump “has said racist things,” but she isn’t too both ered by it. “I honestly think it’s fine,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t really care.”

MARGARET HAGERMAN

“What did you draw?” I ask.

“I was surprised [when Trump won]. We did this vote at our school and it was 16 people who voted for Trump while the 360 other people voted for Clinton. But I heard that at this other school [nearby] … the vote was so Trump.”

Zena goes on to tell me about one friend who is outraged by Trump’s racism de spite her parents’ full support of him. “She argues with her parents all the time,” Zena explains. “What about you?” I ask. “Do you think we still have racism in America?”

A number of white children, in both Massachusetts and Mississippi, tell me they are shocked and outraged by what they perceived to be racism radiating from the high est seats of power. For these kids, Trump’s presidency not only challenges their under standing of the country but also sheds new light on previously held notions about race in America. In addition to their outrage, these children also exhibit racial empathy for people of color, immigrants, women, and other groups that they perceive to be under attack by the Trump administration. In fact, part of what they dislike so much about Trump is how badly he treats the vulnerable and how he seems to bully the marginal ized.Other white children I speak with have a different reaction. They don’t all consider Trump’s racism to be a problem. Children, in both Massachusetts and Mississippi, tell me that even though they recognize Trump’s racism, they ultimately don’t care.

114 115 los angeles review of books profound divide between how much some children seem to care about Trump’s racist words and actions and how much some don’t.

Twelve-year-old Erin lives in Mississippi and attends a former segregationist acad emy that is still almost entirely white. Erin knows she is white, she explains, because “I was born in America and my skin is white.” I ask her how she felt after Trump won the election. “I was happy he won because I think he knows how to handle, like, people who threaten us and stuff.” She describes kids at her school making jokes about building a wall at recess, but she says she did not tell the teacher because she “did not think it was a big deal.” Like many of the kids, Erin also shares her views on the differences she has observed since President Obama was in office: “When Barack was president, like, there was a lot of tension going on ’cause he was, like, the first black president … the people didn’t think it was right that he should be president because he was black. Now we have a white president again.”

Trump’s election has made 12-year-old Charlie, who is also white, rethink aspects of President Obama’s time in office. “I knew President Obama was the first black pres ident, but I didn’t understand the significance of it until Trump became president,” 12-year-old Charlie tells me one afternoon at a restaurant in Mississippi. Charlie at tends a public school that is almost 70 percent black. Like many of the white kids I interviewed, Charlie tells me that lately he has been talking about racism with his parents, his friends, and his teachers “all the time.”

“Trump has definitely done something to make things worse,” he tells me.

Paige, 12 years old, was one of the children I talk to in Mississippi. I sit down with her in her living room on a Saturday morning. “We had an assignment after the presi dential election,” Paige tells me. “We had to draw a picture of what we think the future is going to look like under our new government...The teacher actually made half the class redo it because she was unhappy with the results because she got a lot of walls and cities in flames or like evil-looking politicians.”

“I personally drew Trump behind a wall of fire,” she says, matter-of-factly. I ask her why she drew that particular image. “I just felt like we were making so much progress with Obama. Like on everything. Like women’s rights, gay rights, racism, like things like global warming. Then, like, now that we have the new president — it’s like a million steps backward.”

Betsy, who is 12 years old, white, and lives in Massachusetts, is more engaged with politics than Blake. She tells me that she loves knowing what is going on in the world. In fact, she gets up early to drink a cup of tea and watch the news before school every morning.“Ifeel like I’ve heard stuff on the news about [Trump] being racist, but like, the [news anchors] exaggerate stuff. But I don’t really think he’s racist. I think when he does one thing wrong, people turn it against him.” She can discuss many of the issues that have come up while Trump has been in office, like the wall and the Muslim ban. “Overall, I’m not saying he’s the best president, and he’s definitely not the worst. But he’s not racist. There might have been one or two incidents when he was racist, but he’s not racist.” Betsy tells me that even though she wishes we could have elected a woman for president, from her perspective, Trump is “fine” and even though he is racist some times, she does not think that it is a major problem.

116 los angeles review of books his research, Forman finds an increase in whites’ use of “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” when asked survey questions about racial integration.

In talking with some of the white children in my study, I find similar patterns. For instance, Blake, who is 10 years old and lives in Massachusetts, tries many different ways to avoid identifying his race. Eventually, though, he tells me he is white. After talking with him a bit about his hockey team and upcoming game, I ask him what he thought the day after Trump was elected. “I didn’t care,” he tells me, shrugging. When I ask him if he thinks Trump is racist, he responds, “I don’t know ’cause I’ve never heard him be racist. But he said um, that we’ll build a wall between Mexico. … Mexico is like part of our world so you shouldn’t try to keep them out.” Blake tells me that there is racism still in America, but that he doesn’t really know much about it. “I’ve never heard anybody say [anything racist],” he tells me. He explains he does not talk about race or racism with his family members. Generally, he says, he does not think much about racism — but he knows that it exists. “Yeah.” He tells me. “But I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

Back in Mississippi, 12-year-old Ellie, who is white, tells me about voting in a mock election at her private school, complete with mock voter ID cards that students had to show before casting their mock ballot. “Everyone wanted Trump to win and they were like, ‘If you want Hillary to win, then you’re terrible.’” Ellie was not surprised when Trump won the actual election. “I knew he was probably gonna win,” she tells me. “I didn’t really think anything about it [when he did.]” Ellie talks about how she liked one of the other Republican candidates better than Trump but that ultimately, she was happy Trump won.

Anna Maria Maiolino, Untitled (“Vida Afora Fotopoemação” [Life Line Photopoemaction] series), 1981, Black and white analog photos. Photography: Henri Virgil Sthal Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Luisa Strina

When it comes to young people specifically, Forman and his colleague, sociologist Amanda E. Lewis, explore expressions of racial apathy in white high school students over time. They find that instead of new generations of white kids being less racist and more tolerant than generations before them, this population instead embraces more subtle forms of racism like being indifferent to racial inequality. Data from this import ant research suggests that racial apathy is actually on the rise.

Even when this group of kids identifies racism in the words and actions of the president and his administration — even when they agree that Trump is doing something racist — they do not really seem to care. Although they are aware of racism, they would prefer to not think about it.

Ava, who is 12 years old and white, also likes Trump but finds him “embarrassing” at times. Sometimes, he “acts like a kid,” she says explaining that her family and friends share the hope that he “straightens out soon.” Despite how embarrassing he is, Ava goes on to say that she was happy Trump won. But, she still thinks “he seems kinda mean.”

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In terms of racial politics at the national level, James recognizes that racism exists but does not think that it is serious enough to merit a solution or any political action. Regarding football players kneeling at NFL games, he says, “Some people are doing it because they don’t like the president. They don’t like racism. They don’t like the way some people are getting treated. … But if [they] want to live in America, why [are they] kneeling instead of like, loving our country that people fight for every day so we can be free? If they don’t like wanna stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or the National An them, why are they living here?” James makes it clear that he understands these protests to be about real racism in America, but he ultimately concludes that racism is not a legitimate reason to protest.

When I ask her what she means, she says: “Well, I don’t really want him to build a wall even though it keeps some mean people out,” she explains. “There’s usually nice people who want, like, a better life too.”

The views of children like Ellie, James, Ava, Jason, and others are in direct opposi tion to those of children who are fearful of or outraged by the Trump administration.

Social science research makes it abundantly clear that, across the board, children today are growing up in a country with increasing economic inequality and “deep differences of opportunity” (Kids Count, 2017). Race and wealth disparities between children are well documented in a wide variety of realms like education, health, the criminal justice system, the child welfare system, the labor market, housing, wealth holdings, and so on. American children are growing up in this context, among tremendous race and class inequality and deep powerful political divides. Based on my new research, however, it seems that there is another type of division separating today’s younger generations: how they respond to explicit forms of racism. Why is this division important? As psychologist Derald Wing Sue puts it, rather than expressing a “conscious desire to hurt,” racial apathy conveys a “failure to help.”



That failure is twofold: it is not just a failure of action, it’s a failure of empathy — it’s the failure to even care about the persistence and consequences of racism in the United States. This “failure to help” — this failure to concern oneself with the suffering and humanity of others — is a powerful tool, used to reproduce and perpetuate existing racial oppression. As Forman and Lewis ask: If, in the face of entrenched, systemic, and institutionalized racial inequality, most whites say that they have no negative feelings toward racial minorities but feel no responsibility to do anything about enduring racial and ethnic in equalities and in fact object to any programmatic solutions to addressing those inequalities, is that progress, or is it rather a new form of prejudice in its passive support for an unequal racial status quo?

MARGARET HAGERMAN

When asked if he thinks Trump is racist, Jason replies, “Trump is kind-of racist, kindof not. He kind-of is building a wall so other people won’t come in.” I ask him what he would say to Trump if he had the opportunity. “I would make a joke like, ‘Hurry up and build that wall!’” Jason goes on to say that during recess, kids made other “jokes” about immigrants. To Jason, even if Trump’s wall is “kind-of racist,” he does not see a problem with making jokes about it, or replicating the racism in his own conversations or playful interactions with his peers.

Indeed, racial apathy is not new, and I found signs of it among the many children I spoke with during the Obama era. But, in my previous work, kids who expressed this apathy embraced a “colorblind” racial logic — they believed that because a black man was president, American society didn’t have to worry about racism anymore. This is different from the apathy I observed in many of these white children today. Based on this new research, it seems that some kids are learning not to care about racism or racial inequality in any way, even when it is explicitly present. The narrative seems to be shift ing: “I don’t see racism, so I don’t care” is becoming, “I see racism, and I still don’t care.”

When Ellie is asked about her thoughts on racism in the United States today, par ticularly in light of Trump’s election, she says she has heard people say he is racist, but she “do[esn’t] really know.” She also explains that her family does not talk about racism. “There’s not really any [racism] going on in Mississippi but there might be in like, other states, I just haven’t noticed anything. … I don’t really know. … It’s not something I care Kidsabout.”offer different versions of this opinion. James, a 12-year-old boy who identi fies as “Caucasian” and who goes to the same school as Ellie, “felt good” after Trump was elected because he supports many of Trump’s positions, even the more controver sial stance on the wall between the United States and Mexico. James understands that Trump’s policies may upset people, but he ultimately cares more about other things. For example, he spends a lot of time discussing the conflict between the United States and Muslim countries. “I think it’s silly that [conflict] is still going on,” he says. “They’ve been fighting since 1999 and nobody’s won. Why [hasn’t the United States] dropped an atomic bomb on them? It would just end them, so they wouldn’t like, come at us again.”

When Ava is asked if she thinks that the president is racist, Ava replies, “Mmm, maybe, sorta, kinda because he built the wall and because like, he wants to keep some religions out. And I think if it’s just because of like, the religions, we could try to teach them like, about God and like that Jesus Christ came for our sins.” For Ava, racism is, again, not an important issue. Even if Trump’s wall and Muslim ban are “maybe sorta kinda” racist, the real issue with these policies is that they might prevent people from converting to Christianity. Jason, who is 11 years old and identifies as white, views Trump in a similar “kinda racist” way as Ava. His reaction to Trump winning the election was, “I didn’t care.”

Every child of color I interviewed not only articulated disgust and outrage with the president’s racist language and actions but also described feeling scared, angry, anx ious, upset, and worried because of Trump’s presidency and specifically what his racist actions might mean for themselves or the people they love. They told me about their nightmares and about drawing violent images. They talked to me about feeling fearful and not being able to relax when out in public or around authority figures. As one 11-year-old told me, “When Trump got elected, I was actually kind of nervous. My dad isn’t a citizen. If [Trump] sends him back, he’s not going to be able to come back and I won’t be able to see him. … Like, like [one time recently] we were just driving and the police were behind us and I got scared because if he were to get pulled over, they would arrest him and they’ll send him back. I am scared.” She was on the verge of tears. Empathy alone will not solve racism and racial injustice in America. But, in the Trump era, when children are confronted with the stark reality of the legacy and per sistence of racism in the United States, it appears that they respond in different ways. For black, brown, and other marginalized children, this reality seems to be connected to feelings of stress, fear, anger, and anxiety. For some of the white children I spoke with, this reality seems to be connected to empathy, anger, and a sense of concern for their peers. But, for other white children, this reality simply does not matter, even though they know and can acknowledge that it exists. If children cannot develop empathetic perspectives, if they cannot learn to care about the suffering or humanity of their peers, what does that suggest for our future? Collectively, we must identify, acknowledge, and resist the power of racial apathy — and recognize the destruction it brings to our democratic society, to our political efforts, and to the children growing up in this world.

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White peoples’ disinterest in racism — or the more active refusal of interest in human suffering — dramatically increases the stakes for racially marginalized people.

“What are you?” “Where were you born?” “What kind of name is Acevedo?”

“Who braided your hair like that?” Mom says braided hair keeps out the knots out and the head lice too. She braids my hair every day, sometimes into one long braid down my back, sometimes into two braids, one on each side of my head, or when I ask, wound up to the top and pinned in the middle like Princess Leia. The first time I asked for braids like that, mom laughed.

I’m in Indian club. My little brother is in Indian club too. Mom signed us up and said we had to go, even though we’re not actually Indian, or at least, not the reservation kind. Mom was a chola when she left East L.A. to live with the hippies in the Bay Area. They all hung around with the Grateful Dead, but Mom never liked Jerry Garcia. She once heard him say that he was Spanish, which she didn’t believe at all. “Oh, sure, everyone is Spanish and never Mexican.” She sounded like she was spit ting when she said it. “My cousin used to tell people she was Italian at school. Her par ents told her to. Goddamn Italian, can you believe that?” I couldn’t believe it but mostly because I didn’t know anyone Italian, no one who talked about it anyway. After living with the hippies in Palo Alto, mom moved us to the mountains. She wanted fresh air, chickens, and a garden, and for us she wanted a good school. When we got there, she wanted Indian club. She said that Mexicans are Indios, too. From what she says Mexicans are little of everything, but Indian is one of the things we are a lot of. Everyone can see the Indian in my face for sure — my Mayan nose, my Aztec eyes. People, mostly grown-ups, tell me how I look all the time, everyone but Mrs. Fox, the Indian club teacher. “What a pretty little Indian girl.” “You’re nose has a hook like the Maya.”

Some kids in another class watch us through the window as we walk by. They know we’re going to Indian club. They can tell by the way we look, but they don’t know what goes on in Indian club, in our corner of the library, even though I tell them whenever they“We’reask. learning about acorns.” “We looked at woven baskets.” “We’re still working on our loom-beaded choker necklaces.”

It’s the same red as the moist dirt in most of our yards, the dirt we called Indian clay. Charlie is mean, but mostly he’s quiet. Sometimes he lives in town; sometimes he lives on the rez. He seemed to go back and forth like that all the time.

I watch the heels of his suede loafers as he walks the breezeway in front of me toward the library. He wears suede loafers, the kind with the blond bumpy rubber sole. They’re nice and clean and new looking — his school shoes.

We have been working on those for a long time. During the last club meeting, I spilled my tray of tiny gold, black, and red beads all over the floor. All the kids were there, like Anita Kosumi. We have been friends since first grade. I have even gone to her house after school a couple of times. Fran Herdez, who always looks mad at somebody, was there too. I try not to think about spilling the beads, and the way Mrs. Fox jumped out of her chair and tried to stop the tray from falling, sending the tiny beads bouncing and skittering across the tile floor. I got off my chair to help. Under the table, the tile was cool on my hands and knees; then I saw that tight-lipped look on Mrs. Fox’s face. I wondered if real Indians knew how to be more careful, if they had some Mother Earth

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Charlie is a real Indian. He looks like a real Indian too, except he has reddish hair.

INDIAN CLUB MICHELLE CRUZ GONZALES

“Like Princess Leia! You mean like a Mexican. We’ve been wearing our hair like that before Star Wars. Put some ribbon in Princess Leia’s braid and zass, you got a folk loric dancer and extra protection from head lice.” She always worries about head lice. She doesn’t want anyone to think we’re dirty, that we don’t take baths. Grandma worries about head lice too. When we visited her at Christmas, she asked if we had gotten them yet. Then she told me about how when she went to school in Camarillo in the old days, how Camarillo was just mostly farmland, a place where Mexicans and Indians from India — Hindus she called them — were friends, and how after Christmas the Mexican kids, and the Mexican Hindus, were rounded up by the school principal to have their heads doused with kerosene and topped with a paper bag to kill the lice. Merry Christmas! She said the smell of the kerosene burned her eyes and her nose, even her mouth. She said that she didn’t even think she had piojos. That is the word in Spanish for head lice. Piojos “Flor, Charlie, you can go to Indian club now.” My teacher, Mrs. Carr, looks at the clock and jerks her head toward the door. Charlie and me get up from our desks at the same time. We go to Indian club every Tuesday at 10:00. We miss part of her social studies lesson.Irene and Robert look up as I walk with Charlie toward the door. It makes me feel good to get up and leave right in the middle of the lesson. I put my shoulders back and pretend not to notice them staring.

I want to look over at Mrs. Fox and I almost reach up and touch one of my braids, but I don’t. I just look down at my choker. The strings on the loom blur and all the dif ferent colors: the gold, black, and red beads melt into a muddy brown. “Charlie, another word from you and you’ll spend the rest of club time in the of fice.”I look up. Mrs. Fox looks more enojada than I have ever seen her look. Everyone is stone quiet now, and I’ve lost my place in my tribal design, so I have to look at my paper design, and go back and count each gold bead in the new row, one by one. Then someone coughs and someone else rummages through the beads.

I wanted to say well, the Indians in Indian Club made ones just like it, but I didn’t want her to start shouting about how all she wanted in school was to learn something about her own people, how she kept waiting and waiting but all she got was lessons about the Nina (which she pronounced, Niña), the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. I just think Mrs. Fox wanted us to get used to working with beads and to make something for Christmas.“HelloFlor.

We all nod. I want to ask to go to the bathroom now too, but I look at the clock. I can see there isn’t time to wait for Fran, and Charlie, and the third grader. I will go on the way back to class. Plus, I don’t want to walk with Charlie.

MICHELLE CRUZ GONZALES

Charlie doesn’t have a girlfriend, but Anita told me he likes Margie Johnson. His chair scrapes the floor as he shifts in his seat. I look his way.

Hello Charlie.” Mrs. Fox smiles again at us both. She is married but she doesn’t have her own kids. Most of the other teachers do have kids, and some of them even go to our school. Mrs. Fox isn’t exactly a real teacher because she doesn’t teach English or math, but she likes kids more than some of the real teachers do. She doesn’t like beads all over the floor, or arguments, but she is always nice and happy to see us. My loom with my half-finished choker is already out, so I go to it and sit down. Three other kids come in, one other fourth grader and Fran Herdez, who was in my class in second grade, and my friend Anita Kosumi. Fran always wears a leather headband strapped around her forehead and tied at the back of her head. Maybe to hold down her thick black hair. They find their looms across from mine and sit down. “I brought these chokers today.” Mrs. Fox pulls four chokers, each in a different col or and a different design, out of a black drawstring bag. She’s telling us how the designs aren’t Me-wuk, our tribe’s designs, that they are just meant to look tribal. She passes the chokers around the table for each of us to hold and look at. They feel like the little red racer snakes my brother and I find on our way to school, cool and smooth to the touch.

Anita is watching me from her side of the table. I can feel her eyes on me. I look up and she narrows her eyes Charlie’s way and wrinkles her nose. Mrs. Fox looks up and sets down the loom she was holding. It clunks on the table. “We are a club,” she says. “It’s important that we act like one. Picking on each other is not how you act in a club.” No one says a word. “Do you understand?” Mrs. Fox is looking at all of us, scanning the table.

124 125 los angeles review of books power that helped them have better luck with gravity. I hadn’t seen anyone else spill the beads.When it happened, Charlie laughed so hard, his chair lurched and squealed as it skidded back across the freshly waxed floor. No one else laughed, and Mrs. Fox made him stop. His laugh made me not want to look up when I got back up on my chair, so I focused on sorting the different color beads, putting each in its place. Charlie was like that sometimes, but he has been better since I slapped him in the face real hard. We were on the back of the bus on a field trip, and he wouldn’t stop touching my hair and putting his face over the seat as close to my face as he could get. I told him to stop, and he copied me in a whiney voice, so I slapped him hard. I could tell he wanted to slap me back or touch his hand to the red mark I left on his cheek. Mrs. Fox is already at the Indian club table with the third graders. They’re sitting down already, their small bead looms in front them. Mrs. Fox is talking to one kid, but she looks at us and smiles. Her smile makes me glad that my brother is in Indian club on Wednesdays with the first and second graders because I’m sure he does worse than spill a box of beads on the floor. The older kids go on Mondays and Thursdays. I won der if they’re almost finished with their beaded loom chokers. I can’t wait to wear mine to class, for everyone to see my beaded Indian design that I counted and strung all by myself using a sharp, shiny needle. Before Christmas, we made beaded ornaments with a lot of help from Mrs. Fox — bells, candy canes, stars, and Christmas trees. The bell was really hard. My brother came home with simpler versions of the candy canes and stars. My mom liked them and smiled when she put them on the tree, but then she said something funny: “Do you think Indians ever made candy canes like these?”

Fran opens her mouth wide then laughs, a loud scratchy laugh that I’m sure can be heard all over the library.

I nod even though I don’t think I should have to. I can see others nodding out of the corner of my eye. We sit still until one of the third-graders goes back to rummaging in her bead sorter. I keep my eyes on my choker. Everyone is quiet until Fran raises her hand. “Mrs. Fox, can I use the bathroom?” “Yes, you may. Hurry back.” Fran nods and gets out of her chair. “Can I go next?” Charlie asks with a straight face. “Yes, you may.” “I have to go too,” says one of the third graders. “Okay,” says Mrs. Fox, who no longer sounds angry, “but next week we need to practice being a club.”

Then she tells us that she will help us attach clasps on ours once we are finished and the chokers are off the looms. I can’t imagine when that will be. Getting the tiny beads on the loom strings is hard, and Mrs. Fox has to help us whenever we aren’t careful and get our needle and thread filled with different colored beads tangled among the others. “Charlie’s going to give his choker to his little girlfriend,” Fran says in her scratchy voice, even more scratchy than usual. “His white girlfriend.”

“Oh, yeah. At least she’s not a wannabe, like some people.” Charlie leans in and puts his face right in mine like he did the day I slapped him on the bus.

WeI“Ready?”nod.setthe looms side-by-side in crates and slide the closed bead sorters on the sides, careful not to break any strings. I follow Mrs. Fox to the club closet. I don’t say anything. I am still trying to forget what Charlie said. The closet is at the back of the library in the far corner, but it’s not a big library. Mrs. Fox is quiet at first, but she turns to me once we’re standing by the closet. “Flor, when I married Mr. Fox people said all sorts of mean things.” She pulls the key from her wrist and sticks it in the keyhole.

I try not to think about what he said anymore. I try to bead faster, but my hands move slow. It would be a terrible time to spill the tiny beads, to send them skittering, mixed up and unsorted on the floor. Fran comes back to the table and sits down. Charlie gets up and walks toward the bathroom. I keep my head down, but I lift my eyes to peek at the clock. Only four minutes to go. “Tina, you can go to the bathroom now,” Mrs. Fox says to the third grader even though Charlie is not back. “Everyone else, you can start cleaning up. Flor, you can be today’s cleanup helper.”

“What did they say?” She turns and faces me again. “They said we shouldn’t get married because we were different, that he was a traitor, and that I didn’t know how to take care of an Indian man.”

I’m looking at her eyes now. I really want to understand. I think about when we studied the missions and Mrs. Carr told us that a lot of Indians had Spanish last names like Martinez and Ramirez because they had been renamed by Spanish priests.

We are standing in front of the closet. I am still holding the crate. She takes it from me. She turns and puts it away, but she turns back, looking serious. “Flor, there are lots of clubs and people are funny about them, but there are only two clubs in this town.”

Being cleanup helper means that I get to help Mrs. Fox put the looms and beads in plastic crates and help her carry them to the Indian Club closet. She has the key on a rubber band on her wrist. It’s 11:00 and Mrs. Fox excuses the others. “Bye, Flor,” Anita says to me. Charlie walks in from the bathroom, turns when he sees everyone filing out, and follows Anita. I watch the back of his head as he walks out of the library. Mrs. Fox smiles.

I’m still thinking about what Charlie said, and that Mrs. Fox is not Indian. My head hurts. I can’t keep up. What is the other club? Is it the bar in town called The Club, the bar where I’ve seen the old seventh grade social studies teacher, Mr. Nelson, the bar where the retired mill workers sit all evening drinking beer? I don’t think so. Then Mrs. Fox reaches down toward me with both hands. She touches the ends of my braids. She lifts one, then the other. I feel like a dragonfly, like ones I’ve seen at the creek by my house buzzing above water waiting to land. “I want you to know something,” she says, “you’re in the right club. Your mom did good signing you up.”

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MICHELLE CRUZ GONZALES

With the closet door now open, she is holding her hands out for me to pass her the crate.Ilook right at her, Mrs. Fox, the teacher of the Indian club. Did the other kids know? Maybe I had missed something before. I look at her hair, short, dark brown, and gray. Her eyes are brown too. I look at her skin, her face, her neck, her arms — she’s not dark, but not really güera either, about the same color as my mom. “You’re not Indian, Mrs. Fox? “No, not in the way you’d think,” she said. “Not in any way really, but I married an Indian, and I’ve learned a lot, a lot of things that have made my life more interesting.”

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The elementary school teacher takes roll. When my turn comes, a boy with a face like a pug leers in my direction and pulls the corners of his eyes back. Perfect English comes out of my mouth, but in the corner of the classroom, a freckled girl is singing, “Ching Chong Chinese! Chen! Chen! Chen!”

As a child going through the public education system in a predominantly white community, my name set me apart. I reasoned: I look different from others, I don’t have a last name like Anderson or Jones, and so I am different. I’m told by a fifth-grade history teacher, whom I adored, that the term “American” does not apply — not really — to me, despite the fact that at home my mother has carefully filed away my Social Security card and US passport in a leather portfolio. The teacher asks, “Do you know who, in this whole class, is related most closely to the Indians?” She points to the last row, where I am sitting. Everyone takes her word for fact. To them, going forward, I am a descendant of Pocahontas in addition to Mulan and Genghis Khan. When the time comes for college applications, a guidance counselor tells me, “You have to understand. Everything — the system — is working against you. The admis sions counselors will look at your name, and unless you have a perfect SAT score, grad uate at the top of your class, and do something amazing, you are done. Finished. Your name is your worst enemy.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

KATHERINE J. CHEN

It is just four letters. It cannot easily be mispronounced. On the phone with Customer Service, I do not often have to repeat its spelling. It has no double meanings, no double entendres. Yet, despite its simplicity, my last name was a source of childhood humilia tion, of taunts and bullying. The memory of these humiliations has endured.

Cheyenne Julien, Lukewarm 2018, oil on canvas, 52 x 60 inches

During my senior year, I accompany a fiction instructor to an arts festival on cam pus. She stops to chat with another writer who repeats her last name aloud. “Ah, you’re Irish. I’m Irish, too. The creative blood flows in us.” I know this isn’t a personal attack, but I can’t help feeling hurt. I want to be a writer, but I’m obviously not Irish or British. As a student of literature, I’ve already found this to be a source of conflict. I had never read an Amy Tan novel. Film and literature concerning the Cultural Revolution didn’t interest me. I’d picked up Lisa See’s books without finishing them. What does interest me and makes my soul sing: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Sylvia Plath, Agatha Christie, Jane Gardam, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Hilary Mantel, Charles Dickens, William Trevor, Alice Munro, Harold Bloom. What do these writers have in common? None of them are named “Chen.” All of my idols were white. In my weakest moments I think: Do I even have a right to write, if I am not Irish or English, like the authors I hold dear to my heart? Can creativity, too, run in my blood, if I am not white? Once I start writing, another question poses itself: What does it mean that the characters in my own writing have been predominantly white? Why do I find myself seemingly enamored with white literature and white history? At times, I have even considered myself an amateur Anglophile. Have I turned my back on my own culture? Am I a traitor, doomed to failure on both sides of the world? My senior thesis in college was a novel parodying the Real Housewives franchise; my debut novel was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the middle sister, Mary Bennet. I have recently finished a novel about military heroine Joan of Arc. I often ask myself: Where are the Chinese characters? The Chinese breakfasts and dinners I know so well from my own upbringing? Why do I shrink away from writing about a heritage that has enriched me as much as it has haunted me? I love the Mandarin language; it is a poetic and moving tongue, difficult to master. I love my mother’s and grandmother’s cooking: the shrimp and pork dumplings pooling juice onto the plate, the scallion pancakes ten derly kneaded by hand. I loved watching old Kung Fu films with my dad and listening to stories of good emperors and conniving empresses from my grandfather. I confess: When I submitted the finished manuscript of my novel to my agent, I used a pen name on the title page. Joan McEwan. Now that, I thought, is an author’s name, a real author’s name. Despite my genuine love for Austen, for the history and literature of the English language, I still felt like a charlatan. I felt like I was sticking my foot where it didn’t belong. A small voice reprimanded me, “This is not your world. You have no right. Go back to where you belong. Chopsticks, bound feet, qi-pao dresses, jade bracelets. That’s where you fit in.” My mother also asked, in a manner bordering on the accusatory, “Why can’t you write about yourself?” But what she doesn’t understand is, this is about me. I have put myself — my fears, hopes, and secret griefs — in the character of Mary Bennet, my courage and pride in Joan of Arc. They represent me so truly that it is as if I was looking into my own bathroom mirror in the morning. I eventually come to the realization that I must put my real name on the jacket, no matter how much I fear it. I look at my name now, still haunted by the memories it brings, but I understand I have to own it. I ask myself again, “Do I have the right to write, if I am not Irish or English?” Maybe that toxic question would never have taken root in my mind if I had seen more Asian names in my elementary school library, on college syllabi or best-seller lists. The “Chen” is what made my book, and it should be acknowledged in its original, untouched, and untainted state. Chen. That is my name.

KATHERINE J. CHEN

130 131 los angeles review of books I hope college will be a fresh start. But in that first week, I can already see that I had been too optimistic. I am sitting alone in a classroom, waiting for a poetry seminar to begin, when a white professor, bearded, immaculate in a pressed suit, appears and asks, “What are you doing in here? Are you supposed to be here?” As a disoriented freshman, who has just figured out how to sign up for classes, on a campus resembling a Ralph Lauren catalog, I had been asking myself the same question for days.

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And what could I say when he entered, rude as a dream, bare flame of a man with wings and demands not his own? I’d been raised, a good girl, to house my tongue in my mouth, to be hospitable toward strangers, suspicious of no one. Perhaps I’d have been better off to be wary, but I’d been waiting so long to hear God speak — I hadn’t thought to think of what he might tell me.

Roula Nassar, boxes, which are sometimes troublesome , 2018, color pencil on paper, 10 x 10 x 1 inches

LEILA CHATTI

MARY SPEAKS

Roula Nassar, that too dear desire of pleasant waters 2018, wax pastel on paper, 23 x 15 inches

HAEMORRHOISSA’SMENARCHE

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I wanted to be a woman until I was. What opened in me brought such pain I believed finally one day I would die. But it subsided — for a while. I remember thinking I was cured, I could go back to being a child. Then the next month: red seed in the morning’s bowl unfurling as it touched the water.

LEILA CHATTI

136 The critics say we’ve finally begun to move from solipsism to thatIt’sfutility.truestanding still is (andofAsexhausting.*awayoutmyselfintosomeone near me), more gripping than vampire stories, more realistic than falling in love, I watch toddlers form thoughts and act on them. CLOSER RAE ARMANTROUT Ogawa,AnastaciaAsuka Amarelo, inches48x60canvas,onacrylic2018,

139Ogawa,AnastaciaAsuka Amarelo, inches48x60canvas,onacrylic2018, It’s a good thing mind’s distributed. “It wasn’t me,” one forItheThiswheretoisToI*whatforwaitsthusEach*“Irepeatedly.says,haven’tdied.”tract,bracketed,whatprecedes,follows.acceptdefeat.acceptdefeattoregress,gobackyoucamefrom.maybefountainofyouth!claimitmyself. WHAT FOLLOWS RAE ARMANTROUT

We invite applications to the inaugural meeting of the Environmental Humanities Summer Institute at Colby College. This Mellon Foundation-funded institute will bring together scholars from across the U.S. to collectively explore how this developing field contributes to the theorization, imagination, and practice of Amanda Boetzkes Stephanie LeMenager, and Kyle Whyte

socially just and ecologically hopeful futures for humans and nonhumans in a global collective. Participants will work closely with seminar leaders

for an intensive week of collaborative seminars and workshops on contemporary issues in the field. Applications are due Feb. 1, 2019. AUGUST20195-10 For more information and to apply, visit colby.edu/EHSummerInstitute Counterproductive Time Management in the Knowledge Economy MELISSA GREGG Respawn Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life COLIN MILBURN Experimental Futures See It Feelingly Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No‑Good English Professor RALPH JAMES SAVARESE Thought in the Act The Blue Clerk Ars Poetica in 59 Versos DIONNE BRAND Comfort Measures Only New and Selected Poems, 1994–2016 RAFAEL CAMPO Vexy Thing On Gender and Liberation IMANI PERRY Little Man, Little Man A Story of Childhood JAMES BALDWIN YORAN CAZAC, illustrator JENNIFER DEVERE BRODY and NICHOLAS BOGGS, editors None Like Us Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life STEPHEN BEST Theory Q Worldmaking Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity DORINNE KONDOPressUniversityDukefromBooksNew dukeupress.edu

Rae Armantrout’s most recent books, Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, Itself, Partly: New and Selected Poems, and Entanglements (a chapbook selection of poems in conversation with physics), were published by Wesleyan University Press. In 2010, her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. Wobble, a new volume of her poems, is forthcoming from Wesleyan. She is recently retired from UC San Diego where she was professor of poetry and poetics. She currently lives in the Seattle area.

— YANIS VAROUFAKIS NEW IN PAPERBACK A MILLION YEARS OF MUSIC: THE EMERGENCE OF HUMAN MODERNITY by Gary Tomlinson NEW FROM ZONE

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— HERBERT FINGERETTE RATED AGENCY: INVESTEE POLITICS IN A SPECULATIVE AGE by Michel Feher “A must-read for anyone seeking to escape the melancholy of the Trump era by building an effective progressive movement against a creeping dystopia.”

THE CHINESE PLEASURE BOOK by Michael Nylan “ A fascinating exploration of ‘pleasure’ as understood by major thinkers of ancient China.”

Jos Charles is a poet, translator, editor, and author of feeld (Milkweed Editions, 2018), a winner of the 2017 National Po etry Series, and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). Charles has an MFA from the University of Arizona and is pursuing a PhD in English at UC Irvine. She currently resides in Long Beach, CA. Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of the chapbooks Ebb (Akashic Books, 2018) and Tunsiya/Amrik iya, the 2017 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. She is the recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Prov incetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she is the inaugural Anis field-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems have received awards from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, Narrative’s 30 Below Contest, and the Academy of American Poets, and appear in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. Katherine J. Chen is a graduate of Princeton University. Her debut novel, Mary B, was published by Random House in sum mer 2018.

Justine Champine is a writer and illustrator based in New York City. Alexandra Chang is a fiction writer, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, 3:AM Magazine, and Passages North. She lives in Ithaca, NY.

The Embattled Vote in FromAmericatheFounding to the Present Allan J. Lichtman “Lichtman’s important book emphasizes the founders’ great blunder: They failed to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights…

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The Embattled Vote in America traces the consequences through American history…[Lichtman] uses history to contextualize the fix we’re in today.”

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JEFFREY

Do You Hear in the Mountains... and Other Stories MAÏSSA BEYupress.virginia.edu

for creative nonfiction

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Jennifer S. Cheng is the author of MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems (2018), selected by Bha nu Kapil for the Tarpaulin Sky Book Award and named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2018; House A (2016), selected by Claudia Rankine for the Omnidawn Poetry Book Prize; and Invocation: An Essay (2011), an image-text chapbook published by New Michigan Press. She received fellowships and awards from Brown University, the Uni versity of Iowa, the U.S. Fulbright program, Kundiman, Bread Loaf, and the Academy of American Poets. Having grown up in Texas and Hong Kong, she lives in San Francisco.

Association of Writers & Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction selected by gretel ehrlich Gardenland NATURE, FANTASY, AND EVERYDAY PRACTICE JENNIFER WREN ATKINSON gardenland Nature, Fantasy and Everyday Practice

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Hicham Benohoud was born in Marrakech in 1968. He lives between Paris and Casablan ca. A former professor of art in Marrakech, he left teaching to devote himself entirely to art. Benohoud is known for his staging approach

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Marilyn Chin is an award-winning poet and author. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, her works have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Marilyn Chin’s books of poems include A Portrait of The Self as Nation, Hard Love Province, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, Dwarf Bamboo, and The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty.

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Andrew Martin’s first novel Early Work was published in summer 2018 by FSG. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and the Tin House Flash Fridays series. E.C. Osondu is the author of the collection of stories Voice of America and the novel This House is Not For Sale. He is a winner of the Caine Prize and a Pushcart Prize among oth er prizes. His fiction has appeared in the At lantic, AGNI, n+1, Guernica, Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, Threepenny Review, New Statesman and many other publications and has been translated into over half a dozen languages. A contributing editor at AGNI, he has been a Visiting Professor at UT Austin and is currently an Associate Professor of En glish at Providence College in Rhode Island. Snigdha Poonam is a Delhi-based journalist and the author of Dreamers: How Young In dians Are Changing The World (Harvard Uni versity Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta and The Financial Times. Edith Sheffer is a Senior Fellow at the In stitute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the prize-win ning author Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, which draws on Margarete Schaffer’s file, as well as the files of hundreds of other children who suffered in Vienna’s institutions. She is also the author of the prize-winning first book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator from Berkeley, California. Her recent nov el, Lucky Boy (Putnam/Penguin), was named an IndieNext Great Read, and an NPR Best Book of 2017. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, Canteen Magazine, and the Huffington Post. She’s a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, an AWP mentor, and teaches writing at Mills College in Oakland. Weike Wang is the author of the novel “Chemistry,” which won this year’s PEN/ Hemingway Award and Whiting Award in fiction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 awardee.

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—Lori Ostlund, author of The Bigness of the World Rigoberto Gonz ález is critic-at-large with the LA Times. His most recent book is What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood Michelle Cruz Gonzales is the author of The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band. She writes about the intersections of race, class, and gender She is currently working on a satirical novel about forced intermarriage between whites and Mexicans for the purpose of creating a race of beautiful, intelligent, hardworking people.

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Jennifer Wren Atkinson

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Henri Cole’s most recent book is Orphic Par is, a hybrid memoir. Anaïs Duplan is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brook lyn Arts Press, 2016) and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). His poems and essays have been published by Hyperallergic, PBS News Hour, the Academy of American Poets, Po etry Society of America, Bettering American Po etry, and Ploughshares. His music criticism has appeared in Complex Magazine and THUMP. Duplan is a curator who has facilitated artists’ projects and exhibitions in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, Reykjavík, and Copenhagen. J. D. Daniels is the winner of a 2016 Whit ing Award and the Paris Review’s 2013 Terry Southern Prize. His “Signs and Wonders” will appear in Best American Travel Writing 2018. His collection The Correspondence (a New Yorker “Books We Loved in 2017”) is now in paperback from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. life of miracles along the yangtze and mississippi Wang Ping “Free-wheeling, unusual, and always charged as it swings back and forth in time and cultures.”

Marah Gubar, associate professor of Litera ture at MIT, is the author of Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Liter ature (Oxford University Press, 2009). She is currently working on a second book entitled How to Think About Children: Childhood Stud ies in the Academy and Beyond. It attempts to generate a theoretical framework for think ing about what it means to be a child that could function as a shared language, enabling researchers across the arts, sciences, and hu manities to communicate their key insights about children and childhood not only with each other, but also with people outside of academia. Margaret Hagerman is an assistant professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. She is the author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (NYU Press.)

Cheyenne Julien was born in 1994. She lives and works in the Bronx. She received her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, along with attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016. Julien has participated in artist residencies at the OxBow School of Art, the Vermont Studio Center, the Bronx Art Space, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

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Azusa Pacific University’s Master of Arts in English equips graduate students with advanced knowledge in the field of literary studies. Emerging from an active dialogue between Christianity and literature, graduates are prepared as scholars, writers, and teachers for cultural engagement through the lens of faith.

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Anna Maria Maiolino, born in Italy in 1942, lives and works in S ão Paulo, Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions include “The Matrix 252’,” University of California, Berkeley Art Mu seum, and Pacific Film Archive (2014) and “Affections”, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Brazil. In 2010, the major retro spective “Anna Maria Maiolino” opened at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona, Spain and travelled to the Galician Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2011) and Malmö Kunsthalle, Malmo, Sweden (2011). Major solo exhibitions also include “Continuum,” Camden Arts Centre, London, England (2010); Order and Sub jectivity,” Pharos Center for Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus (2007); “Territories of Immanence,” Miami Art Center, Miami, FL (2006); “Many,” Maiolino’s first retrospective in Brazil hosted by the Pinacoteca do Estado de S ão Paulo (2005); and “ Vida Afora/A Life Line,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2001). In recent years, Maiolino’s work has garnered critical international recognition at documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the Sydney Biennale, Australia (2008) and nu merous editions of the S ão Paulo Biennale. Roula Nassar was born in 1978 in Saudia Arabia. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Asuka Anastacia Ogawa is a Brazilian and Japanese artist who grew up in Tokyo, Petrópolis, and Stockholm. The artist stud ied at Central Saint Martins in London, and graduated in 2015 with a BFA. Her first US solo show was at Henry Taylor’s in 2017, and she is currently exhibiting in the group show, “Early 21st Century Art”, at Almine Rech Gallery, London, and a two-person show with Maria A. Guzmán Capron at Deli Gallery, New York. Nick Sethi is an artist and photographer living in NYC. His work focuses on the ev er-changing meanings and relationships of ideas, images, people, and materials over time as they move through both physical and digital space. Nick’s recently released book, Khichdi (Kitchari), published by Dashwood Books, chronicles 10 years of his photography in India, exploring a decade of changes in the country, as well as himself. He has recently collaborated with Hood By Air and Helmut Lang, as well as being featured in Aperture Magazine’s Future Gender Issue. His recent editorial clients include Kaleidoscope, Dazed, Let’s Panic, Marfa Journal, i-D, Vice, and Of fice Magazine. In addition, he worked with 8-Ball zines to produce a zine fair, as well as The Newsstand, an artist run zine shop in the NYC subway, which was since acquired by and shown at MOMA as part of the New Photography 2015 show.

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Julien has had a solo exhibition at SMART OBJECTS, Los Angeles, CA; a two-person show with Tau Lewis at Chapter NY, New York, NY; and was included in group shows at Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; Almine Rech Gallery, New York, NY; Rental Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York, NY; and White Cube Bermond sey, London, UK, for the survey Dreamers Awake.

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los angeles review of books to photography. He has participated in several exhibitions at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, the European House of Photography in Paris, the Aperture Foundation in New York, the Mori Museum in Tokyo, and the Tate Modern in London, amongst others. He has also participated in several international fairs including Paris Photo, Art Paris, Art Dubai, the Bamako Photographic Encoun ters, and PHotoESPAÑA.

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