story: “The Disappeared”
author: Blake Butler
year: 2013
where: Quarantine
note: I learned about this story from a charming essay on Lit Hub by Nick Ripatrazone. It was described as “a story about a boy’s longing for his missing mother during a pandemic, and how we have to hold on to hope even when the entire world feels like it is falling apart.”
a line: “The police showed up and bent him over and led him by his face out to their car. You could hear him screaming in the lobby. He sounded like a woman.”
theme(s): Family, abuse, pandemic, hope, the state, public health
samantha Neugebauer 