story: “The Faery Handbag” author: Kelly Link year: 2005 where: afterwork at work note: There is a free copy of this story online via Small Beer Press! a line: “If you called the faery handbag by its right name, it would be something like “orzipanikanikcz,” which means the “bag of skin where the world lives,” only Zofia never spelled that word the same way twice. She said you had to spell it a little differently each time. […]
story: “Ulrikke” author: Jorge Luis Borges year: 1975 where: home on the range note: I like chance meetings. a line: “The pronouncement was an attempt at wit, and I sensed this wasn’t the first time she’d voiced it. I later learned that it was not like her—but what we say is not always like us.”
story: “Five Questions for the Snake Charmer” author: C Pam Zhang year: 2019 where: read on my phone note: something short and not sweet a line: “Pinned under that false gold, he’ll look as much the good Chinese boy as I am the bad Chinese girl, the kind who makes a public spectacle out of alcoholism as if she’s white and blonde and carefree and doesn’t drag a whole race’s reputation behind her.”
story: “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” author: Haruki Murakami year: 2006 where: midday and golden note: I love Murakami’s introduction to this collection. He writes, “My short stories are like soft shadows I’ve set out in the world, faint footprints I’ve left behind.” a line: “My cousin lived nearby, but I was just over a decade older than him and we had never been what you’d call close.”
story: “Commerce and Residue” author: Tim Fitts year: 2017 (in Go Home and Cry for Yourselves) where: mio ufficio note: a great story for our age of cultural appropriation politics a line: “Marcus slightly envied the fact that Pham had an automatic angle borne into her. She was part of the diaspora. Her father had spent time in re-education camps.”
Samantha Neugebauer 