Story Lover

Edited by Dave Eggers

I love love love this series. I think it was one of the best things that happened to me living in Moline back in 2002-3. I buy it every year and every year I’m amazed and captivated by these worlds that I never would have known existed. I hope that in 50 years from now, I’ll have a span of the best thoughts, ideas, imaginations that dictated my times. I hope this series spans my lifetime and provides a peek into the reality of my culture and my life. That it will be the prized possession in my will. My favorite essays are always the non-fiction cultural commentaries. So far, there’s 8 volumes to this series. Long live the Best American Nonrequired Reading!

Relations by Eula Biss || This essay was pretty amazing and while it focused on the differences between white and black, I feel like the insights it makes can be umbrella-ed over all the races. I feel like on a spectrum of color with white being at one end and black at the other, I feel like all the other races, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, can all kind of choose their location between these two extremes. Asians in particular. When I was younger, I used to think that race was a state of mind. If I thought and acted like I was white or rather that I wasn’t Asian, then I’d be treated accordingly. Ha. Life is a context sport, not an individual one. And no matter how much I may think I am something, doesn’t mean that anyone else will believe me. And the following quote really resonated with me. Because I feel that who I am, as a race, depends on what context I am in. I want a word that defines me for who I am, an American part of a white family, who has been expected to be Asian because that’s what she looks like, who unfortunately has no idea how to be Asian, other than the horrible stereotypes that have been dictated by movies and other mainstream media.

“‘I feel like an unknown quantity,’ my cousin remarked at some point during the year that we lived together. She was referring to the algebraic term, the unknown quantity x, which must be solved for, or defined, by the numbers in the equation around it.”

Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side by Nathan Englander || Maybe nothing we know about our families is true. In the best efforts of making each other look the least foolish, the most gallant and the most respectable as possible, how much of our truths remain? Is there any truth to history? Our own and the world’s?

“51. The woman I love, the Bosnian, she is not Jewish. All the years I am with her, to my family, it’s as if she is not. My family so good at it now. My family so masterful. It’s not only the past that can be altered and forgotten and lost to the world. It’s real time now. It’s streaming. The present can be undone, too.”

The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn || I find this concept of becoming lost really interesting. I feel like here, trapped in this country, based in this house, I feel lost. I’ve never wanted to go and leave so much as I do now, when I know I can’t. I blame it on immigration. But if I did have the chance to leave, to do as I please, would I even know what that was?

“Here’s a secret. Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. … When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else – an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood – or it may be easier to blame the map you were given – folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print – but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.”

“I’m making this all up now from memory. I have the book on my bookshelf but I’m afraid to open it, in case I find out that the power it held over me proves to be thin, silly, superficial.”

“I tried to imagine what might happen if each of them knew how important their lives were.”

Wild Berry Blue by Rivka Galchen || I feel that sometimes I hang on way too long to things. Years later I’ll find my mind has wandered into an embarrassing memory and I’ll have to mini-scream it away. I hang on to things for too long. I’ll crimson at something that I’m sure no one else remembers. Yet the weight of it never eases. Time does not heal it. And I find myself constantly caught in the wonder of ‘what if’. All the past crushes, the past friendships, the past tensions visit me and I find myself pondering a completely different past. One that always manages to find this real present, but that has absolved me of all my past shames or regrets.

“They slip out from under their own control.”

“I never got over him. I never get over anyone.”

A Product of This Town by J. Malcolm Garcia || I like the idea of going somewhere where everyone is starting. Either starting anew or starting over. I think that’s the power of college. Or of moving into a newly developed neighborhood. Everyone is converging at once. We’re all open to possibilities. We’re all fresh and excited about what lay ahead. Those were always the times when I made friends easily. When people were open to things they might have already considered having enough of. Because when you just move into something already established, you’re lucky if they even make room for you.

“White kid: …My momma says I should go to New Orleans. Black kid: Yeah, start over in a place where everyone’s starting over.”

Your Exhausted Heart by Anne Gisleson

“disaster tourists”

Further Notes on My Unfortunate Condition by Nick St. John || I really enjoyed his illustrations. I’m finding that comics and illustration has become edgier, more mature, away from the childish assumptions. There are so many memories I wish were stronger. Life fades so quickly. Something that was so important, isn’t frozen in a moment of time, but rather it thaws, it melts as you progress into the future. To a point where, I guess, nothing but the empty spot remains. And sometimes you’re lucky to have the void to remind you.

If I had to trace back my life to a single point in time that altered my life. I think it’d have to be deciding to go on Semester at Sea. Looking back, it feels like I made that decision in a heartbeat. I heard about it, I applied, I sent in my deposit and I went. I can thank that former self for what has become my life.

“But it’s the memory I wish had been stronger than any other.”

“This event to which I trace all of the best parts of myself.”