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Seaside Stories
Tayyaba, who moved here from Pakistan with her older brother and sister, precociously explains that she feels “most at peace” near the water.
V. Bensonhurst Girls
No matter what her ethnic background, a girl growing up in Bensonhurst coats the outer layer of her personality with strength, sass, and neighborhood pride. The girls of Bensonhurst exude genuine intensity in almost everything they do. If the time and place calls for dressing up, their hair and makeup will be meticulously arranged; when there is nothing particular to do, they master how to look spontaneously mussed up. Even ambivalence is emphasized with an exaggerated shrug. Such behaviors may sound contrived, but on the streets of Bensonhurst they are perfectly natural.
As these Bishop Kearney girls head into their limo for the prom, cooing relatives and neighbors snap hundreds of photos, stopping traffic.
Outside Diva Dance Studio—motto: “we’re so glam we sweat glitter”—these three dressed up as little “dolls” for their picture day.
Irina and Robin hold their own during a very serious water fight—girls against boys—the first one of the summer.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Edwidge Danticat’s Everything Inside: Stories
By Yvonne C. GarrettSEPT 2019 | Books
Danticat’s writing is language stripped bare which lets her stories and characters breathe. There is a rising intensity in these stories from the first sentence of the first page that draws the reader in and demands we pay attention.
Ivelisse Rodriguez’s Love War Stories
By Yvonne C. GarrettOCT 2018 | Books
The women in Ivelisse Rodriguez’s debut collection differ in age, opportunity, and background but all share one commonality: they want to believe in love. But in a culture where they are taught that to be in love, to be desired by a man, is paramount and that little else matters, it is difficult for any woman to survive. Rodriguez’s women (and one boy) are complex, well-wrought, but cannot teach us anything except perhaps how to believe in or to survive love. These nine stories present a complex, multifaceted, and somewhat connected narrative of Puerto Rican life.
Aimee Parkison and Carol Guess’s Girl Zoo
By Melanie OdelleFEB 2019 | Books
If the girl is in print, then where is her body? Girl Zoo, a collaboration between Aimee Parkison and Carol Guess, published by Fiction Collective 2, takes us into the narrative negative, into the underworld of the missing, where the bodies of captured girls are perpetually contained and observable.
Lily Tuck’s Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories
By Joseph PeschelJUNE 2020 | Books
The collection’s best story is “Carl Schurz Park,” which concerns a murder and one of the murderers. In other stories, a woman finds a dead swan; people pictured in a 1950s photograph inspire a character study; and a fellow called Yann Johansen harasses a woman, once a Rajneeshee cultist, with odd and accusatory emails.
