I started writing lyric essays long before I knew the language for what I was doing. Working at the intersection of poetry and prose, I wrote about big emotions (love, grief) because I wasn’t sure how else to convey…
When my mother died, I inherited a sizeable goldenrod-coloured envelope; inside, I discovered birthday cards given to me from family members throughout my childhood, handmade get-well cards crafted by classmates upon the occasion of having one of several surgeries…
“My memory serves me far too well.” —George Michael 1979 I’ve heard the story a hundred times. Fourteen phone call attempts before my mother snagged my brother’s first babysitter, Sarah, a quick-witted high school sophomore. She showed up from…
BAŅUTA RUBESS pioneered feminist theatre and contemporary opera to national renown in Canada and Latvia. She has lived in four countries and writes in two languages. She has written plays, libretti, radio drama, television biopics, stories, and…
Here’s a secret about movement: speed cares only about distance, but velocity is aware of direction. Here’s another secret about movement: every living creature on this planet is moving fast. But the body tricks us into not noticing the…
All spaces are haunted. In a way, all spaces are about memory. In A Summoning, “a conceptual, psychological experiment focused on memory,” Nicole McCarthy invites readers to sit and feel and think and remember. Throughout this fragmented collection, McCarthy…
In the winter of 2014, Sadaf Ferdowsi took a creative nonfiction class taught by Dr. Sarah Fay. A longtime contributor at The Paris Review, Fay taught her the interview form while instilling a healthy suspicion on the limits of…
January 2021 Today is a day when I hate my house, I hate it for all the things it will never be. For ceilings that are too high for lights in one room and too low for lights in…
After Lorna Simpson’s Head on Ice series and using language from testimonies of eleven Jane Does in the lawsuit against the handling of their sexual assault cases at Eastern Michigan University. Sandra No woman I know got ready with…
They always knock with questions and promises. They assure me that checking these boxes will only take a few. forward. minutes. But time winds serpentine when so many voices crescendo with each box that asks me to fit inside.…
To illustrate that dynamic identity, I used the refrain of “If I check this box” to reflect the recurring negotiation of marking a government form, inherently taking risks in order to participate in “America.” We feel deeply the danger of the stories that will be told about/for/against us if we divulge our identities and our truths that lay bare the violence of this country—“serpentine” traumas that make and remake us.
I write “we” and “our” with intention. In “Census,” I connect historically oppressed groups through “tacos,” “Kendrick and Tupac,” and “the Pacific” to show that these boxes should not divide and conquer us, but rather should fortify our solidarity against the systemic racism represented by the omnipresent “you.”
This piece is a response to the “you” that has historically silenced me and my peoples, that has not heard us, seen us, or given us what we needed. For once, instead of saying or doing what that “you” has demanded of me, I call out what “I’ll need.” This use of repetition is a call to action—a refusal to remain silent any longer, a chant to heal and galvanize the spirit to keep fighting even when beleaguered.
JADE HIDLE (she/her/hers) is a Vietnamese-Irish-Norwegian-American writer and educator. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her travel memoir, The Return to Viet Nam, was published by Transcurrent Press in 2016, and her work has also been featured in MQR Mixtape, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Northwest, Columbia Journal, and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. Follow Jade on Instagram @jadethidle.
