Genre: Essays

It was a shock to hear of Franklin Odo’s death in September 2022. I’d not known he’d been ill with cancer, so, when the news reached me in Oregon, where I teach, it was sudden. He was kupuna to me, …

Reflections on the anniversary of the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

When we were kids, my American-born siblings and I didn’t know the truth behind my father’s citizenship. He kept his immigration history an ironclad secret. We accused him …

There’s no light like Cape Cod light. People come from everywhere to paint by it. My mother told me this. It was 2015, and she’d just moved there, about an hour and a half from where I grew up in …

Dear reader,

The places, the hosts, the students have all started to blur together, I have to admit. I want to remember, but that has become increasingly difficult, especially during the pandemic when talks all went virtual. All the Zooms …

Soon after I purchased land in southwestern Wisconsin, a stranger from Missouri called me. “I’m your farm’s manager,” he said with a drawl. He had helped the widow who’d owned my property before me. Would I like to keep him …

Much has only gotten worse. In 2015, by the count of the people at the Gun Violence Archive, there were 335 mass shootings. (This term continues to have no set definition. For the GVA it is “four or more shot …

Magic These Days

How can we believe we are magic if our hearts are constantly being shattered? Last April, Auntie Carol, who turned an abandoned lot into a community garden next to her house, stopped eating and willed herself …

If ever he writes a memoir, it will reliably contain the falsehood that in 2019 he quit the United States for Côte d’Ivoire to sit out the coronavirus pandemic. Also, perhaps that he wished to elude a great—and imminent—North American …