[{"id":276920,"date":"2026-09-11T05:09:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276920"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:03:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T01:03:25","slug":"harlan-coben-answers-the-age-old-question-where-do-you-get-your-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/harlan-coben-answers-the-age-old-question-where-do-you-get-your-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Harlan Coben Answers the Age-Old Question: \u201cWhere Do You Get Your Ideas?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

This first appeared in Lit Hub\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Craft of Writing\u00a0newsletter\u2014sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cultivating a writer\u2019s mind frame means looking at the world a certain way\u2014that is, as a source of material. Everything you see is a potential writing prompt. Everything you experience should make you ask, \u201cWhat if…\u201d Most fiction writing starts by asking \u201cwhat if.\u201d For that matter, that\u2019s how most scientific advancements begin too. You need curiosity.
\n\u200b
\nEinstein said, \u201cI have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nI am fortunate enough to know a lot of successful artists, writers, creators, scientists, and entrepreneurs and so I often look for the one trait the best of the best all share:
\n\u200b
\nCuriosity. Genuine curiosity. Even better, childlike curiosity.
\n\u200b
\nWhat if<\/em> is the question of a curious child.
\n\u200b
\nIt\u2019s also one of the key ways we come up with and develop ideas. Not the only way. We will explore others. But true innovators keep asking \u201cWhat if?\u201d
\n\u200b
\n\u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u200b
\nSometimes, it\u2019s a simple \u201cwhat-if.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nLet me give you a quick example of how a \u201cwhat-if\u201d led to an idea for a novel.
\n\u200b
\nSo one day, when I was at my neighbor\u2019s house, I overheard their teenage kids talking about drinking and driving. This was in the pre-Uber days. I adored these teenagers. They were utterly fantastic kids. I felt obligated to do something, so when I knew their parents were out of earshot, I quietly pulled the teenagers aside and whispered, \u201cPromise me\u201d\u2014this would end up being the title of the book\u2014\u201cyou won\u2019t do that. Promise me you\u2019ll never get in a car with someone who has been drinking. Here\u2019s my phone number. I don\u2019t care what time it is. I don\u2019t care how far away you are or how drunk or stoned or high or whatever you are. Call me and I will come pick you up. No questions asked. I won\u2019t tell your parents. Just please, don\u2019t get in a car with someone who\u2019s been drinking.\u201d
\n\u200b
\nPerhaps some of you have done something similar. Either way, in the real world, this is the end of the story. These teens never called me. They grew up and are now fantastic adults and parents themselves.
\n\u200b
\nBut we are writers. We have the writer\u2019s mind frame and childlike curiosity.
\n\u200b
\nSo… what if?<\/em>
\n\u200b
\nWhat if a teenage girl\u2014let\u2019s call her Aimee\u2014calls my hero one night at 2 a.m. because of this promise? What if my hero\u2014let\u2019s call him Myron Bolitar\u2014drives into New York City and picks her up on a street corner and heads back into New Jersey and drops Aimee at a friend\u2019s house?
\n\u200b
\nAnd what if the next day Aimee is missing?
\n\u200b
\nWhat if no one at the house where Myron dropped her off even knows who she is?
\n\u200b
\nThat is the opening of my eighth Myron Bolitar novel, Promise Me<\/em>.
\n\u200b
\nThe what-ifs here gave me more than a (hopefully) engaging opening. They gave me conflict and situations and a ripe world that I wanted to explore. How would Aimee\u2019s parents react when they heard Myron made this promise and didn\u2019t tell them? How would Myron feel about his promise now? How would the reader feel? Was the promise a mistake? Should he have still told Aimee\u2019s parents? How would Myron react in the aftermath? There would be anguish and desperation and worry and guilt for sure. Myron would blame himself. He would have to search for Aimee.
\n\u200b
\nI love writing about all those things.
\n\u200b
\nBecause Myron was the last person with Aimee before she vanished, the police would suspect him. That might give me some story, but I wouldn\u2019t want to dwell on that. We\u2019ve all seen the guy we know didn\u2019t do it being made a suspect. It felt too done. I was far more interested in the reaction of Aimee\u2019s parents, of their small community, of Myron himself.
\n\u200b
\nOkay, good start. Now what?
\n\u200b
\nWell, what if I could link Aimee\u2019s disappearance to something else in Myron\u2019s life?
\n\u200b
\nOh, now we are cooking with gas…<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u200b
\nI don\u2019t just tolerate that question. I embrace it.<\/p>\n

Think like a writer. Keep the writer\u2019s mind frame. Keep noodling. No excuses. I try to live with this simple credo always in mind:<\/p>\n

If it helps me produce pages, good. If it doesn\u2019t, bad.<\/em><\/p>\n

The writer\u2019s mind frame means a part of you is always gnawing on a story. I\u2019m obliviously rude sometimes. My mind drifts off because I get caught up in an idea. I seem easily distracted.<\/p>\n

I am fortunate enough to know a lot of successful artists, writers, creators, scientists, and entrepreneurs and so I often look for the one trait the best of the best all share: Curiosity. Genuine curiosity. Even better, childlike curiosity. <\/p>\n

People close to me are used to it\u2014\u201cOh, Harlan is going off to La-La Land.\u201d They all get it. This doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m ignoring my friends and family. Well, maybe a little. But my family knows that I love them with my entire being. I have four kids. They are my world, but they also accept that this is a part of me. Dad will sometimes hold up his hand, ask for silence, start writing something down. Dad may go quiet or even vanish for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as bad as it sounds. The kids get a kick out of it.<\/p>\n

The writer\u2019s mindset also has a lot of advantages. You have to go to museums. You must read books. Lots of them. You have to watch movies and go to the theater. You have to travel and try new things and live out loud as much as you can because you need to keep ye olde brain pan stimulated and full.<\/p>\n

And you have to be ready.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, I carry a backpack with me all the time. In it I have a laptop, a legal pad, a smaller notebook, a potpourri of pens and writing instruments, even snacks. I clear the run- way, if you will, and never let anything get in the way of me wanting to write. I don\u2019t want to give the fickle muse a chance to wander or find another dance partner. I don\u2019t want to give the muse or myself any out. More practically, I don\u2019t want to waste time searching for that perfect pad or pen or electronic device\u2014because it\u2019s there. With me. In my backpack.<\/p>\n

No excuses, Coben. You got time.<\/p>\n

Write.<\/p>\n

Notice a theme here?<\/p>\n

That backpack is with me always. If I\u2019m meeting a friend for lunch or coffee, I often get there early and hey, this is a cool place to hang before my friend arrives. Let\u2019s write. Or I\u2019ll stay after the friend leaves the table and jot down some stuff if the caf\u00e9 owner is okay with it.<\/p>\n

I was never a Boy Scout, but I feel like the writer\u2019s version of one: Always be prepared.<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering, yes, the backpack is sitting next to me right now.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nExcerpted from<\/em> Plot Twist<\/a> by Harlan Coben. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Harlan Coben. Used by arrangement with Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This first appeared in Lit Hub\u2019s\u00a0Craft of Writing\u00a0newsletter\u2014sign up here. Cultivating a writer\u2019s mind frame means looking at the world a certain way\u2014that is, as a source of material. Everything you see is a potential writing prompt. Everything you experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32176,"featured_media":276947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6],"tags":[11185,14747,3401,112254,67126,112255,2741],"class_list":["post-276920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","tag-grand-central-publishing","tag-harlan-coben","tag-inspiration","tag-plot-twist","tag-the-craft-of-writing","tag-where-do-writers-get-their-ideas","tag-writing-advice"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a2s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/harlan-coben.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276557,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276557"},"modified":"2026-09-10T14:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:26:26","slug":"on-the-forgotten-enslavement-of-native-americans-and-its-central-role-in-u-s-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/on-the-forgotten-enslavement-of-native-americans-and-its-central-role-in-u-s-history\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Forgotten Enslavement of Native Americans and Its Central Role in US History"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a sun-\u00addrenched day in June 2018, a woman in traditional Native regalia dropped a large wreath of flowers into the Atlantic Ocean. The impact jostled loose a few petals before the circle of blossoms slowly drifted away on the luminescent blue Bermudian swells. All of the one hundred or so people gathered were silent, each absorbed by their own thoughts. In its departure, the wreath commemorated the journey of enslaved New England Native Americans to the island nearly four hundred years earlier.<\/p>\n

Within an hour, the somber commemoration by the sea turned into a vibrant two-\u00adday intertribal powwow. Representatives from the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and other nations in New England mingled with Bermuda Natives on St. David\u2019s Island as they participated in dancing, feasting, and communing. Men and boys fulfilled traditional roles around a large circular drum, beating it rhythmically. Dancers in brightly colored moccasins, robes, and headdresses shifted from one foot to the other in a line around the large grassy space encircled by tents. The smell of fry bread and stew wafted through the air, and for hours the singing and drumming drifted skyward as the flower wreath slowly caught a current and slipped out of sight into the open sea.<\/p>\n

Native American powwows are important cultural celebrations, but this one in Bermuda memorializes events often hidden in American history: the large-\u00adscale enslavement of Indigenous people and the simultaneous taking of Native land. The ancestors of the Bermuda powwow attendees were part of this buried and intertwined history.<\/p>\n

The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not just a side story in the grand drama of American history. It is the central river that connects all other streams.<\/p>\n

Nearly four hundred years earlier, New England puritans hunted down well over one thousand Pequots, Wampanoags, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and individuals from other nations and shipped them to Bermuda, Barbados, Spain, Mexico, and other international destinations. This took place during and after two wars between the puritans and local Indigenous populations. The first was the Pequot War in the 1630s, in which puritans tried to completely exterminate the Pequot nation. The second was King Philip\u2019s War in the 1670s, which was a massive uprising in response to the harms of colonialism. During and after both wars, puritans used large-scale enslavement of Native peoples to bolster their labor force and help clear land for colonial settlement.<\/p>\n

Native peoples in New England and Bermuda kept alive their family histories and stories throughout the centuries, even when colonial documents suppressed or omitted these connections. In Bermuda, enslaved Native Americans from New England and other regions eventually intermarried with enslaved and free Africans. After British emancipation in 1834, many of their descendants settled on St. David\u2019s Island, in the northern part of the archipelago. There they continued to work, connect, and intermarry into the twenty-\u00adfirst century, and they remain to this day.<\/p>\n

When St. David\u2019s Islanders and New England Natives started exploring this shared history in the late 1990s, they realized a vital reunification was taking place. Starting in 2002, the reconnection powwows like the one I attended in June 2018 have served as a meaningful way for Natives in both New England and Bermuda to bring together what the violence of colonialism tore apart. As Nives Filice, whose ancestors were enslaved and sent to Bermuda, told me over lunch in the capital city of Hamilton, \u201cReconnecting with people in New England plugged a hole that I didn\u2019t even know existed….When I first stepped foot on Mashpee Wampanoag tribal lands [in Massachusetts], I instantly felt a spiritual connection, like I was home.\u201d<\/p>\n

This book uses the concept of stealing to understand Native Americans\u2019 experiences of losing kin and land\u2014\u00adsomething I gleaned from many conversations with Native American collaborators and friends. Scholarly writing about slavery in the Americas\u2014\u00adwhich has mostly centered on Black enslavement\u2014\u00adhas emphasized its economic value in building plantations, wealth, and American capitalism. But Native Americans experienced slavery as stealing of relatives, as a community loss, and it was always intermingled with the stealing of their land and disregard for their sovereignty. From their perspectives, stealing people, whether for enslavement or by forcing children into boarding schools, and seizing land, in wars or through removals, represented tangible community losses as part of a longer-\u00adterm assault on their very existence.<\/p>\n

Although largely erased from public consciousness, Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon that spanned the entire Americas, ensnaring an estimated 3 million to 6 million Indigenous people between 1492 and 1880 from Canada to Brazil. In the area that later became the United States, as many as 600,000 Native Americans were enslaved during this period, with many more stolen from families into the twentieth century through boarding school, fostering, and adoption programs. In comparison, approximately 530,000 enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to North America (excluding Mexico) through 1865.<\/p>\n

These numbers reveal a shocking truth: American forefathers and foremothers enslaved Native Americans in roughly the same numbers as they imported enslaved Africans. Enslaved African-\u00addescended people later came to officially outnumber enslaved Natives through reproduction as well as the erasure of Native Americans from the records when individuals from the two groups intermarried. Still, Native slavery was far more prominent and long lasting in American history than we have realized.<\/p>\n

The enslavement of more than a half million Indigenous men, women, and children within the boundaries of what is now the United States is almost unthinkable because it defies what we have been taught about both American history and slavery. The conventional narrative of American slavery goes something like this: After Columbus \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Americas, the Spanish enslaved Native Americans in the Caribbean and South America until 1542, when it was outlawed and they instead started importing enslaved Africans. When the English landed in Jamestown in 1607, colonists first used white indentured servants but soon began importing enslaved Africans in 1619. This inaugurated the transatlantic African slave trade, which lasted until 1808, when it was banned by Congress. Black slavery expanded in the South until the American Civil War, when it was legally terminated by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.<\/p>\n

But that story is glaringly incomplete. Stealing America<\/em> dramatically expands this history by tracing Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession throughout the full range of American history. This wider story spans five centuries from the first enslavement of the Caribbean Lucayan and Ta\u00edno in 1492 to the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, which slowly halted the stealing of tens of thousands of Native children through adoptions. As Alexis Moreis (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag) has noted, \u201cWhen we are talking about Native American slavery, it always involves dispossession.\u201d There is not a time or place in American history when these intertwined stealings were not viscerally present. And yet this book is not a comprehensive Native American history of the continent, nor is it a detailed history of the United States. Rather, it tugs on the specific threads of Indigenous slavery and land loss, demonstrating their centrality to and ubiquity in every colony and state, in every era of American history.<\/p>\n

This centuries-\u00adlong saga is one of both persistent colonialism and Indigenous resilience. A vast diversity of Indigenous peoples across the continent have found ways to negotiate and survive the waves of invading Europeans and Americans from 1492 to the present. This resilience has manifested in many forms. Powerful Native nations and smaller communities resisted and limited colonial aggression through diplomacy, alliances, petitions and court cases, and wars of resistance. Stolen and enslaved Indigenous people formed new networks of kinship; learned new skills and languages; retained memories of family, kin, and rituals; and, through it all, continually plotted to return home.<\/p>\n

Colonization contained twists and turns. Native leaders and nations did not see themselves as universally on the same \u201cside\u201d as other Indigenous peoples and against all Europeans. Faced with foreign invasions, they made choices for survival and sovereignty that seem unexpected from a modern perspective. In some instances, Indigenous nations played surprising roles as collaborators with English merchants to conduct the large-\u00adscale slave trade of Native peoples, including in the Carolinas, Utah, and even Central America. As Narragansett scholar Mack Scott has noted, \u201cNative Americans had their own histories, networks, goals, and purposes apart from European invaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

This double theft was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States\u2014not just initially but throughout all of American history.<\/p>\n

Although Stealing America<\/em> focuses on the history of Indigenous slavery and land loss, this history also frequently intermingles with the story of African slavery. These are not competing histories since at times they connect and overlap. Nor does focusing on Native slavery minimize the weighty importance of Black slavery in US history. The damage and dislocation caused by Native enslavement and dispossession are part of a broader, layered, and \u201cmultidirectional\u201d trauma in American history that involves Native Americans and African Americans, as well as Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, refugees, immigrants, and other historically marginalized populations. These injustices also coalesce with innumerable historical and contemporary global histories of genocide and displacement. Such stories, along with the incredible resilience of populations harmed by colonialism, need to be told and understood to promote justice and healing. And yet this particular history of Indigenous enslavement and land theft in American history has been so obscured that it merits its own telling.<\/p>\n

The stealing of Native Americans and their homelands is not just a side story in the grand drama of American history. It is the central river that connects all other streams, coursing through the landscape of this country\u2019s past like the muddy, serpentine Mississippi, which bisects the continent and allows everything around it to flourish. Native American enslavement was not just the \u201cother\u201d slavery, merely adding to the labor pool of the colonies and eventually the United States. Instead, enslaving Native Americans furthered colonization in a more fundamental, two-\u00adpronged way. Stealing and enslaving Native Americans from coveted lands was stunningly effective since it provided colonists with labor and land at the same time. The loss of Native individuals led to the destabilization of Indigenous family units and entire communities. This diminished tribes\u2019 abilities to maintain demographic and vital community presence, making them easier to control, remove, or even legally terminate, or so colonists hoped.<\/p>\n

This double theft was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States\u2014\u00adnot just initially but throughout all of American history. It is a powerful but overlooked process that has helped the United States become the superpower it is today.<\/p>\n

How so? The financial strength and geographical spread of the American colonies and the United States emerged from stolen land and enslaved labor. Native Americans were forced to provide both. Fertile lands afforded the capacity to grow export crops that supported farmers and made plantation owners fabulously wealthy. Forests delivered lumber to build ships and barrels for transporting goods that allowed the United States to become a global trading power. A landscape teeming with deer, beaver, and buffalo provided boatloads of pelts and hides that sold for millions of dollars in Europe. Land itself was a commodity, representing wealth and financial stability; for centuries, owning it allowed white men to vote.<\/p>\n

Without stolen Native lands, there would be no American capitalism and no nineteenth-\u00adcentury cotton kingdom; no homesteading rush and push for the individual home ownership so central to the American dream; no majestic national parks, which still are sacred to Native Americans; and no prime waterfront locations for twenty-\u00adfirst-\u00adcentury financial and cultural centers like New York City, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From <\/em>Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History<\/a> by Linford D. Fisher. Copyright \u00a9 2026. Available from Liveright Publishing Corporation, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company. <\/em>Stealing America has been shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a sun-\u00addrenched day in June 2018, a woman in traditional Native regalia dropped a large wreath of flowers into the Atlantic Ocean. The impact jostled loose a few petals before the circle of blossoms slowly drifted away on the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31927,"featured_media":276592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43092],"tags":[111978,13038,6505,60417,71456,109775,65822,41981,2727,109776,12598],"class_list":["post-276557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","tag-2026-cundill-history-prize","tag-american-history","tag-colonialism","tag-cundill-history-prize","tag-indigenous-history","tag-linford-d-fisher","tag-liveright-publishing-corporation","tag-native-american-history","tag-slavery","tag-stealing-america-the-hidden-story-of-indigenous-slavery-in-u-s-history","tag-w-w-norton-and-company","story-type-cundill-history-prize"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19WB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/native-american-slavery.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276814,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276814"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:42:59","slug":"on-the-existential-threat-of-palestinian-kites-to-colonial-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/on-the-existential-threat-of-palestinian-kites-to-colonial-power\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Existential Threat of Palestinian Kites to Colonial Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is an old colonizer adage<\/a> that “the old will die and the young will forget.\u201d In fact, Israel built its future wagering that the Palestinians violently displaced and expelled in the Nakba<\/a> would eventually move on, assimilate, forget the depravity that ripped them from their land. But now, the occupation seems to tremble before Palestinian children holding paper and string.<\/p>\n

Khaled Al Khateeb<\/a> and his siblings spent a week making a kite from scraps they found at home, and when it finally flew, it was as if Khaled himself was soaring above the clouds, above the drones and the bombs that loomed over his entire life. This kite, like all Palestinians, suddenly became an existential threat to the colonizers.<\/p>\n

Last month, Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that kites would be treated like drones; Benjamin Netanyahu threatened<\/a>\u00a0that the people launching them could be killed. Everything but paper and string had already been stolen from Khaled and his friends, yet Israel, after\u00a0vaporizing<\/a>\u00a0thousands of children and burying thousands more\u00a0beneath<\/a>\u00a0the homes it leveled, declared itself endangered by kites. Why? Because colonial powers have always feared the child who survives its violence and continues to imagine a sky beyond its rule.<\/p>\n

Hope is rebellion in its youngest form; it is the guileless expectation of a tomorrow the colonizer has already claimed for itself.<\/p>\n

Khalid\u2019s kite frightens Israel because Khalid himself does. A Palestinian does not need to take up arms (although they would be within their legally recognized right to do so) to threaten a state built on their disappearance. It is enough that he grows old, remembers, and inherits a right to the land\u2014a right that cannot be erased by the passage of time or by displacement to wherever Israel deems proper.<\/p>\n

Hope is rebellion in its youngest form; it is the guileless expectation of a tomorrow the colonizer has already claimed for itself. At the height of Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza, women and children accounted for close to\u00a0seventy percent<\/a>\u00a0of those murdered, proportionally more than any other recorded genocide in the last century.\u00a0A school bus of children every day<\/em>. I will never forget the first time I saw a father collect the parts of his child in a plastic bag. What were their crimes?<\/em> I wondered, I continue to wonder.<\/p>\n

In the West Bank, bombs were replaced by bullets and clubs. The IDF shot seven-month-old\u00a0Sam Fahd Abu Haikal<\/a>\u00a0through the head inside his family\u2019s car and\u00a0murdered<\/a> fourteen-year-old Amer Rabee as he picked almonds with his friends. Earlier this month, settlers killed<\/a> two teenagers in a raid on the village of al-Mughayyir. A Palestinian child is Palestine in the future tense. Israel wages war against Palestinian children because it cannot tolerate Palestinian adulthood. Israel wages war on childhood because a Palestinian child at play is already trespassing upon the future Israel has reserved for itself. Israel robs children of their smallest joys because joy is the seed of hope, and that is how the body learns that captivity is not the natural condition of life. That they too are born free, even inside a cage.<\/p>\n

Israel wages war against Palestinian children because it cannot tolerate Palestinian adulthood.<\/p>\n

Fifteen years ago, more than 13,000 Palestinian children who\u00a0gathered<\/a>\u00a0on Al Waha Beach filled Gaza\u2019s sky with enough kites to claim a world record. Long before those children reached upward, Palestinians had already learned to build freedom from whatever the occupation could not confiscate. When Israel\u00a0closed<\/a>\u00a0schools and universities during the First Intifada, lessons moved into homes, mosques, and churches.\u00a0Popular committees<\/a>\u00a0stored food for curfews, set up clinics, and planted backyard gardens (until Israel outlawed them in 1988). Two decades later, the IDF would storm Palestinian community centers, confiscating flags and shutting down\u00a0celebrations<\/a>. In 2018,\u00a0during<\/a> the Great March of Return, Gazans peacefully protested, baked bread, danced Dabke, and celebrated marriages. Israel responded by killing hundreds and injuring thousands.<\/p>\n

This attempt by Israel to muzzle hope and stifle joy keeps repeating itself in all aspects of Palestinian life. During the 2026 FIFA world cup, Israel\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0the primary organizer of watch parties in Gaza; in 2014, children were\u00a0bombed<\/a>\u00a0while playing soccer by the beach. Recently, the IDF\u00a0stormed<\/a>\u00a0a wedding in Al Eizariya. In 2013, a bride wearing a white dress and kufiyah traveled from Nazareth toward her groom in the West Bank until soldiers\u00a0stopped<\/a>\u00a0her bus at an\u00a0illegal<\/a>\u00a0checkpoint. In Gaza, last December, Mustafa and Nesma Al Borsh married after waiting two years, then Israel\u00a0bombed<\/a>\u00a0the school shelter where they were expected to live\u2014Mustafa\u2019s eight-year-old nephew was killed in the blast. The groom spent his wedding night wearing his family\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n

The soldiers and settlers can be relied upon to stifle joy, waiting at the olive harvests, along the coasts, and at checkpoints where women are forced to give birth on the sides of the road. A settler\u00a0shot<\/a>\u00a0Bilal Saleh while he picked olives besides his wife and children. Israeli forces killed Mohammed Bakr while he\u00a0fished<\/a>\u00a0with his family. Soldiers held back Nahil Ridah\u2019s ambulance until she delivered her stillborn child at a checkpoint. Israel\u00a0destroyed a desalination plant that supplied ten million liters of water each day<\/a>, left\u00a0only three percent of Gaza\u2019s cropland accessible and undamaged<\/a>, and diverted a West Bank spring for Palestinian watermelons into\u00a0a swimming pool for Israeli settlers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The defining feature of Israeli apartheid is to make Palestinian life unbearable until our removal can be recorded as an act of free will. Colonizers call it\u00a0voluntary emigration<\/a>, but there is nothing voluntary about fleeing after your home has been bombed, your fields poisoned, your water cut off and your child buried. Israel offers Palestinians exile or death and expects to preserve its innocence, but\u00a0 innocence is buried with our martyrs.<\/p>\n

Who might we become when survival no longer consumes the entire imagination? What lives have been postponed by the labor of remaining alive? Colonialism cannot permit such questions because each assumes that its rule will end, that the people it has confined to grief will one day have the freedom to desire beyond it. Joy asks those questions anyway, allowing us to encounter parts of ourselves that occupation did not author and cannot explain. Our grief keeps the stolen world from disappearing, and our joy keeps the thief from determining the world that follows. What should come after the colonizer? People who have lived even fragments of freedom together are harder to persuade that domination is eternal.<\/p>\n

Palestinians possess no natural gift for grief and there is nothing beautiful about enduring destruction and death.<\/p>\n

After Israel destroyed Jenin refugee camp during the Second Intifada in 2002,\u00a0a young girl looked into Mohammad Bakri\u2019s camera<\/a> and said that Palestinians would live proudly as eagles and die standing like lions. Twenty-four years after that girl spoke from Jenin, Palestinians in Gaza are still refusing to kneel. During the genocide, children gathered outside Al Shifa and organized their own press conference<\/a>\u00a0to tell the world they wanted to live, mothers found ways to feed their families after Israeli forces\u00a0killed Palestinians waiting for flour<\/a>, and fathers raised tents again after Israel burned down the place it had called a safe zone<\/a>. Now workers are\u00a0crushing concrete and twisted metal into roads, shelter floors, and spaces for community kitchens<\/a>. In Al Mawasi, wood, sheet metal, and solar panels have become six university halls serving hundreds of students each day<\/a>. At the Great Omari Mosque, volunteers use paintbrushes to lift dust and gunpowder from\u00a0the few thousand books that survived from a collection of twenty thousand<\/a>. Hanadi Muhanna and her father are\u00a0rebuilding the Al Qarara seed bank<\/a>, gathering indigenous wheat, spinach and barley. Foreign leaders continue debating who should be entrusted to rebuild Gaza, as though Palestinians will not reclaim freedom with our own hands and rebuild it ourselves.<\/p>\n

But do not mistake this with resilience, a convenience that admires the survivor without accusing the person who made survival necessary. Palestinians possess no natural gift for grief and there is nothing beautiful about enduring destruction and death. Admiration is cheaper than respecting Palestinian life.\u00a0Sumud<\/em>\u00a0(steadfastedness) is more demanding. Sumud denies the colonizer their desire to record history in our blood. Hope amid genocide makes no prediction that our killers will one day discover mercy; rather, it begs us to remember that mercy ourselves, to prevent the violence and blood and ghosts from consuming our ability to imagine and fight for liberation.<\/p>\n

So please do not celebrate Palestinian steadfastness as though we were placed on this earth to provide inspiring images of survival between massacres. End the siege, impose sanctions and an arms embargo, dismantle occupation and apartheid, and return the land and political power Israel has taken.<\/p>\n

In another life, Gaza was never besieged,\u00a0AI-guided guns were never mounted in Al Khalil<\/a>\u00a0to lock onto Palestinian bodies,\u00a0Jaffa was<\/a>\u00a0never turned onto a mass grave, and those\u00a0murdered at Deir Yassin<\/a> grew old in their homes. In another life, Khalid could fly his kite. Palestinian children could be ordinary children\u2014bored, mischievous, happy, alive. But another life is too generous to those who stole this one. We were entitled to the life they destroyed. What can joy give a child inside a cage? The first knowledge that the cage is not the world. The will of the occupied will always outlive the will of the occupier. A child at play has already imagined a life beyond violence and, for a moment, begun to live there.<\/p>\n

The sky is still larger than those occupying it, and Palestine remains larger than the violence devoted to emptying it of Palestinians. We have hope because a child in Gaza can look past their cage and still see the sky. In this life, we will be free, from the river to the sea, and kites will fly again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an old colonizer adage that “the old will die and the young will forget.\u201d In fact, Israel built its future wagering that the Palestinians violently displaced and expelled in the Nakba would eventually move on, assimilate, forget the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32157,"featured_media":276816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43095],"tags":[112235,8632,13187,1209,40299,6841,1210],"class_list":["post-276814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-politics","tag-ahmad-ibsais","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-kites","tag-occupation","tag-palestine"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a0K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Al-Waha-Beach-Kites.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276881,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276881"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:47:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:47:53","slug":"what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-11-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-11-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Cline\u2019s\u00a0Switzy<\/em>, Francis Fukuyama\u2019s\u00a0In the Realm of the Last Man<\/em>, and R.F. Kuang\u2019s\u00a0Taipei<\/em>\u00a0all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.<\/p>\n

Brought to you by\u00a0Book Marks<\/a>, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"Switzy<\/a><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Switzy<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Emma Cline
\n(Random House)<\/strong><\/p>\n

5 Rave \u2022 3 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s hypnotic about this novel is the illusion that we\u2019re watching a mind decaying even as it engineers its own expiration. Cline manages to pull the dramatic irony increasingly tight without letting us see the strings \u2026 She holds out her hand to the essential yearning in every human being, to that desire that persists until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Ron Charles Substack<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Taipei<\/a><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Taipei Story<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by R.F. Kuang
\n(William Morrow)<\/strong><\/p>\n

4 Rave \u2022 3 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed \u2022 1 Pan
\nRead an interview with R.F. Kuang\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf Kuang\u2019s early books often come across as the product of market research on what a certain type of reader wants in their fantasy fiction,\u00a0Taipei Story<\/em>\u00a0has the authenticity of genuine self-expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Laura Miller (Slate<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

=3.\u00a0The Pirate Queen<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Ariel Lawhon
\n(Doubleday)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave \u2022 1 Positive<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cImmersive \u2026 Through the novel\u2019s engaging format, readers not only come to know Grace as the formidable historic leader, but also as an ambitious girl, passionate woman, and fierce mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Patricia Smith (Booklist<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

=3.\u00a0The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Ken Liu
\n(Saga Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave \u2022 1 Positive
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0The Passing of the Dragon<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cKen Liu\u2019s stories are not just about the future: they are the future \u2026 Liu is the kind of writer who can make such topics as viscerally thrilling as a Lee Child action sequence \u2026 The more I think about it, the more Liu reminds me oddly of Dostoyevsky \u2026 Whatever he writes next, I shall be first in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

5.\u00a0The Living Realm<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Jordan Tannahill<\/strong>
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n

2 Rave \u2022 1 Pan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSlim but astonishing \u2026 Those expecting the novel to replicate that show\u2019s raunchy titillation will instead find in\u00a0The Living Realm<\/em>\u00a0a far more elegiac, meditative work. Tannahill writes as gorgeously about nature\u2026as he does about bodies \u2026 Extraordinary and sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Christopher Bollen (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

**<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonfiction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Ambivalence\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Ambivalence<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Brian Dillon
\n(New York Review of Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave \u2022 4 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0Ambivalence<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the elegance of Dillon\u2019s prose\u2014the book is a page-by-page pleasure\u2014there is a risk of losing the reader. First because the writers he loves are a minority pursuit \u2026 So strong is his passion for his way of finding himself in the world, so dedicated is he to be true to his idols, that we long for him to make it. And this book is proof that he did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013John Self (The Financial Times<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Francis Fukuyama
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n

5 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201che most dramatic passages of his memoir describe Fukuyama\u2019s break with his neoconservative milieu over the war in Iraq \u2026 Less\u2026a personal memoir than as an inner monologue of post-cold war liberalism \u2026 The memoir is not the apologia of a prophet whose prophecy failed. It is the record of a moment when liberalism learnt to live in the present tense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Ivan Krastev (The Financial Times<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Frenchman<\/a><\/p>\n

=3.\u00a0Frenchman Flat: The Rise and Fall of Atomic Bombs<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Jon Else
\n(Belknap)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThrough absorbing, sharp-eyed prose, the book traces the entire history of atomic bombs \u2026 The historical and scientific narrative is punctuated by personal stories \u2026 Gripping.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Eileen Gonzalez (Foreword Reviews<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Tower<\/a><\/p>\n

=3.\u00a0Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Alan Taylor<\/strong>
\n(Random House)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA rich and compelling new study of the Blow plantation \u2026 Reads like a nonfiction version of William Faulkner\u2019s\u00a0Absalom, Absalom!<\/em>\u00a0\u2026 A quietly devastating epilogue brings the story of the scarred landscape around Tower Hill up to the present.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Richard Kreitner (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a><\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by James Muldoon<\/strong>
\n(Faber & Faber)<\/strong><\/p>\n

5 Positive<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cExistentially chilling \u2026 Muldoon warns of the dangers of \u2018the synthetic social\u2019, but also even-handedly suggests that the most awkward or wounded among us could benefit from the bots. I think not. The future that\u00a0Love Machines<\/em>\u00a0sketches is a dehumanized hell. I advocate hitting control-alt-delete on the whole business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Sarah Ditum (The Times<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Cline\u2019s\u00a0Switzy, Francis Fukuyama\u2019s\u00a0In the Realm of the Last Man, and R.F. Kuang\u2019s\u00a0Taipei\u00a0all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by\u00a0Book Marks, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews. * 1.\u00a0Switzy\u00a0by Emma Cline (Random House) 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":873,"featured_media":276882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[15654,13821,33508],"class_list":["post-276881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","tag-book-marks","tag-book-reviews","tag-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a1P","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Switzy.avif","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276598,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276598"},"modified":"2026-09-07T20:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T00:53:09","slug":"tom-cole-on-autofiction-shame-based-writing-and-being-an-unreliable-narrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/tom-cole-on-autofiction-shame-based-writing-and-being-an-unreliable-narrator\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cole on Autofiction, Shame-Based Writing, and Being an Unreliable Narrator"},"content":{"rendered":"

If at all possible, it is best to do whatever Thora Siemsen says.<\/p>\n

So when she said \u201cCan I send you a copy of this?\u201d about Tom Cole\u2019s forthcoming monologue Chimes<\/em> published by The Song Cave, without any context, I got excited. It\u2019s exactly the kind of book you want to send to someone without context, like a really good psychic or money. It\u2019s a slim volume, which means it feels like a present instead of a burden. I related so much to the inner world of this gay ranter at the center of Chimes.<\/p>\n

I understood that it took place in the early days of COVID, but it also felt so timeless, like we’re just kind of constantly living through these periods of profound isolation and crisis and normalcy and absurdity. I wasn\u2019t familiar with Tom\u2019s work previously only because he\u2019s not on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills<\/em> which is where I source most of my cultural references. But after reading Chimes and then talking with him in my apartment during an intense thunderstorm, I am a Tom Cole nationalist. I hope you will send this book to some other lonely degenerate who is just trying to avoid the rain, with no context.<\/p>\n

\u2013Morgan Bassichis<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Morgan Bassichis<\/strong>: Chimes<\/i> was the very first thing I read after closing my show Can I Be Frank?, <\/i>about another neurotic queer monologist, the late Frank Maya, and your monologue just felt like such a buoy and a balm in that weird and disorienting time after finishing something. I just gobbled it up and feel really grateful to have gotten to read it, and to now get to talk to you about it. On a really practical level, what was the process of writing this?<\/p>\n

Tom Cole<\/strong>: Well, I presented sections of<\/i> Chimes<\/i> as an episodic audio play at Le Petit Versailles, a community garden in the East Village in the summer of 2020. We installed speakers at the edge of this beautiful garden and invited people to enter and listen to the drama as it unfolded in 45-minute episodes, a new one each week, over four weeks. I wrote it as fiction, and hope it reads that way, but with a theatrical flair\u2014a hybrid. My feeling was that a monologue could seem immediate, more enjoyable and readable than a straightforward play with multiple characters, additional stage directions, etc.<\/p>\n

I’m not a reliable narrator of my own experience, and I’m trying to capture that.<\/p>\n

The first draft of Chimes<\/i> was more than twice as long as the completed monologue. I entered into an extreme editing process to bring the work down to its current 120 pages. I took over 1000 notes from my editors at The Song Cave. I killed a lot of darlings partly because\u00a0 wanted the book to be short enough that it could be read in a day or two, and for that, I hope it feels like a show as much as it does a book.<\/p>\n

TC: <\/strong>One of the things that I love about your work is your use of humor while dealing with very complex, difficult issues. That was my goal with this. I don’t know if you can tell I’m going for a laugh at every turn.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Oh, big time. A crying queen is a scheming queen.<\/i> I mean, one of the best lines I’ve ever read.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: At some point during one of your shows you have a line about a person dying if they don\u2019t get a laugh.<\/p>\n

MG<\/strong>: Oh, thank you for remembering that joke: I have a medical condition in which if you don’t laugh, I’ll die. Maybe not immediately, but definitely at some point.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I have the same condition!<\/p>\n

I’m grappling with the idea of the label “autofiction.” Would you refer to your work that way, as it seems to be so much about you? You’re also clearly performing a show, and that isn’t all true. What do you consider it?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I don’t really think about it. Or, you know, for it to be funny it has to be true on some level. But that doesn’t mean it has to have happened. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Yes.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Steve Martin has a great quote: “What\u2019s funny is what\u2019s happening, and there\u2019s always something happening, so there\u2019s always something funny.” And so it could<\/i> be<\/i> true on some level, but it’s not real. Or, it’s real… but it’s not true. I don’t feel any responsibility to stay inside of the facts. And also, I don’t always know what actually happened. Like, my perspective is not particularly dependable. I’m not a reliable narrator of my own experience, and I’m trying to capture that. On some level, I think your unnamed narrator, of course, is deeply<\/i> unreliable. But also very reliable, in terms of their emotional truth. In my show I say my name is Morgan. Do you think of this character as Tom?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m definitely a shame-based writer.

<\/p><\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: No. I purposefully left his name out, for a couple of reasons. I wanted to make sure that people understood that this was autofiction and not memoir, because so much of this didn’t happen, or happened in a very different way. It would be unethical to pretend that this is my story. It is very much constructed in order to get to the truth. But I can say that the emotional truth of the book relates to my core. What was it like for you to read this with a nameless narrator?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I read it as if I was saying it. I was putting myself in the place of the narrator, and I suppose his not having a name made that more possible. It was kind of like this is just a psyche that I get to inhabit. And I enjoyed that experience the book gave me. So I wasn’t thinking, what’s their name? What’s the back story?<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: The real-life aspect of the things that inspired me to write this book were so much grimmer than the book itself and not actually very funny. It’s all so much worse in real life!<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I find that the more you tell the ugly truth, the more people are like, yeah, that’s me too. It’s universal<\/i>, especially the parts that we think are kind of bad, or absolutely shameful.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I\u2019m definitely a shame-based writer.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Oh, me too.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>:\u00a0 I grew up in Louisiana and North Carolina, and identify as a Southern writer, even though I have lived in New York for a long time. I love Southern Gothic writing. There’s a certain kind of gentility and politeness, and then on the flip side, dark humor and grotesquerie. I think you can tell from reading the book I was raised Catholic, and I feel like there\u2019s a Catholic shame-based judgmentalism that, for better or worse, drives a lot of who I am and how I write.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: What do you personally get out of writing towards the shame?<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Hmm\u2026it’s where I feel heat. And when I feel the kind of heat that tends to accompany my shame or embarrassment, I know I am onto something that should be included, even if it makes me uncomfortable. These are the sections I find audiences connect to in a more profound way. It’s a really masochistic way to work!<\/p>\n

A few years ago, some of this book was excerpted in the anthology Eileen Myles edited, Pathetic Literature<\/i>. On tour with Eileen to promote that book, I was really nervous about how this material was going to be perceived. People might think it was awful. Am I actually going to stand up and read this in front of all these people? And people laughed! They are related. I feel you might relate to that too with your work?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I mean, I think of performing as being incredibly masochistic. Literally, my work is to try to make strangers laugh and to stare at their faces. I’m basically opening up my entire innards for them. And I see that also in the narrator of Chimes<\/i>, the masochism of the narrator, the velocity of his needs. It’s almost like a compulsion.Performing is often hell. I mean, when it’s good it\u2019s good, but often I experience it as a kind of masochism. Humiliation.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Right.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Can I read you a line from Chimes<\/i> that I thought was a really good joke?<\/p>\n

ToeTag loved me. His screen name referred to the tags you find tied to the toes of corpses. I love ToeTag back. We never spoke because when he came over, I was dead.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Perfect. A perfect… relationship, really! A perfect relationship, a perfect poem, a perfect joke.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I really like that ToeTag goes as far as to pay for his pedicures. Don’t you find that above and beyond?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I mean, that\u2019s sexual hospitality right there. I find something so liberating in the depravity of this book. Sometimes when you’re gay and you look around at your life, you\u2019re like, this is so depraved. Like, this is crazy, what is happening right now?! I felt what I believe is called \u201cseen\u201d in this book.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I\u2019m really thrilled to hear that. I wanted it to be a different reading experience, to be fast, like you’re in… and you\u2019re out,<\/i> almost like going to a show, but of course you’re reading it. And I wanted it to be really fun and enjoyable, even though it’s about what it’s about, you know?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Mission accomplished. After finishing it I immediately asked The Song Cave if they could send an advance copy to my friend Neil Greenberg, because I just knew he was going to love it, too.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I think Neil\u2019s a genius. And he worked with you on Can I be Frank?<\/i><\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: He is the reason the show happened, not only because he took meticulous care of Frank’s archive and welcomed me into Frank\u2019s world, but also because Neil is a true artist himself. He understands that artists have to also make their own work, that even archivally-driven work needs to go its own way.\u00a0 He kept saying, \u201cMake your own piece of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>It really feels like you’re untangling American sexuality by going directly into the tangle.<\/p>\n

Now, you’ve done a lot of labor to cultivate and welcome other people’s work, through your day job commissioning and producing theater, and the work you do at Dixon Place and with other artists. You are kind of midwifing, doulaing other people\u2019s art. And that is, trigger warning, sorry to use the word sacred, but it really is sacred work. What’s your dream for Chimes<\/i>, for your own work? If you could snap your fingers, would it be you performing this or somebody else?<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: I have a complicated answer to that question. I’d rather it be someone else, but I think, also, that maybe there’s something about doing it myself that might make it more touching or pathetic. I don’t know. What do you think?<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: I think you owe it to yourself to try, even just as an experiment. If you immediately skipped over it and said it had to be somebody else performing it, there would always be that question of\u00a0 \u201cShould I have done that?\u201d<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: But if someone came to me and said, hey, I’m interested in doing something with this monologue myself, I wouldn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Can I keep reading parts to you? This is not me auditioning! Or maybe it is! There’s this scene in a hotel, where the narrator is a teenager, and is sleeping in the same hotel room with his parents, with the father basically forcing the mother to have sex.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: My father woke up, got on top of my mother, humped her, dazed.\u00a0 Only half awake, she said, <\/i>not now, but he kept humping and humping and she rolled away, him, mad.\u00a0 I was titillated, repulsed.\u00a0 While he pseudo-forced my mother to have sex I closed my eyes and fantasized about being downstairs in the grimy bathroom, on my knees, blindfolded, waiting, a fat boy waiting to take all comers.\u00a0 And then it shifted\u2014some part of me wanted to be my mother. She didn\u2019t get him off. He got out of bed and I heard him jerk off into the toilet. I was thinking, I\u2019d have gotten him off.<\/i><\/p>\n

It really feels like you’re untangling American sexuality by going directly into the tangle. I just love it.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Thank you. I like that you were laughing when you just read that.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: That part? Yeah. All of it. Oh, also this quote: I had a lot of sexual energy as a child<\/i>. I mean, that could be like the title of \u2026.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Our interview.<\/p>\n

MB<\/strong>: Our shared memoir! I had a lot of sexual energy as a child, <\/i>for sure.<\/p>\n

TC<\/strong>: Should we put that up at the top? Let’s put that up at the top. Let’s try it.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chimes<\/a>\u00a0by Tom Cole is available from the Song Cave.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If at all possible, it is best to do whatever Thora Siemsen says. So when she said \u201cCan I send you a copy of this?\u201d about Tom Cole\u2019s forthcoming monologue Chimes published by The Song Cave, without any context, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31936,"featured_media":276603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6,43072,43092],"tags":[7299,112142,1149,41770,112144,27270,112143,13552],"class_list":["post-276598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-in-conversation","category-newsandculture","tag-autofiction","tag-chimes","tag-craft","tag-in-conversation","tag-morgan-bassichis","tag-the-song-cave","tag-tom-cole","tag-writing-process"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Xg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chimes-convo.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276612,"date":"2026-09-11T05:06:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276612"},"modified":"2026-09-07T20:59:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T00:59:42","slug":"late-summer-in-the-anthropocene-a-poem-by-marcus-wicker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/late-summer-in-the-anthropocene-a-poem-by-marcus-wicker\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLate Summer in the Anthropocene,\u201d a Poem by Marcus Wicker"},"content":{"rendered":"

& our hibiscus is on that bullshit again.
\nYou know the story. She picked us. Date night<\/p>\n

at the roadside nursery. The one made entirely
\nof good vibes & floor-to-ceiling chain link,<\/p>\n

so that sometimes, with any luck & clear
\nskies\u2014when the air quality index glows a pale tangerine\u2014<\/p>\n

little golden squares of Kraft Cheese light melt honey
\nbees, snake plants & hostas; the ordinary ferns<\/p>\n

hanging tough; melt me & my love in a gooey, tropical
\ngladness. Hibiscus Child sang to us from the parking lot:<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t I look peachy on your withered deck?
\n<\/i>Don\u2019t I deserve ceramic turquoise views<\/i><\/p>\n

& Whole Foods fertilizer? A daily minute of
\n<\/i>attention with a 9-Pattern Garden Hose <\/i>Nozzle? <\/i>Middle kid<\/p>\n

in a potted triptych, Hibiscus Child can be a bit much.
\nBut she\u2019s honest. Opens up, then closes, pointedly.<\/p>\n

Flaunts her heart\u2019s coral needs with a gaudy
\naudacity I am famously bad at. Like, Love me, <\/i>motherfucker<\/i><\/p>\n

lest we both perish of heatstroke! <\/i>Love, it\u2019s
\nlate. Summertime & the living is halogen.<\/p>\n

But you & me, we are perishing gracefully
\nas two sentry gardenia bushes flanking a flugelhorn tree<\/p>\n

fashioned from rose-gold blooms. Impervious to inclement
\ngrief, rising seas, & the separatist hurricanes of history.<\/p>\n

Drought-resistant & gleaming, the two of us
\nup early, watering in record heat. Me in my cloud-<\/p>\n

colored robe misnaming the flowers,
\nhoping to see you beam. Good morning, Fernie Sanders.<\/i><\/p>\n

Little Pothos Bill. Rise & shine, Morgan Treeman. Little
\n<\/i>Cactus Everdeen. <\/i>Sometimes peril imperils itself. I can see that now.<\/p>\n

When the affected acclimate. When the veil between
\nbackyard garden & the inferno is sheer,<\/p>\n

you learn to fix your focus on the roots. Love,
\nin this erstwhile fire, this halcyon season, we are proof.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From<\/em> Dear Mothership<\/a> by Marcus Wicker. Copyright \u00a9 2026. Available from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

& our hibiscus is on that bullshit again. You know the story. She picked us. Date night at the roadside nursery. The one made entirely of good vibes & floor-to-ceiling chain link, so that sometimes, with any luck & clear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1934,"featured_media":276636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43074,43077],"tags":[112028,2945,56926,112156,31560,17544,212],"class_list":["post-276612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-fictionandpoetry","category-poem","tag-dear-mothership","tag-ecco","tag-harpercollins-publishers","tag-late-summer-in-the-anthropocene","tag-marcus-wicker","tag-poem","tag-poetry","story-type-poem"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Xu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/summer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1934"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275308,"date":"2026-09-11T04:02:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275308"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T01:05:04","slug":"the-birthing-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-birthing-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"The Birthing Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 1968<\/em><\/p>\n

On a bone-chilling day in February, over a table of textbooks and potato chips, Susan and I, despite me being only twelve years old, decided we were going to go to college together and studied more than we ever had, with the realities of impending adulthood still a few years away. Susan had become obsessed with the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement and the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, so there was no room in her future for men\u2014\u201cjust yet,\u201d she said. So, in our conversations about the future, I left John out. In my mind, he was there, but around the kitchen table doing homework and when we were at school sitting on the bleachers eating lunch, I didn\u2019t mention him. Susan and I had become friends thanks to her mother, who occasionally stopped by our house after dark to buy tea to help with something Kiju called \u201cwomen\u2019s troubles.\u201d Susan came with her once, just after we\u2019d started elementary school. She was my first friend who wasn\u2019t either from the few small houses around ours or one of the ones who came with their parents in the fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou an Indian?\u201d she asked on her first visit to my house, looking around our small home, taking in all the things she would never find in her own home\u2014ash baskets for collecting vegetables from the garden, braids of sweetgrass hung over the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think? Don\u2019t you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow come?\u201d<\/p>\n

An adult would never have been so bold, and this is one of the things I still admire in children, their unchecked curiosity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a father.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure you do. Everyone does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan\u2019s mother lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder, trying to listen in on the conversation, so I lowered my voice too. \u201cI don\u2019t know who he is,\u201d I whispered, then shrugged.<\/p>\n

Susan\u2019s mother turned and walked quickly toward us. She took Susan by the hand and escorted her out the door, thanking Kiju and chastising Susan for asking questions she had no business asking.<\/p>\n

If Susan felt that me being Indian and fatherless were reasons not to be friends with me, she never said so. When we started school a few weeks later, she sat beside me, and we quickly became inseparable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather married an Indian woman after my grandmother died. Mom said that he was as happy as a clam.\u201d This, to Susan, meant we shared something. What that was, I was never really sure, but it made us friends.<\/p>\n

Susan had long, dark hair and skin darker than mine. \u201cFrom the Greek side of my family,\u201d she told me. In our little part of the world, having dark skin from her Greek family was mysterious and interesting. Indian dark and African dark were a different story altogether, seeming to hold something more sinister.<\/p>\n

I still wandered among the pickers, looking for new faces, for anyone who might resemble me, no matter how vaguely. A new family would arrive, maybe fair skinned and freckled, and I would offer to help to hold their baby, to read with a child, to stir the stew. I would ask them about a Maggie, the potential of a long-lost photo. But I never found what I was looking for, and I would love to say that the older I got, the easier it got, but it didn\u2019t. To acknowledge my status as an orphan\u2014and not only an orphan but one with an unknown father\u2014was a ghost that loomed large. The rest of the year it was easy to push my parentage out of my mind, but in October, when everyone gathered, the issue was front and centre. My desire to belong to someone took up all my thoughts and most of my time.<\/p>\n

When I got a little older, my mind turned to other things at that time of year. I found myself looking forward to John\u2019s arrival, scanning the cars and trucks as they pulled up, waiting for him. That year, his father and younger brother were there, but he wasn\u2019t. I asked his father why he wasn\u2019t there and he said John\u2019s mother wanted him to stay in school. He\u2019d had a hard year, so she decided to stay home with him. I walked away disappointed.<\/p>\n

I was a teenager now, but I was still a child, particularly when it came to my feelings. As I walked back to the house, I let my mind wander, making something out of nothing. By the time I reached the door to the house, I had convinced myself that John didn\u2019t come because he didn\u2019t like me anymore. Maybe I had put too much stock in our letters, in the kiss on the cheek at New Year\u2019s. I felt like a silly girl and moped around the house for the rest of the evening. That night I dreamt of John, and in the morning my feelings were tempered, not gone but a little less intense. Then Kiju got sad and my own emotions, valid or not, took a back seat.<\/p>\n

It was a Saturday morning when Kiju came into the kitchen, a pronounced frown on her face.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething wrong, Kiju?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard another family chose to have their baby in the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sounded hurt but busied herself setting the table for breakfast. She didn\u2019t cry like the first time, but sighed a heavy sigh, full of loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re still there, I guess. They keep the mother and the babies for a week, you know, away from family. Don\u2019t even let the mothers give milk from the breast. I just can\u2019t understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s winter,\u201d I said, hoping this weak excuse would soothe her worried heart, even though I knew that babies were born under the tree in winter. Kiju ignored me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t had a baby all year, Aliet.\u201d She sat down, the weight of sadness taken out on the thin legs of a very old kitchen chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be more babies under the tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t say anything as I placed a cup of tea on the small table beside her chair. That morning, I cooked us breakfast.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe I should chat with them. Reassure them,\u201d she said as she scooped a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might help. Everyone trusts you, Kiju.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, Aliet. They are starting to believe those white doctors instead of me. I fear they are starting to see me as a silly old woman trying to hold on to the past. But it\u2019s more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I buttered a piece of toast and waited for her to continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve lost so much, I just can\u2019t imagine this. Bringing our babies into the world in their <\/em>way. Starting them off on their journey in such a cold manner. If we don\u2019t hold on, if they don\u2019t know their stories, how will they go out into the world? Lost, that\u2019s how, disconnected.\u201d She paused to take a breath. \u201cI\u2019ve heard that the mother isn\u2019t even permitted to keep the birth sac. They throw it into a fire. It\u2019s so wrong, Aliet, it just breaks my heart. Those children need to know their roots, need to know that there is always a place where they are loved and welcomed. These doctors are stealing our ways and giving us lost children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Kiju.\u201d I was still unsure how to comfort her, so I offered advice instead. \u201cMaybe you should <\/em>go talk to people, just like you said. Start with the folks who live here and maybe they will talk to their families. Tell them what\u2019s happening. Tell them you are worried.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was quiet, considering my words. \u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

After breakfast, the dishes done, Kiju put on her boots and jacket and headed next door. I followed close behind. We knocked on the door and listened to the murmur of voices on the other side. Mrs. Jeremy opened the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, look who\u2019s here. Come in, come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

We took off our jackets and boots and followed her into the kitchen. Before we had the opportunity to refuse, she had put water on the stove for tea. I remember admiring the telephone that hung on the wall, a modern amenity that Kiju had yet to allow. Mrs. Jeremy set out a plate of store-bought cookies and sat at the table across from us, her cigarette squeezed between her fingers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brings you two to my door on a cold day like this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiju took a breath before starting. \u201cI wanted to talk to you about the birthing tree and our women. Apparently, they are choosing to give birth in hospitals now without even considering the traditional ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. My own girl gave birth last year in one. She said that they offer pain relief. You don\u2019t have to experience the pain.\u201d She flicked the ash from the tip of her cigarette into the glass ashtray and I winced as some of the smoke made its way toward me.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut those medicines, they steal your memory. How can you tell your own child their birth story if you can\u2019t remember it yourself? How will they know where they came from, who they came from?\u201d Kiju\u2019s voice was desperate, her face drawn. \u201cAnd you sleep through the most beautiful . . .\u201d She stammered. \u201cAnd the lights, and the noise, so harsh on the ears of a newborn. And they steal the cord, the birth sac.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSuperstition is what they told my girl when I asked to keep them. She tried to explain that it needs to be buried to remind children of their roots. But they made her feel silly, like she was a child, so she let them take it.\u201d She looked sad. Kiju reached over and held her hand. There was no admonishment, no advice, only comfort.<\/p>\n

Anita, Mrs. Jeremy\u2019s daughter, who was a few years older than me, walked into the room and nodded to us as she got herself a glass of juice. She listened in on the conversation but didn\u2019t take a seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we need to move forward, like the white folks. We don\u2019t want to be left behind,\u201d Anita said. \u201cThey already think we are slow and behind the times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiju sat up straighter and let go of Mrs. Jeremy\u2019s hand, her own hands balled into tiny little fists in her lap. \u201cDoes it matter what they think? We can\u2019t always listen to them. Haven\u2019t you seen the damage they\u2019ve already done?\u201d Kiju asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that was so long ago. Things are better now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBetter?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, better than before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to hold on to the threads that connect us to our past.<\/p>\n

Without knowing our past, we won\u2019t know who we are. That scares me. It should scare you. We can still be bold in this world but keep our own traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiju was trying to keep her voice level, but desperation was creeping in.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you say before that we should be able to choose?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but when you understand all the facts, all the information. Then <\/em>choose. They are telling people lies, and people are believing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anita shrugged as if the conversation was nothing more than gossip between friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf folks would sit with me, learn with me. I can help them.\u201d \u201cI dunno,\u201d Anita said. \u201cSeems kinda old-fashioned to me.\u201d \u201cBut . . .\u201d Kiju tried to say more, but she was dispirited, and nothing came out.<\/p>\n

Anita left the room as silently as she had entered. Mrs. Jeremy stood to make the tea.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, thank you. I think we will move on,\u201d Kiju said.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Jeremy poured herself a cup and left the other two cups on the counter, empty, as she followed us out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you could maybe talk to your family, let them know that I would be happy to talk about all this, I would be grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll see what I can do, but no promises. These young folks these days have minds of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

We bundled up against the cold and stepped out into winter. I turned toward home, thinking Kiju might have abandoned her mission, but she turned in the other direction. We spent the entire morning talking to the families who lived near us, trying to help them understand the importance of our ways of birthing new generations. But their responses echoed those of Anita, and Kiju wandered home disheartened.<\/p>\n

That night, I tried everything I could to comfort her, to reassure her that she was wanted, needed. For hours it was only my voice interrupting the silence. She was so quiet as she knit a new pair of mittens for me, my hands apparently too large now for the ones she\u2019d made the previous year. I made hot chocolate, and it went cold beside her. I buttered toast and sprinkled sugar on it, a special treat, and the toast went soggy and uneaten. It was a little after ten when she spoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they are right and I\u2019m just an old woman holding on too hard to the past.\u201d With that, she stood up, put down the knitting needles and went to bed, without another word.<\/p>\n

As the days grew longer, her quiet remained, her words reserved for necessity only. Until one dark afternoon in early March.<\/p>\n

Each day after school, I rushed home, checking the mailbox at the end of the driveway and then the little table by the door, waiting on a letter from John, but I was disappointed each time the mailbox was empty and the little table was bare. I had begged Kiju for a telephone but had yet to win that particular battle. Letter writing was all we had, and he seemed to have given up on it, and I was determined that I wouldn\u2019t write until he did. I could be stubborn when I wanted to be.
\nThat winter, Kiju and I suffered together but separately, content in our misery. It was a particularly nasty day, with heavy snow and strong winds, when I looked up from my homework to see Kiju staring out the window. Her silence concerned me. She didn\u2019t respond when I asked what we were having for supper and if I could help. She simply stared. I wondered if yet another of our women had confessed to using the hospital and not the tender care of my grandmother. I wished they would just stop telling her, but she knew, deep down. Fewer women were coming to us. It was impossible not to notice, but it had happened so fast. Change can creep up on you or it can pounce. This was a leap we were not prepared for.<\/p>\n

\u201cKiju?\u201d<\/p>\n

She jumped, startled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething is wrong. You are too quiet.\u201d I said it lightly, but my effort to lift her mood fell flat.<\/p>\n

Kiju reached over and took a piece of paper off the counter and handed it to me. It was a notice from the town about a council meeting to take place next Tuesday. Under the items to be discussed was \u201cpublic safety and childbirth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d I handed it back to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the people in town don\u2019t like what we do, and they want us to stop. Not that anyone comes to us anymore. I don\u2019t see why it\u2019s so important now. They are winning the battle for our children. I suppose they want everyone to know they are winning. That once again they have beaten us down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s none of their business what we do, and the women will come back, Kiju. They\u2019re just confused. They\u2019ll come back.\u201d I hoped she couldn\u2019t hear the doubt in my voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not so sure.\u201d Kiju stared into her teacup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can go. We can explain to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I had your faith in people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll go, Kiju. They have to listen to you. They all listen to you when they want your herbs and medicines. They\u2019ll listen now.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The night before the town meeting, I couldn\u2019t sleep. When my mother died under the birthing tree, a small group of local people put up a fuss, insisting that we be forced into the sanitized hospitals, a world full of sharp light and loud noises, of antiseptic smells and unfamiliar faces, and the prick of needles to lessen the pain, while white women, dressed in white hats and white dresses, snatched our babies from us the moment they came into the world, and exchanged the nutrients of a mother\u2019s milk for manufactured formula. This was not what we wanted, but the more this small group talked, the more the fear they sought to instill took root.<\/p>\n

The previous year a few of these people had even wandered the camp in the evenings, men dressed in suits and women with lipstick on their teeth. Some carried Bibles, some sandwiches, as if we would let our own go hungry. If not a Bible then pamphlets, concern, real or not, in their voices. Our people seemed to be patient if not attentive. They listened about the wonders of modern medicine, the value of a \u201cproper education\u201d and not filling children\u2019s heads with Indian nonsense and superstition. The visitors spoke of the risks of the medicines Kiju made in our kitchen, of the dangers of a mistaken mushroom in a tonic, of the potential of death in the misuse of a berry or leaf. The pamphlets were taken, and maybe even read, but when night fell, they often met the fire. Regardless, something was taking root; Kiju and I could feel it.<\/p>\n

Kiju had continued quietly protesting the changes, speaking to any woman who would listen, but the more she pleaded for the children, the more she seemed to drive the families away.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

We ate dinner early so we could walk into town without being late. Toasted fried egg sandwiches with apples cut into slices. Sweet and salty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, let\u2019s go, I guess,\u201d she said as she threw the reminder notice of that night\u2019s meeting into the fire. We watched the edges curl and burn as the words disappeared into the flames.<\/p>\n

As we walked toward town, I considered that going to the meeting might be a fool\u2019s errand. They had already made up their minds, and they weren\u2019t going to listen to us. Kiju said that Indians were never listened to in matters considered important to the rest of society, and that was even more true for Indian women. Susan\u2019s women\u2019s rights movement had yet to make its way to our part of the world, and even if it did, it wouldn\u2019t represent us. The tree still stood, waiting, but no one visited, no one entered the world under her strong branches, her rustling leaves. No one held on to the roots for strength. I hadn\u2019t seen the ground glow red in so long, I was forgetting what it looked like, even when I closed my eyes and concentrated.<\/p>\n

The town hall was half-full, mostly women, given the topic. The only men were the mayor, the three members of town council, the priest from the Catholic church, Father Michael, and the reverend from the Baptist church, as well as a man with a balding head and a full moustache, his suit pressed and clean. He looked confident in himself, if completely out of place.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood evening, Mrs. Paul.\u201d Father Michael took my grandmother\u2019s hand without asking and held on to it while bending slightly to come face to face with her. \u201cYou need to know that we mean no disrespect to you. The women of this town hold you in very high esteem. But we need to move ahead with the rest of the world and take advantage of new methods to ensure the safety of the flock. You understand.\u201d His voice dripped with condescension. Even at my young age I understood that.<\/p>\n

Kiju took a deep breath and removed her hand from between his. \u201cI understand,\u201d she said as she walked past him, leaving his hands hanging mid-air.<\/p>\n

\u201cFather Michael.\u201d I nodded as I followed her to the plastic seats in the second row, facing the town council.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do they treat me like I\u2019m an idiot? I\u2019ll wager none of these men have ever witnessed the beauty of birth. And these women\u201d\u2014she cast her hand around in a semicircle\u2014\u201cdon\u2019t even get me started.\u201d Then she placed her hands on her lap and avoided the glances and idle whispers.<\/p>\n

I went to the back of the room to collect some snacks. No one approached Kiju or tried to engage me in conversation, despite the fact that almost everyone in the room had known us for years. We all shopped in the same stores, and some had come to Kiju for herbs to calm a cough or stop a crying baby. But on this night, instead of being upset at their avoidance, I was glad for it. We dipped stale cookies in weak tea as we waited for the meeting to start.<\/p>\n

The mayor faced the crowd and cleared his throat, waiting for the room to quiet.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood evening. It\u2019s so nice to see so many concerned citizens.\u201d He stopped to clear his throat again. \u201cAs you know, historically there have been some unwanted practices related to childbirth that have been happening in and around our town. While these practices may have been welcome in the past, we have made wonderful advances in medical treatment that provide a safe and clean environment where women can labour.\u201d He looked around the room, careful to avoid making eye contact with either of us. Kiju sat still and said nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a guest with us this evening to better explain the dangers of these practices and the advancements that make labour safer for our womenfolk. Please help me welcome Dr. Vincent Thorn.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t recognize the man, dressed in his fancy suit, who walked down the centre aisle, took the mayor\u2019s hand and thanked him for the invite.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs many of you know, the medical field has advanced quite a lot in the last few decades. Giving birth is now safer for both mother and child, as well as being less painful for the mother. There is no longer a need for the . . .\u201d He stopped to consider his words. \u201c. . . more uncivilized ways of having children that could and does endanger both the mother and the child.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked directly at us. Someone must have told him who we were. The room was quiet except for the nervous shuffling of feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone will agree with me that progress is welcome, and the safety of the women and children is paramount.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few quiet claps.<\/p>\n

Kiju stood and the room went as quiet as a tomb. Hands stopped mid-clap, waiting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that you and everyone else here should respect the ways in which women choose to give birth. If a woman chooses a hospital, that is her right, but traditional birth should always be an option. A woman should be able to choose without fear or pressure.\u201d She spoke softly, and everything she said was a matter of fact. \u201cAnd you, a man, think you know what is best for a woman. You who want to deprive her of memory, of the moment she brings life into the world, by knocking her unconscious. It\u2019s cruel, if you ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease let me finish before you carry on with your bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

I choked back a laugh. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever heard her swear in all my years on earth. It was a shock, and I was delighted by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a woman chooses to give birth in one of your institutions, that is her right. If she chooses to give birth among nature, where she is held in the earth\u2019s embrace, what gives you the right to tell her she is not allowed? Where do you get your moral authority?\u201d<\/p>\n

The room was quiet.
\n\u201cYou have nothing to say?\u201d She looked around the room as people looked at their hands, their feet, the wall\u2014anything except my grandmother. \u201cWell, to me, that says it all. I\u2019m finished now.\u201d Kiju sat back down and placed her hands on her lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Paul.\u201d Father Michael was standing now. \u201cI believe that the doctor has a good point. We just want what is best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a bunch of men know what\u2019s best for a woman? I hardly think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Paul. I agree with the doctor, and I think most of the women here do as well.\u201d Father Michael looked around the room, half-full of nodding women.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have corrupted their minds. You have convinced them of something you <\/em>want. Half of these women have been to my door, for teas and medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked around the room at the women who wouldn\u2019t look at us. My home economics teacher, the wife of the man who owned the grocery store, and the woman who lived three houses down from ours\u2014they had all been to the house for something to stop headaches, or a tonic to ease a nasty belly, one to end a pregnancy she didn\u2019t want to explain to anyone. Yet they said nothing to defend my grandmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou keep your practices and I will keep mine. I just ask that you stop trying to terrify our women into adopting your ways. It\u2019s unfair and it\u2019s wrong.\u201d Kiju reached over and took my hand. \u201cI have nothing else to say. I\u2019ve said my piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

We stood and started to walk down the aisle toward the door when a woman younger than my grandmother but much older than me slid her thin body down the narrow row of chairs and stepped out into the aisle, blocking our way to the door. She was tall and bent her back to make sure she would meet Kiju\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to say anything, but you of all people should understand. You let your own daughter die.\u201d She whispered it, but just loud enough for the people sitting on the aisle to hear. A hush fell over the room. I swear that every single person was holding their breath.<\/p>\n

My grandmother was a kind woman, not prone to fits of anger or violence, so when she brought her arm up, stretched out her fingers and slapped the woman so hard that the sound of it echoed off the walls, it was all I could do not to either run or start to laugh. The woman\u2019s head of auburn curls, so neatly assembled and without a hair out of place, was flung to the side and her cheek, powdered with rouge, was now as red as a sunset. Kiju looked at me, took my hand, and walked around the woman and out into the night air as those inside gasped and moved to help the vile woman.<\/p>\n

A three-quarters moon guided our walk home. The wind had settled, and the cool air felt good on my face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ashamed,\u201d she said quietly.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf my behaviour. I shouldn\u2019t have hit her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

She stopped and turned toward me, her face in shadow. \u201cAliet, violence, whether with words or hands, is always a bad idea.\u201d Yet there was the smallest smile on her face.<\/p>\n

She turned and started walking again. \u201cBut boy, did that feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n

We both laughed, and I hooked my arm in hers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need you to know.\u201d She stopped to catch her breath. \u201cI need you to know that I would never have let your mother die. She was my entire life. I loved her more than the moon loves the stars. Her pregnancy was normal, nothing out of the ordinary. If there was something wrong, I would have taken her to the hospital. It was her heart, a condition she\u2019d had since birth, but we didn\u2019t know, no one knew. I would never let her die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood, but I had to say it out loud. Throw it out into the universe. Hopefully, she knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not something you ever get over, losing a child. It\u2019s something that never ends, the grief just comes and goes as it pleases. It\u2019s a greedy thing, grief. You have to sit with it, let it do what it does, and then rise up and keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

I kicked a rock into the ditch and let her talk. Sometimes, when she got like this, I wasn\u2019t even sure she knew I was around. But as we turned the last corner toward home, her mittened hand took my mittened hand and she started to swing until we both had no choice but to smile.<\/p>\n

The house was dark, and the fire had almost gone out. I went out to the woodshed and grabbed a few logs to last us the night while she sliced a few pieces of homemade bread and buttered them, sprinkling cinnamon sugar on them for a treat. The fire restored, she made tea and we talked about the woman\u2019s face and the shock that had quieted the entire audience.<\/p>\n

We stayed up late that night, and she told me stories about my mother, stories she\u2019d told so many times I could mouth the words along with her, but I listened, and I pretended to be surprised and saddened at all the right places. How she and Big Ben, back then known only as Ben, had stolen the bicycle of a boy who was mean to her and threw it in the river on the other side of town and how the police brought my mother home. About the time where she jumped rope for 796 consecutive jumps without tripping. About the comfort she provided when my grandfather died, even though she herself was too young to understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when she was expecting you, she would sit in that chair by the fire and rub her belly and sing to you. Not the traditional songs, but the new kind of music. She just loved Frank Sinatra. I\u2019m surprised you can\u2019t hear her voice, she sang so much to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night, I dreamt of the birthing tree. In my dream, the woman with the shape of Kiju\u2019s hand imprinted on her cheek was using a hatchet, slamming it into the trunk over and over again, her neatly coiffed hair loose and knotted. Each time she struck the tree, a woman cried and blood seeped out of the bark. I was running to stop her, but each time I got close, the tree moved farther away. I screamed for her to stop, but she wouldn\u2019t listen. In the sky, black birds shrieked and dove at the woman, but, like me, each time they came close, she moved farther away. We watched as she slammed the hatchet into the trunk, but the tree wouldn\u2019t fall. The leaves shook and the branches swayed, but the tree stood. I woke up to the dull light of dawn, my head aching from clenching my teeth, my eyes and pillow wet from crying. Kiju snored in her room, unaware of the battle I\u2019d fought in my sleep.<\/p>\n

I got up and stretched the tension from my body and walked out into the cold. The ground was covered in a thick layer of frost that crunched under my feet as I made my way to the outhouse. The cold wrapped itself around me as I gathered logs to start the fire. Inside was almost as cold as outside; what the house had in charm, it lacked in insulation. I snuck around quietly, lighting the fire in the stove, and set the kettle on to boil. While an indoor toilet wasn\u2019t something she thought we needed, a tap in the kitchen delighted her. It was cold water and we had to boil water for dishes, but it was a welcome addition. I stood and watched the steam start to rise out of the little whistle hole on the kettle, determined to get to it before it whistled and woke her. I was watching so intently that I didn\u2019t hear her come up behind me.<\/p>\n

\u201cA watched pot never boils.\u201d<\/p>\n

I jumped as the kettle whistled and I moved out of her way, letting her begin her day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a simple life with me, Aliet. I hope you don\u2019t feel that you are missing out on anything. If your mother were alive, I imagine you would be off on some great adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have lots of time for adventure,\u201d I replied.
\nWhen I got to school, I noticed everyone looking at me.<\/p>\n

Apparently, word had gotten around about Kiju\u2019s slap. Susan pulled me into an empty classroom just before the bell rang for third period. We only had English together and that wasn\u2019t until the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid Kiju really punch Mrs. Brown?\u201d Her eyes were wide with pure joy. \u201cPlease tell me she did. I wish I could have seen it. That woman never minds her own business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe did. I was so shocked I almost started laughing, but I held it together. She, Mrs. Brown, blamed Kiju for my mother\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan\u2019s face went cold. \u201cWhat a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYup. She deserved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bell rang and we went our separate ways, her to the left and me to the right. I was left to wade through the crowded halls, listening to the whispers and catching the odd glance. Some were nasty and some, I swear, held admiration.<\/p>\n

A month later, an envelope arrived in the mail. A new bylaw had been passed making any medical procedure illegal unless conducted by a qualified medical practitioner in a proper medical facility. Monetary fines and other penalties would be issued if the illegal activity was discovered. Kiju handed me the notice, and as I read, I turned up my nose as if the message itself reeked of decay. I had just finished when Kiju snapped it out of my hands and threw it into the fire. We never spoke of it again until the night we met Paulina.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

From <\/em>The Birthing Tree<\/a> by Amanda Peters. Used with permission of the publisher, Catapult. Copyright \u00a9 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 1968 On a bone-chilling day in February, over a table of textbooks and potato chips, Susan and I, despite me being only twelve years old, decided we were going to go to college together and studied more than we<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":275687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25508,3,43074,43076,26764],"tags":[91343,111739],"class_list":["post-275308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-fiction","category-excerpts","category-fictionandpoetry","category-from-the-novel","category-novels","tag-amanda-peters","tag-the-birthing-tree","story-type-daily-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Cs","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-birthing-tree.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276899,"date":"2026-09-10T15:35:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276899"},"modified":"2026-09-10T15:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:35:30","slug":"121-years-ago-russian-printers-went-on-strike-over-commas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/121-years-ago-russian-printers-went-on-strike-over-commas\/","title":{"rendered":"121 years ago, Russian printers went on strike over commas."},"content":{"rendered":"

Commas can change meaning (\u201ceats shoots and leaves\u201d versus \u201ceats, shoots and leaves\u201d or \u201cI ate, grandma\u201d versus \u201cI ate grandma\u201d), but over a century ago, commas helped change the Russian government.<\/p>\n

In 1905, uprisings broke out all across the Russian Empire as peasants, workers, and soldiers revolted against the repression and violence they lived under. This would eventually lead to the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.<\/p>\n

Among the agitators were the workers at Sytin\u2019s Moscow publishing house. At the time, printers were paid by the letter set, but this didn\u2019t include punctuation. From \u201cA history of punctuation\u201d<\/a> by Florence Hazrat in Aeon:<\/p>\n

…in 1905, Moscow printers demanded to be paid for setting not only letters but also punctuation marks, which required the same action and the same amount of time as the alphabet. What is known as the “Comma Strike” spread popular boycott throughout the country, leading to the czar ceding Russia its first constitution.<\/p>\n

And from a 1950s academic article title \u201cThe Strike and The Revolution\u201d<\/a> by Feliks Gross in Il Politico:<\/p>\n

The October uprising of the 1905 revolution was triggered by an economic strike. The printers in a Moscow shop struck, because they were not paid for commas, semi-colons and periods – in a word, for punctuation. A railroad strike followed. The railroad strike spread and changed into a general and political protest.<\/p>\n

The commas that started a revolution. A good, post-Labor Day reminder that all labor, including placing punctuation is consequential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commas can change meaning (\u201ceats shoots and leaves\u201d versus \u201ceats, shoots and leaves\u201d or \u201cI ate, grandma\u201d versus \u201cI ate grandma\u201d), but over a century ago, commas helped change the Russian government. In 1905, uprisings broke out all across the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17056,"featured_media":276901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43101,43092,43095,43445,43646],"tags":[35879,576,8121,34489,7637,1735,24970],"class_list":["post-276899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-newsandculture","category-politics","category-technology","category-the-hub","tag-comma","tag-history","tag-labor","tag-punctuation","tag-revolution","tag-russia","tag-strike"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a27","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/comma-strike-copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17056"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276842,"date":"2026-09-10T10:22:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T14:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276842"},"modified":"2026-09-10T10:22:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T14:22:06","slug":"on-ed-parks-personal-days-one-of-the-best-comic-novels-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/on-ed-parks-personal-days-one-of-the-best-comic-novels-of-all-time\/","title":{"rendered":"On Ed Park\u2019s Personal Days<\/em>, one of the best comic novels of all time."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first installment of an ongoing series recommending books from what I’ll call the Funny Novel Canon. Think of it as a working syllabus for literary humorists. If there’s a funny novel you love and think should be included in future installments, email me\u2014nicely please!<\/em><\/p>\n

Ed Park is a great writer, and his work is always smart and ambitiously challenging in form and structure\u2014see his love of H.S. Keeler\u2019s \u201cweb-work\u201d<\/a>. His latest book, Three Tenses<\/a><\/em>, a well as his Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams<\/em><\/a>, are complex without resorting to gimmicks or cheap obfuscation that implies depth. Park is a genuinely creative writer, who continues to challenge himself to try something new.<\/p>\n

But Park\u2019s writing is also tremendously funny. (Full disclosure, we wrote a McSweeney\u2019s piece together<\/a> so I\u2019m not exactly unbiased.) Some of Park\u2019s funniest writing is in his collection of short pieces, An Oral History of Atlantis<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> but his first novel, Personal Days<\/em><\/a>, is one of my favorite comic novels of all time.<\/p>\n

Personal Days<\/em> follows a group of office workers who spend their days in the Manhattan offices of a mysterious company with murky goals. Nobody seems to work much, though, the employees are consumed by gossip, crushes, and confusion about their coworkers, superiors, and others who lurk in their building.<\/p>\n

The plot roughly follows a central mystery about the company, but this book is memorable for being extremely funny\u2014Park is going for jokes. Personal Days<\/em> is full of wordplay, dry observations, and weird specifics, and none of it feels tacked on or forced. Coworkers spin up absurd theories about each other, and this setting\u2014the office as the most fertile breeding ground for speculation\u2014allows Park\u2019s absurdities to bend plausibility without breaking it.<\/p>\n

The wordplay is especially well done, which will come as no surprise if you\u2019ve read Park\u2019s work before. His funny turns of phrase and memorable names get a lot of laughs, but they\u2019re working at a deeper level too. The homonyms and mishearing are folded into the plot, which turns at a few instances on wordplay and puns.<\/p>\n

Like all funny writers, Park is attentive to form, and uses headers and other formal shifts to get in little jokes and control his pacing. I won\u2019t spoil it, but the book also takes a big turn in the last section using a really fun, formal constraint. It’s a wonderful combination of sitcom and Oulipo.<\/p>\n

What I love most about this novel is that it’s funny in ways that only writing can be. Too often, humorous novels find comedy by mimicking the things that film and TV do, relying on writing that often feels like transcriptions from the screen. Park takes a different route, relying on jokes and situations that can only happen on the page, which makes Personal Days<\/i> a very special novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first installment of an ongoing series recommending books from what I’ll call the Funny Novel Canon. Think of it as a working syllabus for literary humorists. If there’s a funny novel you love and think should be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17056,"featured_media":276848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43201,43092,43646],"tags":[7693,112240,4820,105400],"class_list":["post-276842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-news-newsandculture","category-newsandculture","category-the-hub","tag-ed-park","tag-funny-novel-canon","tag-humor","tag-personal-days"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a1c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/personal-days-computer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17056"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276835,"date":"2026-09-10T06:30:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T10:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276835"},"modified":"2026-09-10T09:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:17:12","slug":"lit-hub-daily-september-10-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-september-10-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: September 10, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1886, H.D. is born. <\/span>\n