A grocery store forty-five minutes west of Chicago seemed as good a spot as any to find a talent scout. I’d heard of kids getting discovered at shopping malls or even in the street, so why not me, and why not here? Even talent scouts had to shop for food. Any one of these people inspecting the bananas in the…
Kayo Chang Black is a Taiwanese Canadian writer who explores hybrid identities, global citizenship, and the intersection of cultures. Her librarian and writing careers brought her to the U.A.E., Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and the U.S. She is currently based in Taichung, Taiwan, where she is working on her collection of essays while being mom to a six-month-old baby.…
Step 1: Listen to your older brother when he hands you a joint and tells you not to smoke it alone. Find two friends to smoke it with in the woods behind the high school before the ninth-grade dance. When you get to the end of the joint, eat the roach. Twenty minutes later, when you freak out in the…
They said it was the coolest fight ever, my cousins did. A little older than me and boys to boot, their fathers had kept them out late at the fisherman’s pub the night before. We ate dinner there every night on those annual surf-fishing trips. As my cousins told me the story of how a fight started over a game…
We’d explored the far reaches of the continent and survived. We had 2,000 miles between us and school, but I was certain my pal Wildman would get us home. I prayed to God, even though mixing travel and religion was a questionable practice. I’d rejected certain Biblical teachings, such as the Old Testament story of Isaac and Abraham. Why…
1 This was not the Tinseltown Los Angeles of the world’s imagination. I looked around at my cohorts at orientation for this language proofreading gig for the LA County Board of Elections. They were clad in baggy clothes from Costco, were balding or had drugstore hair dye jobs, sported clompy scuffed shoes or spike heels too fancy for a…
The cobbles under my wheels make my old bike bounce as I ride along, its loose bell jangling ever so quietly, the noise echoing through the stillness of the Oud-West. I have a little headlight that gains more power the faster I pedal, and I like to keep it bright-bright-bright. I am heading home from work, away from the…
When I hugged my family goodbye, said I love them, stood aside—me on one side, all five of them on the other side—my youngest sister crying, my dad saying, “Go, go!” and I walked into the airport, the icy hands of alone cuffed me. Even the metal chair by the departure gate, on which I sat, felt cold to…
When you work for the cat sanctuary, you have everything you need. You may not be able to afford the organic yogurt with its own sidecar of muesli topping. You should lay down any lust for handbags with proud monograms. But you will have a seat on the speed dial of a man whose email address begins with “108shamans.” When…
From my reception desk in the lobby, I watched my boss hang a poster, featuring a team of superheroes familiar from comic books and franchise films. “Heroes Work Here,” the poster declared. The heroes here looked nothing like the ones on the poster. Instead of athletic bodies able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, most employees were women…