You spoke on the phone to your mother every week, a combination of mutual guilt and obligation, but she wanted to give you the news in person. It was common not to speak to your telephone-phobic father for months at a time, and your mother had always been adept at keeping secrets. Continue reading
The boy and girl were laid out at the mortuary a week after Jamil’s funeral. For those who considered the thickness of hair currency, the children were rich. The townspeople, to observe the fear that devils could appear to buckle the children’s crowns, guarded the children, danced to distract themselves. Continue reading
Your name never seemed like it belonged to you. It sounded ridiculous when you said it out loud. It came from your mother, who wanted a bit of greatness, so she named you after Benito Juárez. Continue reading
Criminal “Love is never better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.” —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye The winter I move back to my hometown—, degree-bearing, jobless, staying at mom’s—I’m remembering why … Continue reading
Our fiction editor for February and March is Dawnie Walton, who is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. As a 2015 fiction fellow at the MacDowell Colony, she continued work on her first novel, a faux oral history about an art-rock duo in the early 1970s. She has been a managing editor for … Continue reading
The James Franco Review 