The green hills from which the Zapatistas descended to take San Cristóbal nearly twenty years earlier looked wet and blurred outside the windows in the rain. After the parched Oaxacan isthmus and clammy, tropical Tuxtla Guitierrez, San Cristóbal’s mountain air felt liberating, like emerging from a fever into quiet clarity. We rolled down the windows and watched the ... [Continue Reading]
Lessons of Grief
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The day that it happened, the United States Postal Service unveiled The Simpson’s collectors’ set—a five-stamp commemorative booklet featuring Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, each set against solid, neon backgrounds. A father in Cheyenne, Wyoming took a hammer to his daughter’s cell phone after learning the girl, thirteen, sent and received 20,000 text ... [Continue Reading]
Map to Motherland
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This morning, Steven and I woke up late and tired because our two-year-old had been up twice in the night dreaming about scary dinosaurs and then there was an incident with a rat in our bedroom. Now, in my cold Mexican kitchen, I am “sproaching” eggs in sugar cane vinegar and picking rodent-gnawed fruit out of the basket on the counter while Steve shovels our son into ... [Continue Reading]
Waiting to Be
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Here is what waiting to be feels like. It feels like that one trilled song of a morning bird, a single note curled upwards in the stillness, and it should be poignant but you are on the Internet. Get off, get off, get off. It feels like trying to peel yourself away from Dave's ESL Café–a job in Saudi Arabia; you've never been to the Middle East, and you could save ... [Continue Reading]
Yo Soy Perú
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The toucan lifts its lobster-claw bill into the sky over and over, releasing its whooping, loonish phrase like a persistent question. It wears a penguin’s tuxedo plumage, yet with flair—a yellow band at the base of the bill, bright blue just around the eye, a flash of red beneath the black tail feathers. It sits alone and throws its two-note song into the sky. For over ... [Continue Reading]
My Month as a Slut
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My sister clapped her hands and said, “Let’s get dressed up like sluts and go to the Beverly Center!” This is how it started. For my thirteenth birthday, my parents had gotten me tickets to fly down to LA. It was my first plane ride by myself. “I’m sure you’ve done this a thousand times,” the stewardess had said when she shepherded me on the flight early, ... [Continue Reading]