It Occurs to Me That I Am America Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  IT OCCURS TO ME THAT I AM AMERICA

  “On its own, this chorus of brilliant voices articulating the shape and texture of contemporary America makes for necessary reading; that this collection also supports the ACLU, the fiercest and most noble defender of our freedoms, makes it urgent as hell.”

  —LAUREN GROFF, author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia

  “At this time in our history, it is imperative that the narratives we put forward illuminate rather than confound, elevate rather than suppress, and embrace rather than isolate. This dazzling volume of talented artists and writers, like the ACLU that it supports, does just that.”

  —ADAM D. WEINBERG, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art

  “It’s bracing to see such a remarkable and gifted group of writers come together in support of civil liberties and American ideals at this particularly troubling time in our history.”

  —JULIE OTSUKA, author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine

  “An anthology that celebrates the radical freedom of the imagination and the power of art to redraw the lines of our shared reality.”

  —KAREN RUSSELL author of Swamplandia! and St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

  “If literature is ‘news that stays news,’ how often do we get to see it blaze out like this, as an audacious rebuke to the headlines? These writers will help you feel proud to live in this country again.”

  —JONATHAN LETHEM, author of A Gambler’s Anatomy, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn

  “This book is filled with powerful writers articulating what they care about so deeply: our country, depicted here with beauty and emergency. I hope many, many people read this book and help support democracy in this urgent moment.”

  —MEG WOLITZER, author of The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and Belzhar

  “A visceral reminder that storytelling gives us the opportunity to change our minds about strangers, and thus is an essential tool for reteaching empathy to a nation that is trying—and hopefully failing—to live with a closed heart.”

  —COURTNEY MAUM, author of Touch and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

  “It Occurs to Me That I Am America is a masterful literary achievement, one that should enter the pantheon of great books. More than a collection of fine works by some of our country’s most accomplished and talented writers and artists, it is a telling reflection of the America we have become in these troubled times and communicates a hope for the America we can be. For a nation consumed by anger and blindness, it is a critical salve to remind us all of what it means to be an American. And it should be required reading for future generations, so that the knowledge of who we are is never again forgotten.”

  —KURT EICHENWALD, Vanity Fair contributing editor and author of The Informant and Conspiracy of Fools

  “There is a pitch battle in progress for the soul of our country. The writers and artists in this anthology represent a wide spectrum of views but each speaks for and to our better nature and to a vision of the United States in which all can thrive in a moment of crisis when others seek to reduce us to the worst possible, most exclusive view of our collective capacities. Their contributions are patriotism in practice. Reading and looking at their work we have reason to take heart and fight harder when the stakes could hardly be higher.”

  —ROBERT STORR, Professor, Yale University

  “I can’t think of a better act of #resistance than an anthology that brings together some of America’s fiercest fiction writers and visual artists to reclaim our country—and our flag—from the fever dream of Trumpism. Its glories, to quote Walt Whitman, are ‘strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings.’ Read it and feel renewed.”

  —BENJAMIN ANASTAS, author of An Underachiever’s Diary and Too Good to Be True

  “Hooray for the warty, flawed, wondrously and painfully nuanced life experience that is America! A spectacular assemblage of inspired art and thought-provoking prose, at a time when we all need to be reminded of the power of story, the urgency of the current political moment, and the precious and often precarious nature of our democracy and our civil liberties.”

  —DENISE KIERNAN, author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City

  “Of course not all American literature tells a tale of grace and justice. But what the best stories do have in common is their faithfulness to the deepest truths, compelling us to see our world as it is now, in all its imperfections, or else showing us what it could look like, redeemed. These artists and writers continue that grand tradition and, in this incredible volume, do so in support of our best values: the pursuit of civil liberties, the freedom to create, and the chance to live the lives we choose. It Occurs to Me That I Am America is a battle cry: We will not be silenced.”

  —MATTIE KAHN, Elle.com writer covering politics, culture, and dangerous women

  “What a remarkable thing, to see so many names, from all over the world, giving voice to our collective story. It inspires awe and hope, like America itself.”

  —JOHN KENNEY, author of Truth in Advertising

  “A terrific collection of short stories and art, which you will enjoy reading even more because the book supports the ACLU. Needed now more than ever.”

  —DICK CAVETT

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  Contents

  Foreword by Jonathan Santlofer

  Introduction by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  JULIA ALVAREZ Speak! Speak!

  RUSSELL BANKS Oh, Canada

  JANE KENT Blackout

  BLISS BROYARD The Party

  STEPHEN L. CARTER Compline

  ERIC FISCHL Scenes from Late Paradise: Stupidity

  ERIC FISCHL Late America

  LEE CHILD  New Blank Document

  BRIDGET HAWKINS Tell Her Anyway

  MARY HIGGINS CLARK Veterans Day

  MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM Atonement

  MARK Di IONNO Intersections

  ANNA DUNN The Third Twin

  ROZ CHAST Politics

  LOUISE ERDRICH Balancing Acts

  ANGELA FLOURNOY The Miss April Houses

  SHAHZIA SIKANDER The World Is Yours, the World Is Mine

  SHAHZIA SIKANDER The Many Faces of Islam

  ELIZABETH FRANK Fires

  NEIL GAIMAN Hate for Sale

  PHILIP GOUREVITCH Unaccountable

  JAMES HANNAHAM White Baby

  MIMI POND Your Sacred American Rights Bingo

  ALICE HOFFMAN In the Trees

  SUSAN ISAACS Getting Somewhere

  SUSAN CRILE Guantánamo, ERF Team: Macing Prisoner in Eye (detail)

  SUSAN CRILE Guantánamo, ERF Team: Waterboarding Prisoner

  GISH JEN Mr. Crime and Punishment and War and Peace

  HA JIN Finally I Am American at Heart

  LILY KING Arlington Street

  SHEILA KOHLER The Harlot and the Murderer: Sonia’s Story

  JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH Starry Starry Night

/>   JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights

  ELINOR LIPMAN “People Are People”

  JOYCE MAYNARD The Trout Fisherman

  SUSAN MINOT Listen

  WALTER MOSLEY Between Storms

  MARILYN MINTER Our Cuntry Needs You

  MARILYN MINTER Tic-Tac-Toe

  MARILYN MINTER Deep Frost

  JOYCE CAROL OATES “Good News!”

  ART SPIEGELMAN Island of Tears . . .

  ART SPIEGELMAN Island of Hope!

  ART SPIEGELMAN Ghost of Ellis Island

  SARA PARETSKY Safety First

  BEVERLY McIVER Look Away

  BEVERLY McIVER Loving in Black & White

  TOM PIAZZA Bystanders (April 2003)

  HEIDI PITLOR Lucky Girl

  S. J. ROZAN If They Come in the Morning

  RICHARD RUSSO Top Step

  ERIC ORNER The Ugliest American Alphabet

  JONATHAN SANTLOFER Hope

  ELIZABETH STROUT The Walk

  DEBORAH KASS Vote Hillary

  PAUL THEROUX Stop & Shop

  DAVID STOREY Little House on the Prairie Holding Company LLC

  JUSTIN TORRES The Way We Read Now

  ALICE WALKER Don’t Despair

  EDMUND WHITE Learning American Values

  Letter from Anthony D. Romero

  Acknowledgments

  Photographs

  About the Author

  Epilogue

  Permissions

  To our storytellers and artists, who, through their work, help us to see and feel empathy for people we’ve never met.

  And for our parents, who taught us to uphold and honor the dignity of all people.

  Foreword

  The idea for this book came together over a weekend not long after the 2016 presidential election. For weeks I had been thinking: What can I do? Then I knew. I presented the idea to Touchstone’s David Falk, who not only said “Yes!” but helped form the book and has been its champion from day one. I knew something else: I wanted the book to give back, to not only be an incredible read and visually dazzling but to put all of the creative work in the service of an organization that has been defending our civil liberties for almost a hundred years, which is exactly what every writer and artist has done by donating his or her royalties to the ACLU.

  Having led a bifurcated life in art and writing, I also knew I wanted both visual artists and writers to share the stage. The idea of fiction surprised and scared a few writers until they thought it through and it became obvious: to write a story that dealt with some fundamental right or principle Americans take for granted that is currently threatened or under attack—from immigration to education, free speech and censorship; from women’s rights to basic human rights, to the frustration, sadness, disappointment and anxiety about losing the freedom Americans have fought for; the idea of America as an international symbol of hope; and the most basic notion of all: what it means to be American.

  The completed stories show the variety and diversity that is America now: from a depiction of small-town life and the awakening of racism to a sophisticated party where racism and sexism form the backdrop for impending tragedy. Several authors delivered chilling stories that glimpse a not-too-distant future where prisoners are jailed for crimes and transgressions he or she might never have committed, a dystopian world where knowledge—specifically admitting to possess knowledge that falls outside of one’s assigned station in life—may prove deadly, and a Kafkaesque trial that has dispensed with civil liberties and truth. There are heartfelt pleas to pay attention, a bookstore that stands as a symbol of freedom and free speech, catastrophic floods, dying trees, disappearing species, unexamined lives, missed opportunities, a teenage pregnancy and an illegal abortion. Academia’s political correctness is skewered in one story; a prestigious art colony democratized in another. There is hate crime, the Holocaust, and reflections on war both at home and abroad, but there is also humor and laugh-out-loud satire. Some rewrite classics from a new and novel point of view; others examine gender from inside out or offer an incisive glimpse of women, class, social conscience and camaraderie in the 1950s and ’60s as a mirror for today. There are autobiographical explorations; pieces that read as pure poetry; one as cool urban pop; another composed of rapid-fire dialogue that evokes the dissonance and disparity between people, the disbelief, wonder and pain that is so much a part of this moment. The never-ending generational conflict forms the basis of one story; understanding one’s own familial racism is at the core of another. What it means to be an immigrant versus a refugee underlies a tale of expatriatism, which plays perfectly against a detailed account of naturalization and what it meant to become American. Writers take on learning—or not learning—American values; truth in a time of fake news; the making of a revolutionary; the East-West culture class; racial controversy; anti-Semitism; a reflection on the legacy of evil; and postelection feelings of sadness, betrayal and confusion. There is grief and there is optimism. There is darkness, light, sadness and wit.

  And there is art: comix, cartoonists, graphic novelists, painters, photographers, printmakers—sumptuously painted depictions of America’s “good life,” who pays for it and how it goes bad; a cartoonist’s funny, earnest, often misguided personal history of politics; a redacted Declaration of Independence; beautifully raw paintings that explore issues of race; photographic images loaded with commentary about women, sexuality and contemporary culture; mixed-media portrayals that examine myths, stereotypes and the paradox of American Indian life; an irreverent and hilarious graphic alphabet detailing the ABC’s of a certain Mr. Trump; artwork that mixes cultural and political figures to tell visual stories in traditional yet unexpected ways; a cartoon bingo game of American rights; a pen-and-ink exploration of what it means to be mixed race; drawings that depict the atrocities of torture; a satirical painting that unites the iconic log cabin with the contemporary skyscraper; comix that employ iconic images of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty to drive home ideas about immigration and freedom. The artists’ eclectic variety in medium and vision complement the wide range and multiplicity of the writers’ words and themes.

  Some of the writers and artists in this collection I knew personally, others only from their work, but I feel as if I have come to know every one of them through their contribution and cooperation, their willingness to commit, to say yes, to create something meaningful. I am proud and honored to have worked with this extraordinary group of people. This book belongs to them and to everyone who values our country’s rights and privileges, who believes in decency, in a freedom that was fought for and a democracy that may be imperfect but one we cherish and need to preserve. This book represents more than a collection of great prose and beautiful pictures; it represents hope.

  Jonathan Santlofer

  Introduction

  I am a writer, and like all writers, I believe in the power of stories. My first love was literature, especially fiction, and so I was thrilled when I was invited to write a few words to introduce this anthology, which is about the power of fiction to shape and to state who we are.

  I have a daily reminder of fiction’s enduring magic, delivered to me by my son. He is four years old. Every morning and evening I read to him. I love the joy he takes in learning new words, immersing himself in stories, seeing himself as the characters, and acquiring a moral and ethical sense. He lives in a fictional world of good and bad, of threat and rescue, of the choice between doing good and doing harm.

  When I was his age, I had just arrived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was 1975. I was a refugee and the child of refugees who had fled Vietnam. My parents had neither the time nor the ability to read to me in English. So I took refuge in the local public library. It became my safe space and books my constant companions.

  I imagined myself amid the wonders of Manhattan, the bucolic splendor of midwestern farms, the stirring and dreadful times of the American Revol
ution and Civil War. Even if there was no one who looked like me or had a name like mine, through these stories, I became an American.

  As I remembered this during our most recent presidential election, what became clear to me was that the contest for our American identity isn’t strictly a political affair. It is also a matter of storytelling. Those who seek to lead our country must persuade the people through their ability to tell a story about who we are, where we have been and where we are going. The struggle over the direction of our country is also a fight over whose words will win and whose images will ignite the collective imagination.

  Donald J. Trump won barely, and by the grace of the Electoral College. His voters responded to his call to “Make America Great Again,” referring to a past when jobs were more plentiful, incomes more stable and politicians more bold.

  That kind of nostalgia is powerful and visceral, but it’s hard to ignore the subtext. America of the golden age, if it ever existed, kept women out of the workplace, segregated and exploited minorities and restricted immigration by race.

  It’s hardly surprising that the population of much of the literary world is terrified by Mr. Trump’s vision of good versus evil, us against them. At the ceremonies for the National Book Awards and Dayton Literary Peace Prizes of 2017, most of the speeches proclaimed opposition to the values that Mr. Trump espoused.

  That opposition isn’t just political but literary: his story contradicts the idea of literature itself. Great literature cannot exist if it is based on hate, fear, division, exclusion, scapegoating, or the use of injustice. Bad literature and demagogues, on the other hand, exploit these very things, and they do so through telling the kinds of demonizing stories good literary writers reject.

  The cast of the Broadway musical Hamilton sought to remind then vice president elect Mike Pence of this when he attended the show soon after the election. They implored him directly to defend American diversity. When an offended Mr. Trump tweeted that the theater “must always be a safe and special place,” he missed their point: America itself should be a safe and special place.