Nyuol Lueth Tong

Subtitled "In Their Faces a Landmark: Stories of Movement and Displacement" on a sticker on the front cover, this issue contains stories and poetry about the immigrant experience or being displaced from one's homeland. If you remember back to 2018 when this issue was published, the US was deporting people at a furious rate and shutting down the borders, a policy that has continued through Biden's administration. McSweeney's was protesting against these policies by putting together an issue highlighting "migrant literature."
The issue is a nice hardback published with covers of different colors: the one I received is light brown. In a clever touch, the book itself is made to appear like a little suitcase: the binding has an illustration of a handle and the endpapers have a charming drawing of an open suitcase with objects that are specific to characters in the stories.… (más)

A strong enough collection in this installment from McSweeney’s, featuring a diverse set of authors and a theme of the immigrant experience, though a little uneven.

My favorites:
“I Pledge Allegiance to the Butterfly”, by Maria Kuznetsova
“Five Petals Proud”, by Aya Osuga A.
“The Wall”, by Meron Hadero
“Cappuccino Please”, by Edvin Suasic
“The Cobbler and the Acolyte”, by Ilan Mochari
“Chinese Girls Don’t Have Fairy Tales”, by Rita Chang-Eppig

My favorite quote, from “Many Scattered a Bench Along the Banks of Coralville Lake”, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, about a funeral:
“Their voices tintinnabulated in that death-still afternoon, seeking those soprano peaks and contralto watersheds and tenor valleys, relentless, relentless. They dragged out sorrow as though it were death or its occasion that had given them the wisdom to mine our deepest pits of woe and reflect them back to us in songfuls of unbearable feeling, imploring us nevertheless to bear it. And it was beautiful to hear, and awful, too, so very awful.”… (más)