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The Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

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…formed her mother, bringing a happiness and energy Ruma had never witnessed. For the first time in her life Ruma felt forgiven for the many expectations she’d violated or shirked over the years. She came to look forward to their nightly conversations, reporting the events of her day, describing what new thing Akash had learned to do. Her mother had even begun to exercise, getting up at five in the morning, wearing an old Colgate sweatshirt of Ruma’s. She wanted to live to see her grandchildren married, she’d said. There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.

After finishing with the dishes he dried them and then scrubbed and dried the inside of the sink, removing the food particles from the drainer. He put the leftovers away in the refrigerator, tied up the trash bag and put it into the large barrel he’d noticed in the driveway, made sure the doors were locked. He sat for a while at the kitchen table, fiddling with a saucepan whose handle—he’d noticed while washing it—was wobbly. He searched in the drawers for a screwdriver and, not finding one, accomplished the task with the tip of a steak knife. When he was finished he poked his head into Akash’s room and found both the boy and Ruma asleep. For several minutes he stood in the doorway. Something about his daughter’s appearance had changed; she now resembled his wife so strongly that he could not bear to look at her directly. That first glimpse of her earlier, standing on the lawn with Akash, had nearly taken his breath away. Her face was older now, as his wife’s had been, and the hair was beginning to turn gray at her temples in the same way, twisted with an elastic band into a loose knot. And…

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

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The thought of her grandmother, born in the previous century, a shrunken woman in widow’s white and with tawny skin that refuses to wrinkle, boarding a plane and flying to Cambridge, is inconceivable to her, a thought that, no matter how welcome, how desirable, feels entirely impossible, absurd. “No.  But a letter will.”

That evening Ashoke goes home to the apartment, checks for the letter. Three days come and go. Ashima is shown by the nursing staff how to change diapers and how to clean the umbilical stub. She is given hot saltwater baths to soothe her bruises and stitches. She is given a list of pediatricians, and countless brochures on breast-feeding, and bonding, and immunizing, and samples of baby shampoos and Q-Tips and creams. The fourth day there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Ashima and the baby are to be discharged the following morning. The bad news is that they are told by Mr. Wilcox, compiler of hospital birth certificates, that they must choose a name for their son. For they learn that in America, a baby cannot be released from the hospital without a birth certificate. And that a birth certificate needs a name.

“But, sir,” Ashima protests, “we can’t possibly name him ourselves.”

Mr. Wilcox, slight, bald, unamused, glances at the couple, both visibly distressed, then glances at the nameless child. “I see,” he says. “The reason being?”

“We are waiting for a letter,” Ashoke says, explaining the situation in detail.

“I see,” Mr. Wilcox says again. “That is unfortunate. I’m afraid your only alternative is to have the certificate read ‘Baby Boy Ganguli.’ You will, of course, be required to amend the permanent record when a name is decided upon.”

Ashima looks at Ashoke expectantly. “Is that what we should do?”

“I don’t recommend it,” Mr. Wilcox says. “You will have to appear before a judge, pay a fee. The red tape is endless.”

“Oh dear,” Ashoke says.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Regular programming resumes—

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(from the short story: “When Mr. Prazada Came to Dine”)

…being shot, as she and my father had. “Imagine having to place her in a decent school. Imagine her having to read during power failures by the light of kerosene lamps. Imagine the pressures, the tutors, the constant exams.” She ran a hand through her hair, bobbed to a suitable length for her part-time job as a bank teller. “How can you possibly expect her to know about Partition? Put those nuts away.”

“But what does she learn about the world?” My father rattled the cashew can in his hands. “What is she learning?”

We learned American history, of course, and American geography. That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary War. We were taken in school buses on field trips to visit Plymouth Rock, and to walk the Freedom Trail, and to climb to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. We made dioramas out of colored construction paper depicting George Washington crossing the choppy waters of the Delaware River, and we made puppets of King George wearing white tights and a black bow in his hair. During tests we were given blank maps of the thirteen colonies, and asked to fill in names, dates, capitals. I could do it with my eyes closed.

The next evening Mr. Pirzada arrived, as usual, at six o’clock. Though they were no longer strangers, upon first greeting each other, he and my father maintained the habit of shaking hands.

“Come in, sir. Lilia, Mr. Pirzada’s coat, please.”

He stepped into the foyer, impeccably suited and scarved, with a silk tie knotted at his collar. Each evening he appeared in ensembles of plums, olives, and chocolate browns. He was a compact man, and though his feet were perpetually splayed, and his belly slightly wide, he nevertheless maintained an efficient posture, as if balancing in either hand two suitcases of…

The Color Purple by

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Dear God,

Harpo no better at fighting his daddy back than me. Everyday his daddy git up, sit on the porch, look out at nothing. Sometime look at the trees out front the house. Look at the butterfly if it light on the rail. Drink a little water in the day. A little win in the evening. But mostly never move.

Harpo complain bout all the plowing he have to do.

His daddy day, You gonna do it.

Harpo nearly big as his daddy. He strong in body but weak in will. He scared.

Me and him out in the field all day. Us sweat, chopping and plowing. I’m roasted coffee bean color now. He black as the inside of a chimney. His eyes be sad and thoughtful. His face begin to look like a woman face.

Why you don’t work no more? he ast his daddy.

No reason for me to. His daddy say. You here, aint you?

He say this nasty. Harpos feeling be hurt.

Plus, he still in love.

Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall

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Caught in the riptide of her anger, Thomasina Moore was powerless to stop herself.

“…Here the tree of us suppose to be traveling together and she just ups and leaves, ruining the rest of the trip for the two of us. And after all the time I spent seeing to it everything would be just right!” (Which was true. The woman devoted the better part of the year to planning for the cruise—which each year took them to a different set of islands. She had the time, not having worked since her show business days. Her dead husband, a dentist, who had been taken with her color, had indulged her shamelessly, treating her as if she were all the children they had never had.)

“…No decent person’d do a thing like this. Why she’s no better come to think of it than some bun on a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street, never mind the airs she gives herself. But she never had me fooled. Oh, no, this is one boot she couldn’t play for a fool. I could tell her airs were nothing but a front. Always knew she had it in her to pull somethin’ mean and low-down like this. Knew it!”

“That’s why,” she cried, her suppressed fury at a new high, her breath sucked deep into the bony wells at her throat, her eyes convulsed. “That’s why if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: it…don’t…pay…to…go…no…place…with…niggers! They’ll mess up ever’ time!”

Unhurriedly, Avery Johnson bent and picked up first her gloves and then her pocketbook from the chair beside her. To her surprise she found she was smiling. A little faint, pleased, self-congratulatory smile, as if, instead of the insult, the woman had said something complimentary. It didn’t make sense. Yet the smile was, its warmth stealing across her…

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

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…another one, and why this wouldn’t be a final solution. Then I thought about Peter and what had happened to him; Ainsley, however, would only be amused if I told her. Finally I asked her if she was feeling better.

“Don’t be so concerned, Marian,” she said, “you make me feel like an invalid.”

I was hurt and didn’t answer.

We were going uphill at a slight angle. The city slopes upwards from the lake in a series of gentle undulations, though at any given point it seems flat. This accounted for the cooler air. It was quieter here too; I thought Clara was lucky, especially in her condition, to be living so far away from the heat and noise of downtown. Though she herself thought of it as a kind of exile; they had started out in an apartment near the university, but the need for space had forced them further north, although they had not yet reached the real suburbia of modern bungalows and station-wagons. The street itself was old but not as attractive as our street: the houses were duplexes, long and narrow, with wooden porches and thin back gardens.

“Christ it’s hot,” Ainsley said as we turned up the walk that led to Clara’s house. The grass on the door-mat-sized lawn had not been cut for some time. On the steps lay a nearly-decapitated doll and inside the baby-carriage was a large teddy-bear with the stuffing coming out. I knocked, and after several minutes Joe appeared behind the screen door, harried and uncombed, doing up the buttons on his shirt.

“Hi Joe,” I said, “here we are. How’s Clara feeling?”

“Hi, come on through,” he said, stepping aside to let us past. “Clara’s out back.”

We walked the length of the house, which was arranged in the way such houses usually are—living-room in front, then dining-room with doors that can be slid shut, then kitchen—stepping over some of the scattered obstacles and around the others. We negotiated the stairs of the back porch, which were overgrown with empty bottles of all kinds, beer bottles, milk bottles, wine and scotch bottles, and baby bottles, and found…

Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust by Nathaneal West

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“Yes, that’s me.” Her voice was hard with fright.

“This is Miss Lonelyhearts.”

“Miss who?”

“Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Lonelyhearts, the man who does the column.”

He was about to hang up, when she cooed, “Oh, hello…”

“You said I should call.”

“Oh, yes… what?”

He guessed that she wanted him to do the talking. “When can you see me?”

“Now.” She was still cooing and he could almost feel her warm, moisture-laden breath through the earpiece.

“Where?”

“You say.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Meet me in the park, near the obelisk, in about an hour.”

He went back to desk and finished his column, then started for the park. He sat down on a bench near the obelisk to wait for Mrs. Doyle. Still thinking of tents, he examined the sky and saw that it was canvas-colored and ill-stretched. He examined it like a stupid detective wo is searching for a clue to his own exhaustion. When he found nothing, he turned his trained eye on the skyscrapers that menaced the little park from all sides. In their tons of forced rock and tortured steel, he discovered what he thought was a clue.

Americans have dissipated their racial energy in an orgy of stone breaking. In their few years they have broken more stones than did centuries of Egyptians. And they have done their work hysterically, desperately, almost as if they knew that the stones would some day break them.

The detective saw a big woman enter the park and start in his direction. He made a quick catalogue: legs like Indian clubs, breasts like balloons and a brow like a pigeon. Despite her short plaid skirt, red sweater, rabbit-skin jacket and knitted tam-o’-shanter, she looked like a police captain.

He waited for her to speak first.

“Miss Lonelyhearts? Oh, hello…”

“Mrs. Doyle?” He stood up and took her arm. It felt like a thigh.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as he began to lead her off.

“For a drink.”

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

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(from the essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream”)

The Millers never did get it landscaped, and weeps grow up around the fieldstone siding. The television aerial has toppled on the roof, and a trash can is stuffed with the debris of family life: a cheap suitcase, a child’s game called “Lie Detector.” There is a sign on what would have been the lawn, and the sign reads “ESTATE SALE.” Edward Foley is trying to get Lucille Miller’s case appealed, but there have been delays. “A trial always comes down to a matter of sympathy,” Foley says wearily now. “I couldn’t create sympathy for her.” Everyone is a little weary now, weary and resigns, everyone except Sandy Slagle, whose bitterness is still raw. She lives in an apartment building near the medical school in Loma Linda, and studies reports of the case in True Police Cases and Official Detective Stories. “I’d much rather we not talk about the Hayton business too much,” she tells visitors, and she keeps a tape recorder running. “I’d rather talk about Lucille and what a wonderful person she is and how her rights were violated.” Harold Lance does not talk to visitors at all. “We don’t want to give away what we can sell,” he explains pleasantly; an attempt was made to sell Lucille Miller’s personal story to Life, but Life did not want to buy it. In the district attorney’s offices they are prosecuting other murders now, and do not see why the Miller trial attracted so much attention. “It wasn’t a very interesting murder as murders go,” Don Turner said laconically. Elaine Hayton’s death is no longer under investigation. “We know everything we want to know,” Turner says.

Arthwell Hayton’s office is directly below Edward Foley’s. Some people around San Bernardino say that Arthwell Hay…

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

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… she turned, her face looked soft and changed, like a different Rosaleen. Her hand dipped into her pocket, where her fingers crawled around for something. She drew out a folded piece of notebook paper and came to sit beside me on the bed. I rubbed my knees while she smoothed out the paper across her lap.

Her name, Rosaleen Daise, was written twenty-five times at least down the page in large, careful cursive, like the first paper you turn in when school starts. “This is my practice sheet,” she said. “For the Fourth of July they’re holding a voters’ rally at the colored church. I’m registering myself to vote.”

An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Last night the television had said a man in Mississippi was killed for registering to vote, and I myself had overheard Mr. Bussey, one of the deacons, say to T. Ray, “Don’t you worry, they’re gonna make ‘em write their names in perfect cursive and refuse them a card if they forget so much as to dot an i or make a loop in their y.”

I studied the curves of Rosaleen’s R. “Does T. Ray know what you’re doing?”

“T. Ray,” she said. “T. Ray don’t know nothing.”

*

At sunset he shuffled up, sweaty from work. I met him at the kitchen door, my arms folded across the front of my blouse. “I thought I’d walk to town with Rosaleen tomorrow. I need to buy some sanitary supplies.”

He accepted this without comment. T. Ray hated female puberty worse than anything.

That night I looked at the jar of bees on my dresser. The poor creatures perched on the bottom barely moving, obviously pining away for flight. I remembered then the way they’d slipped from the cracks in my walls and flown for the sheer joy of it. I thought about the way my mother had built trails of graham-cracker…

A Cool Million and the Dream Life of Balso Snell

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…Paradise cannot be blamed for the quality of his tail—it just grew. The Inornata, however, is held personally responsible for his performance as an artist.

There was a time when I felt that I was indeed a rare spirit. Then I had genuinely expressed my personality with a babe’s delight in confessing the details of its inner life. Soon, however, in order to interest my listeners, I found it necessary to shorten my long outpourings; to make them, by straining my imagination, spectacular. Oh, how much work goes into the search for the odd, the escape from the same!

Because of women like Saniette, I acquired the habit of extravagant thought. I now convert everything into fantastic entertainment and the extraordinary has become an obsession…

An intelligent man finds it easy to laugh at himself, but his laughter is not sincere if it’s not thorough. If I could be Hamlet, or even a clown with a breaking heart ‘neath his jester’s motley, the role would be tolerable. But I always find it necessary to burlesque the mystery of feeling at its source; I must laugh at myself, and if the laugh is “bitter,” I must laugh at the laugh. The ritual of feeling demands burlesque and, whether the burlesque is successful or not, a laugh…

On night while in a hotel bedroom with Saniette, I grew miserably sick of the mad dreams I had been describing to amuse her. I began to beat her. While beating her, I was unable to forget that strange man, John Raskolnikov Gilson, the Russian student. As I beat her, I shouted: “O constipation of desire! O diarrhoea of love! O life within life! O mystery of being! O Young Women’s Christian Association! Oh! Oh!”

When her screams brought the hotel clerk to our door,