June 15, 2004
Holiday Remembrances
I let my subscription to the New Yorker expire last week and, sure enough, this week there's stuff I actually want to read. Holiday remembrances by Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, and T.C. Boyle, among others. Excerpts: Zadie Smith's "You Are in Paradise"
If you are brown and decide to date a British man, sooner or later he will present you with a Paul Gauguin. This may come in postcard form or as a valentine, as a framed print for your birthday or repeated many times across wrapping paper, but it will come, and it will always be a painting from Gauguin’s Tahitian period, 1891-1903. Chances are nudity will be involved, also some large spherical fruit.Or check out Junot Diaz's "Homecoming, With Turtle"
What I wanted more than anything was to be recognized as the long-lost son I was, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not after nearly twenty years. Nobody believed I was Dominican! You? one cabdriver said incredulously, and then turned and laughed. That’s doubtful. Instead of being welcomed with open arms, I was overcharged for everything and called un americano. I put us on all the wrong buses. If there was money to lose, I lost it; if there was a bus to catch, I made us miss it, and through some twist of bad luck all my relatives were in the States for the summer.Links unabashedly lifted from Maud.
posted by Laila Lalami at 10:48 AM
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