It’s hard to believe we’ve made it past the midway point of 2021, but here we are, close to turning the corner into Fall.
Meanwhile, our determined members have continued to send their beautiful, provocative, insightful work into the world and publish it. This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during July 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Let’s celebrate our members who published in July!
Within this global pandemic, there remains loads of uncertainty. Debate continues about masks and vaccines and what is safe and what is not. In this uncertainty, the family and I had our summer break, and after over a year of not seeing family, we decided to drive to Oregon. On our way, we witnessed the world on fire.
As we sped through the night through Northern California, the sky outside Redding glowed eerily. Flames shot skyward and plumes of smoke billowed. We kept driving. You can’t get too close to a world on fire.
As dawn light lifted into day, we drove through a scorched Southern Oregon. Last fall, I’d watched whole towns in this area burn to the ground, but we drove on and arrived in Portland to record-breaking heat. It was so hot, you’d think the world was on fire.
After long-awaited visits with vaccinated family members, we drove across the Cascades where the burn scars from this past year remained. For miles and miles, scorched forests lined the two-land highway all around the Detroit Lakes region. The world had caught on fire.
photo credit: Oregon State Fire Marshal via Storyful
It stayed hot in Central Oregon despite the elevation gain, and days later, when we made our return trip, we again drove past smoldering ruins of a fire that had just started, but has grown so huge, it sent smoke across the continent. You guessed it. The world is on fire.
But here in Los Angeles, the summer has been temperate. A long-delayed international sporting competition has begun, and although young women of color like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles continue to show us how to take care of ourselves, how to listen to our bodies and how to know when to step back, I’m afraid we might be burying the lede.
While there’s a global pandemic and sporting competitions dominate the headlines, we have to remember to breathe. But this year’s road trip reminded me that our current lives are not sustainable. We cannot forget: the world is on fire.
Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the stories she has been told not to talk about. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Hippocampus, Catapult, Linden Ave, and elsewhere.
