Women Who Submit

April showers bring May flowers…and WWS publications! Congratulations to all the Women Who Submit who had work published in May.

From Anita Gill‘s review of Debra Gwartney’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself at Brevity:

Gwartney’s second book veers from the traditional structure of memoir, using a lesser-known historical event as a springboard for her own personal narrative. In I Am a Stranger Here Myself, Gwartney juxtaposes her memories with the story of Narcissa Whitman, one of the first white women settlers to journey westward. This genre-bending manuscript won the 2018 River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and publication this past March.

From “Marvels of Representation” by Ryane Nicole Granados at LA Parent:

While they are 5 1/2 years apart in age and are opposites in many ways, one thing my sons have in common is that they have struggled to find toys – in particular, superheroes – that look like them.

From “The Quiet on the Other Side” by Hazel Kight Witham at Mutha Magazine:

The quiet stops when they call my name from the waiting room at Labor and Delivery. I open my eyes, balance my six-month baby belly in my arms as I shift to standing. I need a quick check in, a blood pressure reading, some reassurance. I am not here to labor or deliver.

From Mia Nakaji Monnier‘s “Kokoro Yasume” at Longreads:

I inherited the porcelain ghosts from my neighbor Amy, whose parents’ house was filled to capacity with everything from shrimp figurines to polished-wood Noh masks. After her mother died and before the estate sale crew swept through the house, I walked the rooms with Amy, cataloging the contents of cabinets, sorting documents from recyclables. “If something like that catches your eye, take it,” she said about the ghost dolls. “I don’t want to see them becoming someone’s Oriental tchotchkes.”

From Carla Sameth‘s “Mother’s Day Triptych” at Mutha Magazine:

The picture is of my son, Raphael, as a newborn. The bright royal blue color of the onesie complements his looks. Like now, his look is racially and culturally ambiguous, similar to the rest of our family. His eyes dark-dark almost black, his hair barely curly, brownish, which will get darker and thicker and curlier as he grows. At birth, there is a bit of blond. Like me. For a second. Family lore has it that my mom called out when I was born, “Oh my God, the Milkman, a blond” in a family of dark haired olive skinned people.

From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “Invisible No More: How ‘Fade Into You’ Reflects the L.A. Chicanx Experience” at Los Angeles Review of Books:

In an interview with the popular feminist podcast Call Your Girlfriend, Darling said she named her character Nikki because “being in the interiority of a teenage girl is not something readers are always familiar with.” InFade Into You, Darling gives us more than an intimate view of a teenage girl; she gives us an intimate view of a young, mixed-race Chicana living in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the kind of portrait that is nearly nonexistent in L.A. letters.

Also from Xochitl, “Kenji Liu Is Using Frankenstein as a Metaphor for Toxic Masculinity” at bitch:

Much of the work in Monsters I Have Been is what Liu calls “Frankenpo,” a style of his own creation that chops and mixes multiple texts into one body. The poem “Stomach me, delicious world” is a Frankenpo, and according to Liu’s notes at the back of the book, combines “the screenplay of Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together (1997) + screenplay of Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) + article ‘Confucius on Gay Marriage’ in the Diplomat + New York Times article ‘Court in Hong Kong Invalidates Antisodomy Law from British Era.’”

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “Much More to Investigate” at Los Angeles Review of Books:

From the opening pages of Miracle Creek, Angie Kim creates an intense atmosphere of foreboding and suspense, building swiftly to the event that triggers the rest of her debut novel, unraveling so many lives and lies.

From Rachael Rifkin‘s “How to Honor a Loved One’s Memory” at nextavenue:

When my mom passed away, having established guidelines for my early grieving process was a relief, giving me concrete steps to take and tasks to do. Several years on, my grief is different — less sharp, but still punctuated with unexpected moments and feelings that catch me off guard. I’ve found myself wishing for more traditions and rituals for this stage, and more opportunities to remember and celebrate her life.

Also from Rachael, “29 Siblings and Counting” at 23andMe:

Shauna tested to learn more about her health history, and found herself instead in the middle of the plot of a movie (The Delivery Man, to be exact). Thoughts about potential susceptibilities to diseases receded as she discovered first one, then eight, and now at least 29 donor siblings.

As someone who grew up as an only child and really owned that identity, receiving an email that began “It looks like we are related” was pretty disorienting.

Congratulations to Minal Hajratwala whose poem, “new world literature, or, we’ll be together in the end,” was published in WSQ: Asian Diasporas! Minal also won residencies at Pond Farm and Clarion West workshops.

Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong whose poems, “The Cost of Breath,” “Confronting My Father’s Mistress,” and “Journey” were published in Women’s Studies Quarterly! From “The Cost of Breath:”

Talk about the wood
stacked high in the living room
what it costs
to breathe in my home—
raw wood, oak
so long and thick—
a dead elephant stretched wall to wall

What a great selection of published pieces to celebrate in April. Congratulations to all!

From “Panama” by Donna Sprujit-Metz at SWWIM:

wings, the hummingbirds— 
part of one thousand 
species of birds here—they sip sweet
sap, beaks bright,
the lush forest shows, greens

Further congrats to Donna for publishing her poem, “Tiny Hammers,” in Smartish Pace!

From “Visitation” by Cybele Garcia Kohel at New American Legends:

La Virgen materialized to me- Me!
on a car bumper a medallion of divinity
appeared
where a US Army Seal had been
small
but not impotent

Also from Cybele, “Moon’s Shadow” at New American Legends:

her buxom breadth
her waning flow
true comfort
in this wicked world

From Stephanie Abraham‘s “Telling Stories that Matter for an Increasingly Influential Generation” at My PRSA:

Thanks to the social-media sharing habits of their Gen X and millennial parents, most Gen Zers have had social-media footprints since conception and learned to swipe before taking their first steps. Although the youngest in the age group won’t be eligible to vote until 2030, the oldest have already graduated from college. Starting next year, Gen Z will make up 40 percent of consumers.

Also from Stephanie, “‘Ramy’ Will Get You Laughing — and Thinking,” at Ms.:

The 10 episodes, 22 minutes each, are designed to be binge-watched—which Youssef called the “most 2019” part of the production after a screening in Los Angeles last week. Episodes are not resolved neatly, he added, because “that would be sci-fi.” The plot’s primary tension comes from Ramy’s grappling with believing in God and wanting to be a “good” Muslim, or what he perceives as such, and everyday life in the U.S.—including navigating dating and sex, peer pressure and Islamophobia.

From Romaine Washington‘s “A Thriving Writing Workshop in San Bernadino” at Poets & Writers:

Our workshop participants range in age from mid-twenties to eighties, from college students to retirees. The octogenarian from Germany and the dancer in her twenties who works with at-risk youth have a mutual admiration for each other’s poetry and joie de vivre. The creative process, natural flow in fellowship, and mutual respect makes each meeting memorable.

From “The Button Maker’s House” by Sakae Manning at Carve:

At the center of the front garden, a Deodar Cedar, taller than any tree for blocks around, broad-branched, and regal, planted for shade, a children’s swing, a place for family gatherings. The tree reminded Mari of the flat-topped cedars growing at the edge of her grandfather’s village in Japan. Bending to the ocean’s whims, shaped by monsoons and tsunamis, but never breaking. The four intertwined trunks created a perfect spot for marrying up to the big-nosed man Mari’s mother believed held so much potential. 

Congratulations to Sakae who won a 2019 Summer Fishtrap fellowship!

From “Four Days: A Provocation” by Deirdre Hennings at Litro:

“Papers! Papers!” Shouts of armed soldiers wake me as they tromp through my train in long coats and helmets. So this is East Germany, 1972. We scramble for our passports, watching passengers exit under machine guns aimed at our train from atop nineteenth-century iron catwalks arching above the tracks. One blond, Nordic-looking woman is pulled from her seat in our car at gunpoint, crying and pleading in German, broken English and some other language I cannot understand. She looks to be twenty, the same age as me.

From Rosa Navarette‘s “A Busted Window or My Observation of Luz Moreno, mi Tia Paty” at Label Me Latina/o“

Luz Moreno, also known as Paty in our family, was born in 1979. She was the last of the Morenos to emerge, and she stood out like a sore thumb with her lighter complexion and short legs. A small suspicion wandering the halls of my grandmother’s house, that no one in the family was brave enough to confront. Her older sister, Magda, had become a kitchen helper in the family and home business — the indoor garage was turned into a restaurant, that once belonged to the eldest, sixteen years Paty’s senior. The eldest was at the time of Paty’s childhood, crossing the border to be reunited with her husband. Paty only remembered that her sister’s husband used to
bring her toys, but that those presents stopped when he moved away.

Congratulations to Arielle Silver, whose lyrics for “The Calling” won second place in the March/April 2019 Lyric Contest at American Songwriter:

Freight train’s in the distance
Hear that whistle blow
See it slipping like a serpent
Beneath the sunset glow
Further out, the clouds
Are building up a storm,
Throwing bolts of lightning
They say it’s gonna pour

From Flint‘s “The Clubhouse” at Bending Genres:

The golf cart got a flat 20 yards past the eleventh hole, and three-quarters of a mile away from Frank’s now warm vodka Martini waiting for him at the clubhouse bar. They were only supposed to play nine, and Shirley always had his drink out of the shaker and fogging up the glass at 12:15pm on the nose, not a second before or a minute later, not even if she had to stop mid-pour, leaving some luckless bastard’s Black Label

A great month for Flint who also published “A Villanelle by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet” at Arts & Letters and “Ink” at Unchaste Readers. Congrats!

From Judy Gitterman‘s “Money for Nothing” at The Wild Word:

As I stood in line to reload my Metro card at the station, a man in front of me turned around and stared. It took me several seconds to recognize my old lover. It wasn’t as though he’d aged. He was as gorgeous as ever, a silver-haired Richard Gere look-alike with an irresistible smile. Eyes so dark they resembled bottomless black wells. No, what threw me off was his attire. He wore the most exquisite charcoal grey suit, so sharply tailored he could have been a model for GQ. In the three years we were together, I’d never seen him wear anything other than ripped jeans and faded tee shirts.

Congratulations to Janel Pineda, whose “When the Death Squads Come” was published at Latina Book Review!