Authors: Judith Kitchen
ISBN-13: 9780393326000, ISBN-10: 0393326004
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Date Published: July 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Judith Kitchen, poet, novelist, and essayist, lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where she and her husband have established a low-residency writing program. She is poetry reviewer of The Georgia Review.
Invigorating creative nonfiction—short, but never slight—gathered by the co-editor of In Short and In Brief.
Seventy-seven authors contributed short essays (a few paragraphs to 2,000 words) on various subjects: a drowning in Tucson, hitchhiking, sounds, colors abandoned by the Crayola company, Mexican farm workers, small towns such as Murdo, South Dakota, a scarlet fever epidemic in 1944, an Armenian grandmother watching the Yankees, the Taj Mahal, fishing and sleeping in the woods, gay love in Amsterdam, ugly women, winter, trains, French lessons, the semi-colon, gray whales, jet lag, human cruelty, fatherhood, the ghetto girls' guide to dating and romance, and ritual meals. Themes range from American/Immigration/Settlers through Danger/Violence/Recklessness and Male Identity to War, Water, and Work/Jobs. Readers will encounter "some of the most exciting writers in present-day America." This collection is an excellent resource for young writers. Readers can tackle the essays in sequence or dip at random into this varied pool. As the author notes, "this collection speaks to a self-conscious American identity." Recommended to teachers of writing and their students. KLIATT Codes: SA*Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2005, Norton, 399p., Ages 15 to adult.
Moving water, Tucson | 19 | |
Brief history of my thumb | 21 | |
Night song | 28 | |
Signs and wonders | 35 | |
from "Mexico's children" | 41 | |
Tenino | 44 | |
In Wyoming | 51 | |
Those who stay and those who go | 54 | |
The Khan men of Agra | 60 | |
Water's edge | 65 | |
Someone I love | 68 | |
Words of my youth | 71 | |
Six postcards | 75 | |
September | 81 | |
Winter wheat | 82 | |
Confessions | 88 | |
Planet unflinching | 91 | |
from Two or three things I know for sure | 93 | |
Work | 97 | |
Muskgrass Chara | 104 | |
Undercurrent | 107 | |
A second time | 110 | |
January | 112 | |
Winter | 115 | |
In Nebraska | 122 | |
The night trucks | 124 | |
Opposite of south | 128 | |
What Sacagawea means to me | 133 | |
Two | 137 | |
The trains | 139 | |
Men at night | 144 | |
Random | 147 | |
Standard time | 152 | |
The war at home | 160 | |
Book war | 166 | |
Bookless in Biak | 169 | |
Disclaimer | 173 | |
Contributor's note | 176 | |
Me talk pretty one day | 181 | |
Semi-colon | 188 | |
Experiencing | 192 | |
Moon snail | 196 | |
Breakfast with Canis latrans | 200 | |
An animal looks at me | 208 | |
The human road | 213 | |
Capital realism | 219 | |
Jet lag | 227 | |
Daylight savings time | 232 | |
Getting yourself home | 235 | |
Afternoon with canals | 238 | |
Siena, burnt and raw | 241 | |
from The growing seasons | 244 | |
Behind the screen | 248 | |
Hose | 254 | |
Take me out to the ballgame | 260 | |
The old country | 264 | |
Human cruelty | 271 | |
The unknown soldier | 274 | |
Confession | 278 | |
Kind of blue | 280 | |
Son of Mr. Green Jeans | 283 | |
The spinners | 292 | |
The ghetto girls' guide to dating and romance | 295 | |
The mother | 302 | |
Clean slate | 305 | |
Ritual meals | 307 | |
Getting rid of the gun | 314 | |
Bullet in my neck | 318 | |
The big nap | 322 | |
The museum of obsolete colors | 328 | |
Four | 333 | |
Margot's diary | 337 | |
Salt hay | 343 | |
Revision | 345 | |
They're in the river | 347 | |
Essay, dresses, and fish | 354 | |
Some cloths | 359 |