After our first week, I begin to lose things during the walks along the creek.
Haiyang
Don’t worry, I said, you’re the sea, and it’s impossible for the sea to drown. There’s nothing big enough for you.
Desperate Love: Review of “The Case for and Against Love Potions” by Imbolo Mbue
After reading this story, readers may wonder whether a love potion is worth the trouble and risk.
Anything that Shines
There’s an our kind and a their kind.
The Mean Streets
I was Indiana Jones, hanging from a rope above a pit of snakes, my moves skilled and sure. My recorder was below, begging to be rescued like whatever unrealistic female heroine Jones would fall in love with and then totally forget about by the sequel.
Nurture
Out here, she knew, was his sanctuary, away from his daughter’s problems. Here, only these more easily governed fruits of his labor existed.
Homecoming
I was just taking some time off, I told myself. From college. But more and more it felt like from life.
The Jumper and the Gaijin
Nora learns “gaijin” when she hears the teenagers say it. She’s not heard an adult use it, and when it’s said in her proximity the eikaiwa manager turns stern and scolds the student. So while she knows that it means “outsider,” it must mean something else, something a little shameful, the kind of word said only at home.
To Be Generous
When Amy whispered in Russ’s ear that what he wanted her to do would cost him fifty bucks, she meant it to be sexy.
The Young Mayor of Villa Sorgo
With a clogged throat and quivering bowels he’d watched the river of muscle flow beneath his balcony, the white-clad men in their blood-red neckties tumbling through the streets, vaulting over the barriers in their frantic attempts to escape the horns of the onrushing beasts.
BERKELEY FICTION REVIEW 