A closer look at THE KNOT WOUND ROUND YOUR FINGER – part 1
"A Photograph of My Mother"
"In 1958, Grandad stole my mother. I know, stole might be too strong a word, but from where I’m standing, what took place was theft."
This short creative nonfiction piece delves into the details of a single photograph of the speaker’s mother when she was a child, and all that was lost when she was taken from her home and culture in Singapore. From the very first line, a story emerges, and in a short space Emma Prior captures an immense feeling of loss.
Emma Prior lives in Liverpool where she runs grassroots, community-building projects. Her writing has been published in several independent anthologies, and she’s currently working on her first novel. Twitter: @emmavprior
"The Library"
"As soon as I was alone, I was running my fingers across the stacks, feeling the hardness of the pages without opening the books yet. The walls had fallen away, and the sun shone directly into the space. The racks were giant trees, and the books were their rich, colourful leaves."
In this funny and moving nonfiction story, a broken sandal and a helpful friend lead the narrator to discovering the joyful depths of the school library. It’s a quiet moment of being lost in words amid the ups and downs of school at Nigerian Federal Government College in the ’90s.
Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim took 20 years to find his way back to his passion after he was forcibly sent to science class in high school. In 2019, he left a successful ten-year career in media & entertainment to become a writer.
Since that time, his work has been accepted for publication in JMWW, Door is a Jar Magazine, Ake Review, Agbowó Magazine, Landlocked Magazine, The Chaffin Journal, The Decolonial Passage, and more. He finished as a finalist in Goge Africa’s #GogeAfrica20 Writing Contest, and Ibua Journal’s Packlight Series. He was longlisted for the 2020 Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Ibrahim’s work explores the human experience from an African perspective. He’s @heemthewriter across social media.
"Tea Break" by Shereen Hussain
"The temperatures are so high that they can smell the heat. But everyone craves that treacherous tea regardless. Wise elders know how chai drinking has a cooling effect through perspiration. The colonials take this secret back to England with their jewels and even learn of a meal called High Tea. Mini kebabs, dainty colonized cucumber sandwiches, crunchy samosas, and fish cutlets."
The memory of a tea party and joyful family gatherings mixes with the colonial violence surrounding tea and the history of the East India Company in this vivid and impactful flash fiction story.
Shereen Hussain was born in India and raised in the U.K., but later moved to California. She has a degree in French and English Literature from the University of London and one in Education from San Francisco State University. Shereen was a teacher for many years and then entered the field of international business. However, writing has been a lifelong passion.
Her short stories have been published by Freedom Voices in San Francisco, Lascaux Review, and by a publisher in the U.K. Her play, Inventing the Truth has been performed in a high school in California and a community theater in Illinois. It is about the invention of the ice cream cone by a Syrian immigrant.
"Violence in the Calm" by NC Hernandez
"I felt both like an intruder and a relative as I tried not to miss a word the old man said. Nearly seventy years after the violence I came to ask him about, I sensed that even the small privileges I had in California were, no matter how obscure, magnified here, and partly a result of his life."
In “Violence in the Calm,” the author visits relatives in Mexico to learn about a violent event in their childhood and how it has changed their lives since.
It is a powerful reflection on family history and on a moment of violence that unspools across decades of anger, an anger that lives in memory, in lingering injury, and in a desire for revenge. This is beautifully written nonfiction that settles on striking imagery and meditates on the echoes of the past.
2021 Pushcart Prize nominee
NC Hernandez is a Chicano writer from southern California, temporarily living in San Francisco since 2010 with his partner and two cats. He has worked as a behaviorist for children with autism, a touring musician, and an immigrant rights activist who led the first visitation program in California for federally imprisoned immigrants. He currently works in a non-profit organization, spends part of the year in Mexico City, and invents his own cocktails. Hernandez writes socio-political essays about male violence, music, and classic menswear.
"Horizontal Recruiters" by Mark Blickley
"It suddenly dawned on me that the signs admonishing me to behave in a certain way weren’t so much to insure proper respect for the dead, but a kind of recruitment poster for potential future servicemen. In my mind the phrase eternal rest suddenly turned into parade rest, the military term for being at ease while still in a military formation."
In this essay, Mark Blickley visits the Arlington National Cemetery and ruminates on how even in death, soldiers still work as silent recruiters for the military. Through the story of this historic site, Mark investigates how the treatment of the dead has a political impact on the living.
Mark Blickley is a New York based, widely published and produced, author of fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, and experimental video, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His multi-genre collaborations with artist Amy Bassin include Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes from the Underground (Moira Books) and the text-based art collaboration Dream Streams (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). His videos, “Speaking in Bootongue” and “Widow’s Peek: The Kiss of Death,” represented the United States in the 2020 year-long international world tour of Time Is Love: Universal Feelings: Myths & Conjunctions, organized by esteemed Togolese-French curator, Kisito Assangni.
Read these stories and more in The Knot Wound Round Your Finger:
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The Knot Wound Round Your Finger
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