Beloved Bilinguals: Writers Working in their Second Language

Ha Jin has his characters speak in a slightly “off” English to remind us they are speaking Chinese. The author says, “I think in English, but I hear in Chinese.” Gary Shteyngart thought in Russian while composing his memoir Little Failure in English. As a child, his nicknames included Solnyshko (Little Sun), Soplyak (Snotty), and…

Nelson Mandela – happy centenary, Madiba!

Happy birthday, Madiba. He would have been 100 on July 18th, 2018. Mandela was the greatest man of our time. Courageous, unrelenting, humble, forgiving. I cannot state how much his example has meant to me and countless others. His story is well-known: his fight for racial justice, the Rivonia trial, his lost years (27 of…

“Bestiary” – by Donika Kelly

A bestiary is a compendium of creatures – an illustrated book from the Middle Ages – with each animal symbolizing some abstract moral principle. They are there to show us foolish humans how to live by the divine code written by Nature/God. In Donika Kelly’s debut poetry collection, there are beasts large and small –…