Short, Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1947845306 ISBN 13: 9781947845305

Verlag: Ooligan Press, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Ooligan Press

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Mark Budman is first generation immigrant to the US. He is an engineer by training but works as a medical interpreter. His fiction has appeared in Catapult, Witness, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel My Life at First Try, published by Counterpoint, and is the co-editor of anthologies published by Ooligan Press, Persea, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (China), and University of Chester (UK). Learn more at markbudman.com.

Susan O'Neill is the author of two books: the fiction collection Don't Mean Nothing (Ballantine Books, UMass Press, and Serving House Books), and a slim volume of mostly humorous short essays, Calling New Delhi for Free (Peace Corps Writers Books). She co-edited Vestal Review, the oldest continuously-running journal for flash fiction, from its beginnings in 2000 until 2020, and has published stories and essays in a fair number of literary magazines, virtual and print. She was nominated for the Pushcart twice, in fiction and in nonfiction.

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Beating Boris

by Masha Kisel

Ever since Boris Efimovich became her stepfather when she was six years old, Sasha fantasized about growing big enough to overpower him. When he smacked the back of her head or hit her arms, buttocks, or stomach with a belt, she imagined him as a frail old man. His white beard down to his knees, he would cower in the corner of their small kitchen as she raised a frying pan over him, ready to beat him senseless.

Four years later, with the help of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, they were allowed to leave the Soviet Union. An invisible hand, large as the fear of the unknown, plucked them out of Kiev and carried them from Vienna to Rome to Chicago. They dangled without citizenship, suspended over foreign lands by the kind giant’s grasp. At every checkpoint they were interviewed. “How were you persecuted for being Jewish? Which slurs did they call you? Were you beaten? How badly did it hurt and where?”

Boris Efimovich stopped eating. His hair began to grey. His arms grew weak. He could barely manage to slap Sasha across the face.

“Oh, his delicate nerves! Will he make it to 1989?” Sasha’s mother cried when they were detained an extra week in Austria.

“Maybe it’s because I told them that I’m a good Communist and all Americans are bourgeois pigs?” Sasha said as a joke. No one found it funny. She tried again. “I said that Boris Efimovich is a KGB agent.” He was almost too broken to take off his belt. Sasha didn’t care. She gorged on Vienna’s roasted chestnuts, foot-long hotdogs, and chocolate-covered pretzels. She gaped in amazement at the roses blooming in the middle of December—red as her stepfather’s handprint on her cheek—as she walked on a cold beach in Rome.

A few months after they arrived in America, Boris Efimovich stopped leaving their fourth-story Chicago apartment. All day long he sat in an armchair they had salvaged from the dumpster, watching the empty yard—so different from their neighborhood in Kiev. There were no gossiping grandmothers warming benches, no children playing outside.

“This is America?” he’d say in a frightened whisper. “Where are all the people?”Sasha bundled up in a coat too small for her rapidly growing body and walked out the door. She was meeting her new friend Amy at the Greek diner where they would eat American French fries and laugh in English. Sasha looked up.

Boris Efimovich was just a small figure in the window.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ooligan Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1947845306
• ISBN 13: 9781947845305
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 154
• Herausgeber: Budman Mark, O'Neill Susan
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland