Non-Fiction
Category
My Life of Sin
Nonfiction
by Eduardo Cruz Eusebio
…Don’t ask me what the communal outhouses were like. Okay, I have to tell you. Picture a six-foot deep slit trench with a long wooden building pulled over it. In that building hang a dim 20-watt bulb above a long bench with a missing rear board. Where the board is missing, you hang your ass over the fetid darkness, and let it fly into the abyss. Shitting in the darkness, shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers of the Lord, the bench shaking with the exertion of a dozen men and boys, is a dear memory that will never leave me, despite years of hypnosis and therapy….
I remember my Chinese name
An essay by Mengnan/Mary Wu in response to Co Shi An’s essay “Remember heritage, imagine identity, stop believing”
I remember my Chinese name. I remember when it was my only name.
My grandfather wanted a son. My grandmother gave birth to three daughters. Each daughter gave birth in the same year in Beijing. My mother, the middle daughter, was supposed to give birth to me in the middle of her two sisters. But I was 2 weeks overdue, and I broke the order of things. My two cousins were both born female before me, and I was the last hope for my grandfather.