Tag: Personal Narratives
-
Letter to my body
Tereza CrvenkovicSydney, Australia Dear Body, Here we are clinging to this rope, swinging from side-to-side, above this great big stage with its pitch-black backdrop. Anything could happen to us. Anything. How did it come to this? How did we get here? I do not have the answer. We have been together for some time now.…
-
My mother and Proust
Dean GianakosLynchburg, Virginia, United States “Mom, one day I’m going to write a story about you. I’ve already picked out a title: “My Mother and Proust,” I laugh. I look at her face, hoping for a smile. Before my eighty-six-year-old mother developed Parkinson’s dementia a few years ago, she would have laughed with me. Instead,…
-
Distant memories of medical school – 1950–1954
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States How sweet the silent backward tracings!The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of oldtimes resumed—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.— Memories by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)1 It is now more than sixty years since I was in medical school (1950–1954). Most of the classes I attended and many of the people I came…
-
Pitch dark
Ochiche IjeomaLagos, Nigeria I had observed many surgical operations as a medical student so I knew what to expect. The rules about changing clothes and footwear, the strict hand washing routine, the complex method of putting on the aprons, gowns, and gloves had been drummed into my ears and demonstrated countless times. I also knew…
-
Immigrating to the in-between
Maia EvronaMassachusetts, United States “But you have an accent. Where are you from originally?” I have learned to expect this question whenever I make a new acquaintance, whether the meeting occurs outside of the United States or in my home state of Massachusetts. There are few experiences more surreal than trying to convince a fellow…
-
Cancer class
Emily DieckmanTuscon, Arizona, United States When my parents told me about the cancer, everything felt different. It seemed the entire world had suddenly gone from plain font to italics – everything was still legible, but newly emphasized by this cold, sharp, intrusive fact. I was not prepared to make room for something like this. I…
-
The seeds of resilience
Bryanne StandiferRedford, Michigan, United States One Friday morning in high school, I counted fourteen murders in one week in the city that I call home. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Not the cool, trendy Detroit we know now, but the Detroit that made us lock our doors at night and look both…
-
Family encounters with pathogens 100 years apart
Meredith WrightNew York City, New York, United States After my mother died, I became obsessed with preserving family memories and learning as many stories as I could, with the knowledge that most were likely already lost along with her. While sorting through her desk for family memorabilia I came across my great-grandmother’s unpublished memoir. I…
-
Trauma vicariously: a writer’s madness
Kirsten FoggToronto, Ontario, Canada It started with a lump in my throat. Actually, it started before that. Last year when I embarked on a project gathering stories of belonging, I tried to be witty and philosophical by quoting author Ben Okri. “Listening,” Okri had said in an ABC radio interview, “is quite close to suffering.”…
-
The disease you do not see
Aaron BerkowitzNew York, New York, USA You look normal, good even. Statistically you are bigger, stronger than billions of people alive (and those who have died). You learn to repeat mantras to affirm your being. There is power in prayer when action is impossible. You cry more too, beg. You force yourself to write, to…