A wonderful, challenging, and enlightening journey has come to an end. Like every great project, it was made possible by the people who helped me along the way: My family, my friends, Eli, Eli’s family, the artists I read and the artists I met, my hosts, and, of course, the readers of this blog. Many thanks to you all. It will certainly not be my last literary travel project, so stay tuned for alerts from this site.
Schlagwort: Literature
Voices: Marisol García Walls
Marisol García Walls is a non-fiction writer born and raised in Mexico City. After the earthquake in September 2017, she started the project Cuéntanos dónde estabas together with Roberto Cruz Arzabal to collect and record the experiences of those affected. You can find two of her essays in English translation here and here and one of her essays on material culture in Spanish here. Voices: Marisol García Walls weiterlesen
Voices: Michelle Marie Wallace
Michelle Marie Wallace is a San-Francisco-based writer working with themes of the border and healing in both her fiction and non-fiction. I had the chance to meet her twice on my journey: In San Francisco, where she co-hosted The Borderlands Lectura, and in Ciudad de México, where she lived for 13 months in 2016/17. Read one of her short stories here and a piece about her experiences during the earthquake in Ciudad de México in September 2017 here. Voices: Michelle Marie Wallace weiterlesen
Valeria Luiselli: The Story of my Teeth
Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, also known as Highway, is not only the self-proclaimed best auctioneer in the world, but also the proud owner of a large collection of exquisite memorabilia. Each piece has a story that gives it inestimable value. The most important item never leaves his body – instead of his own, his mouth sports the teeth of Marilyn Monroe. Valeria Luiselli: The Story of my Teeth weiterlesen
Héctor Tobar: The Barbarian Nurseries
After an argument over money ends badly, Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson leave their home in the Laguna Rancho Estates separately. Neither of them informs their housekeeper, Araceli Ramírez, who finds herself unwillingly in charge of their two sons. Three days and several miscommunications later, Araceli faces deportation because she attempted to bring the children to their grandfather in L.A. Héctor Tobar: The Barbarian Nurseries weiterlesen
Books, Booths, and Burritos in San Francisco
Sometime during the 17-hour-trainride from Portland to San Francisco, the lush forests of the Pacific Northwest turn into the hills covered by yellow and green grasslands and bushes that surround the Bay Area. The Ohlone people, including the Yelamu, are the original inhabitants of the area that is now San Francisco. They were the largest group of Native Americans south of the Coast Salish before European settlement expanded from the East Coast. Now their traces are few and far in between. The time of Spanish colonization and Mexican affiliation, however, is still present in many place and street names. Books, Booths, and Burritos in San Francisco weiterlesen
Brian Doyle: Mink River
Brian Doyle’s fiction debut Mink River (Oregon State University Press, 2010) takes place in Neawanaka, a small, fictional village on the central Oregon coast whose indigenous origins reach back about 5000 years. Brian Doyle: Mink River weiterlesen
Tracing „A Tale For The Time Being“ on Cortes Island
The beach where Ruth finds Nao’s diary // An diesem Strand findet Ruth Naos Tagebuch.
The bookstore // Die Buchhandlung.
The free store // Der Umsonstladen.
The Cortes Museum // Das Cortes-Museum.
A Tale for The Time Being (Canongate, 2013) is a book about connections – between and in spite of people, time, and place. The story is set in motion when Ruth, who lives on Cortes, one of the Discovery Islands at the northern end of Georgia Strait, finds a mysterious piece of flotsam: The diary of Nao, a teenager in Japan. Tracing „A Tale For The Time Being“ on Cortes Island weiterlesen
Trains, Planes, and Books. 