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Robin Williams at a charity benefit in 2007. John J. Kruzel/American Forces Press Service
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RIP Robin Williams


Yesterday, the world lost one of its great talents. Robin Williams was found dead in his home Monday from an apparent suicide. The sadness of his loss is matched only by the joy he brought the world over his life.

While early obituaries I’ve read have lauded his acting triumphs (i.e., Good Will Hunting, Dead Poet’s Society), equally important to my childhood were Robin Williams’ less acclaimed works, from Jumanji (50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) to Hook (31 percent) to Flubber (23 percent). Few actors have achieved such generational impact, making his death all the more painful.

Robin Williams in glasses and green jacket
Robin Williams at a charity benefit in 2007. John J. Kruzel/American Forces Press Service

After I heard the news of his death last night, I was filled with a deep anger at the selfishness and pointlessness of the act. Salmon Rushdie wrote, “Murder is an act of violence against the dead. Suicide is an act of violence against the living.” But Williams was just a man, one of the millions in America fighting depression on a daily basis. The sad fact is, suicide is endemic in our society, especially among men.

Williams’ fame and wealth made him seem larger-than-life. But, like the successful but tortured man in Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Richard Cory,” it is important to remember that wealth and fame are not panaceas for depression. If anything, they can create undue pressure and prevent those in need from seeking help.

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The Poetry of Pussy Riot: A Review of Words Will Break Cement

By Cornelius Fortune

Journalist Masha Gessen wrote a well-received biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin two years ago. In her new book Words Will Break Cement, she profiles Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist punk activist group whose members have become the international faces of anti-Putin protest.

In recent years the group has won a global following—including the likes of Madonna and Paul McCartney—for their offbeat acts of civil disobedience against the Russian government. One of their best-known protests—a controversial “punk prayer” performance in a Moscow cathedral in 2012—eventually landed three of its members in jail. Gessen, a Russian American journalist and herself a critic of Putin, follows the personal histories of these three members: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadya), Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Stanislavovna Samutsevich (Kat). Most of the book was culled from Gessen’s reporting from their trial and her correspondence with Nadya and Maria while they were in prison.

Nadya, we learn, grew up with a love for philosophy. One of her heroes was Anatoly Marchenko, a Soviet dissident who wrote about the experiences of political prisoners in Soviet camps. Bookish Maria long felt herself to be an outsider, and yet, as one of her friends put it, she also “had this idea that she would change the world.” Kat was trained as a computer engineer. Gessen describes her as cerebral, sometimes too much so: “Her word choice was always intentional, but she seemed unaware of images or associations that her words called forth in others, and as a result her speech often served to obscure rather than to illuminate.”

Before Pussy Riot, Nadya was involved with an art collective called Voina (roughly translated as “War”). Formed in 2007, the group used street art to criticize corrupt politicians, police, and clergy, staging colorfully named (if somewhat clumsily executed) protest pieces throughout Russia that involved a wide range of illegality: from vandalizing police vehicles (“F*** the FSB”), to stealing groceries while wearing priestly robes and a police officer’s hat (“Cop in a Priest’s Cassock”). After Voina split in 2009, the faction based in Moscow eventually became Pussy Riot.

What set Pussy Riot apart from their earlier incarnation was their deliberate strategy to steer clear of “Art with a Capital A,” Gessen writes:

Indeed, the fact that it was art should be concealed by a spirit of fun and mischief. Whatever they did should be easily understood, and if it was not, it should be simply explained. It should be as accessible as the Guerrilla Girls and as irreverent as Bikini Kill. If only Russia had something like these groups, or anything of Riot Grrrl culture, or, really, any legacy of twentieth‐century feminism in its cultural background! But it did not. They had to make it up.

Pussy Riot soon developed their own style of protest: donning multicolored balaclavas and playing loud punk rock. Other than that, they seemed to make it up as they went along—storming designer boutiques, practicing on playgrounds, climbing atop buses. Once, they unintentionally set a fashion show on fire, and later called it “Pussy Riot Burns Down Putin’s Glamour.” On another occasion, they performed in Red Square to protest the detainment of three gay activists.

Even after the three members were hauled into court for their “punk prayer” at a Moscow cathedral, they remained—poetically—defiant. Plodding in its first half, the book takes off once Gessen gets to the trial, a dramatic media event that crystallized many of the reasons that the young women have become an international phenomenon. In her closing statement, Nadya invoked a quote from the Soviet dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “So the word is more sincere than concrete? So the word is not a trifle? Then may noble people begin to grow, and their word will break cement.”

All three of the women were convicted and sentenced to two years in a penal colony. Kat’s sentence was later reduced on appeal. As for Nadya and Maria, Gessen writes, “forty seconds of lip-synching cost them around 660 days behind bars.”

Cornelius Fortune is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Advocate, Citizen Brooklyn, the Chicago Defender, Yahoo News, and other publications.

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Messy and Beautiful


liberty-for-all

Since I was a child, I knew I was going to be a writer. Early on, though, I was ruined by the romanticism surrounding the craft. I’d read too much Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and Charles Bukowski. I did drugs. I drank. I wandered. At first it may have been to emulate my idols, but eventually it became about survival: running fast and hard from the horrors of an abusive home.

I don’t recall ever making the connection that all of my literary heroes were straight white men, but in the back of my head I knew that so much of how the world opened up for them would never be in the cards for me. But I kept writing, filling up composition books, not thinking about getting published so much as trying, word by word, to patch up my life.

In high school, several teachers took an interest in me, despite the fact I was a miserable fuckup who barely showed up to class. I read all of the writers they believed a girl like me should read. The men gave me Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus. The women gave me Kate Chopin, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. Not once did any teacher ever hand me a book by a writer of color.

I now understand this experience is hardly unique to me. If it weren’t for one of my oldest friends, Jessica Rodriguez, loaning me Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros in high school, I would have never known a Latina could be a writer. I mean, I knew Latina writers existed—they were my friends, fellow notebook scribblers—but I don’t think it ever occurred to us that one day we could hold each other’s books in our hands.

Diversity in literature is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. Last month I attended a workshop run by the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA), which sponsors programs for writers of color working in a variety of genres. I sat at the orientation looking around in disbelief at more than 150 writers crammed into a room at UC Berkeley, thinking, “Holy fuck, I had no idea there were so many of us.”

I was there because of the weekly comic strip I write with my best friend Julio Salgado. Liberty For All is his baby. In its early days, the queer, undocumented artist drew and wrote it himself and posted it on his Facebook page. When the comic was picked up by CultureStrike, I was brought on as the writer, giving the two of us the opportunity to work on our first project together after nearly ten years of friendship.

Liberty, the strip’s main character, is a writer without much of a filter. She is sometimes Salgado. Sometimes me. Sometimes our friends, lovers, or family members. She is never a stranger to us. By featuring her story, week after week, we hope she is seen as the quirky, complicated, sometimes problematic character we know her to be, rather than a laundry list of oppressions. But because of those less-than-conventional details of who she is—chubby, brown, undocumented, queer, feminist—I worry that mainstream audiences aren’t capable of recognizing her humanity.

Junot Díaz, the celebrated Dominican American author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and one of VONA’s founders, has spoken out about the tough environment writers of color face. In a recent New Yorker piece—an excerpt from an anthology of writing from VONA attendees and instructors—Díaz describes his particularly miserable experience studying in an MFA program: “That shit was too white.” It’s the “standard problem” of MFA programs everywhere, he adds. Díaz brings up the story of Athena, a Caribbean American woman he praises as a “truly gifted writer.” She dropped out of his program because it was simply too challenging to be a woman of color in that space. Over the years, he looked for Athena’s work, but it appeared that she had chosen not to pursue writing. Díaz seems to recognize the tragedy of this, if only in the distant way a man who “made it” can.

How much better are things today? The women’s literary group VIDA does a yearly tally of the number of women writers in various mainstream literary publications, from the Atlantic to the New Republic—both of whose bylines were more than two-thirds male in 2013. Inspired by this hard-numbers approach, Roxane Gay set out to find out where things stood for writers of color. She found that nearly 90 percent of the books reviewed by the New York Times in 2011 were written by white writers. (Today, few writers of color can be found even in the pages of liberal magazines, which may laud diversity in theory, but do not actually practice it.)

Gay also pointed out another issue: the identity hierarchy. “Race often gets lost in the gender conversation as if it’s an issue we’ll get to later,” she wrote. Yes, progress is slow, but it’s always the most needed voices that are forced to wait. And as we push for a racial mix that better represents the world we live in, does that mean we’ll also need to “get to” queer and transgender writers later?

At least people today are more willing to speak out about these issues—on social media, in particular. In May, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks hashtag went viral after it was announced only white writers would be featured at BookCon, a new reader-focused book festival held in conjunction with the annual trade show BookExpo America. It wasn’t the first time BookCon organizers had come under fire. A month earlier, they had put together a panel on young-adult literature composed solely of white men.

Another diversity-related dustup blew up on Twitter in May when writer Daniel José Older reacted to criticism of a story in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, an anthology he co-edited. A review chided one of the anthology’s writers, Troy L. Wiggins, for relying too heavily on “phonetic dialect,” calling it a “literary trick” that rarely works. Older tweeted that the reviewer was unfairly coming at a black writer for using AAVE (African American Vernacular English), even though critics have long called white writers—from Joyce to Shakespeare—“brilliant” for using vernacular in their prose. He and Wiggins, Older wrote, are “trying to stay true to our voices in a white ass world.”

In the comic strip Julio and I work on, many of the characters are queer, undocumented, body positive, sex positive, transgender, and people of color. They suffer from mental health issues. They live below the poverty line. They do bad things. In other words, they are messy and beautiful, just like our real-life communities.

Julio and I never had a conversation about being all-inclusive, but sometimes we get commended for our “diverse” comic. No doubt the nine other people in my graphic novel writing workshop—eight of whom were women—encounter the same weird praise. And that’s just it, really. When you give people at the margins the opportunity and platform to tell their own stories, what is reflected will look like intentional pushback against mainstream narratives. Our stories only seem revolutionary because they so often go untold.

At VONA, our instructor Mat Johnson told us we can’t hide behind our oppressions. We have to be good writers. Our only hope of getting mainstream readers to take interest in stories featuring people of color is by tapping into the human condition, those seemingly mundane and yet monumentally important life events that connect us all—and that magically render gender, race, culture, and class unimportant.

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Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last December, three months before popular protests ousted Yanukovich. Photo courtesy of Kremlin.ru
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Don’t Underestimate Vladimir Putin


Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and Russian president Vladimir Putin seated and talking in Kremlin
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last December, three months before popular protests ousted Yanukovich. Photo courtesy of Kremlin.ru

Speaking at West Point on Wednesday, President Obama touted his administration’s response to Russia’s recent belligerence in Ukraine. “Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away,” he said. The public outcry and the pressure exerted by international institutions, he added, have served as an effective “counterweight” to “Russian propaganda and Russian troops on the border and armed militias in ski masks.” In spite of the crisis Ukraine has gone on to hold elections—“without us firing a shot.”

Unfortunately, Obama is mistaken. The momentum is still on Russia’s side. It has forcibly seized and annexed the strategically valuable peninsula of Crimea. It has succeeded in destabilizing eastern Ukraine through a proxy war­—secretively supporting ethnic Russian rebellions against the Ukrainian government there. It is quite possible Ukraine will end up losing more of its territory.

For years now, America and the international community have underestimated Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruthless and unpredictable leader. Obama, for example, has dismissed Russia as a mere “regional power.” And so far the global response to Putin’s latest aggression has been tepid. But this is a serious miscalculation, and it betrays a deep ignorance of Russian power and the dangers it presents.

Related: Victor Epstein on how to counter Russia’s recent aggression

Obama and other world leaders may excoriate Russia’s actions in their speeches, but Putin clearly cares little for what they say. At home his popularity and political capital have only grown, thanks to a state-run propaganda machine that relentlessly praises and “whitewashes” his foreign policy. And while the US and Europe have levied trade sanctions and other punishments on his regime, these have had limited effect.

“Russia cannot be isolated,” Putin said when the sanctions were imposed, and so far he seems to be right. On Wednesday, the EU chose to delay further sanctions against Russia—the very same day as Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, called futilely on the West to increase those sanctions and provide Ukraine with military aid. Yesterday, French president François Hollande agreed to meet Putin in person next week. Over the protests of its Western allies, France is pushing ahead with a deal to sell Russia  two warships for $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, Russia recently signed an economic agreement with Belarus and Kazakhstan and announced a landmark $400 billion gas deal with China.

Given their dependence on Russian energy and trade, European countries are unwilling to break their ties with Russia in any meaningful way. And in the ongoing trade war that the sanctions unleashed, Russia is clearly willing and able to endure the economic damage—much more so than its opponents. Apparently, Putin has a higher pain threshold than his counterparts on the other side.

Russia has also proven itself more adept in using trade as a weapon. Ukraine’s new president knows this well. Dubbed the “Chocolate King,” Poroshenko made his fortune with the confectioner Roshen, which exports candy to over thirty countries. Last summer, the Russian government banned all imports of Roshen sweets, citing safety concerns. The move was clearly an act of retaliation against Poroshenko, who had helped lead efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s ties to Europe. Months later—in the same week that the Ukrainian government caved to Russian pressure and abandoned a proposed trade deal with the EU—Russia lifted the ban. But this was only a temporary ceasefire in the so-called “chocolate war”: in March, a month after mass demonstrations in Ukraine toppled a regime more favorable to it, Russia seized and closed a Roshen factory in one of its cities, Lipetsk. These targeted reprisals, which have personally cost Poroshenko millions, remind us how inseparable Russia’s trade and business decisions are from its political ambitions—and how brazen Putin can be in getting what he wants.

Currently, Poroshenko faces far bigger challenges than sinking candy profits. Ukraine is suffering from deep economic woes, entrenched corruption and cronyism, and fragmented and sluggish political leadership. It is engaged in what at this point amounts to a small-scale civil war against the separatist rebels in the east. And the conflict seems to be intensifying. A day after the Ukrainian army engaged in a fierce battle to retake the Donetsk airport, separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter, killing thirteen soldiers and a general. This week, several Russian nationals were revealed to be among those wounded in the recent fighting. In spite of its routine denials, the evidence suggests that Russia has been deeply involved in funding and fomenting the unrest.

It appears that Putin has no intention of withdrawing his support of the separatists anytime soon. But given that the conflict has already inflamed sectarian passions and emboldened separatist hopes, Russia would have a hard time putting the genie back in the bottle even if it wanted to.

Having faced two brutal wars in Chechnya and a string of terrorist atrocities committed by Russia’s own separatist enemies, Putin must surely appreciate how difficult it can be to predict or control hostilities once they have begun. It’s more likely he intends to play both sides against the middle: working with Ukraine’s newly formed government to encourage greater autonomy for certain regions in eastern Ukraine, while continuing to secretly foment unrest there—thus ensuring his smaller neighbor is weak and distracted.

Poroshenko now finds himself in the unenviable position of having to negotiate with, and somehow outmaneuver, Russia’s shrewd and unscrupulous leader. But given his ample experience playing Putin’s game, there is hope that he at least will not underestimate his enemy—as the rest of the world continues to do.

Related: Power Play, by Victor Epstein

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May Is the Cruelest Month


The author as a young child held by her mother on a bed
The author and her mother.

May in Los Angeles is breathtaking. I know this because it’s all people talk about when the city explodes in Technicolor and flowers rip open. Everything is lush and living, or so they say. I live in Los Angeles too, but I don’t see it the same way. Not anymore. The sunshine is harsh. The colors unkind.

When I walk to the corner liquor store with my sunglasses on and hoodie pulled up, hoping to be left alone, neighbors still yell out, “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” I smile politely, nod. Always polite.

I stood on this same street four years ago, a few days before Mother’s Day. It was early in the morning, around 3 a.m., and I was on the phone with a steely 911 operator, wondering why she was being so cold to me. I realize now it was probably better that way, but in those moments I hated her. I remember saying, “This doesn’t feel real. This feels like a movie. Is this real?” There was silence on the other end of the line.

As the ambulance turned onto my street, I sucked in air like someone drowning. There were no sirens. No flashing lights. I wanted to see the EMTs rushed and sweaty. I wanted adrenaline. But they were calm and slow-moving.

It was my fault. I’d already told the 911 operator I knew my mom was dead.

During the month of May, I will give myself permission to self-destruct. I will drink more than I should. I will sleep more than I should. I will want to do things I’m not wired to do. Sometimes I will. Mostly I won’t.

I will spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Jumbo’s Clown Room in Hollywood, that dark little strip club that has the power to turn my brain off. I will think about sipping double Crowns and mindlessly throwing crumpled bills onto the stage. I will think about the women and how I want to make eye contact with them in a way I’m usually not capable of. I will think about all the hours of work I need to put in to make a trip to Jumbo’s a reality. It will exhaust me and I will go back to bed.

I broke up more fistfights in my family home than I can count, and I never threw a punch. But this month, there will be days when I wish someone would dare to say something about my dead mom. I will fantasize about how that first punch would feel. And I will think about what my dad said after the EMTs confirmed that my grey-faced mother was dead and probably had been for hours. In front of these men we did not know, he said, “We didn’t even care about her.” It took everything in me not to jump across the bed and murder him.

Mostly, I will search for that hollowed-out feeling I get from Xanax on those days when the anxiety feels like it’s going to burst my heart. That sensation of floating unwittingly through my day, serene and untouchable—not sobbing in a grocery-store bathroom or sitting on the curb in an unfamiliar neighborhood trying like hell to steady my breathing and stop the tears so that I don’t have to deal with a stranger asking, “Are you okay?”

Last May, I lost my mind. Every day, I fought the urge to lie down in the spot where my mother’s body lay for hours before the coroner came. I went on long, meandering walks, listening to the same Perfume Genius album over and over again. (A word of advice: Do not have a soundtrack for your mental collapse. You will never be able to listen to those songs again without being snapped back into that headspace.) I tore apart a pink Bic razor the way I used to in high school. Those flimsy things do an impressive amount of damage. As I watched the blood rise to the surface of my forearm, I thought, “I have no idea why I’m doing this.”

This May, I don’t know what will happen. But I know there will be days when she is all I think about.

Four years ago, I bought my mom a pair of turquoise earrings for Mother’s Day. I had found them at a street fair. My dad and uncle and I had tried to talk my mom into going with us, but at that point she only left the house for doctor’s appointments.

So we left her behind and talked shit about her at the fair. We sat on a green bench on Third Street, the sun beating down on us, the smell of roses everywhere, and talked about forcing her to go on walks, forcing her to quit smoking, forcing her to get it together.

At the fair that day, I took pictures of my dad and uncle beaming, standing in front of glorious restored cars from the 1950s that shined Larkspur Blue and Goddess Gold.

When I look at those photos now, I think about how my mom at that moment had less than twenty-four hours to live. I look at every picture taken before her death the same way. My favorite picture of us smiling with our big, bright eyes? We only had twenty-two years left together. Those pictures from her birthday in 2009, those pictures of her hanging ornaments on the tree, those pictures of her looking dazed in the background as my nieces danced around the living room? She would have less than 365 days left. She didn’t know it. Or maybe she did.

I write this on the anniversary of her death. It’s a beautiful May day. When I walk out my front door, I actually hear birds chirping. The smell of honeysuckle and orange blossoms swirls around. All this afternoon, my dad and uncle have tried to talk me into going to a street fair, the same fair where I bought my mom those Mother’s Day earrings that I would later bury with her.

I was going to give her those earrings. I was going to cook her favorite meal, those bloody steaks she loved so much. I was going to get her pink roses, the kind she bought me on my birthday. I was going to, I was going to, I was going to. But I never got to.

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A Nepalese porter takes a wooden door up to the Everest base camp.
Blog / Political Prose

The Lethal Snows of Everest


Today, twelve Sherpas died in an avalanche on Mount Everest, the worst accident in the mountain’s history. (Four are still missing.) The Sherpa community, an ethnic group in Nepal renowned for their mountaineering skills, has long guided foreign visitors up the world’s tallest peak. “Sherpas bear the real burden of climbing Mount Everest,” American mountaineer Conrad Anker told National Geographic. “They’re the ones who take the biggest risks.”

Last year we published a story by Stephanie Lowe that described the growing dangers of the mountain and the concerns of the Sherpa guides, whose very job is to risk their lives on Everest’s slopes.

From the article:

More worrisome, the mountain’s slopes have become crowded, a situation that veteran mountaineers deplore as dangerous. More than 200 people have died on Everest, and even though fatalities happen less frequently these days, the recent surge in climbers has meant that more than a quarter of those deaths have occurred since 2000. There is a very narrow window between May and June when Everest’s slopes are relatively less perilous, and during that time hundreds of climbers can crowd the so-called “Death Zone” — altitudes above 26,000 feet, where oxygen becomes scarce and mental faculties quickly deteriorate. (Climate change may also be making the climb more lethal, as the mountain’s layers of ice and snow melt and leave the path rockier and more treacherous.)

Last year, an expedition went up Everest to clear debris and retrieve the abandoned corpses of previous climbers. The five-person team ended up having to wait four hours in the Death Zone, as climbers going up “Hillary’s Step” — a sheer rock wall just below the summit — jammed the path down. A South Korean climber died, one of Everest’s four fatalities that day.

Nima Sherpa, a twenty-nine-year-old medic, ticks off the many afflictions that beset those who venture into Everest’s unrivaled altitudes: frostbite, snow blindness, hypothermia, delirium. The Sherpa guides who risk their lives climbing the Himalayas’ toughest peaks cannot dwell on these dangers, though: they have families to support. “The pay is good, and this is their work,” he points out.

And yet that is, perhaps, part of the problem. “When your family needs that money,” another guide says, “sometimes you don’t insist a weak climber turn back.”

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Call for Submissions: Resistance


In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | April 2014: Resistance

Ukraine. Venezuela. Thailand. The Arab Spring. We are living in a time of vibrant protest, captured and magnified by cellphone videos and Twitter feeds. On both the political right and left, grassroots movements have emerged everywhere—including America and Europe—to resist authority and overturn the establishment.

We want to hear your stories of resistance: from powerful mass movements to personal relationships. We are seeking profiles, personal essays, and photo essays of individuals and groups who have stood up to power—triumphantly or tragically, honorably or hypocritically. Describe the ways that people have organized and inspired each other to overcome tough odds. On a smaller level, tell us about how you or someone else fought back against domestic violence, bullying, a hostile work environment, or other kinds of intimidation. Importantly, show us how that single case has something to say about larger issues and broader struggles.

Please review our submissions guidelines and send a one-paragraph pitch to the appropriate section editor NO LATER THAN MAY 1, 2014. You may attach a complete draft if you have one.

We also welcome submissions of news features, commentary, book and film reviews, art/photography, and videos on any other topics that relate to the magazine’s themes: understanding other people and cultures, encouraging empathy and compassion, and defying categories and conventions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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Losing Mama


At the height of my teenage apathy, my mom made me squeal with delight by smuggling a kitten into our home in a cardboard box she’d found at work. She burst into my bedroom excitedly and shoved the box toward me. When I saw its tiny, grey nose and bright, yellow eyes, I fell in love just like my mom.

Mama the catMy dad, however, had a strict “no pets” policy. Caring for a cat would cost too much money, he said. He and my mom already struggled to afford food. For days, my parents fought over the kitten while I held out hope I could have this one little, good thing in a house that all too often felt devoid of good things.

Shockingly, my mom won the fight. I was given the task of naming the kitten. I chose “Cindy,” sort of as a joke to make my best friend Cindy laugh. That was the cat’s name until a year later when she gave birth to a litter of kittens in a cupboard in my parents’ house. We kept one of the kittens, Jacky, and gave the rest away. Overnight, Cindy became “Mama.”

When I talk with friends who aren’t “animal people,” it’s difficult to articulate just how big a part of your family a pet becomes. For thirteen years, I knew I could walk into my parents’ living room — no matter how unpleasant that experience could sometimes be — and there Mama would be. She would sit on my lap, rub her face against mine, and purr. If I spoke to her, she’d meow in response to everything I said.

Mama helped my mom to cope, too, during some hard times. Ten years ago, my mom was laid off. She had worked for over two decades as a janitor at a hospital. It was the only job she’d ever known.

After she was let go, my mom’s world became very small. Once a woman who had refused to leave the house without a face full of makeup, long nails painted bright red, and a cloud of perfume around her, my mom stopped caring about her appearance. She stopped leaving the house. She stopped talking. She stopped getting dressed. Her life stopped.

I thought she was horribly depressed — and I’m sure that was part of it, but physically, she was also broken. I made doctor’s appointments for her and refilled her prescriptions. I wrote her doctors pretending to be her, hoping they could tell me what exactly was ailing her. It all fell flat. She’d spend her days sitting on the edge of her bed, watching TV and chain-smoking, seemingly unconcerned about the state of her life.

Mama, who was without a doubt my mom’s cat, sat beside her. Or on top of her. Or somewhere on the bed with her. She was always near.

Three years ago, my mom died. The night before, I cried for hours, knowing in my gut that something was very wrong. I called my older brother and told him I needed help. I didn’t know what to do, I said. I was panicking, and we were losing our mom.

My brother was wrapped up in his own life, battling an addiction I wouldn’t be aware of until later. He offered me no advice and little comfort. Afterward, I sat on my bed and cried even more. Mama sat by my side, rubbing her face against me and intermittently meowing.

When my mom died later that night, she was alone. Not even Mama was in the room with her. The only indication my mom ever existed was in the few things she left behind: a hairbrush, some expired makeup, pajamas, and her cat.

The rest of my family couldn’t pull it together after my mom’s unexpected death. My two brothers left their children in my care in order to go out drinking into the early morning hours. It was even worse when they stayed home and drank themselves into a stupor, crying unabashedly about how my parents didn’t love them enough. My dad sat on the couch, frozen.

As for me, I’ve never felt safe letting myself be vulnerable in front of my family. When you grow up in a house where basic needs — such as knowing you’re loved — go unmet, you learn to make it appear as if you don’t have needs. To do otherwise is setting yourself up for disappointment.

In other words, falling apart after my mom’s death wasn’t an option for me. Instead, I hustled to pay for the funeral, shamelessly hitting up my editors for advances and scouring Craigslist for affordable plots. I sat through excruciating sessions with a Catholic priest who scolded my family for not being Catholic enough — while happily taking $300 to appear at my mother’s funeral. I cared for my nieces and cooked for all of the family that had suddenly come out of the woodwork, showing up at our house bearing sympathy and expecting a meal in return.

I didn’t cry in front of anyone, ever.

I would lose it when no one was around. No one, that is, except Mama. She always seemed to be there. When I howled in pain on the floor, she would look panic-stricken. When I got up and composed myself, she’d settle on my lap, purring.

Animals are so powerful in their love and kindness. Very few people have provided me with the kind of comfort Mama did after my mom’s death.

Eventually, Mama became a free agent, loving everyone and belonging to no one. After a few months, she settled on my great-uncle Willie, then seventy-nine years old, who had been homeless before my mom invited him to live with our family. Fast friends, they soon spent every moment together.

I, of course, had Jacky, Mama’s baby. He’d stuck with me through bad relationships, family blowups, and even a move to the Arizona desert that made us both miserable. He consoled me as I was grieving.

Three years after my mom died, Mama became seriously ill. Last October, I went out of town for two weeks. When I returned, Mama had dwindled away to skin and bones. I had the same gut feeling about her that I’d had about my mom. When I saw the vet the following week, I was blunt: “You need to tell me what I already know.”

It was cancer. The vet gave her a few weeks to live.

I knew it would be rough, but what I didn’t expect was how much my experience caring for Mama would mirror the final months of my mom’s life. In the weeks leading up to her death, my mom had often asked me to sit in bed with her. At the time, I felt that being in such close proximity to my fading, ill mother was too overwhelming. After a few minutes I would come up with an excuse and leave the room. In retrospect, I deeply regret not spending that time with her. It wasn’t really her illness that frightened me; it was my need for her. I needed my mom to return to who she was, to become my mom again — not this sick, depressed person I didn’t even know how to sit next to.

I wanted Mama to feel loved and comforted by my presence, but I couldn’t shake that same selfish need for her to return to normal, to fatten up and follow me around, meowing. I knew it wasn’t a possibility and never would be again, and that sense of loss made me hesitate, just as it had with my mom.

Late at night, when no one was around, I held Mama, crying as I traced her brittle bones with my fingertips. When I spoke to her, she looked up at me, but could no longer respond the way she used to. Her mouth would open, but no sound would come out.

Soon, Mama could barely walk. She ate voraciously, but it was never enough. She rarely moved. She lay on a pile of blankets on the coffee table, a place she was never allowed before. For whatever reason, it was the only place she wanted to be — and so we let her be.

We scheduled her to be put to sleep on December 14. That day, in a rare display of energy, Mama pulled herself up, jumped/fell off the coffee table, and stumbled to the front door. When she was well, she would stand in that same spot meowing, demanding to be let out into the front yard, where she would stretch herself out and slow-blink in the sunshine. I picked her up, and together we lay down on the lawn. She rubbed her face into the grass. The last few days in Los Angeles it had been forty degrees. That day, it was seventy-five, and Mama soaked it up. I sat there in pain, knowing what she didn’t.

One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life is my dad and my uncle Willie crying over Mama, running their hands over her bony back, telling her they loved her just moments before the vet gave her the injection. I had to leave the room. I couldn’t bear to see the men in my life so fragile, couldn’t stand to see Mama die right before me. I walked out of the room without saying a word, walked through the hallway and out past the waiting room, smiling at the receptionist as I passed, only to turn a corner outside the building and burst into tears.

When I got home, I crawled into bed and held Mama’s collar close. I traced its edges with my fingertips, thinking about how little of the physical world we really leave behind. Soon, Jacky jumped into bed with me, purring into my neck. As I drifted off to sleep I thought about how we’d both lost our mothers and how we would find comfort in each other.

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Blog / Political Prose

Best of In The Fray 2013


Out of everything we published this year, our editors chose the following pieces from each section for being standouts among their peers. As we see it, they best represent what In The Fray is all about: stories that further our understanding of other people and encourage empathy and compassion.

Commentary: How to Say ‘Divorced’ in Spanish, by Alexandra Levine

News: All I Know Is Here, by Scott Winter and Shelby Wolfe

Photo Essay: Rough Guides: Sherpas for Hire in the Himalayas, by Stephanie Lowe

Culture: Born Again: A Conversation with Writer Joy Castro, by Mandy Van Deven

Blog: Love like Exclamation Points: Growing Up with Mental Illness, by Joshunda Sanders

Your support ensures our nonprofit, volunteer-run magazine can continue to publish this kind of insightful and moving content: original reporting, photo essays, personal narratives, and reviews that make us think differently about the world, and perhaps ourselves. Please make a tax-deductible gift today.

From all of us at In The Fray, may you and your loved ones have a peaceful holiday season and a healthy and happy 2014.

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Support Stories of Inspiration and Change


Nepalese porter on a trail

I am writing to ask you for your support. For twelve years, In The Fray has published stories that further our understanding of other people and encourage empathy and compassion. The staff work hard — for me and others, on a strictly volunteer basis — to bring you original reporting, photo essays, personal narratives, and reviews that we think are timely and compelling on a global scale.

Our small nonprofit urgently needs your help to continue our mission to be a forum for real, honest discussion and provocative, informed storytelling.

Your gift of:

  • $50 will pay the honorarium for one hardworking writer.
  • $75 will pay the honorarium for a feature article with photos.
  • $100 will pay the honorarium for a writing team.

For me, In The Fray is a labor of love. Over twelve years, it’s been one of the greatest satisfactions in my life to edit and mentor dozens of writers and artists, learn more about countries and places I’ve never been to, and pass along to our readers insightful and moving stories about real people — stories that challenge them to think differently about the world. Just this past year, we published:

While any contribution goes a long way in helping to support In The Fray, we are asking that you donate $50 dollars today. Help us so that we can continue to give stipends to our contributors, who work from around the world and spend weeks and even months reporting and writing about stories that matter.

Harvard sociologist and National Medal of Science recipient William Julius Wilson (who just donated himself) has said that In The Fray is at “the front lines where identity and community are undergoing tremendous flux, climbing into the trenches to give a voice to often invisible movers and shakers, or just plain strugglers.”

I want to ensure that these voices continue to be heard. Please make a donation to support not just my work, but that of the many dedicated editors, writers, and artists who give this magazine its vibrant, caring heart. Thank you for your help, and I hope you continue reading.

Donate

Sincerely,

Victor Tan Chen
Editor in Chief and Cofounder

p.s. Please support our donor drive on social media: retweet our tweets and add your name to our Facebook campaign!

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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The Slippery Slope of Social Media

By Lisa Factora-Borchers
phone showing social media apps
Photo by Jason Howie

I am a writer who recently noticed I spend more time reading articles about writing, absorbing Top Ten lists of famous authors’ work practices, and laughing at clever memes than doing any writing. That space where your hands pause, your mind deepens, and your lips slightly part in anticipation was being filled with links to the latest insight from Junot Diaz or a must read command on Facebook because my name was tagged in a post. The time I was supposed to be working was filled with sending a few dollars to an activist whose rent-and-grocery bank account was low, reading breakthrough essays from emerging writers, and passing on information about independent films, memoirs about Caribbean girlhood, and petitions to Free Marissa.

When I noticed my attention span was getting shorter — and that perhaps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GoodReads, and Google+ were contributing to frenzied jumps from link to link — I booted myself off social media. Still, there were animated videos about the political situation in Syria and applications for studio time, grants, and artist residencies to fill the small space I’d regained. My attention span was like a connect-the-dots page, but there were no lines drawn to make a picture.

My inability to focus became shamefully apparent during an embarrassing moment the other day. I raced upstairs to get directions on my computer before going out with my family, but found a stray, open tab when I sat in front of the screen. I quickly sunk into an article about postpartum depression, then read about the origin of the magazine in which the article was published, then moved to the bio of the magazine’s founder, then on to one of the zines she’d once written, then … Click. Click. Pause to read. Click.

Nearly twenty minutes had passed when I heard my husband’s voice from downstairs, “Did you get the directions?” Although no one could see my face, I blushed. Have I no sense of time, respect for others, and self-discipline to focus on just one thing?

I thought about the struggle I have with digital distractions. I pondered how my love of things smart and wordy might be balanced with being an essayist and a mother. For writers, the Internet can be a portal to resources, networks, new knowledge, and communities that encourage creativity, but it can also bring the temptation to observe rather than create. While there is a safety in observation, and an allure to continual learning, the deepest gains a writer can make is in the act of writing.

Social media is an infinite playground for intellectual stimulation. It is an unhinged door with no threat of being closed. And its endless void often leads to a blank screen. I want the buzz and the quiet, but the duality remains illusive to me.

Last week my publicist reminded me that I need to “get out there,” and encouraged me to use social media to establish a public voice. I know it’s good advice, but I fear the tightrope walk. Can I effectively balance entertainment and social meandering with prolifically producing creative work?

Over the last several days, I snuggled with my son without wondering if I should take a picture of how cute he looked to post on Instagram. I texted love poems to my partner. I started a morning prayer routine for the billionth time with the hope that this time it will be sustained. I was more present with others, and I was more present with myself.

It felt authentic. I felt authentic. That cannot be downloaded.

I finally returned to Twitter and Facebook today, and the pace felt dangerously hurried. It also felt wonderful. The tide begin to tug at me as I waded in, and its pull shifted the ground under my feet. Afraid again, I take a deep breath and wonder if I will finally learn how to swim.

Lisa Factora-Borchers is a Filipino American writer and editor of Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence. She writes about writing, justice, and transformative feminist practice.

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Maybe in America: A Review of Captain Phillips

By Tony Cella

Two pirates confront Captain Richard Phillips on his captured ship

Captain Phillips, the new film based on a real-life encounter between an American commercial-shipping crew and Somalian pirates, opens with the titular character in Vermont, driving to the airport with his wife. Richard Phillips expresses concern about the state of the shipping industry, sunk by the global recession that struck a year earlier.

On the other side of the globe, Muse, a poor Somalian fisherman forced into piracy by his own economic woes, wakes up to news that the local warlord has demanded that his village capture another ship, or suffer violent consequences. Muse joins a crowd of hungry men on the beach jumping and shouting at a young pirate captain to give them a spot on his crew.

The angular fisherman-turned-pirate is an obvious foil for Phillips, their stories — and those of their first-world American and desperate Somalian crews — woven together through crosscut scenes. This parallel storytelling guides much of the film, emphasizing the economic anxieties shared by the men even as it highlights the brutality of the Horn of Africa’s most chaotic state. (The film is based on a book that the real-life Captain Phillips wrote, a memoir of the 2009 piracy attack he survived.)

Somalia’s recent history of civil strife makes it the global poster child for a failed state. The country’s last functioning government dissolved in 1991 when the Cold War ended. The civil war that followed degenerated into a free-for-all of sectarian bloodshed, first pitting political factions and, eventually, tribal clans. In recent years, the economic situation has deteriorated to the point that the installation of ten miles worth of solar-powered street lights in the capital of Mogadishu last May was a cause for celebration among the beleaguered population.

Basic statistics about today’s Somalia — unemployment numbers, literacy rates, total population — are currently unknown, although two relatively stable, if unrecognized, governments have sprung up in the northern part of the country, at the tip of the Horn of Africa. In one of the breakaway states, known as Puntland, many former fishermen during the recession years began raiding the busy commercial-shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden. The Somalians claimed they took to piracy because international companies used the waters as a chemical dumping ground or overfished, as the film references. In a nod to Somalia’s fractured state, the pirates call themselves the Coast Guard when approaching their prey; Muse compares the ransom money they demand to taxes for passing through Somalian waters.

In a meeting after their first encounter with the Somalian pirates, the crew argues with Phillips. One sailor, a twenty-year veteran sailor, says he didn’t sign up to fight pirates. Phillips points out that each crew member knew the ship’s route before signing up for the voyage, and each knew the dangers of the Somalian waters. When the crew insists that they evade the pirates by heading further out into the ocean, Phillips tells his men that switching the course would slow down the trip and cost the company money. If they don’t like it, he tells them, they can go upstairs to his office and sign the paperwork to quit their job — and go home with the rest of the crew anyway when they reach their destination, Kenya.

Later on the in the film, a wounded pirate cries to Muse that he never planned on being hurt. The Somalians were supposed to capture the ship, hold it for ransom, then get paid and leave. Muse shouts at him that anything can happen on the job. Piracy, like capitalism, isn’t for the weak.

The comparisons continue. Everyone — American or Somalian — hates their boss. After Phillips and his crew escape the pirates thanks to a sputtering motor, Muse wants to chase them. The pirate captain refuses after their radios pick up Phillips “requesting an air strike” from the Navy.

“I may be skinny, but I’m not a coward,” Muse snaps — a remark that provokes a particularly violent kind of work disagreement.

Later in the movie, Muse (played by first-time actor Barkhad Abdi)  brags to his captive that he and his fellow pirates recently netted a six-million-dollar ransom for a Greek ship. Phillips, nicknamed “Irish” by the pirates, asks why Muse is still in the piracy business. The Somalian replies that their bosses have bosses, and — much like the American sailors — low-level grunts like him must pay their dues.

But that fact of life also says something about the key difference between the two crews. The Americans benefit from the safety net of union-bargained contracts and a stable legal system to see them enforced. When the Somalians disagree over business decisions, they don’t sit around a table with lawyers and discuss their options. They pull out guns and threaten each other with death.

Somalia hasn’t changed much since 2009, when the film takes place. The United Nations-recognized government controls little territory outside of Mogadishu. With piracy down thanks to an increased international naval presence, Somalians have lost one more option for gainful employment. Young men join tribal militias or the Islamist insurgency. Gun-shy Somalians working at the bazaar live in constant fear of suicide-bomb attacks. Even subsisting off food rations and other international aid comes with its risks: UN personnel have been accused of child abuse and other sex crimes.

In film’s final scenes, with the US Navy drawing near, a battered Phillips pleads with Muse. “There’s got to be something other than being a fisherman and kidnapping people,” he says.

“Maybe in America, Irish,” Muse replies. “Maybe in America.”

Tony Cella is a freelance reporter who has covered crime and grime in Los Angeles, New York City, and the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Email: tonycella37@gmail.com

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: