Posts Tagged: language

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Nonfiction Feature: “Common Tongue,” by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

CommonTongue

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This graphic memoire appeared in Indiana Review 37.1, Summer 2015.

Anna Cabe (Nonfiction Editor): One of my favorite forms in CNF is the graphic memoir, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s “The Common Tongue” is a prime example of why. By telling the story of how Buchanan acquired different languages through whimsical, colorful imagery, the scope of what is ultimately a gift — the gift of opened doors— is rendered familiar and magical.

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Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of the novel Harmless Like You which was a New York Times Editors’ Pick and an NPR 2017 Great Read. She has received a Betty Trask Award and The Authors’ Club First Novel Award. Her short work has appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.

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Fiction Feature: When My Father Was in Prison by Hadley Moore

When My Father Was in Prison

 

We had this bird called Smokey that my brother taught to say Nevermore,  but he (Smokey) couldn’t ever really do it since he was the wrong kind of bird. Not a talker, my mother said.

There was a girl across the street whose father was a government functionary. My brother made me repeat the words to get the sounds right and when I asked what that was, he said it was almost the same thing as being in prison, except her father slept at home.

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Poetry Feature: here is the sweet hand you always turn back on yourself by francine j. harris

here is the sweet hand you always turn back on yourself

 

and hold where the ear goes and try to hear what you need to hear.

the way it was put. a bird went to the phone pole and knocked a hundred

times and here i was looking for a hammer all along to knock back.

 

all the tools are crushed. i swear to them i only make sense between periods.

translation comes awfully late and if the woodpecker got out of control, caught up

in a pole rung, for example. well, my forehead. i am well pecked and out of excuse.

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