Non- fiction Archive

This is the Nonfiction archive page. Pieces are in reverse chronological order by publication date.

  • How to Fry A Potato Latke

    by Emily Alpert
    31 January 2007

    When a pancake had exacted sufficient torture, she fished it out with a slotted turner, then laid it to rest on a plate draped with paper towels. There, it blissfully relieved itself, staining the towels translucent with oil. My mother set me to work laying out placemats and settings; my father began to ransack the fridge for sour cream and applesauce, which he slathered onto each latke, liberally, in the tradition of our people.

    (read more)

  • The Rise of Hitler Humor

    by Josh Schonwald
    13 January 2006

    When I tell him that I’m from Chicago, and that Chicago has a large German immigrant population, he instinctively improvises in Hitler’s voice and cadence. “Chicago has and always will be, German, and it should be German again.” At another moment, after a few more sakes, and a few words about the post-September 11th world, he says, “Civilization must rise up and fight terrorism. You know who said that?” he asks. “George Bush,” I say, confidently. “Hitler,” he says, smiling devilishly.

    (read more)

  • Birthday of a Nation

    by Emily Alpert
    13 January 2006

    I was reminded that those in power are usually the philistines, the ones ignorant of the world and its cultures, because they don’t need to know. It’s the less powerful, or powerless, who toss out foreign phrases with ease, whose minds have been limbered by an accommodation with power. In South Africa, minibus drivers and short-order cooks opine knowledgeably on the Bush Administration; in the townships, American hip-hop and soap operas blare. Of course, a comparable American competence on South Africa is sorely lacking, and often South African friends would rib us, asking if we’d expected elephants and lions upon coming to Cape Town. Our denials were usually laughed off, dismissively.

    (read more)

  • Roberto Melendez A.K.A. Esteban Martinez

    by Felicia Rosshandler
    14 October 2005

    I always perceived my mother as brazenly coquettish and remember being intensely aware during my adolescence that she was having a turbid love affair in Havana. We never spoke about it, she and I, but I believe that it imprinted me deeply. Perhaps that is why I drew the character of my father in such a sad sympathetic light.

    (read more)

  • The Holiness of Fear

    by Emina Tuzlak
    11 April 2005

    Westernization. What is happening to us? We are changing and nobody’s noticing. As long as we work hard and live like all those other people who have houses and families, we should be OK. But we’re not. We are nervous. Tremendously nervous. We are on shuttles such as these and we wear the latest in European fashions and American sneakers with any article of clothing; we insert German and English words in our own language, and as we speak a foreign tongue, we add a genitive or a dative ending that corresponds to Bosnian language only, yet we make it our own and “improve” the grammar. We don’t want to be flagged as Bosnians so we try hard to forget and substitute the soul of one people for tangible things. But faces in airplanes and shuttles reveal that deep down we cannot forget and we cannot forgive.

    (read more)

Otium