In this issue of Fantasy Magazine: Short stories by Davida Kilgore (“My Dear, My Love”), Hana Lee (“Bari and the Resurrection Flower”); flash fiction by Joshua Lim (“Voices of the Kings”) and B. Pladek (“The Runners”); poetry by Ubong Johnson (“Kumbaya”) and Marie Brennan (“Damnatio Memoriea”); and an essay by AT Greenblatt. Enjoy!
What came easiest was portraying Bari’s complicated, tangled emotions of love and resentment for her family. I think children of immigrants, particularly eldest children, will experience my story differently from everyone else. It’s a feeling that’s hard to put into words, but I tried.
Many years ago, a writing instructor said that in order to write a story, you need to figure out who the story belongs to. He was talking about the narrator, the lens of the story. I thought it was good writing advice at the time.
The forest whispers of my sister’s arrival long before I sense her. Birds flutter between pink-girdled maehwa trees, mocking her voice in the tongue only shamans understand. Seonbyeon, Seonbyeon, they repeat mindlessly, and this is how I know my sister is looking for me. But I don’t know which sister, not until she finally appears from the forest gloom.
Their stories filled encyclopedias. / Matched ranks on the shelf, leather-bound, / volume after volume, / cover to cover / packed with their achievements, their failings, their tales.
They have never fought about it. “It’s your body,” her husband says, and means it. Only sometimes, when they’re out walking, a little girl will careen across their path roaring like a giggly tyrannosaurus, and he falls silent. “What’re you thinking about?” she asks, before she learns not to.
Most of my writing is fictionalized autobiography, and as I’m getting older I cull through my life experiences looking for my more interesting dramas. I was thinking of my first marriage and how my husband left me high and dry, but he was still able to get U.S. citizenship. I moved to New York as we were going through our divorce and everything I touched turned to gold.
It takes a Black woman to tell the truth about another Black woman, whether she likes that woman or not. If the woman in question is loved, the story reaches mythological heights, she could do no wrong, she was brown skinned and beautiful, intelligent, had all her faculties and her teeth, all the men and women of the neighborhood called her by a term of endearment, which is how Medea morphed into Ma’Dear.
In the land that is now Malaysia, there once was a tribe of monkeys called the Mawahs, whose king was appointed by King Solomon to be the Raja of the jungle. Raja Mawah built himself a throne on the south bank of the Perak River and ruled the jungle fairly.
In this issue of Fantasy Magazine: Short stories by Davida Kilgore (“My Dear, My Love”), Hana Lee (“Bari and the Resurrection Flower”); flash fiction by Joshua Lim (“Voices of the Kings”) and B. Pladek (“The Runners”); poetry by Ubong Johnson (“Kumbaya”) and Marie Brennan (“Damnatio Memoriea”); and an essay by AT Greenblatt. Enjoy!
