This week we have a conversation between E.C. Osondu and Kasimma, two authors from Nigeria who have released short story collections this year. We also have an essay by Edie Meade, “A Flash As Intense As It Is Solitary,” and a roundup of this week’s new books.
Dead Identity Theory Readers,
I mean, DEAR Identity Theory Readers (honest typo),
I apologize, profusely, in advance, if this newsletter is terrible. I took Aleve this morning. It’s the only cure for my headaches, but it detaches me from my normal sensibilities. Whatever those are.
Speaking of being detached from sensibilities, several of my neighbors in Henderson, Nevada, have begun flying flags that say, “Trump 2024: Take America Back!” This is par for the local course: last year, after his White House sent a memo advising everyone to keep indoor gatherings to fewer than 50 people, the then-Pres(Ican’twritetherestoftheword) held a massive indoor rally (5,000 people, or 5 million by his count) down the street from our house, at a place called XTreme Manufacturing. (Critics mocked him for holding a rally at a manufacturing plant, not yet realizing that future venues for his administration’s events would include a place called Four Seasons Total Landscaping.)
It makes sense that Trump came to my town first: my zip code has one of the highest % of Trump supporters in the state. It’s an area commonly referred to as Hendertucky (because Henderflorida is too many syllables). On a typical 10-minute drive to pick up French fries (most of the restaurants are fast food), it remains, a year after the election, commonplace to pass a $60k pickup truck flying a giant, made-in-China “TRUMP 2020” flag or an even classier “FUCK BIDEN” flyable truck accessory. (Not sure how long they have to wait for the “Brandon” editions to arrive from Asia—supply chain.)
Whenever I pass those cars, I imagine an unhealthily Trump-obsessed manbaby crying behind the wheel while listening to that song that goes, “Tell me hooooow am I suppoooooosed to live withooooout you.” (Michael…Bolton?)
Most of the bumper stickers in my area are police-state endorsements. You know, the perverted American flag with the messed-up color patterns that announce the driver’s supreme whiteness.
But there’s a lot of cool stuff about my area. Views overlooking the entire Vegas valley, proximity to Lake Mead and hiking trails, etc. And sometimes the road offers fascinating sights like rare classic cars and modded #vanlife vehicles and tricked-out boats headed for the Hoover Dam region. And, of course, blissed-out dogs slobbering out of car windows in the desert sun.
Living in a place where every other car expresses its bottomless love for police and zero cars express support for Black lives (#alllivesmatter), I’ve come to appreciate the random bumper stickers that stand out from the crowd.
My favorite recent sighting was one that said, “Honk If You Don’t Exist.”
I also recently saw a vanity plate that just said, “SUFFER.”
Last week we were on a Halloween walk (some would call it trick-or-treating but I got no candy) and spotted a bumper sticker on a glittery car that said, “Only Gay Cops Pull Me Over.” I’m still baffled as to what that one is supposed to mean and why someone would put it on their car, but it least it wasn’t a lame-looking flag.
Oh, and there’s also a local who drives around with a bumper sticker covering a dent on their rear bumper. The sticker looks like a Band-Aid. It just says, “FUCK.”
I don’t have an overall point to make about this. At least not today. I just wanted to talk about some of the sights I’m seeing lately, what the world looks like for me, here, now.
“We think in generalities, but we live in detail.” —Alfred North Whitehead
The Short Story is Alive and Well in Africa: A Conversation Between E.C. Osondu and Kasimma
This week we posted a conversation between E.C. Osondu and Kasimma. Osondu’s story collection Alien Stories came out in May, and Kasimma’s collection All Shades of Iberibe came out this week. My favorite part:
Kasimma: How did you arrive at the story, “Memory Store”? What informed your choice of depicting memory as a commodity to be sold?
Osondu: Memory is such an interesting thing. It is the only thing we bring along with us when we are stripped of all we have. Interestingly, memory is also a malleable thing. Oftentimes we hang on to the version of memory that suits us best. For us immigrants, we carry our memories the way a tortoise carries its carapace, the snail its shell, and a camel its hump. So selling this is a form of betrayal, but what is the immigrant narrative if not a form of betrayal—revealing ourselves and explaining ourselves to others and to strangers and oftentimes the selling of memories?
Kasimma: The childhood games you mentioned in “Feast” reminded me so much of my childhood. Thank you for that. I was wondering, the execution of the aliens, has it got anything to do with the way criminals were executed at the beach in the early ‘90s? I was too young to realize. But I'm wondering, was it really a feast? I know, from the videos, that people gathered to watch. But was it really a celebration?
Osondu: The celebration came after the lynching. One of the phrases that has become a kind of cliché—even though no less profound—is the phrase "the banality of evil." Even when it seems the worst has occurred, mankind shrugs and moves on carrying on as if nothing happened. Look at all that is happening today: the pandemic, the bottomless racism in America and the western world—bottomless fries and bottomless racism, ha ha—towards Black people, the refugee crisis, space colonization, climate change. But mankind continues to fiddle while our world is on fire.
Read the rest of the interview.
A Flash As Intense As It Is Solitary
Getting stuck in Ohio is never fun, especially if snow and car crashes are involved. In her essay on the site this week, Edie Meade wrote about getting trapped in a polar-vortex snowstorm on the Ohio Turnpike on her way to becoming engaged:
A big-antlered buck, frozen upright in a snowbank, sends me swerving into the right lane of the interstate. It’s there, then gone, as I struggle to read the signs through a whiteout snowstorm west of Toledo. That’s the way everything begins and ends in Ohio—in a flash as intense as it is solitary. I don’t know if the deer died straining to escape the median or if a semi knocked it there already frozen into its noble pose, but it feels like a message for me on Valentine’s Day of 2015.
I can never believe my eyes driving over this monotonous part of the country, with its tangles of frenetic cities in the middle of dismal stubble-fields, so busy and yet so forlorn. Maybe the deer wasn’t even dead, I think, trying to catch a glimpse of it in the rearview. Truck trailers fishtail and hurl ice chunks, warning me to keep my eyes on the road. Then the glacial blob of wiper fluid I had futilely dispensed half an hour ago rattles up my brown-streaked windshield and startles me all over again.
I’m driving in this hellish weather to see the man with whom I will soon elope.
Read the rest of Edie Meade’s essay “A Flash As Intense As It Is Solitary.”
Win Me Something: This Week’s New Books
This week’s new books include Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something and titles from Tyler Barton, Kasimma, Joy Castro, and Patrick Hourcade. Read about them here.
To Live In Defiance Of All That Is Bad Around Us
About a year ago I Tweeted this quote from Howard Zinn’s You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train:
“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
I felt like, given all that is bad around us this week, it would be appropriate to give away a copy of Zinn’s book to one person through this newsletter. To enter, just reply with a little note about something in your area that brings you happiness: maybe a sign you see on the side of the road, a place off the beaten path, anything random that gives you a sense that it comes from a marvelous place, defying all that is bad around it.
(Bonus points if you read our interviews with Howard Zinn.)
Please don’t actually honk your horn at me,
Matt Borondy
Founding Editor
Identity Theory
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