creative nonfiction – Michigan Quarterly Review

creative nonfiction

My Generation Doesn’t Do Internships

I will be discussing only my own experience, but extrapolating beyond it to make a strong claim about some ill-defined, amorphous group of people whom I imagine to have experiences identical to my own. In other words, I’m writing a personal essay masquerading as a social critique. How very millennial of me.

“We Will Return After These Messages,” by J.D. Ho

I think of my grandmother whenever I delight over rotting corpses and the life cycle of maggots, when I research methods of picking locks, escaping from car trunks, or working myself loose when I am tied to a chair and someone is trying to pull my teeth out with pliers. I think of her when I see unmarked vans with suspicious drivers. I think of her in dark alleys, or when I read news stories of cat murders.

photo of author and her father in a pontiac

Baba and the Pontiac

That Pontiac was a classic American beauty: a long, wide yellow convertible with sparkling nickel and chrome trim, and gray leather seats with yellow stripes running down the middle.

painting of a garden with sunflowers and red and white flowers

“When Persephone Goes Away,” by Desiree Cooper

Mom gave birth to me on the vernal equinox, just as the world begins to bloom, so it was no surprise that I inherited her love for the outdoors. We grew together as twin Persephones, bursting with life at the first sign of crocuses, and shrinking into sullen hibernation as the days darkened into winter.

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