Neighborly

Sasha Thurmond

S

unday morning, my horse Tigere', and my dog Tuxedo began snorting and barking at some monster in the woods. Clad in my pajamas, I dashed outside looking like a toothless, wreck of the Hesperas.Two men were marking off boundary lines with neon pink, plastic tape that flapped ferociously in the high winds.

The befuddled men looked up quizzically when I queried "Whad up ?" Recognizing the younger one, I blurted out "I know you, you're the one who cost me $1,000 when I first moved here!"

"Oh, Yea,  you're the one who backed your truck into my SUV !"

Silently I thought to myself that this was still debatable. It transpired eleven years ago on a moonless evening at the dimly lit parking lot of our local variety store. While I was in the store, my new neighbor parked perpendicular to the rear of my battered old farm truck .As I backed up eagerly to return home, I heard the old familiar and sickening CRUNCH!! "Ugh......not THAT” ...dollar signs flashing in my stressed out head and flying out of my pockets. The thought hit me that maybe I shouldn't have moved here after all. I was determined to make it on my own, but I always got miserably lost attempting to find my way home, and my whole world was discombobulated. Enough of that thought....I should have fought it. I decided to go the whole nine yards, and barraged them with questions. 

"Are you getting ready to build? Where are you placing your house? Are you developing all ten acres? Do you have horses?"

The father suddenly began speaking in Spanish as if he didn't understand me anymore.so I say, “Cuando empieza?" or something like that.

He flailed his arms and shouted,"Pronto!"

I smiled and slowly did a pirouette, followed by a peacock strut back home to finish my Sunday morning brunch, smugly hoping that my mission was accomplished. No way in Hell would my neighbor ever want to build his house close to mine.

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Sasha Thurmond is a graduate of the Cornell University MFA program where she majored in Printmaking. She lives on a farm in South Carolina with her horse and other animals, and sometimes finds time to make art or write stories.

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photo by Sasha Thurmond

gorky hanged himself in calder's tree

mike foldes

bill was drunk on virgin mojitos, while the rest of us worked our way through peroni and corona. it was a chill day on the cutting edge of warm enough and too cold to sit outdoors, but that’s where we sat, at the cuban cafe talking art and history. calder’s name came up and rick said something about a russian artist hanging himself at calder’s farm and calder’s daughter finding the body, and bill said, ‘wasn’t it gorky?’ and we all agreed, “yes, well gorky did commit suicide.” or did he? in connecticut or russia? by his own hand or stalin’s? at the time it didn’t seem to matter, but not knowing and needing to know has since become a passion. besides, gorky was a writer, not an artist. not that gorky, bill said, arshile.

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Mike Foldes is the founder and managing editor of Ragazine, an online literary magazine.

editor@ ragazine.cc 
http://ragazine.cc
ragazinecc/Twitter
ragazineccblogging@blogspot.com
Join Mike on MySpace & Facebook
Mike is also the author of Sleeping Dogs, A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping
Download at www.Smashwords.Com and www.Amazon.Com
Purchase the paperback at www.splitoakpress.com

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A Day in the Life of Narcissus

by Sreemanti Sengupta

I

 woke up and saw that my grandfather had beaten me to the loo. I watched the painted wooden door which he had shut three minutes ago and thought about what a bummer Diabetes was. I was sure I would meet Diabetes some day, the same way I had met Migraine and Myopia and I would treat him to Pink Candy Floss. I remembered Candy, yeah that’s what they called her, but I was too young then. I loved her because she was around all the time. I had dreams of Candy and Blyton’s Five going on quests together and Candy stealing their picnic basket. I think that’s what she wanted - picnic baskets or men with big picnic baskets. I couldn’t look at Candy without getting lost in her lips. I was soulwrecked in their bloody excess. I cringed every time Candy bent down to kiss me, sighing at the hard work that awaited me, just to rub off the red riot from my cheeks. I lost Candy or she me just like we lose strains of beloved poetry to our memories. I had gone into some illicit wooden trance by the time the door opened, bringing on The Old Man and The Stink. I couldn’t hold it so I shuffled inside. I tore away the Three Black Ants that were sitting on the rim of the Poo Bin, waiting to pinch my ass. I sat and crapped serenely and couldn’t find one good reason for spoiling this with a newspaper which the Stereotype does. I am not interested in Stereotype types. I meet them everywhere, or they meet me. I think they are the real sneaky types, betraying people, choking people on their last drinks. I had a whole bundle at school and way up to college and to university. I doubt I picked up Paranoia from them. I never liked Paranoia, that insane creature. I was afraid taking her out in crowded places, like happening places with people and buzzing with activity. I felt rather irritated, nay, embarrassed when she called me closer and whispered that everybody on the street were either looking or bitching about her - her dress, her past, something or the other that was incredulous and disturbingly Unicorneish. I gave up when she demanded all the lights be switched off when we were doing it - “the chairs look queer” she said. I of course needed the lights, I needed to see them under me, feeling my enormous weight. I am done with crapping and the black poop floats inside the bin. I asked Mamma why it’s black and she said that’s because I take iron tablets. I remember when this happened, the time since I have been Black Pooping. I and Hemoglobin were great friends till such time I saw him making out with my girl on the hospital bed. It was a bloody mess. I throw up everytime I recall how he tried to explain that it was necessary for the girl to get well and have a Normal Life. I left him with my girl and he left me with Black Poop. I don’t like going out, I think that Paranoia bitch had something to do with it. I vaguely enjoy a mock solitude in my room, with an indifferent track playing in my desktop unless it croaks and stops...arrgh that bothers me. I am me in too many ways and too many of them are obsessive and protective, when the day ends it irks me because I haven’t ended. I hate this part when I have to go out and people stare at me. I have disorders in the brain which are friendly. I think Bipolar was a little disappointed when I told him about Low Confidence. I can still picture him brutally facing me and saying it within quotes that Low Confidence was a total Loser and I should concentrate on The Grand Things, such as Schizophrenia because I am destined to have exotic disturbances, not prosaic, beer bellied ones. I go to an Exotic Corporate Office to earn my bread and write Exotic Things to sell Exotic Things. I’ve travelled some places with my babes and brooms where Exotic has been warm and kind to me. I have had Exotic doing me favours and showering me with gifts. I have known Countries In a Single Leaf Of Tea and Suffering In The Rhyhm Of Dances Cut Short, just because I had Exotic around me. I have been easy on him and he on me, except his choice in women and people in general. I was Exotic’s guest once and he told me that there was no time to tour, and we needn’t. I watched as The Girl From The Tribe entered, shed her clothes and waited. I turned and saw Exotic breathing down my neck and marking the erogenous zones on the brown body. I stared and sank as he explained you couldn’t go wrong with her, she’s our pride! I anyway will now cross the street and you must know it confuses me. I can't understand roads or road signs in the same way bats do not understand the morning. I have a sense of distance because it tires me, of speed because it is the wind against my hair and acceleration, because it brings hopes and highs.  I cannot fathom why roads are not flowing and going wherever they want to and why there are destinations we must reach, why destinations are waiting so ridiculously where they have waited Yesterday and Yesterday and Yesterday.  I beg you not to believe anyone who tells you that I have gone to their door on a festival night to ask them about Peculiarity. I can vouch I haven’t done so. I can tell you of an old dying man who irritated me with a silly smile stuck on his face like a eight peg vomit to the bottle. I am sure these are Quirks and Peculiarities, and both are exotic and it suits me fine. I know that politicians will often ask you for the wheels to their wheelbarrow and you throw in some obscure Flower of The Hills, Some Rotten Old Lady Who Still Has Babies, Some Tea (ah!), A Dance Step Or Two That’s Swear To Zillionbeeps Authentic and some more. I try to convince myself that I have gotten into severer exotic things, to the soul, where politics cannot invade. I am disturbed about not being more disturbed. I think it’s mighty interesting to have a tortured soul, except that night when I had an unending dream and am not sure I’ve woken up at all. I had the the baddest day at office and I was thinking of the epiphanic words that would explain it on my Facebook wall when urgent sleep fell on me like a huge beam of burning wood on a forest sleeper. I saw a plush washroom, my shaving kit all arranged and pretty, the walls all lined with mirrors, mirrors I have always hated. I looked up and I got taken aback for a few seconds. I stood there trying to smile, as I naturally do in front of a mirror, any mirror, even those that are cracked and poisonous with scribbled abuses. I watched as nothing happened, nothing. I couldn’t see crease lines or the pupils lighting up and then I realised it was a mask. I immediately ventured to tear it down and did - tried to smile - didn’t happen - tore it down again - tried to cry - nothing - and again and again. I have developed a thing for the opaque and the simple after that, almost zen like. I am not necessarily the in-betweener, but habitually so, and damn it’s painful. I can tell you what it is like if you can tell me how it is to be blessed with immortality, that too on the condition that ‘thou shalt have a fish bone stuck in your throat forever.’ I am walking to office now and everything attacks me - the drizzle has torn up everything in shreds - the faces and the cars - the zip zap by and give me queer looks. I curse Paranoia under my breath and the rain falls harder. I open the Giant Black Umbrella, that titanic shield against everything, and I walk, I murmur a pagan prayer ...take me to the Corporate Office, will ya?. I think I think..that it’s always me and my and so much so…...SPLASH!...sonouva..the guilty car passes by and there is a little pothole filled with sparkling rainwater.

Epilogue

black umbrella

some blooms fine

I, me mine

I, me, mine

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Sreemanti Sengupta enjoys a world of divided minds. She is an advertising copywriter from Kolkata, India, a poet, a struggling author, an e-mag editor, an elocutionist, previously published in various online journals such as Mad Swirl, Paragraph Planet, Certain Circuits, Bare Hands Poetry, Ppigpen and more including print anthologies in both English and her vernacular Bangla. She founded and runs The Odd Magazine celebrating alternate creativity here www.theoddmagazine.wix.com/thisisodd and blogs at www.weareideating.wordpress.com

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The painting is by Zoe Nikitaki,  a visual artist - illustrator and a storyteller, who lives and creates in Greece. She also writes and illustrates books for children and for adults who keep on dreaming and want to reconnect with the inner child. Connect with her on www.zoenikitaki.com (under construction) 

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Why? a book review

by Pearson Oldmitz

Why? The Question that Could Save Your Life

Robert Brown, DDS

TriMark Press, 2014, 159pp

SO MANY THINGS come to mind. Why is what passes for television news so frustratingly awful? Why is winter so long?  That’s not the kind of reflection Robert Brown has in mind in this slender, read-in-one sitting book. Instead, he writes as a man who has had his own problems with the U.S. medical industry, and now encourages others to follow his lead and ask: why?  Why that medicine? Why that treatment?

Mostly, Brown’s thesis revolves around the very old, yet new again argument that we should eat more wisely and ask more questions of our medical caregivers.  His formula is simple to describe:  some foods cause inflammation, and inflammation causes disease. Eliminate the food and inflammation and you control and perhaps even cure the disease. He lists wheat, gluten, diary and other possible allergens, and includes an easy, no equipment needed, self-administered test for food allergies that I’ve never found in any other nutrition book.

What is interesting about this book,  in a market crammed with nutrition advice books, is what Brown’s book doesn’t do:  there isn’t a single recipe, no ten day or four week plan, no busy work and list keeping to distract the reader. What he does include are a few frightening examples of how medicine-as-big-and-profitable-business may be working against us, not for us.

If you buy Brown’s argument (and this reader does), the book gives enough information for you to begin to work on your own health plan. In that, this book is not really a self-help book, but more of a convincing essay that we need to be more active in our own health care and take responsibility for what goes down our own gullets…and to ask more questions. Always a good thing.

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Pearson Oldmitz is a short story writer and blogger. Friend him on FaceBook  https://www.facebook.com/pearson.oldmitz

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Carceral Circus

by Keri Blakinger

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN a 300-pound lady naked and covered in Vaseline? No? Me either; when I met Betty she was fully clothed, but her naked Vaseline escapade was legendary. In the real world, there aren’t many opportunities to see people walking around naked coated in Vaseline – but I didn’t meet Betty in the real world. I met Betty in prison.

Prisoners are often compared to animals in the zoo, which is a somewhat obvious comparison when one of them is running around naked, shrieking like a wild (and naked) banshee. In truth, though, prison is far more like a circus than a zoo. Many of the circus personalities are present: you have your fat lady, your bearded ladies, your acrobats, and even sword swallowers. Well, not sword swallowers. But there are many individuals who are very talented at “swallowing” a surprising amount of contraband with their vaginas. Prison is not your average circus experience – and a felony conviction is the price of admission – but, in the right light, it is a circus nonetheless. Here are the featured performers:

The Fat Lady: It is perhaps doing Betty a disservice to call her the Fat Lady; she was far more entertaining than your typical circus Fat Lady. She was, however, over 300 pounds. A dedicated alcoholic, Betty went to jail more frequently than some people do their laundry. She had a penchant for getting arrested either naked or half-naked and sometimes dropping her drawers – while handcuffed – to moon whichever unfortunate judge happened to be remanding her that particular day. Although Betty was fat in a literal sense, the key thing about the Fat Lady is that everyone wants to stare. Whether or not they are actually overweight, the Fat Ladies of prison fascinate and often horrify onlookers by doing unexpected and shocking things, things no one can help but watch. Maybe they decide to take a crap on the floor, maybe they have a screaming match with an imaginary person, maybe they decide to take a swing at someone for invading their dreams. Sometimes, this type of Fat Lady has mental health issues -- but sometimes it’s just an act. Usually the onlookers know, but not always. In either case, it is difficult not to watch.

Lion Tamer: The lion tamer has a difficult task, and one that could go horribly, horribly wrong -- just like those inmates who have sex with corrections officers during their prison stays. In some cases, it’s clearly against the inmate’s will; in others, the inmate is a willing party. In all cases, the inmate is in grave danger. If it’s voluntary, the inmate is in danger of being placed in solitary confinement. If it’s involuntary … the inmate is still in danger of being placed in solitary confinement. In fact, in the latter case, they are both in danger of being placed in solitary confinement for telling and of being placed in solitary confinement for being found out. In theory, reporting a sexual assault should not result in retribution. Perhaps predictably, in reality it does. Essentially, no matter what, the lion eats you.

The Bearded Lady: There is a whole coterie of bearded ladies in prison. See, on the outside, women with facial hair generally shave it, tweeze, or do anything in their power to get rid of it.  On the inside, though, some don’t bother. Why? Because they’re “gay for the stay.” So many women find prison girlfriends that it’s generated a phrase, an axiom of prison existence: “Gay for the stay, straight at the gate.” Of those who go gay for the stay, there are two basic types -- femmes and AGs, or aggressors. Femmes are, as the moniker implies, the girly types. AGs are the more butch lesbians. Although the majority were not transgender on the outside and do not identify as transgender on the inside, many insist on masculine pronouns during their prison stay and are generally referred to as boys. Because I had short hair during my circus tour, even C.O.s would refer to me as “he.”  I didn’t seem very masculine, though, so the short hair confused people and they would often asked, “Are you a boy or not?”

Human Cannonball: A man being shot out of a cannon clearly has little regard for personal safety. Essentially, the human cannonball just doesn’t give a shit. Just like the jailhouse lawyer. It may perhaps surprise those unfamiliar with the carceral circus to learn that jailhouse lawyering is such a dangerous job, but it certainly is. The exact repercussions can vary greatly from one facility to the next. In some facilities, the biggest risk is a little extra hatred from the guards. In other facilities, helping one’s fellow inmates with legal paperwork is a major rules violation and will result in solitary confinement if discovered. Despite this risk, there are generous souls who do it anyway.

My friend, Henrietta, did months in solitary for helping other inmates with legal paperwork. Repeatedly. She knew that she was breaking the rules. She’d been punished before. She didn’t care. Unlike a human cannonball, she didn’t engage in dangerous activities for the sake of entertainment. She did it because it was the right thing to do. People needed help and she had the skills. So she helped.

Acrobats: In the real circus, acrobats seem to defy the rules of gravity; in the carceral circus, they just defy the rules. It should come as no surprise that there are some inmates who refuse to follow the rules. They get high, they make out in the bathroom, they get in fights, they steal. They get away with it an awful lot of the time, but when they don’t, they turn into a contortionist.

Contortionists: Contortionism involves tying oneself in knots, sometimes while confined in a tiny box -- not unlike those inmates who land in solitary confinement. With traditional contortionists, crowds watch as the performer twists body in painful knots. With solitary confinement, the inmate watches as his or her own mind twists into painful knots as the days drone on and the contortionist loses touch with reality in a nightless, always-lit cell with no human contact.  

Tight-Rope Walkers: That’s everyone. Everyone in prison is doing a tightrope walk, every single day trying to maintain some shred of dignity or sense of self when you have regular strip searches and are identified only by a number. You teeter between a person and a piece of property; between choosing to stay sober and returning to drugs; between finding redemption and becoming a statistic.

Spectators: No show is complete without an audience. And who is the audience in this case? Why, the guards, of course. Ultimately any show is answerable to the spectators, and ultimately every inmate is answerable to the guards. Granted, in this case, the spectators have the ability to send the performers to solitary confinement, which is something they do with great regularity and for the most absurd of reasons.

Guessing the reason for someone being placed in solitary is as ridiculous as any carnival game. Except that carnival games may be a little fairer. In the carceral carnival, you can go to solitary for major things, like having a weapon or smuggling drugs, but you can also go to solitary for minor things, like having too many postage stamps or talking back or missing an appointment. Most solitary stays aren’t particularly short, either -- in state prisons, it’s usually a few months, but some people spend years or even decades in solitary confinement.

World’s Tallest Man: The World’s Tallest Man is above it all. This is what every inmate wants. Well, perhaps not -- some like the drama of being more directly involved in the show. With a little luck and a lot of resolve, any inmate can stay above it all. Stay in your bunk and read. Keep to yourself. Don’t give the guards any reason to remember your name. Stay out of trouble. Be anonymous. Almost no one does it perfectly -- you probably won’t be the World’s Tallest Man. But if you do your time the right way, you can at least be tall enough to stay out of the fray.

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Of course, the circus is not the real world. The circus is where people go to escape, whether it’s for a night or more permanently, such as if they’ve run off to join the circus. Prison is a circus that no one chooses to run off to – but it’s just as, or more, removed from the real world than any Barnum and Bailey affair.

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 KERI BLAKINGER is an ex-convict and a journalist living in upstate New York. She is a reporter for The Ithaca Times and has had bylines in The Washington Post, Business Insider, Salon, Alternet, and more. She is also an ardent prison reform activist, indiscriminate dog lover, and aspiring book hoarder. 





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Is Amazon the Reader's Friend?

A lively audience of readers gathered in January at New York City’s Kaufman Center to hear a panel of four authors hash out the contentious proposition that “Amazon is the reader’s friend.”

The Oxford-style debate, hosted by Intelligence Squared (IQ2), featured two writers arguing for the motion and two against it. In the Amazon corner were self-publishing guru Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesias, Executive Editor of Vox. Pitted against them, former Authors Guild President Scott Turow and Franklin Foer, former Editor of The New Republic, contended that Amazon is not, by a long shot, the reader’s friend.

The IQ2 debates declare a winner by polling the audience at both the beginning and the end of the arguments, and comparing the results. The side that sways more people takes the cake. Before the debate, 41% of the audience voted for the proposition that Amazon is the reader’s friend, 28% voted against it, and 31% were undecided. At evening’s end, there was a clear victor: the Amazon apologists managed to increase their backers by a mere one percentage point, while Turow and Foer earned a 22% spike, overwhelmingly capturing the undecided vote.

Throughout the evening, Yglesias and Konrath largely stuck with the appealing arguments that Amazon’s low prices for readers and higher royalty rates for its self-published authors are benefits without downsides. But Turow and Foer’s effectiveness lay in taking a position that honored the diversity of the literary ecosystem. Left unchecked, they suggested, we may end up with a book world controlled by Amazon. The better option by far is a competitive plurality of publishers and distributors.

Turow agreed that self-publishing works very well for some authors in some publishing sectors. He was clearly encouraged, for instance, that self-publishing gives voice—and a second chance—to authors overlooked by traditional publishers. “I am not against self-publishing,” said Turow, before homing in on Amazon’s deliberate attempt to eliminate publishing houses, “but if we do away with traditional publishers, there will be a great loss to literary culture.”

Another reason Amazon can’t be trusted, Turow noted, is that it hasn’t even stood by the very self-published authors who defend it so vociferously. Turow illustrated this with a point that his opponents couldn’t counter: although many self-published authors rallied to defend Amazon during the Hachette dispute, recently Amazon dramatically cut the earnings of self-published authors enrolled in its Kindle Unlimited program.

Foer also pointed out that a loss of publishers could mean a loss of the nonfiction works requiring “deep reporting,” work which is time-consuming and expensive, and which can only be sustained by an advance from a publisher. It would also mean the loss of the committed editorial investments provided by publishers. “Writers are the people in the world who are least able to see the flaws in their own work,” he said.

“Scott and Franklin did a terrific job of articulating exactly what we’ve stood for throughout our many disagreements with Amazon,” said Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson. “Namely, that a diverse literary marketplace is a healthy literary marketplace. And I’m personally encouraged—though not surprised—that so many readers in the audience agreed.”

Much of the argument focused on Amazon’s place within the publishing industry at large. Yglesias opened by proposing that Amazon’s massive share of the publishing markets—it sells 41% of all books sold in the U.S., and 67% of digital books—is the result of its superior product. Turow countered that such market power is a danger in and of itself. A friend is someone who you can rely on to treat your interests as equal to their own, he said. But Amazon has “habitually turned on its allies when it suited its needs. Anyone who believes Amazon will wield its market power kindly has not read Lord Acton or Machiavelli,” he continued, characterizing Amazon’s history of browbeating as “a mugging sponsored by Wall Street.”

Reflecting on the evening, Turow offered the following summation. “I regard the question of Amazon’s role in American literary culture as truly important, and I was glad Frank and I were able to make many in the audience understand that Amazon is a Trojan Horse, offering low prices today—while Wall Street is willing to float a company that doesn’t make a profit—at the cost of destroying the publishing ecosystem that is indispensable to authors who can’t write several books every year, as many self-published authors do.” Turow further noted, “You never make all the points you want to. But I wish I had made more of the fact that Amazon actually prevents competition by locking its customers in through devices like Prime and DRM, which means Amazon customers can’t read books sold by Apple or Google Play on their Kindles.”

As the event came to an end, the writers’ closing arguments tended to encapsulate their styles. Konrath resorted to off-color humor and bribery: he offered free books for votes, making the salient point that, as a self-published author selling on Amazon, he is able to set the price of his books and even to give them away for free, and doing do, he has sold—and given away—millions of books. Turow spoke of how, like Konrath, he struggled to find a publisher for his first novel, and agreed that Amazon was good for readers and authors in some ways. The problem with Amazon, he explained, is the threat it poses to literary culture at large, and ultimately to the reader. “I don’t judge these things on the basis of what’s good for me,” he said, adding that while Amazon has been very good to him, “I care about what’s good for all writers.” Yglesias maintained that his opponents were painting an unrealistic doomsday scenario, but that for now, Amazon’s low prices and great service make it a friend to readers

.

Foer had the last word. Alluding to the arrogance of the tech industry’s self-styled “disrupters,” he noted that Americans have made “disruption . . . our secular religion.” This particular brand of optimism might well lead us to a future “that could be wonderful, or it could be a dystopian hell.” Lastly, he encouraged the audience to speak directly to Amazon with their votes. Tell Amazon, he said, “You’re dealing with precious cargo. Don’t abuse your power. Be good stewards of word and thought.”

The audience, apparently, was listening. Let’s hope Amazon was, too.

The debate, expertly moderated by John Donvan, is well worth watching in its entirety. The on-demand version is available here.

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Reading Diaspora Fiction

 Excerpted from: MAGNT Research Report (ISSN. 1444-8939) Vol.3 ( 1). PP: 469-475

Reflections on Diaspora Subjectivity

Nasser Motallebzadeh1, Leyli Jamali1, Majid Alavi1 and Nasser Dashtpayma1,  Ph.D. Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Reading Diaspora Fiction

Taking A Loaf of Bread, a short story coming from Stephen Poleskie's new collection Acorn's Card, as an example of diasporic cultural production, it is attempted to show how this approach is used in critical evaluation of short stories. Stephen Poleskie is a Polish American short-story writer who writes in a fable-like mixture of realism and magic.

A Loaf of Bread narrates the story of a Polish immigrant family in America. From the very beginning the reader knows that the family are citizens of their new country but "they were, nevertheless, without a place. America was still to them a foreign country where it was not easy to remain yourself and keep your dignity". Jan Lesnachevski, the father of the family, now a plumber here in America, was an engineer back in Poland. His beautiful wife "Magdalena didn’t teach in a university anymore, as she had done in Gdansk, but cleaned houses for the rich who lived on River Walk Dive- people who thought they were being nice to her by giving their castoff clothes, which she accepted and then gave away herself". Indeed "this reeking and rat infested tenement flat was not exactly what John and his wife had expected when they emigrated from Poland".

What is captured in these extracts from the story is the family's disillusionment with American dream. Jan now thinks of return but "he had written so many letters back, telling everyone how well he and his family were doing - the townhouse in the city, the cottage on the lake, two cars, one Cadillac, and his children in the best schools. The Lesnachevskis were truly living an American dream". Previously they tried to make a home out of this new country, but "while they worked hard to improve their knowledge of their adopted country, its history and its culture, they were forever circling outside". They thought they can be truly American if they master the language but after mastering English with an only slight polish accent "they were however, dismayed by the fact that they could not comprehend most people, especially their children, who went to a public school and talked like rappers on MTV.

Applying the analytical tools and procedures based on diaspora subjectivity we have to see what kind of subjectivity Jan and his wife may nurture under such conditions. Where is their real home after all? Drawing on Mishra's theory of subject's unresolved positionality in relation to homeland and hostland which creates a severed sutured identity, one can see the plight of these people. The rest of the story supports this theory. "Whenever Jan talked about the possibility of going back to Poland—he didn’t say going home anymore as both he and Magdalena were no longer sure where home really was—all his children ever said was: Poland! Like are you totally out of your mind, dude? No way!"

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