Essays

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The Woven Tale Press, "Act Two"

This is an excerpt from my memoir-in-progress.
On October 13, 1967, soon after I arrived in Oxford, I pulled a red tweed miniskirt up over my trendy patterned stockings that covered the scales on my shapely legs, left my room and strode out into the ancient English city. Just twenty-two, I’d come to the university to study for an MA, a next step in the academic career my parents and I envisioned for me, believing I’d have to make my way in the world in the strength of my brains and Irish-American charm.
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Alaska Quarterly Review, “Maple Lane”

Mentioned in Best American Essays

Sitting at the end of the library table, I bend into my yellow pad, covering the photo with my left arm. If I can keep her hidden, I can just push my pen across the lined paper, copying out clinical details from the April 1955 Archives of Dermatology, noting the page numbers so I can cite the quotation correctly. Anything but look again at that terrifying picture and consider what it means to me.


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Illustration: Dadu Shin

The New York Times, “Learning to Sing Again”

One summer afternoon, alone in a medieval chapel in central France, I began to sing. Tentatively at first, testing the acoustics, as well as my voice, which, after years of use, wavers in song. Would it reverberate pleasingly against the ancient stone?
It did. I relaxed my throat and sang louder, steadying the soprano notes of a Vivaldi fugue as they rose on a column of air and thrummed through my slightly scaly lips. I sang fully conscious of the pure physical joy of it — a pleasure beyond the flowing endorphins that singing releases. I tightened my abdominal muscles to support deeper breaths and marveled at the sound that vibrated in my vocal cords and finally resounded in the chambers of my skull. For me, this was a late-blooming pleasure. Over the years I had retreated from my body. I did not believe it could make beauty or give delight.
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The New York Times, “Finding Refuge With the Skin I’m In”

The checkout lady’s panic surged as she held the coins six inches above my hand and dropped them into my palm. They clanged until I made a fist. She ran her fingernails through her hair.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, her voice rising to a higher pitch. I slid the money into a jeans pocket and stroked my thigh to calm down.

“Just dry skin,” I murmured. That wasn’t true. 

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Illustration: Dadu Shin

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1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction, "Malade" 

If I write about my skin in an open forum where you can stare, do I invite a shaming? My mottled, peeling, scaly skin, which people fear and even loathe, lies open to your gaze. Will you turn away, or stone me with curses, spouting fear and disgust? Have I staked myself for your eyes because I too dislike my reddened face and shards of skin, so dry and brittle? Scratching, I look away until I stretch my hand across my fine, high cheekbones and rejoice in their beauty.
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The Kenyon Review, “Tuesday Night Rehearsal”

I’m sitting in a metal chair, getting ready to sing Joseph Haydn’s lovely Saint Nicholas Mass with my community choir on the night the DC sniper is scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Staring at the knotty pine walls of our practice hall, I draw as much air into my tight lungs as I can hold just to support the series of vowels we sing at the start of each rehearsal. I try to remember to stretch the muscles of my face into an O, to make my mouth a hollow chamber so the sound can reverberate from it. As she directs us, Carol’s hands move very precisely. She curves her right fingers to urge more volume. Then she twists her wrist into a sharp cut off. I exhale with a little puff
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Illustration: Carol Chu

Writer’s Digest, “How to Write About Your Pets”

You want to write about your pets. You know you do. And your pets are all for it. The cat’s been walking across the keyboard for days now. Even the dog, curled up in bed next to you while you work, looks longingly at you. You know he’s thinking: “make me a star!”
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Chautauqua, "Barefoot"

Brilliant, burning sand stung the open fissures in my heels the instant I stepped onto the beach. We children went shoeless everywhere that summer. No seven year old—certainly not one in a yellow checkered bathing suit—would wear sneakers in July. The heat spread itself across acres of dry sand in front of me. I closed my eyes, imagining a hole going down into the cool earth. Almost to China, I thought, trying to forget my smarting feet. If you dig far enough, you get from New Jersey to the other side of the world. As my face started to flush, I began to pick up speed, trotting on the balls of my feet, then sprinting, determined to get off the sandplain.


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