Nonfiction

People told me my mother was beautiful. By the time I was able to perceive her face, I only saw the mouth turned sharply down at the edges and a glimpse of wildness in her eyes…

The day I decided to again steal food I instituted three simple rules: Steal only essentials, only from big chains, never brag.

First, I remember his hand. Warm — like blood, like loss.

A person can starve to death in prison. By starving I don’t mean death through lack of food.

(Excerpt from Home Truths)   Dreams are a subset of lies, the way the unconscious mind works to make it possible for us to keep living with ourselves.

The beaming portrait of Kim Il Sung on the roof of the Pyongyang Airport was the first thing that greeted us when we emerged from our plane

At a writers’ conference not long ago, I gave a public reading from “Trading Off,” a memoir that for the most part dramatizes a turbulent relationship I’d had with an old high school baseball coach. During the q and a, I was asked the usual questions: “Did it really happen the way you wrote it?”

Culebra is an American Virgin island with a fierce sound for a past, a sound that still hollows it out and leaves it damaged…

The culture of exile is the culture of loss…