April 27
Check out the latest installment of Three Cheers, a series in which Seven Stories authors dish on three books or authors that have inspired them over the course of their lives. In this issue, Innosanto Nagara, author of A is for Activist and many others, showcases a diverse range of influences, from the Polish absurdist Jerzy Kosinski to a dissident poet/playwright much closer to home.
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November 16
A few years ago, I began losing many of the people I love. One of the difficult things about coming from a culture where your extended familia is considered your "nuclear" family is that you don't just lose a set of parents, a couple of aunts and uncles, but dozens upon dozens of tías, tíos, madrinas, padrinos, abuelitas, abuelitos. A whole flank of familia is suddenly gone.
My parents joined that clan exodus, dying within five months of each other. Actually, I had been losing both incrementally to Alzheimer's over several years. Each time I returned to the Dominican Republic to look after their care and visit with them, I'd braced myself for the day when they wouldn't know who I was. No matter how old you get, while your parents are living, you are still somebody's "child."
Their loss, though painful, was in the natural order of things. But then came a loss I was not expecting: my older sister committed suicide.
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