~
My father is more like a poem than most poems
are. . . .
—From "Another Poem About My Father," a poem by Kayla Czaga, from her book For Your Own Safety Please Hold On (Harbour Publishing, 2014). The full poem is reprinted, with permission, on page 27 of this document from the League of Canadian Poets.
Do you also live in deep sadness?
—From Un Poeta (A Poet), a film set in Medellín, Colombia, and written and directed by Simón Mesa Soto (2025). Among other things, the film touches on relationships between fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons.
[Takiko] got out of bed and drew back the curtains, then stared at her watch which she kept by the pillow. If this dull pain was really what was known as a contraction she should feel it at regular intervals. So she had been told.
—From Woman Running in the Mountains, a novel by Yūko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt (New York Review Books, 2022). Originally published in Japan as Yama o hashiru onna (Kodansha Ltd, 1980). (Note: If you are looking for this book or others by the same author, her name in English is alternately stylized as Yuko Tsushima and Yūko Tsushima.)
There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on with this book. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide . . .
—From Things in Nature Merely Grow, a memoir by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025).
Growing up in America with a Caucasian father and a Korean mother, I relied on my mom for access to our Korean heritage. While she never actually taught me how to cook (Korean people tend to disavow measurements and supply only cryptic instructions along the lines of "add sesame oil until it tastes like Mom's"), she did raise me with a distinctly Korean appetite. This meant a reverence for good food and a predisposition to emotional eating. We were particular about everything: kimchi had to be perfectly sour, samgyupsal perfectly crisped . . . We chased our cravings daily. If we wanted the kimchi stew for three weeks straight, we relished it until a new craving emerged. We ate in accordance with the seasons and holidays.
—From Crying in H Mart, a memoir by Michelle Zauner (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).