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Through the Night is a cinema verité portrait of three working New York mothers whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center: a mother working the overnight shift as an essential worker at a hospital; another holding down three jobs to support her family; and a woman who for over two decades has cared for the children of parents with nowhere else to turn.
—From promotional materials for Through the Night, a documentary film by Loira Limbal. It aired locally on PBS on the series POV. The website for the documentary contains current links if you would like to rent or buy the film.
On certain days, I've seen the Woman in the Purple Skirt purchase her cream bun from the bakery, walk through the shopping district, and head straight for the park. The time is just past three in the afternoon. The evergreen oaks that border the south side of the park provide shade for the Exclusively Reserved Seat. The Woman in the Purple Skirt sits down in the middle of the bench and proceeds to eat her cream bun, holding one hand cupped underneath it, in case any of the custard filling spills onto her lap.
—From The Woman in the Purple Skirt, a novel by Natsuko Imamura, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North (Penguin Books, 2021). Originally published in Japanese as Murasaki no sukato no onna (Tokyo, Japan: Asahi Shimbun Publications, Inc., 2019).
"So," the voice began, between regular inhalations on a cigarette, "there's this phone booth in a garden, on a hill in the middle of nowhere. The phone isn't connected to anything, but your voice is carried away with the wind. I'll say, Hi, Yoko, how are you? And I feel myself becoming the person I was before, my wife listening to me from the kitchen, busy preparing breakfast or dinner, me grumbling that the coffee's burned my tongue.
"Yesterday evening I was reading my grandson the story of Peter Pan, the little flying boy who loses his shadow and the girl who sews it back onto the soles of his feet. And, you know, I think that's what we're doing when we go up that hill to Suzuki-san's garden: we're trying to get our shadows back."
—From The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World, a novel by Laura Imai Messina, translated from the Italian by Lucy Rand (The Overlook Press, an imprint of Abrams, 2021). This segment is from pages 16-17 in hardcover.
Wherever he went, Hitoshi always had a little bell with him, attached to the case he kept his bus pass in. Even though it was just a trinket, something I gave him before we were in love, it was destined to remain at his side until the last.
—From "Moonlight Shadow," a short story published along with the short novel Kitchen, both by Banana Yoshimoto, translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus (Grove Press, 2006).
She was so small I would scan the crib a half-second
to find her, face-down in a corner, limp
as something gently flung down, or fallen . . .
—From "Her First Week," a poem by Sharon Olds, from her collection The Wellspring (Knopf, 1996, p. 44).