Christopher Gable My brother has never liked Tom Petty. He hated his voice. Whiny. Too high. Inflected with a Southern accent. But my brother is nothing if not a walking contradiction. As much as he hates Tom Petty and Neil Young’s high-pitched whining, he loves the extremely high voice of
North Dakota Quarterly is pleased to announce three “notable contribution” commendations in the 2017 Best American Essays volume. This is a major honor for the Quarterly and its authors and editors. The jury recognized three individual contributions, one by Peter Grandbois and one by W. Scott Olsen, as well as
A Spot of Body, Without Blood (appeared in NDQ 84.1/2) Bibhu Padhi A body lies on a road in the north, under fog and winter. A hazy picture of mice scampering away onto the road from under its thin sheet of helplessness, is all there is, except a sheer white
Neither Here nor There: Fluid Identities and Exile in Jesús Díaz’s Dime algo sobre Cuba (Tell Me Something About Cuba) (published in NDQ 84.1/2) Patricia Catoira With the renewal of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States under the Obama Administration, travel restrictions to the island have also begun to ease,
Eric Burin In an 1857 speech, Abraham Lincoln explained the meaning and purpose behind the Declaration of Independence’s insistence that all men are “created equal” and that they are endowed with “certain unalienable rights,” including “liberty.” These noble sentiments, observed Lincoln, had no practical bearing on the patriots’ quest to
Remembering Sunny Acres (published in NDQ 84.1/2) Gulchin Ergun The first day of fourth grade came with a new bus driver wearing a baseball jacket and thick-rimmed glasses that slid down the sweat on her nose when we told her she took us to the wrong school. By the time
No. The Car Wasn’t Actually on Fire: Understanding Communication in Southern Oman (published in NDQ 84.1/2) Marielle Risse The patience and tolerance to live harmoniously in an unfamiliar culture; the fortitude to be content with less than comfortable circumstances for prolonged periods; an understanding of and sympathy with a foreign
Calls to Dabaab (published in NDQ 84.1/2) Yahya Frederickson Fargo, North Dakota Sharif’s wife points me to the diwan, where Sharif and several other men sit on the floor around a phone. I say salaam, shake hands, offer condolences for the relative who died. There’s a tap on the doorjamb—the
Roots, History, and the Possibility of Coexistence: Horizontal and Vertical Consciousness in Amin Maalouf’s Ports of Call (published in NDQ 84.1/2) M. Önder Göncüoğlu Introduction A Lebanese journalist and novelist born in 1949, Amin Maalouf is a person of multiple identities. Like most of his fictional characters, he is formed by
Bill Caraher I’m totally enamored with J. Borgerson’s and J. Schroeder’s Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America (2017) published by MIT Press. The book explores the remarkable world of album covers from the 1950s and 1960s not from the heights of pop music (which was still dominated
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