Whiting Award Winners
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
We had dozens of books. My father never bought us toys, and he always claimed that he was too broke to buy us new clothes, but somehow we each received at least three new books each month. Most of our books were nonfiction - short biographies, children’s encyclopedias, textbooks - because Dad was convinced that novels were for entertainment purposes only, and he always told us that we would have time for entertainment when we were old enough to make our own decisions. So Tayo and I would huddle in a single bed, his or mine, with a biography about George Washington, or a book about the invention of the telephone, and each of us would read a page and hand the flashlight over.
We eventually grew tired of these books, though, so we began to make up our own stories. Actually, Tayo made them up. Even though Tayo was younger than me, even though he looked up to me and followed me in every other part of our lives, he was a much better storyteller than I was. He was almost as good as Mom.
He always began:
“Once upon a time . . .”
My mother
gathers gladiolas. The gladness
is fractured. As when
the globe with its thousand mirrors
cracked the light. How
it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives
and the show of light
they shot around us: so that
down the dark hall the ghosts danced
with us: down the dark hall
the broken angels.
My family’s experience isn’t fodder
for artwork, says Nature in btwn make outs
But you’ll drink yourself to sleep?
Who is the “I” but its inheritances—Let’s play a game
Let’s say Southern California’s water is oil
Let’s say Halliburton is the San Diego Flume Company
and I am descended from a long line of wildfires
I mean tribal leaders
The Cuyamaca Flume transported mountain runoff and river water into the heart of San Diego. Construction began illegally, in secret, in the 1880s. The creek bed dried. The plants died. The very best citizens of San Diego called it “deluded sentimentality” to give Indians any land or water. As if these are things, stuff to be owned or sold off
I am missing many cousins, have you seen them?
You are told when to sleep and when to wake up. If you spend too much time in your bedroom, it indicates that you’re being antisocial; if you do sit in the common areas, but don’t interact with the other patients, you’re probably depressed or overly inward or perhaps even catatonic. Humans might all be ciphers to one another, but people with mental illness are particularly opaque because of our broken brains; we cannot be trusted about anything, including our own experiences.
The address books Englehart’s stocked were second-rate. Their covers were simulated leather, their bindings indifferently glued. Mary stood frowning over one of the books, bound in oxblood plastic, emblazoned with the golden word Addresses, the final s of which had already begun to chip. It was such a flimsy thing, so beneath her, that she felt foolish even looking at it. She glanced around, saw that no one was watching, and almost before she knew she would do it she slipped the address book into her bag. Her forehead burned. Calmly, walking as herself, in heels and pearl earrings, she left the store with the tacky little address book hidden in her bag, its price tag still attached. The tag, when she looked at it, said that the book had cost ninety-nine cents.
Leaning over me, she took my head into her hands,
the short hair thick still, full beneath her fingers.
She told me she had read that pressure (from
a rubber band about the head) combined with
lowered temperatures (from ice) would sometimes
keep the drugs from killing hair roots in the scalp.
I suffered numbness, ache from cold, for her,
for hope. She only had to try it once.
We had dozens of books. My father never bought us toys, and he always claimed that he was too broke to buy us new clothes, but somehow we each received at least three new books each month. Most of our books were nonfiction - short biographies, children’s encyclopedias, textbooks - because Dad was convinced that novels were for entertainment purposes only, and he always told us that we would have time for entertainment when we were old enough to make our own decisions. So Tayo and I would huddle in a single bed, his or mine, with a biography about George Washington, or a book about the invention of the telephone, and each of us would read a page and hand the flashlight over.
We eventually grew tired of these books, though, so we began to make up our own stories. Actually, Tayo made them up. Even though Tayo was younger than me, even though he looked up to me and followed me in every other part of our lives, he was a much better storyteller than I was. He was almost as good as Mom.
He always began:
“Once upon a time . . .”
My mother
gathers gladiolas. The gladness
is fractured. As when
the globe with its thousand mirrors
cracked the light. How
it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives
and the show of light
they shot around us: so that
down the dark hall the ghosts danced
with us: down the dark hall
the broken angels.
My family’s experience isn’t fodder
for artwork, says Nature in btwn make outs
But you’ll drink yourself to sleep?
Who is the “I” but its inheritances—Let’s play a game
Let’s say Southern California’s water is oil
Let’s say Halliburton is the San Diego Flume Company
and I am descended from a long line of wildfires
I mean tribal leaders
The Cuyamaca Flume transported mountain runoff and river water into the heart of San Diego. Construction began illegally, in secret, in the 1880s. The creek bed dried. The plants died. The very best citizens of San Diego called it “deluded sentimentality” to give Indians any land or water. As if these are things, stuff to be owned or sold off
I am missing many cousins, have you seen them?
You are told when to sleep and when to wake up. If you spend too much time in your bedroom, it indicates that you’re being antisocial; if you do sit in the common areas, but don’t interact with the other patients, you’re probably depressed or overly inward or perhaps even catatonic. Humans might all be ciphers to one another, but people with mental illness are particularly opaque because of our broken brains; we cannot be trusted about anything, including our own experiences.
The address books Englehart’s stocked were second-rate. Their covers were simulated leather, their bindings indifferently glued. Mary stood frowning over one of the books, bound in oxblood plastic, emblazoned with the golden word Addresses, the final s of which had already begun to chip. It was such a flimsy thing, so beneath her, that she felt foolish even looking at it. She glanced around, saw that no one was watching, and almost before she knew she would do it she slipped the address book into her bag. Her forehead burned. Calmly, walking as herself, in heels and pearl earrings, she left the store with the tacky little address book hidden in her bag, its price tag still attached. The tag, when she looked at it, said that the book had cost ninety-nine cents.
Leaning over me, she took my head into her hands,
the short hair thick still, full beneath her fingers.
She told me she had read that pressure (from
a rubber band about the head) combined with
lowered temperatures (from ice) would sometimes
keep the drugs from killing hair roots in the scalp.
I suffered numbness, ache from cold, for her,
for hope. She only had to try it once.