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.
Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.
Damn.
Rat-baiting was the premier betting sport of the nineteenth century. Its prestige can be gauged in economic terms, circa 1875: admission to a then illegal prizefight between humans cost fifty cents, to dogfights and cockfights $2, while a fight pitting a dog against rats ran anywhere from $1.50 if the dog faced five rats or fewer, up to $5, in proportion to the number of rats. In the eighteenth century the biggest draw had been bearbaiting, but that sport gradually dissipated as the number of available bears decreased, although matches continued to be held up to the Civil War, notably in McLaughlin’s bear pit at First Avenue and Tenth Street. For a while, dog-vs.-raccoon contests were popular, but rats were so readily available that they came to dominate the scene; boys were paid to catch them, at a rate of five to twelve cents a head.
I draw the curtains. The room darkens, but
the mirror still reflects a crescent moon.
I pull the crescent out, a rigid curve
that softens into a length of cloth.
I wrap the cloth around my eyes,
and I’m peering through a crack in the wall
revealing a landscape of snow.
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?
Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.
“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.
“Hush up, Jeannie.”
At the end of the hall, through the partially opened waiting-room door, she saw the hemline of a black dress, the gray of once-white tennis shoes, and a green hijab that, rather than covering the long black hair, held the broken arm of a young woman who was made of bird bones and calcium deficiency, who believed this to be her twenty-second broken bone, when in fact it was merely her twenty-first.
Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.
Damn.
Rat-baiting was the premier betting sport of the nineteenth century. Its prestige can be gauged in economic terms, circa 1875: admission to a then illegal prizefight between humans cost fifty cents, to dogfights and cockfights $2, while a fight pitting a dog against rats ran anywhere from $1.50 if the dog faced five rats or fewer, up to $5, in proportion to the number of rats. In the eighteenth century the biggest draw had been bearbaiting, but that sport gradually dissipated as the number of available bears decreased, although matches continued to be held up to the Civil War, notably in McLaughlin’s bear pit at First Avenue and Tenth Street. For a while, dog-vs.-raccoon contests were popular, but rats were so readily available that they came to dominate the scene; boys were paid to catch them, at a rate of five to twelve cents a head.
I draw the curtains. The room darkens, but
the mirror still reflects a crescent moon.
I pull the crescent out, a rigid curve
that softens into a length of cloth.
I wrap the cloth around my eyes,
and I’m peering through a crack in the wall
revealing a landscape of snow.
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?
Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.
“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.
“Hush up, Jeannie.”
At the end of the hall, through the partially opened waiting-room door, she saw the hemline of a black dress, the gray of once-white tennis shoes, and a green hijab that, rather than covering the long black hair, held the broken arm of a young woman who was made of bird bones and calcium deficiency, who believed this to be her twenty-second broken bone, when in fact it was merely her twenty-first.