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.
By 1924, there were about 200,000 Arabs living in the United States¹ and by 2000, at least 3.5 million Americans were of Arab descent².
It is 2010. A census form arrives in the mail.
I check OTHER and write-in: A-R-A-B.
In 2016, Obama wants to add a new racial category and has chosen an acronym to describe a group of people: MENA (Middle Eastern and North African)³
I note the absence of the word “Arab.”
Still, they do not sense us⁴.
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
In that darkness,
Speakers rose like
Housing projects,
Moonlight diamonded
Mesh-wire panes.
What was it that bloomed
Around his curled
Body when the lights
Came up, fluorescent,
Vacant, garish?
The gym throbbed
With beats & rage
And his eyes darted
Like a man nailed
To a burning crucifix.
We didn’t know much about addiction, about homelessness, but we knew how it could look. We’d watched a man nod into his own lap in the Tim Hortons on Abbott Street, had seen kids hawk lone red and white carnations in plastic sleeves to drivers on the interchange off-ramp. We’d heard the spellbound murmurs of the woman who sat all day at the bus shelter on Fillmore. We offered these people things we thought they’d want. Some days one said yes to a cheeseburger or a Filet-O-Fish or a hot coffee, and other days no one wanted anything but whatever coins and cash we had.
We were many times not helpful at all. One winter, Mary Lucille came across a man asleep next to the grocery carts in the Tops lot. She tapped him on the shoulder and asked, when he roused, if he wanted a ride to the shelter. He shook his head. Or, she said, she could take him to McDonald’s for a chicken sandwich, or fries, or a parfait.
“A parfait?” the man said. He squinted at her. “What the hell is a parfait?”
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
By 1924, there were about 200,000 Arabs living in the United States¹ and by 2000, at least 3.5 million Americans were of Arab descent².
It is 2010. A census form arrives in the mail.
I check OTHER and write-in: A-R-A-B.
In 2016, Obama wants to add a new racial category and has chosen an acronym to describe a group of people: MENA (Middle Eastern and North African)³
I note the absence of the word “Arab.”
Still, they do not sense us⁴.
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
In that darkness,
Speakers rose like
Housing projects,
Moonlight diamonded
Mesh-wire panes.
What was it that bloomed
Around his curled
Body when the lights
Came up, fluorescent,
Vacant, garish?
The gym throbbed
With beats & rage
And his eyes darted
Like a man nailed
To a burning crucifix.
We didn’t know much about addiction, about homelessness, but we knew how it could look. We’d watched a man nod into his own lap in the Tim Hortons on Abbott Street, had seen kids hawk lone red and white carnations in plastic sleeves to drivers on the interchange off-ramp. We’d heard the spellbound murmurs of the woman who sat all day at the bus shelter on Fillmore. We offered these people things we thought they’d want. Some days one said yes to a cheeseburger or a Filet-O-Fish or a hot coffee, and other days no one wanted anything but whatever coins and cash we had.
We were many times not helpful at all. One winter, Mary Lucille came across a man asleep next to the grocery carts in the Tops lot. She tapped him on the shoulder and asked, when he roused, if he wanted a ride to the shelter. He shook his head. Or, she said, she could take him to McDonald’s for a chicken sandwich, or fries, or a parfait.
“A parfait?” the man said. He squinted at her. “What the hell is a parfait?”
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.