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.
The light made my skin look orange, and I started thinking about what Wickham had told us about light. She said that oranges and apples, leaves and flowers, the whole multicolored world, was not what it appeared to be. The colors we see, she said, look like they do only because of the light or ray that shines on them. “The color of the thing isn’t what you see but the light that’s reflected off it.” Then she shut out the lights and shone a white light on a prism. We watched the pale splay of colors on the projector screen; some people oohed and aahed. Suddenly, she switched on a black light and the color of everything changed. The prism colors vanished, Wickham’s arms were purple, the buttons of her dress were as orange as hot coals, rather than the blue they had been only seconds before. We were all very quiet. “Nothing,” she said, after a while, “is really what it appears to be.”
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
You will begin to listen to the story of Josie’s life in Spanish and English. You will begin to like the way she looks. At moments you will confuse her with the stripper dancing naked on the table next to where the two of you talk. Josie will be telling you about her marriage, about her husband, about her divorce, about her daughter, about her sadness and disappointment. You will have more drinks than her.
“Recipe” from THE MAGIC OF BLOOD by Dagoberto Gilb © 1993 by the University of New Mexico Press; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc. “Recipe” originally appeared in Winners on the Pass Line (Cinco Puntos Press).
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
I thought, I bet the daughter’s glad she’s dead, because what her mother was doing, throwing herself into the grave on top of the box like that, looked funny. It looked funny because her mother was fat, and it looked so much like the mother was doing the Fat Man Dance, because her arms were spread out too, as if she were waiting for her daughter to spread out her arms also, and then they could hold hands and smack bellies together and dance in circles on the box just the way we always did in the summer when we did the Fat Man Dance. Because we always did the Fat Man Dance in the summer when we ran around with no clothes on and danced a lot because it was summer.
The light made my skin look orange, and I started thinking about what Wickham had told us about light. She said that oranges and apples, leaves and flowers, the whole multicolored world, was not what it appeared to be. The colors we see, she said, look like they do only because of the light or ray that shines on them. “The color of the thing isn’t what you see but the light that’s reflected off it.” Then she shut out the lights and shone a white light on a prism. We watched the pale splay of colors on the projector screen; some people oohed and aahed. Suddenly, she switched on a black light and the color of everything changed. The prism colors vanished, Wickham’s arms were purple, the buttons of her dress were as orange as hot coals, rather than the blue they had been only seconds before. We were all very quiet. “Nothing,” she said, after a while, “is really what it appears to be.”
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
You will begin to listen to the story of Josie’s life in Spanish and English. You will begin to like the way she looks. At moments you will confuse her with the stripper dancing naked on the table next to where the two of you talk. Josie will be telling you about her marriage, about her husband, about her divorce, about her daughter, about her sadness and disappointment. You will have more drinks than her.
“Recipe” from THE MAGIC OF BLOOD by Dagoberto Gilb © 1993 by the University of New Mexico Press; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc. “Recipe” originally appeared in Winners on the Pass Line (Cinco Puntos Press).
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
I thought, I bet the daughter’s glad she’s dead, because what her mother was doing, throwing herself into the grave on top of the box like that, looked funny. It looked funny because her mother was fat, and it looked so much like the mother was doing the Fat Man Dance, because her arms were spread out too, as if she were waiting for her daughter to spread out her arms also, and then they could hold hands and smack bellies together and dance in circles on the box just the way we always did in the summer when we did the Fat Man Dance. Because we always did the Fat Man Dance in the summer when we ran around with no clothes on and danced a lot because it was summer.