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Pig Girl
 
My pride in remembering the Milk and Meat Rule withered under the shame of forgetting the inexplicable Law of Rumination, which prohibited ingesting pigs because they failed to regurgitate and chew cud like cows. The frankfurter oozed inside my Jewish flesh, congealing into lard. I wished I could undo my sin, vomit, go back in time, or just bury myself in soil for several days like my mother did to silverware that had been contaminated by both meat and milk.
 
Gloria Garfunkel

 

Baronesses of the Fourth Exile
 
Some of these women are the writers I will be talking about. They burned. Then they burnt some. Such rude awakenings they were! Such strong antidotes to the system-infused sedatives, that they were banished from their own homes like witches on broomsticks with two buttons—"Out" and "Away." These women are now in the Fourth Exile.
 
Farah Mehreen Ahmad

 

The Christmas Clara Cried
 
My father chatted with Uncle Ralph, who was born to wear a uniform, to hold a stick in his hand and point it at people, to enter rooms without knocking, to make others snap to, and to believe in victory at all costs. He would join the Army, rise in rank, and receive a medal for valor in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he would join the VFW, fail in the furniture business, and later find morsels of happiness as a hater of hippies and the like. He would lead a charge against a peace march and end up in district court, proud to have blood on his hands again
 
Andrew Coburn

 

The Whisper that Echoed across the Seven Seas: Rumi in the Western Intellectual Milieu
 
The contributions of Rückert are the most eminent amongst all other nineteenth century orientalists. In the years to follow, he was to stir up many a lover of Rumi in the West. An interesting analogy can be drawn between Sana'i and Rückert. It was Sana'i who first employed the ghazal form of poetry to express mystical thought, and Rückert on the other hand, was the first one to introduce the ghazal form in German poetry.
 
Talha Jalal

 

America's Pastime
 
In the summer of 1978, I was an eight-year-old budding radical feminist who wanted to play Little League baseball. My drive to play baseball was multifold, but my first motive was to play a game: to go to practices, get a t-shirt, compete with and against other kids. There were but a handful of team sports opportunities available to second graders at that time. Soccer had yet to make significant inroads in the suburban U.S., basketball leagues were mainly for older kids, and the only eight-year-olds playing hockey were carrying on a family tradition that my southern-until-my-generation family did not share—but every able-bodied boy on my cul-de-sac had played or was playing baseball.
 
Mary Kathryn Bessinger