Category: Essays

To read this essay, please purchase a print copy of Issue #2, 2015

“When we change languages, we are altering ourselves, and at the same time giving up parts of ourselves.  And here, now, I feel like I am nearly lost.” —from The Possibilities Are Endless by Maya Weeks I. One of my students was wearing a “No Binary” button the other day, which made me happy. As …

48 miles northwest In January of 2005 a mudslide covered the beachside town of La Conchita. Known as punta until 1925, it was founded in the late 19th century by men working on the South Pacific Railroad. The landslide destroyed thirty-six of one hundred sixty homes. Ten people died. The railroad still a vein running …

Like the cramped sushi bar I found in Kyoto packed with friendly businessmen and laughing smokers, and the independent Tokyo record store I found filled with collectible blues and jazz, I stumbled on Jazz In Rokudenashi by accident. It was a jazu kissa on a brick side street in Kyoto’s historic Gion-Shijō district. Jazu kissa …

Sarah McCord can’t quite remember when she discovered that PubMed was still calling conjoined twins “monsters.” She does, however, remember being startled. “It bothered me,” she wrote to me, “because it seemed like there were all kinds of news stories about conjoined twins being surgically separated, and I knew that there would be more searching …

Monsters are on the rise. People can’t seem to get enough of vampires lately, the giant monsters (Kaiju) are resurfacing, and zombies have a new lease on life. The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin down. Maybe it’s social anxiety in the post-9/11 decade, or the conflict in Iraq—some think there’s …

  The 2015 MLS Cup game is this Sunday, the final match-up of a long, grueling U.S. soccer season. To celebrate, an essay by Story co-founding editor Vito Grippi about the narratives soccer offered him as an American child of an Italian immigrant family. WHAT WE CALL SOCCER IS USUALLY CALLED FOOTBALL. That’s what the English call it. Though …

In the movie, when Dracula moves from Transylvania to London, the first thing he does is crash the opera, and starts making the moves on the ladies. In particular he’s interested in Miss Mina (Helen Chandler), though Mina’s friend Miss Lucy (Frances Dade) has the hots for Dracula just a little bit more. Soon after …

  Born in 1890, Tod Browning, one of the first horror genre directors, began his career during the silent film era. “He was the John Carpenter of his day,” claims Dr. William Dodson, Professor of Rhetoric, Literature, and Media Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Browning directed such films as the original …

In the tank, you watch the whale circle behind you. You tilt your head around trying to follow him in the water. Yellow streams of sunlight cascade over the black and white torpedo that is coming at you. Today, Dawn Brancheau will drown during a clear, sunny afternoon toward the end of the “Believe” orca …