Activity

Our addictions are a part of our modernity and a response to modernity, a choice to surrender. Addictions are also attitudes; at first a fact of the body, they become a perspective on the world. We still don’t know why, when given the chance, a rat willingly doses itself to death with nicotine. But…

“He is not Chinese!” shouted a depressed-looking historian.

Everyone turned and looked at him.

“I don’t think he’s really Chinese,” the historian repeated.

“He does look—different,” said Lidiya.

“Maybe he is an Uyghur,” Zholkovsky suggested.

“Wha-a-at?”

“An Uyghur, an Uyghur, an U…

“Elif, hello. I don’t know if this is pleasant or a surprise, but, yes, this is Grisha.” Freidin was at the dinner for the conference participants. He was, he said, experiencing confusion due to the total lack at this dinner of any graduate student presence. “You are not here,” he explained, “and F…

This was great news for my classmate, Josh, who was also working on the exhibit, and who had somehow developed a crush on Pirozhkova, based on the pictures from the 1930s which show her to be, indeed, an extremely attractive woman. Josh’s parents were Star Wars fans and his full name is Joshua Sky …

But then there were so many problems. First, my copy was sent back to me with a note: “Please call ASAP regarding portrayal of Cossacks as primitive monsters.” It turned out that my copy was lacking in cultural sensitivity toward Cossacks. I tried to explain that, far from calling Cossacks primitiv…