Issue 549 | The Sun Magazine

September 2021

Readers Write

Bread

A family recipe, a childhood memory, a Depression-era handout

By Our Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

Refugees, Late Summer Night

Out there, in the dark, they could have been / anyone: refugees from Rwanda, slaves pushing north. / Palestinians, Romani, Armenians, Jews. . . . / The lights of Tijuana, that yellow haze to the west, /could have been Melos, Cracow, Quang Ngai. . . .

By Steve Kowit
Quotations

Sunbeams

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

Ellen DeGeneres

The Sun Interview

The Longest Road

Margareta Matache On The Persecution And Perseverance Of The Roma

I think it is fascinating how the Roma, a people who have continuously moved or been expelled from one country or another, and who have been often denied the use of their language, have managed to hang on to a sense of Roma-ness, if you will.

By Finn Cohen
Tribute

A Tribute To Chris Bursk

The selection that follows — just a small sample of the fifty-plus poems of his that have appeared in The Sun — display the heart and honesty that first drew us to Chris’s work in 1977. A self-described “compulsive writer,” Chris once said, “I do not wait for inspiration. . . . Some days I watch the page until a few words come — and then I find myself inside the world they invite me into.” That world will be missed.

By The Sun
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Interpreter

The first time I saw Bak Hoo, she was peeing into a big Del Monte pineapple can in the basement. I froze on the cellar steps at the sight. Bak Hoo was my great-grandma.

By Judy Chow
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Ungrown

The cataracts give her an otherworldly countenance, like a blind prophet who gazes more easily into the past than into the present. She is otherworldly, because she isn’t a part of this time where I dwell — not fully. She floats closer to us and then away again before we can grasp her.

By Sarah Broussard Weaver
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Thousand Cups Of Coffee

It’s like arriving at your destination after a long drive, only to realize your mind has been elsewhere the entire time and you have no memory of the lights you stopped at, the turns you made, the glide in and out of traffic. Morning arrives again, and I stand in the kitchen, startled to exist.

By Steve Edwards
Fiction

Deep Eddy

They fished three tournaments together without breaking the top fifty before I told him to sign me up as his partner instead. At least I knew the difference between monofilament and fluorocarbon. I mean, damn.

By D.T. Lumpkin