Volume I: Isolation and Community

In loving memory of Veronica A.

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Cover • For Contributors • For Readers • Volume I: Isolation and Community • Volume II: Belonging and Exile • Volume III: Xenophobia and Xenophilia • Contributors • Print version of introductory material

Preface

I’m alone in a crowd—e pluribus plures.
Far from a family I miss.
I’d almost say I’m lonely, but lonely
Is worse, I recall, than this.
--Geoffrey Brock, Bryant Park at Dusk

About the authors whose works are discussed in this volume

Short fiction

Ray Bradbury, "Night Call, Collect"

Anton Chekov, "The Bet"

Julio Cortázar, "The Southern Thruway"

Ken Liu, "The Paper Menagerie"

Carmen Maria Machado, "Dream House as Choose your Own Adventure"

Oscar Wilde,

"The Happy Prince"

"The Selfish Giant"

Long Fiction

Octavia E. Butler,

Dawn

Kindred

Poetry

Emily Dickinson,

"Much Madness is divinest Sense"

"They shut me up in Prose"

"The Soul selects her own Society"

Langston Hughes,

"Let America Be America Again"

"Mother to Son"

Short film

Pierre Ieong, Belonging

Textual Comparison

"The Deluded Self": Machado's "Dream House as Choose your Own Adventure" and Sartre's No Exit