Jonathan grew up wanting to be an artist, went to art school, undergrad and graduate, and spent the first half of his adult life as a fairly successful painter. When a gallery fire destroyed nearly ten years of his artwork he started writing. His first novel, The Death Artist, about a serial killer in the New York art world, was an international bestseller. Since then, he has written several novels.
He has also edited and contributed to many anthologies and has even illustrated a few.
Jonathan continues to divide his time between writing and art. His memoir, The Widower’s Notebook, will be published by Penguin Books in July 2018, and he is at work on a new novel.
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Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
—Langston Hughes
Permissions
Foreword and “Hope” copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Santlofer
Introduction copyright (portions of the introduction originally published in the New York Times) © 2018 by Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Speak! Speak!” copyright © 2018 by Julia Alvarez
“Oh, Canada” copyright © 2018 by Russell Banks
“The Party” copyright © 2018 by Bliss Broyard
“Compline” copyright © 2018 by Stephen L. Carter
Politics copyright © 2018 by Roz Chast
“New Blank Document” copyright © 2018 by Lee Child
“Veterans Day” copyright © 2018 by Mary Higgins Clark
Guantánamo ERF Team: Macing Prisoner in Eye and Guantánamo, ERF Team: Waterboarding Prisoner copyright © 2018 by Susan Crile
“Atonement” copyright © 2018 by Michael Cunningham
“Intersections” copyright © 2018 by Mark Di Ionno
“The Third Twin” copyright © 2018 by Anna Dunn
“Balancing Acts” copyright © 2018 by Louise Erdrich
Scenes from Late Paradise: Stupidity and Late America copyright © 2018 by Eric Fischl
“The Miss April Houses” copyright © 2018 by Angela Flournoy
“Fires” copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Frank
“Hate for Sale” copyright © 2018 by Neil Gaiman
“Unaccountable” copyright © 2018 by Philip Gourevitch
“White Baby” copyright © 2018 by James Hannaham
Tell Her Anyway copyright © 2018 by Bridget Hawkins
“In the Trees” copyright © 2018 by Alice Hoffman
“Getting Somewhere” copyright © 2018 by Susan Isaacs
“Mr. Crime and Punishment and War and Peace” copyright © 2018 by Gish Jen
“Finally I Am American at Heart” copyright © 2018 by Ha Jin
Vote Hillary copyright © 2018 by Deborah Kass
Blackout copyright © 2018 by Jane Kent
“Arlington Street” copyright © 2018 by Lily King
“The Harlot and the Murderer: Sonia’s Story” copyright © 2018 by Sheila Kohler
“ ‘People Are People’ ” copyright © 2018 by Elinor Lipman
“The Trout Fisherman” copyright © 2018 by Joyce Maynard
Look Away and Loving in Black & White copyright © 2018 by Beverly McIver
“Listen” copyright © 2018 by Susan Minot
Our Cuntry Needs You and Tic-Tac-Toe and Deep Frost copyright © 2018 by Marilyn Minter
“Between Storms” copyright © 2018 by Walter Mosley
“ ‘Good News!’ ” copyright © 2018 by Joyce Carol Oates
The Ugliest American Alphabet copyright © 2018 by Eric Orner
“Safety First” copyright © 2018 by Sara Paretsky
“Bystanders (April 2003)” copyright © 2018 by Tom Piazza
“Lucky Girl” copyright © 2018 by Heidi Pitlor
Your Sacred American Rights Bingo copyright © 2018 by Mimi Pond
“If They Come in the Morning” copyright © 2018 by S. J. Rozan
“Top Step” copyright © 2018 by Richard Russo
The World Is Yours, the World Is Mine and The Many Faces of Islam copyright © 2018 by Shahzia Sikander
Starry Starry Night and Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights copyright © 2018 by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Island of Tears . . . and Island of Hope! and Ghost of Ellis Island copyright © 2018 by Art Spiegelman
Little House on the Prairie Holding Company LLC copyright © 2018 by David Storey
“The Walk” copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Strout
“Stop & Shop” copyright © 2018 by Paul Theroux
“The Way We Read Now” copyright © 2018 by Justin Torres
“Don’t Despair” copyright © 2018 by Alice Walker
“Learning American Values” copyright © 2018 by Edmund White
VIET THANH NGUYEN is the author of The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2017, as well as Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, shortlisted for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. A recipient of Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, he also wrote the short story collection The Refugees and edited the forthcoming collection The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Compilation copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Santlofer.
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First Touchstone hardcover edition January 2018
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Interior design by Erich Hobbing
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Santlofer, Jonathan, 1946– editor. | Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971– author of introduction.
Title: It occurs to me that I am America : new stories and art / edited by Jonathan Santlofer ; introduction by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Description: First Touchstone hardcover edition. | New York : Touchstone, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017055446 | ISBN 9781501179600 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Short stories, American. | American fiction—21st century. | BISAC: FICTION / Anthologies (multiple authors). | FICTION / Political. | LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General.
Classification: LCC PS648.S5 I83 2018 | DDC 813/.010806—dc23
LC record available at https://lc
cn.loc.gov/2017055446
ISBN 978-1-5011-7960-0
ISBN 978-1-5011-7962-4 (ebook)
It Occurs to Me That I Am America Page 40
