Homesick
Oh, this one was really, really good. Carmen Maria Marchado’s praise adorns the cover (of course with this library copy, it’s obscured…), and it’s true: If you like her work, I think you’ll like this one.
I found this short story collection — Homesick by Nino Cipri — because I did a big swoop of books with this title (or some variation thereof) that came up in my library system’s database. I’m working on a nonfiction writing project about “homesickness” so thought it would be fun and interesting to see how/why an author titled fiction this way. (PS: I find more inspiration this way because while there’s a lot of nonfiction work about people and home — straddling two locales, being rooted, etc. — I’m trying to employ some different narrative tools for my own project. Bonus points for Cipri’s work because it’s innovative and surprising.)
This is speculative fiction — we’ve got ghosts, shrinking houses, a character who keeps choking on keys — that simultaneously addresses very concrete and “real” emotions about not feeling at home…in the world, in one’s family, in one’s body (Cipri is trans/non-binary).
Each story somehow projects a spooky yet sweet or tender tone. Because being “homesick” can feel scary, until you realize that it might be a universal emotion: “We have so many questions…and so few answers. But that’s life, isn’t it? We let inertia carry us into a future with a—a shady flashlight that’s going dim. We can barely understand where we’ve come from, and where our choices have led us, but we keep groping forward, trying to find a way out of the mess we’ve made.”
originally published on instagram