FEATURING Madeline Ashby Hannah Lillith Assadi Calvin Baker Frank Bill Yoon Ha Lee Karen Lord Mike McClelland Achy Obejas David A. Robertson & Selena Goulding Martha Wells Published by PRODUCED BY CONTENTS 164 OBSOLESCENCE MARTHA WELLS 50 College Road East 124 West 13th Street 4 Princeton, NJ 08540-6614 New York, NY 10011 FOREWORD www.rwjf.org www.melcher.com ROXANE GAY 196 VIRAL CONTENT Take Us to a Better Place: Stories © 2019 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 10 MADELINE ASHBY INTRODUCTION Forward © 2019 Roxane Gay PAM BELLUCK Introduction © 2019 Pam Belluck 226 “Viral Content” © 2019 Madeline Ashby BRIEF EXERCISES IN “Paradise” © 2019 Hannah Lillith Assadi MINDFULNESS 18 CALVIN BAKER “Brief Exercises in Mindfulness” © 2019 Calvin Baker THE FLOTILLA AT “The Masculine and the Dead” © 2019 Frank Bill BIRD ISLAND “The Erasure Game” © 2019 Yoon Ha Lee MIKE McCLELLAND 250 “The Plague Doctors” © 2019 Karen Lord THE PLAGUE DOCTORS “The Flotilla at Bird Island” © 2019 Mike McClelland KAREN LORD “The Sweet Spot” © 2019 Achy Obejas 54 “Reclamation” © 2019 David A. Robertson and Selena Goulding PARADISE “Obsolescence” © 2019 Martha Wells HANNAH LILLITH ASSADI 280 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored THE MASCULINE in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, AND THE DEAD 82 FRANK BILL mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the THE ERASURE GAME publisher. YOON HA LEE 322 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 AFTERWORD 116 MICHAEL W. PAINTER Printed in China AND JODY STRUVE Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963596 THE SWEET SPOT ISBN: 978-1-59591-111-7 ACHY OBEJAS First Edition 326 ABOUT THE AUTHORS The views expressed by the authors included in this collection do not necessarily 140 reflect the views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RECLAMATION DAVID A. ROBERTSON ILLUSTRATED BY SELENA GOULDING There is a lot of money to be made in promoting the idea of a culture of health, and companies that claim to care about wellness recognize this. There are all kinds of commercials touting diets and fitness clothing and fancy gyms and juices and vitamin regimens that will help us become our best, most well selves. The constant refrain of this health-conscious consumerism is that with the right combination of products and discipline, we will all be healthy. These entreaties foreword are predicated upon the notion that health and wellness are within Roxane Gay everyone’s reach. It’s an absurd fantasy, the kind of fantasy that can be actively nurtured only by people who can afford to buy into such a flight of fancy. In many ways, I take my health and my right to good health I take my health and my right to good health for granted because for granted. I am relatively healthy and able-bodied. I work out I can afford to. It’s a blessing, but it is also galling because good five or six days a week, often with a personal trainer. I have a health should be an inalienable right, something everyone has access home gym, and before that I had a gym membership. I use a to regardless of who they are, what kind of body they live in, and range of apps to track how many steps I take each day, what I their economic status. There was a moment, during the presidency eat, and the composition of my workouts, even though I never of Barack Obama, when it felt like we, in the United States, were really do anything with the data. Sometimes I wear a Fitbit and getting closer to the possibility of a more robust culture of health. feel just a bit more virtuous. I have robust health insurance, The economy had improved. Obamacare became law, and suddenly though as a fat woman I am reluctant to visit the doctor given millions of people who previously had no access to adequate health the persistent anti-fat biases of most medical practitioners. I have care were able to benefit from the expertise of medical professionals. access to healthy foods. I go to Whole Foods and joke, like most They could better care for themselves and their loved ones. people who shop there, about how it should be called “Whole This is not to say that adequate medical care is the singular hallmark Paycheck.” And still, I marvel at the produce, always arranged so of a culture of health, but universal health care would certainly be a neatly, artistically. I partake of the olive bar and get exotic cured step in the right direction. Unfortunately, we do not yet have universal meats to make charcuterie. I browse various juices and elixirs. health care in the United States. People’s access to health care remains I talk to the butcher about the provenance of the meat I buy, political and comes and goes with the will of those in power. And and trust that nearly everything I buy from the store is “organic,” for those without means, it’s far more than access to health care that however vague and broad a distinction that is. Nearly everything makes a culture of health a distant, absurd fantasy. There are regions in the store promotes the idea of wellness, as if by engaging in where even if people have health insurance there are not enough consumerism within the confines of Whole Foods, our lives will medical professionals to serve their community. Those in rural areas necessarily improve. are particularly hard hit by doctor shortages. In Flint, Michigan, 4 5 residents still don’t have access to clean water. In San Francisco, young boy in a different way of life. Wellness is a cultural mandate in life came to a halt when the air quality was so dire, schools closed Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Erasure Game,” where people must assiduously and residents were warned to stay in their homes and wear air track their exercise, food intake, civic participation, and other markers masks should they absolutely need to leave their homes. From of well-being. Households are incentivized to live healthy lives. As the the East Coast to the West, shorelines are eroding as the oceans story unfolds, we see that a culture of health is only a social good if rise. In cities all across the country, there are barren food deserts participation is voluntary. where people have little access to grocery stores and affordable In Hannah Lillith Assadi’s “Paradise,” we are reminded that none fresh produce. When your life is constrained by enduring systemic of us are healthy if we remain indifferent to the suffering of others. oppression, it’s hard to expect that people are going to care about Rita, a young Syrian teenager, lives with her brother, Hussein, and health and wellness. their father in Arizona, recently resettled immigrants. She is mourning But what if this world were different? What if we started taking her mother and trying to take care of her father and brother, both better care of our planet, our communities’ infrastructures, and of whom need surgery for untreated gunshot wounds. The family ourselves? What if we had the financial and emotional means to receives an invitation from Dr. Jean al-Hadid, a local Syrian surgeon do so? What if a culture of health was more than a fantasy? In who welcomes new immigrants to the community. With the invitation this anthology, writers imagine what a culture of health might comes the family’s hope that they might receive the care they so look like. They imagine the dire consequences for humanity if desperately need. Theirs is a painful hope, because this suffering FOREWORD we don’t start building a true, widely accessible culture of health. family does not yet understand that the American dream does not They imagine what the world might look like if we misinterpret offer anyone the true rights they deserve. what a culture of health should actually be. They imagine how we These collected stories offer thoughtful, compelling, unique might all thrive if we all had the inalienable right to participate responses to imagining today a culture of health tomorrow. They in a culture of health that was actively supported economically, are hopeful and cautionary tales. They are, above all, a call to societally, politically. action, offering all of us the opportunity to rise to the occasion of Two old friends, Bobby and Kyle, reconnect in Atlanta after contributing, in the ways we can, to a world where a healthier life is years of distance in “The Flotilla at Bird Island,” by Mike possible to all, where a healthier life is something we can all rightfully McClelland. The world is different from the one we know, the take for granted. ravages of global warming clear and present, the ozone layer depleted, the air thick with pollution. Health is but a memory of what once was, but there is hope for a healthier way of life and, ultimately, a healthier world. In Frank Bill’s “The Masculine and the Dead,” Guy, a widower veteran, is a man who values self- sufficiency, taking care of his body, his home, and his community in simple but effective ways, and slowly he mentors a neglected 6 7 Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Non- required Reading 2018, Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.