SPRING 2018 A PETIT LITERARY JOURNAL VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1 The nobodies: nobody’s Hunger / 1 children, owners of Hunger Leaving San Salvador and heading nothing. The nobodies: toward Guazapa, Berta Navarro the no ones, the met a peasant woman displaced nobodied, running & the by the war. She was no different like rabbits, dying from any of the other women through life, screwed and men who had exchanged every which way. Transient hunger for starvation. But this Who are not, scraggly, ugly peasant woman but could be. was standing in the midst of Who don’t speak desolation, her skin hanging Hero; languages, loose on her bones and a scraggly, but dialects. ugly little bird in her hand. The or the Hunger Who don’t have bird was dead and she was very religions, slowly plucking its feathers. of Publishing & but superstitions. The Publishing of Who don’t create art, Hunger / 2 Hunger Painting by Ricardo Celma but handicrafts. A system of isolation: Look out Who don’t have culture, for number one. Your neighbor Painting Excerpts From but folklore. is neither your brother nor by Mark Axelrod The Book of Who are not human beings, your lover. Your neighbor is a but human resources. competitor, an enemy, an obstacle lmost all of this is from an to clear or an object to use. The article I wrote in the 90s Embraces Who do not have faces, A by Eduardo Galeano system feeds neither the body nor that was published in The New but arms. the heart: many are condemned Internationalist which was the Who do not have names, to starve for lack of bread and only periodical courageous enough The Nobodies but numbers. many more for lack of embraces. to publish it. I have revised and Fleas dream of buying themselves Who do not appear in the history added a bit, but what was true With Permission of the Author a dog, and nobodies dream of of the world, two decades ago is pretty much escaping poverty: that one magical but in the police blotter true today so, rather than rewrite day good luck will suddenly rain of the local paper. what has already been written and still remains germane down on them—will rain down in The nobodies, who are not worth especially in the United States, I buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain the bullet that kills them. down yesterday, today, tomorrow, have decided to let it stand. As or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall Vonnegut might say, “So it goes.” down in a ne drizzle, no matter A quarter of a century ago, in how hard the nobodies summon it, 1992, as the sun set on the Bush even if their left hand is tickling, Administration and the sun rose or if they begin the new day with on the Clinton Administration their right foot, or start the new (two sides of the same star), I year with a change of brooms. had witnessed the famine in 1 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University Contents Introduction FICTION POETRY Memoir Eduardo Galeano .................. 1 Jonathan Swift....................... 5 allen Ginsberg .......................11 Ariel Dorfman ......................22 Excerpts From the Book of Embraces A Modest Proposal C’mon Pigs of Western Civilization Heading South, Looking North: A Eat More Grease Bilingual Journey Mark Axelrod .......................... 1 Margaret Atwood ..................7 Hunger and the Transient Hero Bread Luisa Valenzuela...................16 Ian Prichard .............................8 Dark Desires Clarity Charles Bernstein ................16 BIOGRAPHIES John Diamond-Nigh .............10 Rivulets of the Dead Jew Dragon of Air Doris Lessing .........................17 About the Writers ...............24 Knut hamsun ..........................12 Two Cities Hunger (Excerpt) george Orwell .....................12 Down and Out in Paris and London (Excerpt) Flann O’Brien .........................13 The Poor Mouth (Excerpt) Luisa Valenzuela...................18 From Death Cats/El Gato Eficaz Steve Katz ...............................19 The Smoochers Maxine Hong Kingston ........14 The Woman Warrior (Excerpt) Charles Dickens ....................15 Oliver Twist (Excerpt) Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge those who have helped make the publication of MANTISSA possible: President Daniele Struppa, Dean Patrick Fuery, Dr. Joanna Levin, and Dr. Eric Chimenti. This Issue was created by Chapman University’s Ideation Lab. Special thanks to Renee Bulda, Aly Carley, and Cassandra Taylor. Look for Volume 4, Issue 1 in the Spring of 2019 2 Mantissa Journal Volume III Issue I Introduction Somalia with both consternation express that. And so I set myself whatever reasons they had, I had of Aesop’s Fables or a redesigned and perplexity—at what was the task of writing to as many two dozen or so of the world’s cover of Tolstoy or Trollope. After happening and at how I was so writers as I could to see if they nest writers, all of whom were all, those are all public domain. ineptly capable of alleviating might contribute. In the course committed to contributing prose any aspect of it. Being a mere of four years I have written or poetry of some kind, and Then I thought that, perhaps, purveyor of words, I really had over 200 writers worldwide all I needed was a publisher, a Grove was an anomaly; perhaps no idea of what I could do to help and of those 200 I have received publisher willing to publish the publisher who had published remedy that horror or any other positive responses from about these writers, a publisher whose such distinguished humanists horror whose focus was pestilence. 26. And they are: Martin Amis, interest in social responsibility as Beckett and Pinget and Genet Pestilence and hunger. Famine, Margaret Atwood, Christine was forthright and sincere. had somehow changed directions. mainly. Sitting on my sofa, watching the nightly news and feeling impotent to effect change was not the principle upon which one took remedial action. Nor was sitting in my corner ofce working diligently on the next piece of ction or deciding whether to use an excerpt from Derrida or Eco in an upcoming lecture. So, I began to think about what I could do to get involved since not to remedying the problem was, as Cleaver the Younger once so deftly put it, being part of the problem and being part of the problem was not being part of the solution. But what could I do, as a mere purveyor of words, that would get me off the couch and into the universal melee that was hunger? World hunger. Finally, I came upon an idea to organize and edit a collection of ction, poetry and essays devoted to hunger, written by writers from all over the world and published by a publisher who would donate most of the prots to a foundation whose mission it was to help remedy the burden of world hunger. I set out very systematically to discover a Painting by Alejandro Boim foundation that would be eager I rst contacted Grove Press From new directions to newer to participate in such a program Brooke-Rose, J.M. Coetzee, thinking, of course, that such a directions. Perhaps others, and I found one in the Freedom Maryse Condé, Ariel Dorfman, distinguished press, a press of when they discovered such a ne From Hunger Foundation of Davis, Raymond Federman, Eduardo noble causes and richly-stocked collection of writers and writing, California which, “founded in Galeano, Allen Ginsberg, Günter writers, would be interested. And would be as enthusiastic about 1946, [...] promotes ‘Self-Help for Grass, Alasdair Gray, Thomas they were. For a time. Until the the possibility as I was. Perhaps a Hungry World.’” Their mission Keneally, Maxine Hong Kingston, day came when they informed Noonday would be interested. “is to create, develop, demonstrate, Doris Lessing, Wole Soyinka, Ben me that “the collection would After all, they published and still and disseminate, worldwide, Stoltzfus, Ronald Sukenick, Luisa not make much money.” But published Hamsun’s Hunger and, innovative programs to eliminate Valenzuela, Gerald Vizenor, and I didn’t think making a lot of after all, it documents the horror chronic hunger by providing Elie Wiesel. I also had the good money was the point. At least of hunger—albeit in an artistic resources and information that fortune of interesting Madame not making a lot of money for the way. But perhaps that kind of empower the poorest families Jehan Sadat, an enthusiastic publisher. Making some money hunger is easier to publish. After and communities to help supporter of the Freedom From for the foundation which, in all, it happened over a hundred themselves.” They appeared Hunger Foundation, to write a effect, might put some bread on years ago, and late nineteenth- to be the kind of foundation foreword to the collection. And the ground for some child in, say, century Norwegian hunger isn’t with whom I could work and then there were others who Ethiopia was the point. But I was n de siècle American hunger they had been very helpful in have not committed, but who wrong. Protability was the point. or Latin American hunger or sending me material which I said they’d consider it. There How naive. And in my naïveté Rwandan hunger, and Hamsun could forward to the writers. were, of course, a lot of missing I marveled at the loss of the pro won a Nobel Prize and... well, bono spirit of publishing. At least you get the idea. In short, their Once I had a conduit for the writers, noble and not Nobel Prize winners, who did not wish to semi-pro bono. Not in that world. answer was “this would not “prots,” my next goal was to No “kinder, gentler” humanists be suitable for our list” and, of interest writers.