by Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross
Equal parts melody and malaise, the short stories and lyric essays in The Longest Way to Eat a Melon chart the activities of a cast of speakers who all grapple in their own ways with what it takes to conjure a self in the midst of discordance. A brain argues with a non-brain about how to remain productive from a place of exhaustion; expansive emotional geographies are mapped across linear, and non-linear, time; an idealistic teenager tries to “make it” in a big city corrupted by readymade storylines and self-destructing grammar; and an emerging artist paralyzed by possibility considers how best to transform a melon into a breakthrough work of art. Incorporating elements of fable, autofiction, surrealism, satire, and art/cultural criticism—the pieces in this collection attempt an uneasy inventory of the pitfalls and minor triumphs of the work of creative production, all the while exposing, through exasperated logic, the total fallibility of language.
Publication: Summer 2025
Publisher:
Sarabande Books
Rights sold:
- North America: Sarabande Books