BY HANA ZITTEL Hunchback by Saō Ichikawa, Translated by Polly Barton (2025) “What a funny old ecosystem, where these meaningless sounds transliterated by a middle-aged, severely disabled virgin generate income by setting people’s honeypots aquiver.” Shaka was born with myotubular myopathy, a non-degenerative, genetic condition resulting in muscle weakness. She requires assistance breathing and eating, and uses an electric wheelchair to get around. Living in the care facility she owns, Shaka spends her days in distance learning, reading on her iPad, writing erotic fiction, and tweeting her innermost desires with the assumption that they would never be seen. Her tweets, expound on her fantasies, “In another life, I’d like to work as a high-class prostitute.” In another she states, “My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman.” When the female caretaker normally assigned to bathe Shaka calls out, Shaka chooses to have a male staff member take over. Tanaka, insecure and jealous of Shaka’s wealth, is assigned the task. This experience ushers in a changed dynamic for the two characters, all the while Tanaka’s resentment continues to boil. Soon he reveals he’s seen her tweets, leading to a proposition that shifts Shaka’s desires into reality. Saō Ichikawa’s debut novella is a raw look at sexuality, desire and disability in Japanese culture. Subversive and honest, Hunchback ventures between darkness, sincerity and points of humor, resulting in an unexpected piece of fiction centered on moving through the world with a disability. Ichikawa won the Akutagawa Prize in 2023 making her the first disabled writer to win the literary prize in history. Pilot Imposter by James Hannaham (2021) Six years after the release of his PEN/Faulkner Award winning novel, Delicious Foods, James Hannaham released the amalgam of literary forms and visuals, Pilot Imposter. Consisting of poetry, screenshots, short stories and reflections, this experimental work breaks forms to result in a unique collection. An unlikely influence, Hannaham's watching of the show Air Disasters takes a central focus of the collection with many of the poems and stories exploring these famous airplane tragedies. In Pilot Impostor 3 he takes the voice of a pilot and his self-consumed, horrifying decision to intentionally crash his plane after taking a huge hit in the stock market. “The copilot is banging on the door. I wish I hadn’t had to lock him out. He’s a good person too. I guess he has a family as well, and so do the passengers. But none of them have the same kind of doubts hanging over them as I do.” Among the stories of plane crashes, the impact of his reading of Fernando Pessoa and the 2016 election of Donald Trump emerge throughout the book. Along with life, death, race, identity and love, Hannaham captures immense complexity into confined spaces with expertly crafted writing and imagery. On death, Hannaham writes, “About death, we know nothing. But our impressions make it seem incredibly boring. Eternal sleep? ‘Rest’? Perpetual silence? Decomposition? Bad. Just Bad. Not even bad like a bad vacation. Bad like a business trip to Ohio where they make you pay upfront for a nondescript hotel where it’s the anniversary of 9/11 every morning and they serve mini-muffins and complimentary Starbucks coffee between the times where the planes hit the Trade Towers.” Absurd and profound, Hannaham has crafted an engaging collection that manages to consistently shift forms while maintaining its themes. Hannaham followed up Pilot Imposter with 2022’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, which won the Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award for fiction. No. 138
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