I sat in the taxi staring at the screen, as I usually did, watching a scene showing several Chinese people wearing masks. The taxi TV blared, “the Coronavirus rages through China, enhancing the possibility that it will spread to America!”
“Dad,” I asked. “What is the Coronavirus?” He turned to me nervously, as if I had asked where babies come from or if Santa Claus was real. Questions that for me had been answered long ago.
“Well, the Coronavirus is a disease,” he said.
Gemma was shielding herself from a sandstorm of dandelion seeds. Her tutor, Dominick Vickson, and herself were right at the core of a lush field. “As you can see,” Dominick called above the strong summer wind, as they made their way through the long, fine, green stalks, “wind is another form of seed dispersal. So that makes…” He choked on a mouthful of seeds, and coughed them out. Gemma giggled behind her hand and finished the sentence for him.
The sky was smashing and attractive. It was the hue of tomatoes, marmalade and freshly picked lemons. Cumulus clouds were slowly drifting by and the sun was just about to go hiding behind the endless mountains.
Of course, you only see that kind of stunning site on TV nowadays where rich companies just make winsome backdrops of impossible sights and post them to make humans think that they are living in an appealing world.
The cruel truth is, we are not. Living in a lively world.
Yum. The sweet smoky aroma of barbecued ribs fills the backyard and slowly drifts into the house. The backyard has uneven, rough stone tiles and a Big Green Egg Kamado (Japanese barbecue smoker) under the potato tree. Grass and roses are growing to the side.
The chef learned how to cook so well from her mother. The chef expresses herself through cooking. She says, “Cooking is my way of art and creativity.” The chef is CC Zhang, my mom.
Most of the writers we publish in Stone Soup are published only once. This is not a bad thing. Even some very famous authors, like Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind) and Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), are known for the one great book they wrote. But over the years the pages of Stone Soup have also featured the work of young writers who sent us one great story after another. Some were published twice, some three times, some even more.
The day Gu Zewei was born, we got the first notice. We had a month to choose a child to give away. "I will come to take her when you have decided," the official who delivered the notice said. She said "when you have decided," but her words implied that she was sure we would choose the girl, not the boy, to give away.
Zewei's name, which means "Rare Treasure," caused a great deal of confusion in the adoption department, because it is usually a boy's name.
Sabrina Guo, a Syosset High School freshman from Long Island, NY–and a name that readers of Stone Soup over the past few years will recognize from her many contributions to the Magazine and blog–has risen to the challenge of COVID-19 in the Long Island community. In response to New York City Mayor De Blasio's declaration on March 23 that hospitals would run out of personal protective equipment (PPE) in a week, she started a fundraising campaign: LILAC (Long Island Laboring Against COVID-19)
A conversation between Sabrina Guo—activist, former Stone Soup contributor and current Refugee Project Consultant, and nine-time national medalist from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards—and Shivanshi Dutt, poet and former Stone Soup contributor, about Sabrina Guo's debut chapbook Catalogue of Ripening.
0:23 — What first sparked your interest in language and writing?
1:28 — Did certain pieces of literature or media act as inspiration for your chapbook?
For Mom, and all the “Emmas” out there.
“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before.”
–Ram Dass
“Em? Wanna go bike riding with me today?”
“Can’t,” I mumbled and grabbed my backpack.
“Emma?” Jennifer asked, “Are you OK?” But I was already out the door and sprinting down the sidewalk as fast as I could. “Emma?” Jennifer called, “Emma?!”
I ignored her. I didn’t care. I just ran. I just ran toward nowhere in particular.
Last spring, as a fifth grader, I watched the movie Turning Red for the first time. I was excited to see this movie because it was written and directed by Domee Shi. Shi was born in Chongqing, Sichuan and later moved to Newfoundland, then to Toronto in Canada. While researching her life, I learned that she watched many Studio Ghibli and Disney films throughout her childhood, inspiring her to be the storyboard artist for films like Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Toy Story 4, and Incredibles 2.
