Kartika_Issue15

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To: General Manager, Crayona Company From: Manju Nohria Re: Crayona crayons Date: November 23 rd Dear Sir or Madam, I wrote to you about the colour of your crayons in my emails dated November 11 th , 14 th , and 17th. I have also called and left you three messages on your phone. It is now twelve days since I first wrote and provided you with the opportunity to prepare a new crayon colour that will correctly depict the skin colour of wheatish-complexioned females from the state of Rajasthan in the northwestern part of India with which my daughter Anya can prepare another, accurate portrait of herself. I do not believe it should take you so long to write me back an email. I believe I have provided all the relevant information to you and this is a very vital matter, therefore please respond. Please be advised that, in light of the deeply important nature of the matter, I will unfortunately be unable to rest until the matter is addressed. Yours respectfully, Mrs. Manju Nohria, B.A., M.A. Anu Kandikuppa is an economist and a candidate in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina. She lives in Boston with her family and is online at www.anukandikuppa.com. 28
HEARTBREAK Wah-Ming Chang ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013 The year 2008 was the fifth anniversary of the death of Leslie Cheung. He died jumping out a window. All but one of his obituaries attributed cause of death to suicide. The exception had been written by me: I had used the word “heartbreak” instead of “suicide.” Today I recognize the sentimentality of this claim. Cheung had killed himself. What had caused his death was gravity. I imagine the act of defenestration to involve a mixture of elation and terror, with neither, in each its totality, unrelated to the other. The arms cannot help but strike out for balance, the legs tensed for the landing, the head bent forward perhaps to cushion itself—a measurement, in a way, of life meeting death. I have several photographs of him from the winter of 2002, and in the majority of them he has a sword in his hand. This hand with the sword never wavers, acting as a weight while the rest of his body is always a slender blur, as though motion were relegated only to flesh and not to metal. The portraits had been taken over the span of a weekend that winter, in preparation for a lengthy profile about the tenth anniversary of his film Farewell, My Concubine. The following spring, he jumped from the twenty-fourth floor of the Mandarin Orange Hotel. In 2008 a film festival was held in his honor in Vancouver, and I went. At the last minute I packed the photographs. It was only in Vancouver, where he’d retired from his singing career, from 1990 to 1995, that Cheung had enjoyed any peace. Some believed he’d chosen Canada to treat his depression. Clinical depression, in addition to an impossible relationship with fame as a pop singer and a film star, had undone him. After his death, speculation about the depression varied widely, the most popular touching on his sexuality. Though he had openly discussed his partner in interviews, many of his fans had believed him to be heterosexual, or, at the very least, a moody eccentric. Later, his partner revealed that Cheung had tried to commit suicide once before, in 2002. On my first night in Vancouver, in a Chinese restaurant down the street from my hotel, my waiter studied the photographs, which I’d spread out on my little corner of the table. The sword in Cheung’s hand especially arrested him. He asked, “Were all these taken by you?” 29
Page 2 and 3: Cover Art: “The Home Front" from
Page 4 and 5: MISSION STATEMENT Kartika Review se
Page 6 and 7: EDITORIAL Eugenia Leigh Dear Reader
Page 8 and 9: Purvi Shah’s “Tree Risings” d
Page 10 and 11: The Home Front Jordan Josafat 10
Page 12 and 13: lip as she tried to swing her swoll
Page 14 and 15: “Masayuki! Tsune, sit quietly. Be
Page 16 and 17: simple wedding was kept. Along with
Page 18 and 19: Etsuko had backed out the door slow
Page 20 and 21: SKIN DEEP Anu Kandikuppa To: Kinder
Page 22 and 23: northwestern part of India, in part
Page 24 and 25: must use a blend of oils and perfor
Page 26 and 27: To: Ms. Clayton and Ms. Simpson Fro
Page 30 and 31: “Yes,” I said, “though I’m
Page 32 and 33: THOUGHTS OF SINKING Kaitlin Solimin
Page 34 and 35: I paused. How had she remembered th
Page 36 and 37: never touched any of the girls inap
Page 38 and 39: the next generation couldn’t best
Page 40 and 41: Chenxi climbed up the silver ladder
Page 42 and 43: she’d tried. She’d climbed to t
Page 44 and 45: else. For now, this tall, slow Amer
Page 46 and 47: “That’s true,” I said. I hate
Page 48 and 49: I’d read a newspaper article many
Page 50 and 51: Bomb the Morons 50
Page 52 and 53: Into the Wild 52
Page 54 and 55: Runaway Train 54
Page 56 and 57: PAROUSIA I Karen An-Hwei Lee Red bu
Page 58 and 59: QUARANTINE Henry W. Leung My feet p
Page 60 and 61: THE TRANSFUSION OF YUKIYO KANAHASHI
Page 62 and 63: 5. Some people will accuse me of bi
Page 64 and 65: Platonic knowledge is joyful recoll
Page 66 and 67: our self, freed from the constraint
Page 68 and 69: the story of how I began studying J
Page 70 and 71: Jackson Bliss earned his MFA from t
Page 72 and 73: piece suit nearest the air conditio
Page 74 and 75: AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH MONIQUE TRUON
Page 76 and 77: suspect everyone in Saigon was conc
Page 78 and 79:
KR: What is the physical act of wri
Page 80 and 81:
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS FICTION Sharon Has
Page 82 and 83:
ART 82 What The Jordan Josafat Jord
Page 84 and 85:
Nonfiction Editor, Jennifer Derilo
Page 86 and 87:
Kartika Review is a national Asian
Page 89:
ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013 89
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