Writing Prompt #1

My friend Masaki said "You're good at writing Asian" after he heard this. That made me laugh. Who says that except your good Asian friend? We meet every Monday to give each other writing prompts and go through the excruciating so worth it process of reading our shitty spontaneous drafts out loud.

Writing Prompt #1--we had to write after looking at a picture of a painting in Art Forum Magazine. This is what came out.

Death was knocking at our door and we had to run. There was a cave inside the mountain by our house. My mother told me to roll up the old rice from the pot into fist sized balls and sprinkle them with salt. She said, “Faster, hurry.”

I was trying to work so hard my fingers were shaking. Every time I heard a machine gun go off, I shuddered and it was all I could do to tell my muscles to keep moving, to not freeze up and fail me now. I was at eight rice balls, not ten like my mother had requested, when we heard a bomb so close the windows on the far side of the house shattered. I whimpered.

My mother only ducked momentarily and then looked at me fiercely and said, “Pack those up, we have to go now. Get your younger brother.”

I grabbed my brother from the corner where he was huddling. My mom carried a bucket of water on her head and my youngest brother, only 3 months old, on her back. We went out the back door, through the fields and brush, and hurried to the river.

We walked up by the river and saw a neighbor who had dragged himself there and died. My mother ordered us to keep walking, to not slow down. My legs were numb.

Barack is President!

Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States last night. I watched in a room full of Obama supporters and one Republican who thinks he's the antichrist. I teared and I was so moved. I woke up today to a new day. Things feel so different now. Reading the comments on nytimes.com from all over the world moved me too. So many people around the world have more hope than they had before, more of a sense of a future that is good. I'm so glad to be part of this history.