Natasha Varner

Feb 12, 2024 | memoirland.substack.com | Abdelrahman ElGendy |Natasha Varner |Camille Dungy |Lynn A. Cunningham

Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by , now featuring four verticals:Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus,  Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation. First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “War Creates Many Orphans” by and guest edited by . A new essay is coming soon.

Feb 8, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Natasha Varner

I knew where I was going but not how to get there, so I made several wrong turns on my way to the Castle Apartments. When I finally arrived, I got out of the car and had to shield my eyes from the sun. It was cold in the way that only a winter morning in the desert can be: an emptiness where you expect warmth. My presence on that otherwise empty street felt conspicuous. I was searching for a part of Tucson’s past, but to any observer I was just a loiterer casing the building.

May 17, 2023 | atlasobscura.com | April White |Natasha Varner |Ethan Sandweiss |Eveline Chao

The top tier of Shizuo and Frances Nishimura’s wedding cake, which has miraculously survived since they were married in an American concentration camp in 1943.

Mar 21, 2023 | thenation.com | Natasha Varner |Mychal Denzel Smith

The 53 women and children packed into Grant County Jail on June 16, 1951, were not normally ones for civil disobedience.

Feb 16, 2023 | atlasobscura.com | Natasha Varner

When Frances Nishimura died in 2019 at the age of 102, she left behind a mystery that might never be solved. On a warm spring day in May 2021, Elaine Nishimura was clearing out the last of her mother’s belongings from storage in her Portland home when she found an unassuming handmade box she had never seen before. “I opened this box and about fell over, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” remembers Nishimura. What she found inside was a cake, and not just any cake.