S.M. Sukardi

Jul 23, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | S.M. Sukardi |Kyle Lucia Wu

There comes a time in a girl’s life when she will dance with her father. We know this because all the girls before us promise us so. They tell us about the suits and ruffled dresses; the curls and drugstore makeup. The glitter packed into eyelid-creases and sewn into gowns; the heirloom jewelry winking off wrists. If this is true—that is, if justice exists, if promises are carried through—then there must be something that excludes us. We must not be girls. Yes, I think that’s right.

Oct 26, 2023 | altaonline.com | S.M. Sukardi

In the early 2000s, I was a fourth-grade student at a public elementary school in Southern California. This is to say, I was a participant in California’s mandatory Mission Unit: a curricular requirement to teach students about the Spanish conversion of Native Americans to Catholicism at 21 missions spanning the California coast. We wrote book reports. We built dioramas.

Jan 16, 2023 | theadroitjournal.org | S.M. Sukardi

Back to Issue Forty-FourBY S.M. SUKARDIVauhini Vara’s debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was described by Justin Taylor in the New York Times as a “monumental achievement.” It has been shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a best book of the year by NPR and others. Her short fiction has been published in Tin House, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere, and has won an O. Henry Award.