Craving a break from nonfiction? Pravesh Bhardwaj read and shared 238 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2022. Here are his favorites.
1. “More so than to be cowardly and disloyal, though, it’s shameful to be foreign. If you’ve learned anything in your short time on earth, you’ve learned this.” —Jonathan Escoffery in Passages North (“In Flux”)
2. “He ate her eggs, which were like his mother’s eggs, though her biscuit was not like his mother’s biscuit; it was too dry, and there was no tomato jam.” —@legroff in The New Yorker (“To Sunland”)
3. “Mom’s face was ashen. In a voice that sounded strangled, she said, ‘Hayley’s RA called. She went to a music festival. There’s been a shooting.’” —Ken Liu in Slate (“Thoughts and Prayers”)
4. “It was a glass jar filled with hair and corn and teeth. The teeth were white with a tint of yellow at the root. The hair was gray and thin and loose. And the corn was kind of like the teeth, white and yellow and looked hard.” —Morgan Talty in Granta (“In a Jar”)
5. “Moreover, Aruna was herself every bit the shade of monsoon clouds with a cascade of ringlets like the falling of nights that held the promise of laughter in them.” —Maithreyi Karnoor in Bombay Literary Magazine (“Ringa Ringa Roses”)
6. “The old two-story house that had stood majestically in the corner lot diagonally across the road was being destroyed, and I was watching the spectacle from my second-floor kitchen window.” —Mieko Kawakami in Astra Magazine, transl. by Hitomi Yoshio (“Wisteria”)
7. “She liked the man, and even if this was something that could have been done at the A.T.M. she shouldn’t have rolled her eyes. She was simply so used to disliking her customers, and she immediately apologized.” —Sheila Heti in The New Yorker (“Just a Little Fever”)
8. “I hold up the list doing my best to murmur the names. Michelle Sutton, Darius Kite, Verona Dallas. Then I get to one that cold knocks me out. I move it close to my face to make sure it’s not a mistake. Kya Rhodes.” —Sidik Fofana in Electric Lit (“Tumble”)
9. “When Kambili was five months old, I snuck into her room as Mummy fried akara in the kitchen and I pierced her tiny baby shoulder with a razor.” —Tochi Eze in Catapult (“The Americanization of Kambili”)
10. “One wouldn’t think that at such a young age, I could learn how to take orders, serve dishes, or even work the register. But when push came to shove, I found that I could learn rather quickly.” —William Pei Shih in Ursa Story (“Happy Family”)
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