“Subject Position as Craft Tool: An Investigation,” by Leah De Forest (Fiction ’20)

2020 fiction graduate Leah De Forest was recently featured in Fiction Writers Review. Read an excerpt of De Forest’s craft essay below:

Subject Position as Craft Tool: An Investigation

First, a story.

At my primary school in Australia there was a boy who had the misfortune to be French. Laurent spoke funny. He’d been to Disneyland, a far-off fantasy land to us 1980s suburban kids, and often wore a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. The shirt had a squeaker stitched into it, part of the 3D protrusion of Mickey’s head.

We pronounced Laurent in a mean sing-song twang, with a sharp landing on the “t.”

One day we were playing on an arrangement of five upright treated pine poles, each of them about kid-height, arranged like the dots on a five-dice. The game involved jumping from one pole to another. When it was Laurent’s turn to leap he fell, belly first, onto one of the poles. It must have winded him terribly.

When he landed on the pole, Laurent’s Mickey Mouse shirt squeaked.

I told that story for quite a while afterwards.

Thought it was pretty funny.

Lor-rent.

Squeak.

Read the rest of this essay excerpt at Fiction Writers Review, as well as part two of the essay.