If humans did not exist, story still would. In such a scenario there would be no Toni Morrison or Louise Erdrich or Anton Chekhov; no YouTube or Netflix or TikTok; no Star Wars or Avengers or Michael Bay films that last three hours with plots about explosive car crashes and eighteen-wheelers spiraling out of control (I suppose that would be okay). What would remain, though, would be the basic elements of story. Imagine it: orange-red maple leaves are falling to the ground where two squirrels fight over a glossy acorn, each preparing for the winter months, the winter months where several nor’easters with heavy wind will hit and change the landscape into a boneyard of wood. The seasons change, the snow melts, the water rises, lowers, and so on, the earth’s climate producing mini stories that are driven by its actions until once more the orange-red maple leaves are falling to the ground where two squirrels fight over a glossy acorn.
Story does not need us, but we need stories. And we need people to tell them, people who intimately understand how stories speak to us.
Lily Philpott is a young writer who meets this criterion. Born in Santiago, Chile, Lily is an indigenous transracial adoptee raised in New England. I met her when she was a student of mine at the Institute of American Arts, and over the course of a semester I’d never been more inspired as a mentor. She sent me her story “Pa’ la Calle,” and within a few lines I found myself reading for pure pleasure. Her immensely moving work reminds us how to see the complexity of our lovingly hated adored world and, in it, how to discover ways of being better at loving one another. Kci-woliwoni—thank you—for reading “Pa’ la Calle.”
Pa’ la Calle
Before the protests really started, before our cousin Josefa held hands with a man who lost his eye, before I flew over Santiago like a condor in the Andes, and before Mariela broke her heart into a hundred pieces worrying about all of us, I asked my abuelita for a recipe for some of her old medicine to help me sleep.
