EDITOR’S NOTE

“Evangelina Concepcion” paints a portrait of teenaged Lila and her small family as they weather the grief-stricken weeks after Lila’s mother (the titular Evangelina Concepcion) is killed in a car accident. Told in second person, from Lila’s point of view, in numbered sections and straightforward, evocative prose, the story is bleak, funny, and deeply moving.

The episodic structure of the piece effectively evokes the nonlinear, elliptical nature of Lila’s grief. She writes her mother’s name inside her clothes. She recalls her mother’s advice: “You will be like steel.” She endures visits from family friends who “praise [her] lack of frailty.” She reads and rereads an online article about the accident—which offers bountiful detail about the accident’s other victim, a white pedestrian, but leaves Evangelina Concepcion nameless. When a former employer of her mother’s calls to express his condolences, she notices “how easy it [is] for him to cry over the phone for someone who cleaned his house.” After this phone call, attempting through increasingly hysterical laughter to explain to her father, brother, and dinner guests why she found the tears of her mother’s employer so funny, what Lila cannot articulate becomes as important as what does appear on the page: the outrageous emotional privilege of a man who cries freely over the death of his housekeeper is juxtaposed with Lila’s own fierce stoicism in contrast so stark it becomes absurd.

That “Evangelina Concepcion” is Ani Sison Cooney’s first publication is a testament to the sharp eye and editorial wisdom of our Fifteenth Anniversary Issue guest editor Alex Gilvarry. I am grateful to Alex for choosing this piece for publication, proud to work for the journal that published it, and thrilled for Ani Sison Cooney. He is truly an emerging writer to watch.

Rachel Lyon, Editor in Chief

Epiphany