Eunhae Han > Recent Status Updates

University was bigger and baggier, there was room to hide, so much room; she did not feel as though she did not belong because there were many options for belonging.

The General, slaving and shaving for him, always eager to fade his flaws. It was not as it should be.

Aunty Uju liked to talk about The General, different versions of the same stories repeated and savored.

tangled
"You know, we live in an ass-licking economy. The biggest problem in this country is not corruption. The problem is that there are many qualified people who are not where they are supposed to be because they won't lick anybody's ass, or they don't know which ass to lick or they don't even know how to lick an ass.

She would miss her friend, but Ginika's leaving forced them both to wring out their friendship and lay it out newly fresh to dry, to return to where they used to be.

Obinze said,
, with a grin.
Because of her, he had joined the debate club, and after she spoke, he clapped the loudest and longest, until her friends said, "Obinze, please, it is enough."

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.

She knew everyone and everything and she seemed to be everywhere at the same time, with her weather-beaten air, as though life had tossed her around for a long time.

Blanched longing

irked him slightly, because he wished Okwudiba would see that to call him humble was to make rudeness normal…. humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did.

Ferdinand had a steely, amoral face; if one examined his hands, the blood of his enemies might be found crusted under his fingernails.

She was taking two sides at once, to please everyone; she always chose peace over truth, was always eager to conform.

Now she was curtseying and greeting Mrs. Akin-Cole, a famously old woman from a famously old family, who had the supercilious expression, eyebrows always raised, of a person used to receiving hom-age; Obinze often imagined her belching champagne bubbles.

Her animation was exaggerated, as though a bigger smile and a quicker laugh, each ego-burnish shinier than the last, would ensure that Chief would help them.

sunny sentences …. Why should she give him the man’s full name if not because she wanted him googled …. Tipped OBZ over.

"You have boyfriend? You marry?"
"I'm also going back to Nigeria to see my man," Ifemelu said, surprising herself. My man. How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives that we have imagined

"Nigeria film very good now," Aisha said again.
"Yes," Ifemelu said enthusiastically. This was what she had become, a seeker of signs. Nigerian films were good, therefore her move back home would be good

But Ifemelu could see, from Aisha's face, that she understood very well. Aisha was simply a true market woman, immune to the cosmetic niceties of American customer service.

She had read many of them, because he recommended them, but they were like cotton candy that so easily evaporated from her tongue's memory.

But she had not had a bold epiphany and there was no cause; it was simply that layer after layer of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her. She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out.

But they had survived that fight, mostly because of Barack Obama, bonding anew over their shared passion.

Nigeria became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in withour the constant urge to tug them our and shake off the soil.

that she began, over time, to feel like a vulture hacking into the carcasses of people's stories for something she could use. Sometimes making fragile links to race. Sometimes not believing herself. The more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet one more scale of self until she felt naked and false.

The graying hair on the back of his head was swept forward, a comical arrangement to disguise his bald spot. He had to be an academic, but not in the humanities or he would be more self-conscious. A firm science like chemistry, maybe.

11. “Children of the Monsoon” — by X

South Asian climate refugees rebuild cities designed around flooding cycles instead of resisting them.
The future city thrives because it works with water, not against it.

10. “The Last Forest Choir” — by X

Trees genetically modified to survive heat waves communicate through sound.
A forest ranger becomes the last human who can interpret their music — the story of Earth’s pain and resilience.

8. “Plastic Sea” — by X

A scavenger community survives by harvesting plastic from the ocean’s massive garbage gyres.
A child discovers a living organism evolving to digest plastic — the possible beginning of planetary healing.

7. “Afterflow” — by X (title story)

Set centuries after ecological collapse, humanity lives in small river-based communities.
Technology exists, but harmony with ecosystems governs all choices.
A historian records the mistakes of the old world so future children will never repeat them.

6. “Ancestor Wind” — by X

An Indigenous futurist story where ancestral spirits ride the wind to warn the living of coming storms.
A teenage girl learns she is the last wind-listener — able to interpret these messages — and must guide her people through the new climate era.

5. “The Seed Keepers” — by X

After industrial farming collapses, underground seed libraries preserve extinct crops.
A young archivist risks everything to protect a cache of seeds that could restore food sovereignty.