Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Yasmina Din Madden writes about You Know Nothing, her new story collection out from Northwestern University Press.
If You Know Nothing were a body of water it would be the Pacific Ocean, at times peaceful and calm, at times roiling and furious.
If You Know Nothing were a song, it would be Sleater-Kinney’s Modern Girl.
If You Know Nothing were a food it would be sashimi—raw, just slightly chilled, a generous dollop of wasabi and, for optimal taste, many slivers of gari to cleanse the palate between different offerings.
If You Know Nothing were your party guest, she’d probably pull a French Exit
If You Know Nothing were a childhood game, it would be one that made you race against a clock and made you anxious but was your favorite, nonetheless. If it were an outdoor game, it would be Ghost in the Graveyard for some of the same reasons.
If You Know Nothing were an animal, it would be the dark horse only new or reckless gamblers bet on at the racetrack.
If You Know Nothing were a snack, it would be Garrett Popcorn’s cheddar-caramel mix, salty and sweet.
If You Know Nothing were a sibling, she’d be the black sheep.
If You Know Nothing had to pick a Brontë sister, she’d pick Emily.
If You Know Nothing had to choose among desserts, she’d eat them all.
YASMINA DIN MADDEN is a Vietnamese American writer whose fiction and nonfiction have been published in Electric Literature, The Idaho Review, The Fairy Tale Review, and other journals. She is the winner of the 2022 Oxford Flash Prize, and she teaches creative writing and literature at Drake University.
Buy a copy of You Know Nothing here.