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Fiction by C Pam Zhang: ‘See It Slant’

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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. Iwas, like too many others, a film student living in New York when K introduced me to the work of Frank Takashi. Up until that point, for 18 of my 19 years, I’d lived a quiet, middle-class life in a middle-class suburb where my greatest hardship was this: that I could never point to some inciting source of my existential angst, some crack in my life from which all other cracks radiated. K showed me Takashi’s work, and she showed me the depth of my lack. As a kid, I’d sensed something missing and strained for the illusion of depth. Those standard, middle-class rebellions: dyed hair, black nails, combat boots, metal through my nose. In despair, my parents gave me a video camera, a cutting-edge digital model regifted from an office white elephant. I considered it the first true event of my life. I was 15, and it was 1996. For the next two years, as my parents watched

Photo-Illustration: Kristin Kastein This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. I was, like too many others, a film student living in New York when K introduced me to the work of Frank Takashi. Up until that point, for 18 of my 19 years, I’d lived a quiet, middle-class life in a middle-class suburb where my greatest hardship was this: that I could never point to some inciting source of my existential angst, some crack in my life from which all other cracks radiated. K showed me Takashi’s work, and she showed me t

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