My recent New York Times storyHow I Earned My Wings Back I got married a few months ago, but my husband — a proud Air Force pilot from a small town in Georgia — doesn’t know how we met. Rather, he doesn’t know the path that led me to him. By the time he was perched on one knee and [...] |
Essays/Fiction
My recent Los Angeles Times storyWake up, Flight Crews! As we cram into airplanes this holiday season, there is an aspect of air travel that we’re likely to be putting out of our minds — pilots asleep at the yoke and flight attendants so tired their mental states can be likened to a drunken stupor. |
 | Anything with Two Legs and a PulseAt 24, I impulsively threw away a respectable but boring life in suburban California for a stint as a London based flight attendant. A whirlwind of parties, clubs and pubs had me yearning for something real, and a down-to-earth connection proved ever harder to find in my fashionable fast lane crowd. |
The TalkI’m only 5’2”, yet I tower over her. My wrists are the size of her biceps. As I take my shoes off at her doorstep, she offers me a pair of her slippers, but I can’t even fit my toes into the opening. I laugh, nervously, loudly. I’m loud, and I’m large, and I’m bumbling. I’m the uncivilized white girl her first-born Korean son has brought home for the holidays. She says nothing, and keeps her eyes focused on the floor demurely, submissively, but despite her constant deferrals to her husband and sons, I know she’s the heavy. Hers is the only opinion that matters. |
 | The PretendersA surrogate gift and a feigned smile prove it really is the thought that counts. |