excerpt from endangered animals (finalist, restless books prize for new immigrant writing 2021)

“I held my breath, watching the flurry of gray ellipses begin to dance in the comments.

Maybe someone will point out the obvious error: these are photos and videos from a street-food marketplace, where food is cooked to order, and not a “wet market” at all—where live animals are butchered or trafficked to meet global demands for exotic wildlife trade, and where the first outbreak in Wuhan may have begun.

Instead, a woman wrote, “The devil exists, it’s human.”

Read the full excerpt online at The Common here.