The Common’s Spring 2020 issue released today. Find it features featured at the NewPages Mag Stand this week. Inside the issue: an Arabic Portfolio from Sudan with work by Andel-Ghani Karamalla, Ishraga Mustafa Hamid, Bwader Basheer, Jamal Aldin Ali Alhaj, Mustafa Mubarak, and more. Also in this issue is fiction by Thoraya El-Rayyes, Catherine Buni, Bina Shah, and others; essays by A. Kendra Greene, Suraj Alva, and Tanya Coke; and poetry by January Gill O’Neil, Emily Leithauser, Megan Pinto, Mira Rosenthal, Tara Skurtu, John Freeman, marcus scott williams, and more.
The Common
“Death of the Farm Family” by Sarah Smarsh
NewPages magazine review by Makenzie Vance
In the Issue 8 of The Common, Sarah Smarsh describes how her grandfather’s home became a central gathering place for friends and family and then how it was lost after his death. She begins two generations before her own and skillfully condenses her three-generational story into a compelling length.
Smarsh recounts how her drifter grandmother met her grandfather and finally settled down after a life of wandering with her teenage child—Smarsh’s mother. Though the farmhouse served as a communal space for family and friends and a home for eccentric farm traditions like sledding in a canoe behind a truck, the farm fell apart when her grandfather died, leaving a hole in their lives.
Smarsh speaks to all when she illustrates the importance of a central gathering place for a community, and she reaffirms the importance of small farms and the lives lived upon them.
About the reviewer: Makenzie Vance is a creative writing student at Utah State University.