CURRENT Features

"Why I Am Not A Buddhist Monk"

Excerpt:

My Zen name was Bopnim. Sunim said it meant something about forests and strength. Mostly I think that’s bullshit. I can’t even find it on Google Translate. But at the temple, I was Bopnim. A monk in training. Not a disaster. I hid myself in the temple as a means of imprisonment. I could limit my self-destruction. I didn’t need guns or rope or nuclear weapons. I was a nuclear weapon. But at the temple, I was Bopnim. Devout. Robed in grey. A teacher with training wheels.

A personal essay about discipline, neurodivergence, and the quiet humiliations that shape us. I write about the years I spent in a Buddhist seminary, and the rituals I couldn’t remember.

Read it at Gargoyle Magazine

"One Hundred and Forty-One Miles"

Excerpt:

You should know I’m a Buddhist, though not a particularly good Buddhist, but a Buddhist, nonetheless. So when Sophie was in junior high, I thought it might be a good idea to start meditating on her departure. I’d helped these Tibetan monks for over ten years—they’d travel around the country making sand mandalas and chanting. Whenever the monks visited, they’d stay with us and talk about meditation. One of the things they taught me was to meditate on impermanence as a way to prepare myself for death. And, because my daughter’s departure for college seemed like a sort of death, I thought this was a very good idea. Get a head start. Beat the tears. I applied my very A-type way of being to the grief process.

A meditation on motherhood, impermanence, and the slow grief of watching a child grow away from you. This essay weaves music, memory, Buddhist practice, and a near‑kidnapping in 1977 into a portrait of a mother preparing both badly and beautifully for her daughter to leave for college.

Read it at MER

Raymond Hammond, Editor, New York Quarterly

Pink wraps what has been and what is into a UNIQUE AND COMPELLING story of what will be, Jennifer Harris grounds the reader with her in both time and place presenting a read that is, at one moment in time, poetic, fantastic and fun. A TRUE POETIC READ.

Pink Magazine

Poetic and unique in execution, the first-person narrator of Jennifer Harris' debut novel foretells a future based not on what is or was, but what will be when the novel she will write is published.... So poignant are the details and engrossing is the text, the reader forgets the plot is based on fantasy-despite the narrator's constant reminding-yielding a powerfully emotional and unexpected finish.

Edge Entertainment

Pink is a novel of grace notes with the rare misstep…this novel of the future is a gamble that pays off thanks to Harris's sweet and well-drawn narrator. —Ellen Wernecke

AfterEllen.com | Across the Pages

The narrator of Jennifer Harris' ingenious first novel, Pink, is spiraling... Harris weaves together several different threads, providing the narrator with a unique, beguiling voice. ...Pink is an incredibly well-crafted, inventive novel about what it means to dream so big that the dream itself becomes reality. —Heather Aimee O’Neill

Bookpleasures.com

Pink is something that is very different from the usual hype. It is so refreshing to actually find a book that has another angle to the gay/lesbian scene. The author also uses her poetic ability throughout this very 'pink' book. I feel certain that this is one of those novels that will find itself a big fan base, especially with covering gay and lesbian rights. It looks like Jennifer Harris has a good writing career ahead of her so place this book on your bedside table or pop it in your handbag. Definitely worth a read even if you're not gay yourself. —Jessica Roberts

CURRENT Features

Raymond Hammond, Editor, New York Quarterly

Pink Magazine

Edge Entertainment

AfterEllen.com | Across the Pages

Bookpleasures.com

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