Most centuries begin forming in the '80s of the century before.

In the 1980s, in a majority-minority high school in Southern California, haunted by the presence of wars old and new, teachers, students and support staff struggle and skirmish their ways through race, immigration, poverty, and education. In a cycle of stories, all vividly themselves, many voices tell us their lives.






"M. F. McAuliffe's writing is an invitation to reconsider the in-between moments, the sometimes quiet moments I too often leave uninvestigated. And once there, once I'm in her stories, the challenges and surprises and heartbreaks and joys that live in these moments are revealed by a remarkable storyteller. McAuliffe's wit and humor and heart fill the stories that make up I'm Afraid of Americans and Other Stories, and I will be revisiting them from now on."

— Matthew Robinson, author, The Horse Latitudes


"Readers of M. F. McAuliffe's collection will be mesmerized. In these stories, masterful in their own right, shy alliterations come splashing out of nowhere; a jaw-dropping simile or a short string of repetition arrives like a piece of chocolate or a shot of Coirvoisier. Hermitic rhymes and biologically correct personifications walk by. Everything is magnificently spot on."

— Leanne Grabel, author, Ophelia, TheGold Shoes


PRAISE FOR M. F. MCAULIFFE:

"There is elegy and orbiting and sky in your eyes and then there are The Crucifixes which leap from the Poet Goddess McAuliffe's forehead. If this were the last poetry collection on earth the gods who find it after the apocalypse will think well enough of us to resuscitate the species from this body of writing in some distant white and transdanubian blue afteroon."

— Jenny Forrester, author, Narrow River, Wide Sky


"In Seattle and Seattle, a disillusioned photographer works as a photo librarian. The writing parallels old style photography: film processed until a latent image becomes visible. The story emerges with the same chemical intensity."

— Mark Mordue, author, Dastgah, Diary of a Head Trip, and Darlinghurst Fueneral Rites

$16.00 incl. postage (1 copy, U.S. only)

$37.00 incl. postage (2 copies, U.S. only)