I am a die-hard New Yorker who loves taxi drivers with caw-fee accents and bagels with cream cheese and lox. (Rest in peace, H&H.)
I graduated from Yale University with a degree in English. In fact, I majored in the Yale Daily News, working 40 to 60 hours a week reporting and later leading coverage of New Haven, Conn. For my senior essay, I won the Theron Rockwell Field Prize, the highest humanities honor for any student in Yale’s undergraduate, graduate or professional schools. Hooray for rent money.
After graduation, I moved to Washington, D.C., and became a Metro reporter for The Washington Post. I have also worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Popular Science, the New Haven Register and Yale Alumni Magazine. Feel free to contact me at victor.a.zapana@gmail.com, and check out my best clips here.
I just read your piece in the New Yorker titled “Shaken”. It was beautifully written and raises so many difficult issues; For starters: respect for ones parents, guilt, crime, punishment, parenting, immigrants, families, marriage, medical evidence, and love for ones mother.
As a father with a young daughter it was very hard to read. I remember all those scary warnings about not shaking our baby. Thank God nothing ever happened to our daughter. (We left her with no one during those formative years.) I remember reading about your mother in the newspaper, I could not understand how someone could do that. I was angry. Because of your writing I now see another side. Thank you for sharing your mothers story. I hope she gets out soon. She is a beautiful woman.
Just read your piece in The New Yorker. As one who works in law, I have often questioned the Shaken Baby issue.
Having not read the transcripts of your mother’s trial and subsequent appeal, I can’t say for certain anything about her case but SBS has been greatly discredited for years. There are many across the country and in all areas of the English speaking world who most likely have been falsely imprisoned.
Your article in the New Yorker was a most eloquent piece of writing.
My very best wishes to you in all things.
I also have just read your piece in the New Yorker. I am an English teacher at an engineering school in Paris, France and just picked up the New Yorker this morning to read over coffee. I got back to my desk half an hour later feeling shaky.
The rhythm of your story is spot-on leading the reader into the thick of the story gradually without pathos.
I would like to use your story in class if I may to illustrate how a story can be both factual and engrossing.
Good luck in your future.
I found your New Yorker article, “Shaken”, powerfully moving and beautifully written. I believe there is a great deal of injustice in our courts and am haunted by thoughts of what your family endured in this tragic story. Also, I think you are an amazing talent and look forward to reading more of your works. I am a concert pianist by training, and now work as a volunteer with adult immigrants in Washington DC who are learning to read and write. Last year I graduated with a second masters (first was in piano) from Georgetown University in public policy management because I want to change the world even though my hair is falling out and turning grey. Would love to invite you for coffee one day to chat about your work, your ideas, your aspirations, and perhaps collaborate on a future project. Victor (tocayo)