Synkroniciti is excited to announce our “Family” essay contest winner, Houstonian writer and poet Angélique Jamail. Angélique expertly interweaves humanity with humor in “The Kirby Store,” an engaging memoir piece centering on her experience growing up in the family business. Longtime Houstonians will know the grocery store Jamail’s, a fixture in our city that closed its doors in the late 1980s. Jamail’s sold Medjool dates decades before anyone else and celebrities, including presidents, shopped there. She introduces us to a few of the wonders, including the “United States of Beef,” and remembers her time working the coffee counter, confessing that she still “cannot stand the taste of coffee.” The business had a definite mystique, but it also required a huge amount of attention and hard work. “During the holiday season we never saw our fathers unless we came in to work with them.” The nostalgia for a time when a family grocer could compete with the big corporations in a large market like Houston is palpable. Angélique shows us the integrity of the family, intent on improving and serving the community. Bittersweetly, their entrepreneurial spirit led away from the business as children grew into adults with the means and confidence to pursue their own interests.
Read “The Kirby Store” in our upcoming “Family” issue, available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Angélique Jamail is a Lebanese-American author whose work has appeared in over two dozen publications, including New Reader Magazine, Waxwing, Pluck, The Milk of Female Kindness, Femmeliterate, Bayou City Magazine, and Literary Mama. The first time she read one of her stories to an audience was fourth grade; it was a character-building experience. Her books include Finis. and Homecoming (both fiction) and The Sharp Edges of Water (poetry). Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has been a finalist for the New Letters Prize in Poetry. She serves on the Board of Directors for Mutabilis Press and is the Director of Creative Writing at The Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas. She’s also the creator of the popular zine Sonic Chihuahua.