The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans.
It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.
Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.
I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - it was all things I was trying to do unsuccessfully in my poetry. It really just changed everything. I was introduced to authors like Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, and a lot of African American literature, as well.