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  • The Paris Review

    The Man Who Eats Glass

    by Eliane Brum Oct 16, 2019 3 minutes

    Photo: Frank Vincentz (CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)). Via Wikimedia Commons.

    From inside a circle made of shards of glass in front of Porto Alegre’s Public Market, a scrawny man, little more than a twig of skin, fired a bottomless question at me point blank:

    “Miss, tell me something. Do you think I should keep on eating glass or give it up, go back home, and put in some crops?”

    I remained stock-still, not knowing what to say, utterly mute. Should he

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