Genre: Essays

Much has only gotten worse. In 2015, by the count of the people at the Gun Violence Archive, there were 335 mass shootings. (This term continues to have no set definition. For the GVA it is “four or more shot …

If ever he writes a memoir, it will reliably contain the falsehood that in 2019 he quit the United States for Côte d’Ivoire to sit out the coronavirus pandemic. Also, perhaps that he wished to elude a great—and imminent—North American …

Here’s my question. How do we keep doing this—making art? My question can be understood in two ways: what keeps us alive in our art, on what do we draw, year after year and project after project, to keep doing …

I. 

I spoke to Adrienne Rich just once, after a reading she gave at the University of Virginia in April 1998. The line in the auditorium to have her sign my copy of The Fact of a Doorframe was long. …

1.

In telling the story of where I went wrong, my mom drew two lines to mark the turning points that led me down a singular, inevitable path toward a male babysitter who drew no lines at all. 

One “if …

In rural Laos, a village had relocated only meters away from its original site after a recent dam construction submerged it. The historical village lay under an artificial lake, where tree branches poked from underwater. In the afternoon, our modest …

You know, I think these days we would call it a mild stroke . . . yes, I think your dad had a mild stroke. 

Could that happen from drinking?

Well, I don’t know, but he was very drunk. …

1.

Every morning of my childhood, my mother emerged from the bathroom after a shower perfumed by a heady mix of talcum powder and baby oil. Dressed in a blouse and petticoat, the softness of her belly just spilled over …