A roundup of stories from our week together at Catapult.
Hi, friends. Today we’re proud to publish this wonderful novella by Alicia Oltuski: There Are Worse Things Than Money
In which the Magpie thinks about giants, and surveillance, and what, if anything, can remain hidden: “What would they see, those far-sighted giants with their bionic eyes like Cyclops’s eyes?”
Eloghosa Osunde with one of the most beautiful essays I’ve ever read, on dance, trauma, and mental health:
There was a time when I had no words for God, when I could not pray at all, because I was too angry and heavy inside. So instead, every morning, I woke up before 5 a.m., before the sun, to dance. Even if I forget everything, just from those years, I will always know how to express anger with my body, how to bend to gratitude, how to cry and grieve without my face, how to show joy with my back and hands, how to express my own inner peace. I know how to talk to God from inside the flesh I was encouraged to deny. God knows my body and all the ways I have tried to keep it alive, loves me in this way, accepts the way my body moves as worship, knows my (in)flexibilities by name. God knows my victory dance, my war cry; because dance is my prayer itself, and dance is the amen that follows.
“What does Michael think? asks every person who hears I have written a book about our marriage.”
Together, Shoshana Kordova and Saadia Faruqi discuss how they distinguish Fridays from other days of the week in their Orthodox Jewish and Muslim families, now and when they were growing up.
Shannon Fandler on visiting Prince Edward Island in search of the younger reader/dreamer she was, and the Anne of Green Gables she loved.
If someone came to you with symptoms of C-PTSD, would you be able to help?
I am thrilled that one of my favorite writers, Jess Zimmerman, is writing a column for Catapult, and I am even more thrilled that it is about women and monsters. Her first, on harpies and female ambition:
The wage gap is sometimes explained away by saying that “women choose less demanding jobs.” It’s not a sufficient explanation—women are also paid less than men for the same job—but insofar as it’s true, this is why: because matching with men ambition for ambition is seen as greed and theft. What would it take to swoop down anyway, snatching your measure of glory from men who hold their nose as you approach? It requires much more than being impossibly dedicated, impossibly driven. Being a monster is harder than being a hero.
The wage gap is sometimes explained away by saying that “women choose less demanding jobs.” It’s not a sufficient explanation—women are also paid less than men for the same job—but insofar as it’s true, this is why: because matching with men ambition for ambition is seen as greed and theft.
What would it take to swoop down anyway, snatching your measure of glory from men who hold their nose as you approach? It requires much more than being impossibly dedicated, impossibly driven. Being a monster is harder than being a hero.
Finally, I missed having a good link roundup in my life, so I’ve been corralling links two to three mornings a week. Here is today’s; happy Friday, etc. If you’d like still more reading suggestions, you can see what our staff are reading right over here. Have a wonderful weekend, and thank you for reading with all of us.
Nicole Chung is the author of All You Can Ever Know, a national bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the forthcoming memoir A Living Remedy. Find her on Twitter: @nicolesjchung
