People
Cursed: Baseball Lore and Saving My Daughter’s Life
“Does cursing beget being cursed? Had I brashly yielded a power unchecked, unaware of the consequences?”
My Mother’s Secret Garden
The students turned a gray patch of earth into their own tiny Eden, a secret oasis of their own.
“The Long Night”: A Novel by Julian Mayfield
Mayfield’s style was as stark as Richard Wright and poetic as Ernest Hemingway, but was grounded in urban realism.
Melancholia, Death Motion, and the Makings of Marilyn Manson
“Manson’s magical proximity to massacres of gun violence is, we know, not magical. His practice is prismatic, his lyrics a sieve.”
Korean as a Second Language
I never would have come to Korean if not for my adoption. The language pulled me back to it, despite the decades, cultures, and continents between us.
What I Miss: A List
“I miss your record player, and the sense of home you carried with you, although you’d never really been at home anywhere.”
When the Moon Met the Tiger: Homecoming and Loss in Myanmar
A homecoming could happen across many continents. It was not a physical place, but a family’s embrace.
Looking Backward: How Urdu Poetry Makes Queerness Historical
For three centuries, the ghazal has been the most prestigious and popular genre of Urdu poetry.
Peanut Farming, Robert E. Lee, and a Virginia Family’s Legacy
Slaves brought peanuts from Africa and planted them across the South, where they were used as animal feed.
If Famous Authors Described My Attempts to Date
The three women continued to sit on the couch, anguishing over whether this had been a romantic or a platonic encounter.