Read the news for ten minutes and you will feel it. That small flash of contempt for whoever signed off on the obvious mistake. A bridge collapses. A policy meant to feed a region starves it. An invasion promised to take six weeks limps into its third year. The implication of our headshake, never quite…
Read more
I was well into my twenties before I understood that anyone held an opinion about my worth. Where I grew up, this had never come up. A child in those towns is many things to many people, a son, a nuisance, a future, a mouth, but the one thing he is never asked to do…
Read more
I learned early that a face could be a weapon. Sixth of six children, I occupied the basement of the family hierarchy – everyone’s punching bag, no one beneath me to absorb the cascade. My siblings had refined the art of passing misery downward like a bucket brigade, and I stood at the end holding…
Read more
Nobody is white. This seems like an odd place to start, but look at your arm under decent light. Unless you’ve recently died, you will not find white. You’ll find beige, maybe with olive undertones. Pink if you’ve been exercising. Sand, wheat: the cosmetics industry abandoned ‘white’ as a descriptor generations ago because it’s useless…
Read more