Essayist Leslie Jamison visits the Breakup Museum in Zagreb, Croatia — created in 2003 after founders Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić ended their relationship — and considers what stories are told by the objects we shared with former loved ones.
Sari Botton
Posted inBlog Post, Commentary, Nonfiction
Inadvertent Matchmaker Seeks a Love of Her Own
I was introducing all my friends, but had no idea how to be in a good relationship.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Finder, No Longer a Keeper
Jenny Klion tries to make sense of her super power of finding lost jewelry where ever she goes, and reflects on how finding someone else’s engagement ring helped her let go of her own.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Politics as a Defense Against Heartbreak
Minda Honey’s first in an original Longreads series on dating as a black woman in these times. Here, she assesses the deliberate choices and external factors affecting her romantic life.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lurve You? Or Loathe You?
Maybe Woody Allen’s romantic comedies weren’t terribly romantic after all.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Unlearning Woody Allen
An essay of cultural criticism in which David Klion breaks down Woody Allen’s influence on the culture, romantic comedies, and Klion himself, and realizes the premises and attitudes in movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan aren’t so romantic after all.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Cities in Me
A personal essay in which novelist Sorayya Khan maps her family’s path from Islamabad to Solvay.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Decisions, Decisions
Masha Gessen considers the nature of choice, for immigrants and trans people.
Posted inEditor's Pick
To Be, or Not to Be
A personal essay in which Russian emigre Masha Gessen ruminates on the culture’s tendency to privilege those who’ve suffered for a lack of choice — in becoming refugees, in picking their gender — and the choices (her own, and those of her parents and ancestors) that have impacted her life.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Recovering My Fifth Sense
In this personal essay, Kavita Das recalls learning to self-advocate as a patient with a cleft palate — and as a child in a family full of doctors.