The Longreads Blog

Behind the Longreads: Antonia Crane on 'Yellow,' Our Latest Member Pick

(photo by teejayfaust, Flickr)

This week’s Member Pick is “Yellow,” a story by Antonia Crane about the days following the death of her mother. The piece will be featured in Black Clock #17 this summer and is adapted from her forthcoming book Spent. We asked her to tell us how the story first came together:

“‘Yellow’ actually began as a love letter to Cheryl Strayed’s essay ‘The Love of My Life’ (The Sun, Issue #430) which begins ‘The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.’ I had become fixated on that essay because in it, Strayed’s palpable sorrow contained a sexually reckless rhythm that I related to as a dancer and sex worker. My own mother died of cancer two months into grad school and I was raging with grief. At that time, I quit my half-assed personal assistant jobs and chose to sit in the dark for two years at ‘Pleasures.’

“A lifelong dancer and athlete, I was more comfortable hurling my body at the world than eating or buying toothpaste. I remember that I could go strip or meet a client for money, but I could not remember to pick up toothpaste no matter how many times I wrote in on my hand with a black Sharpie. I came home one afternoon to a Walgreens bag on my doorknob with Crest in it and bawled.

“Strayed’s essay modeled the utensils I sought to stir up my own concoction of rage and loss that was tearing at my skin. I’m grateful she allowed me to cook in her kitchen. I was mourning my mother. I was dancing; and I wrote like a motherfucker.”

Read an excerpt of “Yellow.”

Become a Longreads Member.

“How I Met My Dead Parents,” Anya Yurchyshyn, BuzzFeed.

Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Keeler on 'To Err, Divine, so Improvise' and 'Afterlife'

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Today’s guest pick comes from Emily M. Keeler, a writer, critic, and the editor of Little Brother Magazine. She recommends two stories, “To Err, Divine, so Improvise” by Kaitlin Fontana in Hazlitt and “Afterlife” by Chris Wallace in The Paris Review:

“This past week was one of several missteps; headlines and cover lines and tweets let us down even though we already were so low. Breaking news is broken. Steven Saideman put it another way in The Globe and Mail: ‘It is natural that we are impatient and curious, but we must be conscious that false steps may do much damage to innocents along the way.’ Sometimes it’s better to wait for the longreads.

“Here are two things I read while I waited:

“1. On the topic of shortcomings, Kaitlin Fontana has a wonderful three-part essay on Hazlitt this past week, describing the evolution of failure, and it’s eventual adulation, in the public imagination. For the time pressed, I’d jump to the final section—or do it right and space parts one, two, and three out over a few days, give yourself over gradually to your own failures.

“2.  While it’s not fiction—the place I’m most likely to find solace, this essay on self mythology, the interaction between a name and a story, and Big Poppa nonetheless does the trick. After all, one particular Chris Wallace would go so far as to say that ‘Biggie was a fiction—not so farfetched as to court incredulity, but idealized, a romanticization of the writer.’”

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

“When Our Kids Own America,” Gene Demby, NPR.

“Lives of the Moral Saints.” Larissa MacFarquhar with David V. Johnson, Boston Review.

Our Longreads Member Pick: Yellow, by Antonia Crane

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This week’s Member Pick comes from Antonia Crane, the Los Angeles-based writer whose work for The Rumpus has been featured on Longreads in the past. We’re excited to feature “Yellow,” a story about her relationship with her mother, about stripping, and about loss. The piece will be published in Black Clock #17, due out this summer, and it’s adapted from her forthcoming book SpentThanks to Antonia and Black Clock for letting us share this story with our members.

Read an excerpt here.

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Longreads Guest Pick: Christian Lorentzen on 'The Last White Election?'

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Today’s guest pick comes from Christian Lorentzen, editor for the London Review of Books, who recommends “The Last White Election?” by Mike Davis in the New Left Review

“Mike Davis’s essay is the most thorough analysis I’ve seen of the 2012 election and what it portends for the future. Written from outside the Washington consensusphere, it’s free of cant, and has something else you don’t much find in DC: style.”

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

“The Hell of American Day Care.” Johnathan Cohn, The New Republic.

“Getting Stuffed: A Tale of Love and Taxidermy,” David Sedaris, The Guardian.

“The Body in Room 348,” Mark Bowden, Vanity Fair.