After her mother’s passing, Jane Ratcliffe considers the role everyday objects play in a good death.

Kathryn Smith went to an Ashram, and it made her feel better about everything.

Living in a body can be hysterically complicated.

Terese Marie Mailhot questions the value of Native coming of age ceremonies she missed out on.

In two recent books about immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S., the authors’ attempts to help become part of their subjects’ stories.

Cherise Morris turns to astrology and Beyoncé lyrics to move through a difficult moment in her relationship.

Rachel Syme profiles Lady Gaga and dives deep into the mystique and mythology of “A Star is Born.”

Siddhartha Mahanta looks back at the small suburban starter house in Texas that helped his immigrant father redefine “home.”

Roxane Gay writes about the necessary and inevitable influence of politics on literature at this fraught time in history.

Sarah Miller recalls her days in the ’90s as a fickle movie critic.

Physiognomy is a discarded 19th-century pseudoscience. Why can’t we stop practicing it?

Alison Fields remembers the perils of junior high: fitting in, standing out, and trying out.

OutKast’s masterful 1998 album “Aquemini” defined a bold and Black South and predicted today’s pop music landscape.

How ’90s webzines heralded the best — and worst — of today’s online media landscape.

It takes a lot of percolating to become your own person.

Aaron Thier contemplates the connections between privilege, addiction, and recovery.

In the #metoo era, there’s no excuse for continuing to deride women like Maynard who speak out about their experiences with men who had much more power.

Hanna Neuschwander grapples with ending a wanted pregnancy, and finds that “right” or “wrong” fail to describe the moral reckoning.

Two women share a history of daring, of lost direction, of dark bedrooms, and an enforced silence they finally break.

“To my surprise, Disney World was not a difficult place to be while in mourning. To me it didn’t feel like an escape from grief, so much as a continued break from unendurable real life.”

A woman out of her mind, locked in an apartment. This, I believed, was the optimal, and probably only, condition under which art could be made.

Vanessa Golenia contemplates the ins-and-outs of merging finances as the higher earner — and bigger spender — in her (heterosexual) relationship.

Is “mindfulness” not the cure for anxiety we thought it was? Dang, neoliberalism wrecks everything.

We must speak truth to the power of all that threatens to keep women and girls silent in the face of sexual violence.

Jessica Gross considers her preference for certain types of confinement.

Diane Mehta tries to manage anxiety with meditation that requires her to discard all her memories.

New books about the opioid crisis — “Dopesick,” “Fight for Space” and “American Fix” — have different ideas about who’s to blame and what to do next. Our critic says regulating supply can have deadly consequences, and we need to address users’ pain.

Elon Musk can’t wait to send humans to the Moon and Mars. But before we land ourselves on other worlds, we need to remember how we’ve treated our own.

Jen Doll comes to terms with her inner teenager … or whatever.

Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks.