The Last Picture of My Mother
“He’s shot her like this: her black dress black as the scrim behind her so that, but for her face, she is in fact part of that darkness, emerging from it as from the depths of memory.”
It Does Not Matter If You Are Good
“You learn, at some point, how to perform being non-threatening and you learn that often it matters less how well you perform and more whether the audience for said performance believes it.”
The Sacred Ritual Of Meals With My Mother
Food nourishes the body, but the act of sharing food with other people feeds indelible human connections.
No One Knows Amy Sedaris Better Than Her Brother David
Humorist David Sedaris lovingly — and hilariously — profiles his sister Amy, recalling their playwriting days in the ’90s as “The Talent Family,” and other adventures.
Her Sorority Sisters Suspected She Was Pregnant. What Did Emile Weaver Know?
In April 2015, Emile Weaver gave birth alone in the bathroom of her sorority house at a small liberal arts university in Ohio. Sorority sisters who’d suspected the pregnancy for months discovered her baby that night in the garbage, dead. Alex Ronan investigates what happened to Weaver, the campus response to rumors and confirmation of Weaver’s pregnancy, and how her community reckoned with questions of blame and responsibility before and after the baby’s discovery.
Content warning: This story covers neonaticide, “when a parent kills his or her baby in the 24-hour window after birth.”
Two Sisters and the Terrorist Who Came Between Them (Part II)
Lori Sally’s sister Sam moved to Syria to live under ISIS. Can she ever forgive her?
Two Sisters and the Terrorist Who Came Between Them (Part I)
How does a woman from Arkansas, a woman who used to wear makeup and take selfies and wear flip-flops, end up dragged across the border into a war zone by her fun-loving husband? How do you grow up in the United States of America, surrounded by Walmarts and happy hours and swimming holes, and end up living in Syria under a terrorist group?
The Rise of the Mom-Shaming Resistance
Molly Langmuir, a staff writer for Elle, explores the wholly American concept of mom-shaming, along with the rise Unicorn Moms, the mom-shaming resistance that sparked in California and has since spread nationwide.
You Owe Me An Apology
“I’m a black woman in America. I have been owed plenty of apologies. I just never believed I deserved to demand one.”
How Sex and the City Holds Up…and Doesn’t
On the 20th anniversary of the first episode of Sex and the City, Glynnis MacNicol rewatches the series and assesses the ways in which it remains relevant, and the ways in which the series could never get made in today’s more socially conscious climate.
