Search Results for: Details

My Undertaker, My Pimp

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (edited)

Jay Kirk | Harper’s | March 2002 | 29 minutes (7,333 words)

This essay by Jay Kirk first appeared in the March 2002 issue of Harper’s, where it was edited by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Our thanks to Kirk for allowing us to reprint it here.

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For a year I worked in an office where I spoke to dying people on the telephone every day. The office was that of a funeral-consumer watchdog, which meant that we kept an eye on the funeral industry and helped the imminently bereaved and imminently deceased to make affordable funeral plans. Above my desk I kept an index card with a Faulkner quotation, “Between grief and nothing I will take grief.” On a particularly bad day I scratched out the last word and changed it to “nothing.” Read more…

‘Every Means of Confession Creates a Kind of Person Who Confesses’

Every means of confession creates a kind of person who confesses. You become who you are by saying what you did. The details make a difference. That pronoun, “I,” feels one way when you say it as part of a formula, in the dusk of a confessional, to a priest you cannot see behind the metal grille he blesses you through. Rambling in the well-lit office of a psychiatrist, “I” feels very different.

Moira Weigel, writing for The New Inquiry about FitBit activity trackers and the nature of confession (“Like confession and therapy, activity trackers promise to improve us by confronting us with who we are when we are not paying attention,” writes Weigel).

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The ‘Stunt’ That Helped Pass a Barrier-Breaking Law

In 1990, a group of activists and legislators fighting for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gathered on the steps of the Capitol to make a statement. Writing for Curbed about the act’s 1990 passage and its impacts over the last quarter century, Patrick Sisson details how the group dramatized the difficulties faced by people with disabilities using the 82 stone steps that lead to the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.:

On March 12, the Capitol Crawl, organized by ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit), gathered a crowd of hundreds of chanting supporters at the entrance of the country’s legislature. They watched 60 activists drop their canes or leave their wheelchairs and pull themselves up each of those steps. Dozens strained at the task, as friends and family offered them water and encouragement. Cameras focused on eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan, who had cerebral palsy. She made her way up, hands-to-knees. At one point, she told the dozens of reporters focused on her that “I’ll take all night if I have to!”

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The “stunt,” as a handful of annoyed senators called it, proved to be an important turning point in the battle for the ADA. But more importantly, it dramatized the difficulties that the built environment poses for people with disabilities, who make up nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population. Wright, who herself was blind, wanted others to see how much design can change a person’s everyday actions and level of independence, and how poor design can create a form of what she called “second-class citizenship.”

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#NoShame in Mental Illness: A Reading List

Photo: Kelsey

Even though I’ve lived with mental illness for years, I’m still learning about self-care, support systems and valuable resources. One of these resources is No Shame Day, initiated by poet and mental health advocate Bassey Ikpi. Ikpi founded The Siwe Project, which provides special mental health support for the Black community and other minority groups. On the first Monday in July, people take to social media and use the hashtag #NoShame to talk about living with mental illness and overcoming stigma and silence. Here, I’ve collected several stories about mental illness, many written by writers of color.

1. “Disrupting Domesticity: Mental Illness and Love as a Fact.” (Ashley C. Ford, The Toast, July 2015)

Ashley C. Ford interviews her partner, Kelly, about living with a person with mental illness–how to love her better, comfort her during panic attacks and hold her accountable. Kelly’s love for Ashley is so strong: “I love you for who you are. Anxiety is part of you. That part of you also shaped the person I love.” Read more…

Same-Sex Marriage, America, and You: A Reading List

Photo: Ted Eytan

The United States wasn’t built on pluralism, unless you consider “which extremist Protestant denomination are you?” and an oppressed native population pluralism. The Founding Fathers had some good ideas (democracy!) but diversity and inclusion—by our contemporary definitions—weren’t among them. I like to think we’re getting there, that one day, we’re going to be known as a place where superficial tolerance or outright hate aren’t the norm, but wholehearted acceptance and appreciation are. That we won’t use religion as an excuse for bigotry or stasis. That marginalized communities will have equity, not just equality. That’s what I choose to ponder on the Fourth of July. How far we’ve come, how far we have to go.

This year, unsurprisingly, I’m thinking about Obergefell v. Hodges, better known as the case resulting in the Supreme Court decision to institute the right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states. I’m thinking about the weight of marriage and its legal ramifications, about assimilation versus acceptance. I’m reading, a lot, about how marriage equality isn’t the endgame. At its best, it’s a step on the way to something, somewhere better. At worst, it’s a misstep or a distraction. In the following list, I share different perspectives about same-sex marriage (all written by members of the LGBTQ+ community), as well as Pride, religious opinions, family and stereotypes.

1. “The Supreme Court. The Law. And My Same-Sex Marriage.” (Leah Lax, Houston Chronicle, June 2015)

Leah Lax left Hasidic Judaism and found happiness and intimacy with another woman. She shares the technicalities of their journey—healthcare, tax benefits, marriage—and the beauty in the details of of waking up next to the person you love. Read more…

Death Made Material: The Hair Jewelry of The Brontës

Portrait of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, by their brother Branwell (via Wikimedia Commons)

Deborah Lutz | The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects | W.W. Norton | May 2015 | 42 minutes (6,865 words)

Below is an excerpt from the book The Brontë Cabinet, by Deborah Lutz, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor A. N. Devers.

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Long neglect has worn away

Half the sweet enchanting smile

Time has turned the bloom to grey

Mould and damp the face defile

But that lock of silky hair

Still beneath the picture twined

Tells what once those features were

Paints their image on the mind.

—Emily Brontë, Untitled Poem

If the Brontës’ things feel haunted in some way, like Emily’s desk and its contents, then the amethyst bracelet made from the entwined hair of Emily and Anne is positively ghost-ridden. Over time the colors have faded, the strands grown stiff and brittle. Charlotte may have asked Emily and Anne for the locks as a gesture of sisterly affection. Or, the tresses were cut from one or both of their corpses, an ordinary step in preparing the dead for burial in an era when mourning jewelry with hair became part of the grieving process. Charlotte must have either mailed the hair to a jeweler or “hairworker” (a title for makers of hair jewelry) or brought it to her in person. Then she probably wore it, carrying on her body a physical link to her sisters, continuing to touch them wherever they were. Read more…

A Chloe Caldwell Reading List

Photo courtesy of Erika Kleinman

On Tuesday, author Chloe Caldwell announced her second collection of essays, I’ll Tell You in Person: Essays on Intimacy & Identity, is forthcoming from indie publishers Emily Books/Coffee House Press in 2016. Caldwell is one of those writers who, once you encounter her work, inspires you to read everything she’s written, akin to Leslie Jamison or Cheryl Strayed (who happens to be her friend and mentor). My best friend introduced me to Chloe’s first collection of essays, Legs Get Led Astray, and it’s a book I carry with me when I’m in need of comfort. Caldwell’s second book, a novella called Women, garnered critical acclaim (and an Instagram shoutout from Lena Dunham). She’ll show you her demons if you’ll show her yours–her style is deeply personal, almost confessional, but Chloe never seems to write from a place of exhibitionism. She’s simply honest, and in an age of Internet posturing, that feels important. Chloe writes about people who are important to her. She’s important to me, so I thought I’d share some of the things she’s taught me.

#1. Find a community of people who a) are great friends, and b) help you hone your craft: “Who Am I? Two Writers Talk About Life and Nonfiction.”

Chloe took to her personal blog and published four installments of a conversation between her and her good friend, the writer Frances Badalamenti. Rather than an interview, I thought the informal nature of this conversation would be a good introduction to her style. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Interior of the United States Supreme Court. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Guns ‘R (Still) Us

Out-of-state residents can purchase firearms in Arizona read the sign behind the counter at Sprague’s Sports in Yuma. ASK US HOW. I asked a clerk named Ron for details. He was short, packed solid as a ham, with a crew cut and a genial demeanor. He pointed to the cavalcade of hunting rifles lined up on the long wall behind him. “Any of these you can get today—or these over here,” he said, leading me to a corner of the store where two young men in ball caps and a woman with a sparkly purse were admiring a selection of AK-47’s.

I didn’t really want to buy an assault rifle, or even a handgun, but I was curious to know what buying one felt like, how the purchase worked, what-all was involved. Nobody in my circle back east had guns, nobody wanted them, and if anybody talked about them, it was in cartoon terms: Guns are bad things owned by bad people who want to do bad things. About the only time the people where I come from thought about guns was when something terrible happened. A lunatic sprays into a crowd and we have the same conversation we always have: those damn guns and those damn people who insist on having them.

In this 2012 GQ piece, Jeanne Marie Laskas spends a few shifts behind the counter at Sprague’s Sports in Yuma, Arizona, to learn about guns and gun culture in the most gun-friendly state in America.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…