For one brown, queer Filipino-American, Karen Carpenters’ music anchored her to her musical family’s past while helping chart her path in their adopted Southern California.
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Posted inNonfiction
Shelved: Van Morrison’s Contractual Obligation Album
This is the sound of not really trying.
Posted inNonfiction
An Ocean Away From the Sanctuary of Manhattan, Signs of Peaceful Coexistence
As a Jewish New Yorker, Candy Schulman is surprised to find a small town in Andalusia celebrating the coexistence of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, despite the area’s dark racist history.
Posted inStory
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’
Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
Posted inFeature, Story
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo
Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
Posted inNonfiction
‘I Was Trapped Forever In This Present Tense’: Carmen Maria Machado on Surviving Abuse
“She was always afraid of my voice. That was the defining factor of our relationship — fear of what I would say and write and do. She’s afraid of … the narrative that I possess.”
Posted inReading List, Writing
On Keeping a Notebook: A Reading List
In this reading list, Jeanne Bonner ruminates on the joys of writing by hand and keeping a notebook.
Posted inNonfiction
When the Dishes Are Done, I Wonder About Progress
In “Coventry,” Rachel Cusk draws a connection between politeness and narrative death, rudeness and tragedy, storytelling and war.
Posted inNonfiction
Mountains, Transcending
“Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown.”
