This month’s books newsletter is about seeing the big picture.
Search results
A Long, Lonely Time
“It’s strange to think that the Righteous Brothers outlive my mother. Sometimes I pretend they are singing to her.”
I Had To Leave My Mother So I Could Survive
Elisabet Velasquez reckons with a lifetime of disharmony with her religious, mentally ill mother.
The Horse Was a Lie (The Horse Is Here With Us Now)
In Mario Chard’s “Land of Fire,” was it the truth or a lie that killed the migrants in the desert? And what if that’s the wrong question? What if we say it was a horse?
Miami: A Beginning
Jessica Lynne remembers a long distance love affair that began in Miami and the Billie Holiday song that kept her company through the relationship’s transitions.
Whose Boots on the Ground
We invest a great deal of collective energy in commemorating our war dead. But do we remember them?
Pages You Can Dance To: A Book List
Either Martin Mull or Frank Zappa or Elvis Costello once said writing about music is as pointless as dancing about architecture. Which doesn’t account for how I’ve danced to all these books.
Mothers of the Future
In a new memoir, Sophia Shalmiyev attempts to reunite with her missing mother through scraps, signs, and surrogates.
The Danger of Desire
Faylita Hicks considers what it means to be a Black nonbinary activist in the age of Trump — and questions how the social justice movement has changed the way they have sex.
Hot for Teacher
When a student in her writing workshop submits a piece suggesting his character could ‘take’ a teacher just like her ‘atop her desk,’ Courtney Zoffness is flooded with memories of men touching her against her will.
