Tag: book excerpt

“When I moved to Billtown, I worried most about whether fracking tainted groundwater. By the time I left the area, my biggest concern was whether the liberty granted to citizens to lease their land, or to otherwise act in ways that limits others’ access to environmental goods, taints democracy.”

In an excerpt from her new book on fertility, feminism, and queer family-building, Jennifer Berney explores the possibilities of sperm banks.

In her new book, Miranda Ward explores the unique place of almost-motherhood — an uncertain landscape characterized by waiting, wanting, hoping, and not-knowing.

What makes good or bad design happen anywhere depends on who has the most power.

Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.

At an uncertain time in her life, Sejal Shah does Burning Man her own way.

Rachel Vorona Cote on how the Victorian era’s restrictive prescriptions for acceptable female behavior pollute society to this day.

Vickie Vértiz maneuvers her way around teenage love, friend envy, and being outed by her Mexican mother.

In the story of one Mexican-American woman’s life, we can see the whole tragic story of the US-Mexico border’s transformation from a simple chain-link fence to a humanitarian crisis.

“Stepping away, I feel something evaporate, a quantum of my soul, perhaps, burning up on contact.”

In an excerpt from her new memoir, Grace Talusan fondly remembers the badly behaved dog that won her skeptical father’s heart.

Of all the genes parents pass down and values they instill, how does one take hold so much stronger than the others?

Some places are as haunted as our pasts.

The history of England’s fertile music press reveals as much about the opinionated English youth who created it as it does the music they covered in the second half of the 20th century.

A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time.

A trip to a Swedish stone-age burial site gives an archaeologist too close a look at death.

In hip-hop and skateboarding, one young man finds an outlet for his aggression.

What does incarceration do for the member of a family that views prison as a rite of passage? A New York Times reporter takes a close look at intergenerational criminality.

What’s so great about having things spelled out clearly?

“There’s an idea that laborers end up in their role because it’s all they’re suited for. What put us there, though, was birth, family history — not lack of talent for something else.”