Tag: family

Chris J. Rice reaches out to the baby brother she left behind when she ran away from their abusive mother at 15.

Reconnecting with her father after his release from prison, Ashley Ford must also bring him into the digital age.

During the ’70s and early ’80s, 30,000 people “disappeared” during Argentina’s Dirty War — including Delia’s pregnant daughter, Stella. What happened to baby Martín?

While snowed in on the West Coast, Frances Badalamenti grapples alone with her father’s death on the other side of what feels like a dying country.

For Alex DiFrancesco, coming out as transgender—even to themself—wasn’t possible without first disappearing.

Noah Cho ruminates on why his blond, all-American mother chose his “barely bilingual” Korean father.

While searching for a Korean radish to make her grandmother’s soup, Vivien Lee meditates on family and food.

Leslie Jamison explores the fraught role of stand-in parent as she considers her new life as a stepmother to a six-year-old.

Contemplating history, family, and today’s America, Dane A. Wisher tells the story of spreading his father’s ashes on the battlefield at Gettysburg National Park and coming to terms with his life and death.

Kelsey Munger shares the story of a childhood spent being vigilant against the demons, witches, and werewolves her parents believed were stalking their family.

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee reflects on seeing and “being seen” — the silent gift of bearing witness to one another and individual suffering as a way of offering comfort and hope.

Jessica Grose recounts the agonizing waiting period after an inconclusive ultrasound, and considers whether there is such a thing as a good miscarriage.

The dynamics of what constitutes the American family is rapidly changing.

Monica Uszerowicz reflects on what living through the Holocaust does to a survivor’s relationship to food, hunger, and eating for pleasure, and how these relationships get passed on to successive generations.

In more than 30 years of membership, Annie’s descendants became interwoven in the life of the tribe. They married other Nooksacks and had kids; those kids had kids. But once the disenrollment process began, people chose sides. “It was just like a light switch,” Elizabeth Oshiro, one of the 306, told me. People she knew […]

At Oxford American, Ronni Lundy maps her past with family recipes.

At The Walrus, Georgina Blanchard reflects on the stillbirth of her son, Charlie Showman.

In the literary magazine Post Road, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about how her grandmother ─ a smart, talented woman born in repressive times ─ committed suicide for unclear reasons.

James Salter’s Light Years (1975) is a generous, intimate portrayal of a family that bends and splinters under the weight of its own differences and desires. This book exacerbated anxieties about marriage that I didn’t even know I had; thankfully, the novel’s emotional devastation is delivered in seductive, glorious prose. In the passage below, a sort […]

Every year America’s schools shut down for nearly three months—leaving families like single mother Olympia and her 6-year-old daughter Raina struggling to keep up.

That night, the whole village watching, Stavros Stavros finally proved his manhood: on the dance floor. With the pomp of the traditional syrtos that suggested respite before battle, the resting of the soul, he rejected the pappas’s interference, his mother’s control, his father’s weakness. When he felt like showing off, he showed off. During one […]

Jillian Lauren on the challenges of holding nothing back as a writer—about her time in a harem, her life as a sex worker, and the fallout from her family’s response to her memoirs.

“I know what’s the best choice for me, but I am honestly not sure what’s the best choice for him. How is a mother ever supposed to know that?”

Rewriting the false narrative of childlessness.

Recently, Roy Wenzl profiled a woman named Kerri Rawson for The Wichita Eagle. Rawson’s life was upended a decade ago, when an FBI agent knocked on her door and informed her that the man she’d always known as a loving father was in fact the BTK serial killer. Wenzl’s piece is a compelling and meticulous portrait of a […]

As soon as we’re finished, Thad shuffles to the garage to grab two 150-or-so-gallon black garbage bags. We stuff all of the presents inside, double-knot the bags at the top, and drag them to the front door, confident that the next morning, not one of our kids — not even the nine-year-old — will wonder […]

A powerful personal story.

Sabine Heinlein grew up in a family where everyone was treated as equals. It didn’t work out like they hoped.

I made my decision not to cook anymore two weeks ago, and I have stuck to it. I have a feeling I have done this before, but this time, I really mean it. I am tired of the struggle to win and impress, to impress even myself, to be engaged mentally with food, which, if […]

My great great grandmother was also a Katharine Marie. I don’t know a lot about her, but I wish I did. I learned that when my parents were choosing names for their baby, they had settled on Katharine were I to be designated female at birth. I only found out when I brought up the […]