“I’m amazed at our human capacity to adapt to the unbearable. Almost anything can seem normal if it’s inflicted on us long enough.”
family
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Friend Goo
When the pandemic upended her daily life, Deb Olin Unferth started walking, and one day met a goose. A measured, tender tale of loss and love and difficult friendship — one that warns you throughout that a sting is coming, but manages to sneak up and wallop you anyway. He was feisty, the town bully, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sewing Lessons
In this personal essay at Salvation South, a new magazine edited by the founding editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner, Shelley Johansson retells her family’s story against the background of World War II. I know my great-grandmother felt that she was helping the war effort when she sewed bandages – her pride radiates off the page […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Searching for the Mountaintop in Upstate New York
A family confronts its racial past along the Appalachian Trail.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Extraordinary Circumstances
Kenneth Watkins’s son, Kenny, was 6 days old when he was taken away by ACS, New York City’s child-welfare agency. Kenny was then placed with an affluent foster family. To regain custody, Watkins had to prove that being poor didn’t make him a bad father. Despite Watkins’ constant efforts, it took years to get Kenny […]
Posted inNonfiction
My Grandmother’s Dark Secret
The music emanating from a storefront church in Brooklyn was a death knell: Once my grandmother heard it, her childhood was over.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ungrown
“Here it is: Women are the gravity stopping humanity from drifting off aimlessly into the void. We mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, grandmothers — women — are the backbone of the world.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
John Updike, His Stories, and Me
“But now I’ve been a writer for 30 years, I can understand the impulses that I and he and probably every other writer have: to go after a subject we’re compelled by.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
52 Years in 11 Days: A Son, Facing Death, Finds His Father
“After struggling with cancer for years, Sam Anthony was running out of time. Before he died, he found the courage to mail a letter that he had long been afraid to send.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
We Gave Them Our Leftover Frozen Embryos. Now, We’re a Family.
“I had gone into this process hoping to find our embryos a loving family. But now we were finding a loving family for ourselves, too.”