Tag: identity

How a journalist found her voice as her mother lost hers.

“Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.”

How a trans woman found the surgery that could restore her sense of self.

Emily Weitz looks back at a childhood filled with surgeries, harsh stares, and proving she was more than just the skin on her face.

Robert Lopez examines what it means to be an assimilated American from Puerto Rico, and what was gained and lost in the process.

Mirrors are sparkly and shiny and hypnotic. They’ve fascinated us for thousands of years. And they might show us a lot more about our society’s misplaced priorities than we care to see.

Maybe we can’t transcend height, but can we transcend the internalized misogyny that causes us to limit ourselves and judge other women?

“I am leaving this state very soon, and it’s filled me with the kind of ache for understanding that so often accompanies a goodbye, a sense that I can never know quite enough.”

By Trying on the Role of Reality TV Villain, Logan Scherer Confronts His Gay Shame

Surviving seventh grade with a practically perfect punk nanny.

At Vanity Fair, film critic K. Austin Collins explores the shaky “true story” of Green Book, the film by Peter Farrelly starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.

One single mother’s journey to construct a sense of self that’s true to herself, not to other people.

Alison Fields remembers the perils of junior high: fitting in, standing out, and trying out.

Once described by 8th century Mercian king Offa as “a terrible place,” it’s an odd, out-of-the-way part of the world.

Alexander Chee considers the ways in which answering the question, “What are you?” turned him into a writer.

A.M. Homes wrestles with her ambivalence toward learning more about her birth parents and the circumstances of her adoption.

Do we carry pieces of our younger selves with us, even as we grow and change?

On belonging — and not belonging — in two worlds at once.

Hayat Norimine describes what it was like to grow up as an only child in a Japanese-Syrian household in Pullman, a town in the Palouse region of Washington State.

“I’d had no idea that we had ever had to define our identities at all, because to me, white Americans were born fully formed, completely detached from any sort of complicated past.”

“Brayden” and “Nevaeh” have got nothing on their 17th-century predecessors, “Waitstill” and “Supply.”

Andrew Kay found himself on the dating scene and the academic job market at the time time, living life as one long interview.

In this roundtable, poets from around this world discuss the role borders play in their lives.

Have you ever thought really hard about donuts? Like, 7,000 words hard? Keaton Lamle did.

How one woman finally styled her hair in a way that determined who she was and demanded that her loving grandmother accept her decision as a sign of strength.

“People insist that only an idiot would move from the land of the dollar to the 68-times-weaker rupee.”

In Real Life Mag, information accessibility and data-use expert Zara Rahman explores the coercive power of the location drop-down menu.

Christian McMahon so rightly reminds us that everyone has “a right to exist safely in public spaces.”

Lauren Alwan narrates her family’s migration from Syria to California to explore how people’s evolving identities help gain them a foothold in America and create unintentional tensions across 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 […]