What does it mean to perform race for a white audience?
identity
Posted inEditor's Pick
Shortcuts to Identity: How We Tell Asian American Stories
“When it comes to bubble tea and Amy Tan, I’ve taken different stances, but the two have much in common. They’ve both become shorthands of some vaguely ‘Asian American thing.’”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The True Story of Jess Krug, the White Professor Who Posed as Black for Years—Until It All Blew Up Last Fall
“She fabricated harrowing personal backstories, peddled gross caricatures, and spoke from perspectives she had no right to claim. And nobody stopped her.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
‘My Tongue Swallowing the Taste of Home Soil’: On Filipino Food, Family, and Identity
“Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.”
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
There She Goes: How to ‘Feminize’ a Face
How a trans woman found the surgery that could restore her sense of self.
Posted inEditor's Pick
He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita
Amia Srinivasan on language and pronouns: “Language is a public system of meaning. No individual can unilaterally decide what a word means, or whether any given word, according to standard usage, truly describes them. And yet the definitions of words – as any lexicographer will tell you – depend on patterns of actual human usage, […]
Posted inNonfiction
I Never Wanted my Hemangioma to Define Me
Emily Weitz looks back at a childhood filled with surgeries, harsh stares, and proving she was more than just the skin on her face.
Posted inNonfiction
Dispatch from Puerto Nowhere
Robert Lopez examines what it means to be an assimilated American from Puerto Rico, and what was gained and lost in the process.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meeting My Third Family
“Briefly, I was part of that mysterious organism, a biological family; no one cared about my virtues or my bad behavior.”
Posted inArts & Culture, History, Science & Nature, Story
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors
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.