After decades of misogynist characterizations painting Joyce Maynard as violating J.D. Salinger for writing about her relationship with him as a teen, Maynard reprocesses this information and sets the record straight in the light of the #metoo moment.
Personal Essay
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why We Cross the Border in El Paso
“I felt my mom’s grip tighten around my hand as dozens surged across the Rio Grande, the water waist-high. Adults held children in their arms or carried them in rebozos across their backs.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Giving Up the Ghost
After his death, Emily Urquhart ‘sees’ her brother with regularity. Nearly 20 years later, stories and science help to explain why.
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Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsofSummer Turned a Corner of the Internet into a Supportive Literary Community
An essay on #1000WordsofSummer, the two-week-long public writing-accountability project novelist Jami Attenberg offered to writers for free, via Twitter, Instagram and TinyLetter, from June 15th through June 29th of 2018.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Brown Girl with Bubble Gum
As a mixed-race kid with free-form hair, Lisa Rosenberg believed learning to blow bubblegum bubbles would be her ticket to an idealized (white) American girlhood.
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I Shouldn’t Have To Lose Weight For My Wedding. So Why Do I Feel Like A Failure?
In this searching personal essay, writer Scaachi Koul conflictedly interrogates her inability to ignore societal pressure and stop wishing she were thinner — along with her inability to get thinner in time for her upcoming wedding, for which her dress is too small.
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Traveling While Black
An excellent mini-anthology curated and edited by This Will Be My Undoing author Morgan Jerkins. In her introduction, Jerkins writes about her own experiences of having TSA rifle through the Marley twists atop her head while whitesplaining how to care for her hair. Included are pieces by Jamilah Lemieux on the pleasures and pains of […]
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An Introduction to Death
In this essay from our Fine Lines series, raising a teenager of her own offers author A.M. Homes a glimpse into her mother’s experience of raising her.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The 17-Year Itch
In this personal essay, Laura Jean Baker finds that being a feminist married to a progressive man isn’t a fail-safe against sexism occasionally intruding in their marriage.
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The Killer Who Spared My Mother
In an attempt to understand her own chronic pain, Diana Whitney uncovers a violent trauma from her mother’s past.