An illustrated personal essay in which New Yorker cartoonist Carolita Johnson tallies the costs and benefits of love and cohabitation as a woman artist living in a patriarchy.
Personal Essay
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Power in Knowing: Black Women, HIV, and the Realities of Safe Sex
In the third installment of Minda Honey’s #Dating_While_Woke series, an invitation to appear in a PSA prompts her to reflect on the responsibilities of safe sex, and her imperfect past.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Story, Unapologetic Women, Writing
A Beginner’s Guide to Fly Fishing With Your Father
It was the place he came to feel wild, and I was ready to trespass into the world of men.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Cold War and its Fallout
A personal essay in which Vincent Czyz, a son approaching middle age, looks back on a volatile relationship with his father.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Hole in My Soul
A personal essay in which Sara Eckel recalls surprising her agnostic parents by becoming a born-again Christian at age 10. It was the first of many attempts to believe.
Posted inEditor's Pick
In Guatemala, a Solo Traveler Learns It’s Sometimes Best to Leap Before You Look
A travel essay in which, during a last-minute solo excursion to Lake Atitlan, Jami Attenberg considers the advantages to taking more risks and opening up to the unfamiliar, and the differences between healthy solitude and isolation.
Posted inFood, Quotes
Feeding Our Kids, In Fatness and in Health
If struggling parents feed their kids KFC, is it nutritional neglect or love?
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Tiny Scar, From Falling
A personal essay in which Lara B. Sharp’s efforts to gather information about what happened to her in foster care and as a ward of the state turn up nothing but incorrect records.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Politics and Prose
A personal essay in which Marie Myung-Ok Lee finds herself conflicted about attending a controversial author’s reading and wonders: what does “speaking up” actually mean?
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Motherless Daughter, Mothering
In this personal essay, an unexpected pregnancy not long after her troubled mother’s passing forces Ashley Abramson to navigate a kind of dual citizenship she couldn’t have anticipated.