The Weekend Essay

The history of Eritrea and Eritreans in the 21st century has stopped being one of how to win, but of how we might lose the least by the end of the century’s first quarter.

The difference between “escort” and “prostitute” is that one term relies on euphemistic window dressing while the other is unapologetic and unashamed.

Friendship is not a pale imitation of sexual romance. It is a romance unto itself.

Even if the police don’t kill me, a lifetime of preparing for them to just might.

Books and movies can provide our own private oasis, but also a way to find communion with others. And there’s something special in discovering a fictional universe in which outsiders come together.

If the unwelcome death of her uncle taught Emily Mullin anything it's that our lives are transient and largely out of our control.

After living the unfamiliar for so long, the idea of home becomes powerfully linked with an oversimplified image of American life.

Posting teen angst poetry and being part of an active commenting community helped Christine Friar digest the garden-variety pain of growing up, and—unbeknownst to her at the time—curbed the loneliness of being raised by one sick parent and one caretaker parent.

Confronting our mortality with vague metaphors, religious glosses, and computer analogies.

We all desire the three-minute montage, with a completely new you revealed at the end. But that's not how it works. Re-invention is grueling and painful and often dreadfully boring.

After I moved to Wisconsin to pursue an education, other people’s racial perceptions began to pursue me.

As a kid, Rachael Maddux thought she could shut herself away from the reality of death. Instead, through Reader’s Digest, she came face to face with the fragility of life.

After two and a half decades of heart attacks, strokes, heavy drinking, chain smoking, and, finally, cancer, my grandfather decided to end his life at 76. The whole family gathered to watch.

Fifteen years after surviving a terrorist attack in Moscow, I finally came to terms with how deeply the experience had affected me.

The common misperception of religion as a crutch would have us believe that people are faithful because they want to escape the problems of the world and the realities of everyday life. But my faith tells me the importance of staying put.

Are my emotions making me ill?

"The devastation kept me away, but the guilt kept bringing me back, ready for another round."

Type 1 diabetes is physically taxing and its maintenance exhausting, but I've learned to live with my self-afflicting body.