A Low and Distant Paradise
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.
Browsing Tag
The Weekend Essay
18 posts
Calling My Work What It Is
The difference between “escort” and “prostitute” is that one term relies on euphemistic window dressing while the other is unapologetic and unashamed.
The Art of Loving and Losing Female Friends
Friendship is not a pale imitation of sexual romance. It is a romance unto itself.
A Show About Outsiders, for Outsiders
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.
Familial Brains
If the unwelcome death of her uncle taught Emily Mullin anything it's that our lives are transient and largely out of our control.
Thanksgiving in Tilden Park: A Kind of Homecoming
After living the unfamiliar for so long, the idea of home becomes powerfully linked with an oversimplified image of American life.
Subsisting on the Faves
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.
This Last of Meeting Places
Confronting our mortality with vague metaphors, religious glosses, and computer analogies.
The Thing About Victory Stories
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.